Final Project Documentation
Introduction
This project was a visual book using original imagery. The goal was to make the design choices necessary to effectively communicate the content of the book, considering typography, image selection, color, etc.
Initial Sketches
I knew that I wanted to create a book about moods because I thought that it was interesting how different people represent them differently. At first I wanted to link different moods to events that could happen over a span of a day, but I wasn’t sure how to sketch them so I initially sketched just the moods, with possible backgrounds that matched the moods. After sketching, I wanted more imagery than just typography so I did some research, looking for ideas that illustrated moods.
I liked the children’s book of moods that I found with the animals, but I was also interested in the idea of postures and facial expressions creating moods. I wanted to create something like the stick figure that I found.
Then I picked a few moods, focusing on bad moods since children’s books are usually happy and I thought that bad moods were more interesting to represent. I sketched the moods that I picked, along with facial expressions and then stick figures with postures showing their moods.
Digitizing Imagery
I began my digitizations with all the moods, scanning in my sketchbook page and using the Pen or Line tool in Illustrator to recreate the words.
I realized that this would work well only for anger and pain; sadness, confusion, and loneliness would work better with just using type, so I did those using text in InDesign when I was making my first spreads.
Next, I scanned in my sketchbook page of stick figures and used the Pen tool again. The small symbol I put on each figure’s shirt I thought was a nice touch that emphasized the mood.
Content, Iterations, and Refinement
I knew what size I approximately wanted each page to be; the examples of books from previous classes gave me inspiration. I liked the size of the watercolor book of the tiger, so I approximated it in my head and put down pages of 5.5" x 5.5" in Indesign and placed my illustrations onto the pages. Next, I developed the content of the book. I wanted the content to be relatable, so I wrote descriptions for each mood and asked people what they thought. If they didn’t agree with the feelings, I rewrote the descriptions. This is what I ended up with:
After I had all the moods, stick figures, and content placed on the spreads, I continued on to develop backgrounds. In the middle of this, during desk critiques, Julia suggested that I refine one or two spreads first to have a concrete example of where I wanted the book to go, and then have the rest of the spreads go in the same direction. I decided to start with the pain spread and the anger spread, since I already had an idea for the pain spread from my initial sketch of the mood and wanted to have something simple for the anger spread.
In my initial sketches of mood papers, I originally had slashes going randomly all throughout the page, but with the lines making up “PAIN,” I thought that would be too much, so I simply used a brush to create a few lines in the corner, one going through the word to simulate stabbing of some sort. I had already decided on the colors of the spreads when I developed the content, so that explains the black and red. However, the white was entirely unanticipated. When I made the background black, I forgot to account for the black text and the black outline of the stick figure. I decided I needed something else since I wanted all the stick figures to be the same, so to match the theme of a child being able to make the designs, I decided on a ripped paper background for each stick figure, like a child doodled a stick figure onto some paper and ripped it out.
The ripped paper presented a problem. I followed a tutorial online which turned out not to look like paper at all for my purposes, so I then tried to scan in ripped pieces of paper on a paper background:
This turned out well! However, I hadn’t thought that the background would have a gray cast that would be annoying to get rid of. Now, though, I had examples of what ripped paper should look like, so I went back to the tutorial and changed parts of it according to the examples I had. In the middle of this during desk critiques, Brendon recommended I try out green screen to remove the background if needed. I looked into it, but decided to use it as a backup method, continuing with creating my own ripped paper since it seemed like much less work. It turned out well! I had to create a different ripped paper image for each spread and the cover.
I found a free brush set online that suited my scribbling purposes well. I used this to create the backgrounds for the loneliness spread, the rain in the sadness background, and the lines in the pain background.
For the “anger,” “sadness,” and “confusion” spreads, the backgrounds were much more straightforward. Anger had a simple red background, not too bright because it would wash out everything else on the page and hurt the viewer’s eyes, but also not too dark since that would appear to be brown. Sadness had a very muted spread to reflect the mood. The background was a gray-blue, with a few lines that could pass for rain or just a few lines of gray crayon. For confusion, I imposed many rectangles of different sizes and colors onto the background to make it a bit erratic and give it some depth, as if a child cut out a bunch of rectangles and stuck them onto a piece of paper.
For the cover, I simply wrote what the viewer should expect, and I tied it to the rest of the book by including a facial expression and the same ripped paper background. I made the background white intentionally to create a contrast to the inside spreads which were full of color.
The back cover I left blank, so that when the viewer finished the book, there would be no explanations, leaving them in their own thoughts, whatever they might be. I wanted a sudden break from the emotions in the book.
After I had everything down in the book, I went back in to each illustration and cleaned it up — made sure the stick figures were symmetric in limb placement and refined their symbols.
For the paper choice, I asked for something thinner than cardstock, to make the book more fragile. When binding, I ran into a small inconvenience at TartanInk that turned out alright. I originally wanted them to staple the book, but they said that the formatting didn’t let them do that, so I decided that glue-binding was alright. This worked out well, since the spreads with simple backgrounds looked better if they weren’t laid out flat. It added a tiny bit of welcome depth.
Final
Reflection
At the final critique, I saw some people incorporate their hobbies into their books, and I appreciate them sharing part of themselves and putting it into their work. I hadn’t thought of making myself part of the book; I was focused on wanting to communicate relatable moods for a purpose: to show that even something a child could create could easily be effective communication. I thought the wide scope of projects that I saw was interesting, with the subject that each person chose for their book revealing something about that person.
I reached my goal for this book, effectively communicating feelings through a combination of multiple design elements, all that we have learned throughout the course. Even though I had learned about these elements, there were still some surprises, considerations that I had failed to take into account in the beginning, and this forced me to “go with the flow” in a way, having to come up with fixes that still matched the theme of the book, such as the ripped paper background to account for the black backgrounds. I would like to create more designs in the future so that this won’t happen as often — I think this is something that comes with experience.
If I had more time for this project, I would have liked to make the book longer, including more moods. As a learning process, the creation of each spread taught me how to represent each mood and made me think critically about what others could relate to.
