Project Five: Grids, Style & Format
Print
2018
Individual Project
About the Project
In our final project of the semester, we created a bound book with both text and imagery that showcased a topic we cared about. Using all of the design concepts(such as hierarchy, typography, color, and Gestalt principals) we learned throughout the semester and knowledge of grids, we created a book whose form and style matched the content we were trying to portray. We were instructed to design an appropriately-sized book that was at least 16 pages long and had to have a page count that was divisible by 4.
I chose to create a book about makeup. Many of my friends are inexperienced when it comes to putting on makeup, so I wanted to create a book that would be able to teach them some basics about products and hopefully give them a guide to start with.
Project Process
Sketches
My initial idea was to create a book showcasing different types of products, and also provide tutorials on how to put them on. I also wanted to include different types of the different products(eg. liquid foundation and cream foundation), and recommendations of each product. I wrote out all of the products that I wanted to include in my book.
I wanted to go for a minimalistic concept for my makeup book, so I researched different magazine spread layouts and based my initial sketches on them.
First Digital Iteration
I decided to try to incorporate some of the picture tutorials I had seen in beauty magazines in my makeup book, and base my tutorials off of them. For the types of products that contained longer tutorials, or had more variety within themselves, I dedicated two spreads to them, with the description and types on the first spread and the tutorial on the second spread. For products that did not need as much information, I only dedicated one spread to them. In my pictorials, I wrote down the steps, with one picture per step, and I used the brush tool in Illustrator to draw how the product would be placed per picture. Because I wanted to create consistency between each page, I used the same grid pattern for each page and the same hierarchy for the text as well.
During mid-crits, my peers praised my illustrations, and felt a sense of continuity throughout the pages. However, they almost unanimously felt that my illustrations would be better accompanied by me physically putting the makeup on throughout the pictorial. I was also told that I could have more variety in my layouts, as they could get a bit boring. Some classmates commented on the quality of my photos, but I had put some in as placeholders, so I felt like that would not be an issue in the future.
Second Digital Iteration
After much thought, I decided to narrow the scope of my book. A lot of the problems I faced while creating my first digital iterations stemmed from the fact that I was trying to fit too much information onto each spread, and it was very hard for me to brainstorm other ways to fit all of the information I wanted onto the number of spreads I had anticipated. As a result, I decided to focus on the products themselves, and dive deeper into their different types and recommendations for each product.
Originally, each page was 8 inches wide and 5 in tall, but I felt that these dimensions were a little too large for a guide about makeup, so I reduced each page to 4 inches by 4 inches. For my next few iterations, I decided on a few layouts that I thought would fit well with the products that I had chosen, and the text that I wanted to put on each spread. Each spread focused on a different product, and had a description about the product at hand. There were also recommendations for different purposes or different skin types.
During my individual session with Mackenzie, she liked the direction I was going in, but suggested I arrange my text so that I had more of a hierarchy. She also suggested I incorporate four different layouts evenly throughout my book to create more consistency. She felt that one of my layouts cut off the connection between the two text boxes even though they were at the same place on the grid, so she suggested some layouts I could use in lieu of that one. She also mentioned that I could cut down the number of rows and columns I was using for my grid.
Final Digital Iteration
I fixed many of suggestions Mackenzie had for my book. I created a more consistent layout between the spreads, and I created more of a hierarchy in my text. After I finished all of my inside spreads, I went to work on the cover. I wanted the cover to be very minimalistic, but putting ‘makeup.’ on the front cover with only black and white seemed more boring than purposeful, so I decided to set it against a colored background instead. I thought that a light pink would fit very well with the makeup concept. However, after setting ‘makeup.’ in white text against a pink background, my inside layout did not feel very consistent anymore, as it was still black and white. I played around with adding color to each spread, and I finally decided on adding a border to the top that resembled my cover page. However, I realized that doing so would not work with two of my four layouts, so I decided to alternate the two layouts that worked, and I switched all of my spreads to the new bordered design.
Final Thoughts
This book project was definitely the toughest project I had worked on by far, but definitely the most rewarding. It was hard having so many variables to consider, but it was also nice to have the freedom to create whatever I wanted. During the final critique, many of my classmates thought the size of the book was perfect, and that it was very informative. However, they thought that my book could have been better split up into different sections, as it abruptly jumped straight into the actual content. I was also not very proud of the edges of the book, as I did not cut it as well as I could have. In future iterations, I would improve the physical quality of the book as well as add different sections to organize the book better.
