P5 Documentation
Guitar 101, Learn 7 chords in 7 days
Research & Inspiration
Initially, I wanted to make a visual book for my favorite band, the 1975. Thus, I was doing research on visual books focusing on music artists and music related content.
Initial Sketches
I did a full book sketch for the 1975 content with a 12 pages spread.
At this point, I was actually starting to get a bit worried about the content. Since they are a band with certain brand images, especially neon light signs and indie vibe photos with the rectangle for the 1975, there’s nothing much of a space for me to do creative illustrations as well as sticking to their brand. Since I’m not a professional photographer, the only pictures I have are some medium quality concert photos from last year. Though I was a bit concerned, I chose to keep on going with the idea.
Process with the 1975
For the mini crit, I was planning to do a cover page as well as the first several pages.
For the cover page, originally, I wanted to do an illustration of the photo they use for announcing performances for the book’s cover, as shown on the left, but I kept having trouble with the neon light effect, and the outcome on illustration or photoshop was just not ideal.
I still wanted to keep their image but I personally did not have any portrait photo of the band, and a random concert photo taken from a distance with an iPhone was just not ideal appropriate enough for the cover image. Julia suggested me to try collages of the band’s images.
I chose one of their portraits I really liked and just tried to play around with it. With photoshop, I was able to create this cropped image of them with a pink outline, which fits the band’s overall color choices.
Because the band has a color preference on pink and blue, for the current era, I was trying to mimic their color palette for the cover page. Eventually I just chose the simple gradient effect of the two rather soft pink and blue colors for the background. I did this process in illustrator and export the file as an image for the background on indesign.
Since the band has a really clean and simple brand image, I was trying to create the content with the similar style. I didn’t what exact font the band had for their brand, I decided to use Century Gothic for all the texts since its both modern and clean with barely any detail on the edges and corners. For the content, I decided to include basic band information and their major music work for the mini crit.
Mini Crit
I wasn’t able to attend the mini crit because of a family emergency but I brought my work to the class following and showed it to Kaylee and expressed my concerns about not having enough creative content and not very much satisfied with my work. Because of the available contents online, a book with collages of their photos just did seem to be enough for me. Kaylee suggested that I should try something else if I didn’t really like my work and have a backup black in case it didn’t work out as well.
Process with Pittsburgh Photo Book
I was look through my photo gallery for inspiration of ideas for the book and realized that I have a decent amount of photos of Pittsburgh. Since I like to go out and explore places as long as I have time with my friends, I decided to do a book of a collection of places I found in Pittsburgh that I believe are amazing.
Research
I statred to do some research about visual book with collections of photos and I really like the vibe and theme of the following ones.
Photos
I edited some of my photos and went out to take more photos with my friends. I tried to go to as many places as possible for pictures but I didn’t really have enough time to go to every places I planned to go to.
Digital Drafts
I began to try to put the existing photos on indesign. Because I was only able to get the photos taken of the places, I couldn’t really stick to the plan of having my friends interviewd and ask them to take me to places they enjoy staying at.
The book was not really going to the direction I was planning for at this point because of the lack of content as well as my lack of creativity for the text of the book. I decided to change my direction once again…
Guitar 101
Since I changed my content last minute, I did not have enough time as before to go out and explore Pittsburgh or just playing around with the topic, I decided to focus on something I’m familiar with. I’ve always been interested in music and since I also play guitar, I decided to do a small visual book with a tutorial of an introduction to guitar.
When I learned guitar, I really wished there was something handy and easy to follow for the introduction level of hand positions and chords. The book I used was heavy, filled with unnecessary instructions now that I look back and had songs that I didn’t really enjoy playing. I then decided to create a handy book with clear and easy instructions to follow and songs that people actually heard of and are willing to learn.
I had some initial ideas and put some pictures I found online on indesign to have a general overview of the content. Since I wanted to have a really simple book with clear instructions, I decided to include as many pictures and as little words as possible. For a introductory guitar tutorial, it is important to include the basic knowledge of playing guitar, such as the strings on guitar as well as the basic hand positions.
I also did two illustrations of the hand positions since I feel like when I was learning guitar, the hand position was more important to me than the diagram of the strings for the chord. I constantly needed to watch videos or ask my teacher about the correct hand position. I was a bit uncertain about the chords to include. For popular songs, the most often used chords are D, G, Em, C, F, Bm. Since most of them were included in C major chords, and since C major is what everybody learns at the start of learning any instrument, I decided to just do the seven chords of C major.
Chords
I started the whole process with chords, since they do not require much drawing but just positioning of lines.
I first tried to put everything together on indesign but it was quite hard without all the alignment tools and convenient size changing function so I moved to illustrator to do all the diagrams for 7 chords.
I did every string and finger numbers one by one. I wanted the ratio to be very price so I literally calculate the length for each line and their respective coordinates so I don’t mess up the positions not even a little bit. Since I wanted to have some sort of background color for my book, instead of just white, I needed to have everything on the diagram besides the strings and numbers transparent. It took me a long time to find the font for the numbers so that besides the black part, even the numbers are transparent. The font was a font filled with characters and its called Wingdings 2.
I felt liket eh line art was a bit thin so I adjusted the stroke of the lines to a version I felt would be the clearest to view. However, when I tried to import it to indesign, the copied image was just too thick. I figured it probably had something to do with the resolution I set for illustrator. Because of this small thing, I had to copy and paste several times in between illustrator and indesign to find the right stroke for the lines.
With the fixed stroke size, I created the 6 rest chords illustration with a bunch of calculation and alignment adjustments. I added another way to play Bm for those who would potentially struggle with bar chords. I wanted to make the book as approachable as possible.
Hands Illustration
Although I did two tracing of the hand postions, I didn’t really like how they turn out to be since they’re quite cartoonish and did not really fulfill the purpose to “teach” the readers how to position their hands. I was quite frustrated with how to handle the fact that tracing tools are not good enough for my illustration. Then my friend suggested me to use the tablet and draw the hand positions on it.
I printed out the pictures of the positions of hands for each chord and placed them on top of the tablet and use the pen to trace the outline. It was the first time for me using tablet and it was quite hard to manipulate where do you want the lines go. After struggles, I managed to trace the hand pose.
Since it looked quite different after just tracing it with the tablet pen, I needed to use the angle tool and pen tool to slightly adjust every line to make them look more consistent and actually look like a hand.
I really liked the color I chose for the skin tone before so I planned to just go along with it. I used the blob brush tool to fill in the color and I chose a rather pinkish grey for the nail color.
The hardest part was to actually put the illustration on top of the strings. I had to do small changes of the hand shape at this point to fit the strings at the back. I needed to show the precise shape of the strings to not mislead the learners so I had to change the shape of the hands instead.
With similar approach, I was able to draw all 7 hand poses for the 7 chords.
Then I did the illustrations for the basics of the two hands with the same approach.
Guitar
Besides the hands, I needed to trace the outline of guitar as well. However this time, I didn’t use the tablet but just simply use the pen tool to create the guitar based on the line art I found online.
Tracing outlines of the guitar was actually quite simple. The hardest part was to find the right color for it. I started with the easiest colors such as the dark grey and black part on the body of the guitar, as well as the greyish color for the strings. Then I started from the top to the body to gradually fill out the different shades of brown and yellow.
Background Color
I was quite uncertain what color to use as the background color of the book. Since I was gonna include a lot of hands positions on the book, I figured the background color needs to at least look good with the skin tone color. I then used the adobe color wheels and found this blue color I really like and it also looks good with the skin tone color.
I put the blue as the background color but I didn’t really like how light it looks so I changed the blue to a slightly darker shade and it perfectly fit the guitar color as well.
Side Bar
I didn’t want to have the same layout for every page for my book with just the hand positions and the chord diagram so I wanted include something different on every page. Because I wanted the book to be as approachable as possible and as convenient as possible so I thought a side bar for giving the learners tips would be pretty beneficial.
I was just trying the color of the skin tone but it looks pretty disgusting. At the same time, I believed the original size of my book didn’t really serve the purpose for a handy booklet, so I changed the size of each page to 3x5 inchines. I created a new document and positioned everything accordingly.
At this point, I was just trying to think of the colors that would fit the page. I figured it would be a good idea to include completely different shades of color in terms of brightness to have a strong comparison of the side bar and the book. Also, at the same time, I realized that the side bar of the book actually look a bit like a book mark thing that you can just tear off. So I included a line of dots to indicate that you can tear the part off.
With the chosen color palette, I decided to put the darker color on the side as a try to see the overall effect, but then when I looked from a distance, the dark color just seemed to be too off and too different from the rest of the book.
I decided to just find a color to fit the blue background. I really like the pink in the middle of the palette and chose it as the side bar color.
Since I change the color of the side bar to a lighter color, I can no longer use the blue color as the font color and had to change it to black. For the font choice of the side bar, I tried out several and decided to use Century Gothic since it’s very simple and fit the theme of a handy simple book. Since I want a really fun vibe of the book, I chose a fun font for the title of the chord, which also fits the hand illustration, reflecting a bit comic view.
I then arrange the next 6 pages with the same style and positioned everything on the same spots for each page. I manipulated the positions of elements on one page until satisfied and use the data of coordinates and sizes of images for everything in the following page.
As an introductory book, I didn’t really want to include too much about how to play the guitar with fingers so I just include a really short introduction to how to strum the guitar. The positions on this page are laid out in the sane way as the previous pages.
Then I did a user guide page to sort of giving the readers a general idea of how to use the book. I used the same 2 fonts as I did in other pages.
The purpose of the book was to teach the readers how to play songs. I include 3 songs in the end in different level of difficulties. The layout was pretty clear and I specifically put the chords on top of the lyrics on the exact position so that it was clear and easy to follow.
I haven’t designed a cover page at this point. As I loved to call it, I just put guitar 101, learn 7 chords in 7 days as the name of the book. The page looked a bit empty with just the text so I add the guitar on the top right corner to add an element of image and at the same time, the position encourages the readers to actually turn the page and look through the book.
To keep a similar style, I used the guitar as a symbol and a bit of information on the back cover.
Final Product
Final Thoughts
I’m actually quite happy with how my project turned out. I was happy that I got the chance to make something I’m passionate about. Even though I could have had much more time if I didn’t change my topic so many times but I was glad I actually had the courage to change it in the mid way through, for more than one time. I guess the most important lesson I learned through this project is just that it is okay to make wrong decisions and the most important thing is to trust myself and do the thing I actually enjoy and find awesome. This project really gets me to think about the grid and the relative positions of elements on all pages. Also, I learned more about thinking with the perspective as a reader and think about what they would see when they get the book. Most importantly, it gets me to stick to the principle of design, that it is more important to deliver the information to the audience than prettiness. I’m so glad I got to take this class and had so many projects done. It really does shape the way I see design.
