Project 5: Visual Book
In this project, we were tasked to create a 12–16 page visual book that included imagery and text. We had the freedom to choose whether or not the book was going to be a short story, expository, children’s poetry, interactive, fiction, nonfiction or anything else! Additionally, we were able to choose the paper, binding, and size of the book.
Initially when I first read over the project outline, I was determined to create a children’s story. At first, I wanted to write a short book about the life of a cookie. (I was inspired while eating insomnia cookies) After thinking about the story and what I wanted to illustrate, I decided to go in a different direction. The book that I was going to create was going to be a letter to my 10 year old sister.
While thinking about the possible ways to illustrate this I came up with a few ideas:
These were my initial ideas that I came up with after deciding on what I was going to create my book about! (A letter series to my sister)
I decided to pursue the second idea- having an image serve as a background while having text on the side of the pages. After figuring out a direction, I wanted to look for references so I could have a better idea as to how my book should look.
These were the inspirations that I found regarding “children’s books” on pinterest. I loved the illustrations and how graphic they were. I also loved how abstract the animals and patterns were. The colors that were used were simple but yet they popped out. I decided that this was the direction that I wanted to go in/ in terms of the illustrations that I wanted to create.
In terms of the font, I wanted to have a font that was friendly yet modern. I decided that I was going to use Museo Slab for my book. Overall, I wanted the book to be a small square- and chose 6x6.
Content Gathering
I started by writing the dates and blurbs about why those specific dates were so important in my life. I didn’t really think about pages, I just tried to think back of the day my sister was born up until today to see if I remembered all of our crazy memories.
Digital Illustrations
Because I saw that there was a press for time, I wanted to quickly execute as many pages as possible while having them be the best possible illustration. I first started off by drawing away on my ipad! This is a digital version after photoshop. At first I thought I was going to create all my illustrations on procreate, but after asking for feedback, I realized it was close to impossible to execute my illustrations like below within the time frame.
After having my classmates look at my digital illustration, I got a few tips for feedback. The first was that the overall page would benefit much more with color, and that the over complication of images is great, but it would be better “time-wise” if it was not that complicated.
With the feedback I received, I decided to go in a different route. Because my background is in fine arts, I wanted to create a book that also included my specialty which was painting! I decided that I was going to use gouache for all my illustrations. I quickly got started on sorting out the pages trying to determine how many total pages were needed/ which letters I was going to add.
This is the final content for the pages:
4.28.2006
Ever since I was 5- my dream was to have a sister. The moment when mommy and daddy told me about you was on that exact day at the dining room table. We were having eggs and toast and I was determined that you were already mine. My favorite animal at that time were squids and I was set on your name- “squid.”
7.3.2011
Do you remember this day? We were making a mudpie together in our backyard. When I wasn’t looking, you decided to eat one of the mushrooms growing in the grass. You told me your tummy hurt, I told mommy, and we went to the hospital right after.
11.22.2012
On this exact day- we convinced mommy and daddy that after our thanksgiving meal, we should always have ice cream as dessert. Ever since then, the tradition has not changed.
3.19.2015
This was during my senior year of high school. Mommy and daddy thought that I was spending too much time with my friends and told me to babysit you instead of going out. I was so angry and I remember making you eat vegetables and really spicy friend rice for dinner. You didn’t speak to me until the next day.
7.28.2016
This was when I came up with the brilliant idea to bake a cake for daddy’s birthday. We only put tangerines on the cake because we thought it was daddy’s favorite. Mommy got so mad at us because of the mess in the kitchen. Do you remember?
04.23.2018
This was the day we decided to go to Giant Eagle and buy everything we wanted to eat. You probably remember. Glad to have you around sissy.
After determining which letters/stories were going to go into my book, I quickly got started with my first illustration.
After painting a few of the stories, I decided to pop them into photoshop to clean the images up. Below is the first photoshopped image that I worked with in illustrator to figure out which page layout would work with my book.
This was the first iteration of the page that I initially sketched. I realized that if I were to format the image in the way that I sketched, the illustration would be cut too much and would not be understandable. Additionally, when I asked a few of my peers whether or not they liked this page, they said that it looked a bit too clunky.
I then decided to have a white box around the words and include the illustration as the background so that there would be more that can be seen. During evaluation time, one of my peers told me that the box around the words seem a bit harsh. I tried to play around with how the words and image connects a bit better with the opacity.
Because the overall illustration is made up of colors and lines, I was told that the line work of the background and the text may be a bit confusing. After talking to my friends and professors during class, I finally decided that it would be easily understood and seen if there were two pages that covered one story.
After asking around for feedback, I was told that the date seemed “weird” since it was not very different from the words. I tried to move the date around and played with the font to come up with a final layout.
I realized that I liked how the date looked on the side of the page- I decided that the date was going to belong on the side of the page for each story. When I asked for feedback, I was told that the font choice seemed off because it was similar to the body font. I played around with the fonts some more to figure out which style worked the best.
This was the final iteration of the description page. I decided that the date was going to be on the left side of the page because having both the date and description on the right hand side side made it seem too cluttered.
Binding Ideas
When I was told that I could bind the book myself, I started off with looking through Pinterest to figure out which bind I liked the best. This was the first image that I found that I wanted to replicate.
This was the second idea that I wanted to replicate. After multiple attempts at even trying to bind the book with PVA glue, book cloth, and book board, I saw that the glue was seeping out and that it did not look clean. I decided to go a different route and bind the book with book tape.
Final Piece
Reflection
This project really opened my eyes to the endless possibilities of layouts, colors, and fonts when it comes to designing an entire book. I felt like every problem I had was because of the endless choices. Overall, I had so much fun writing a book to my sister and was so happy when she finally got to read through it.
If I were to go back and do something different I think it would be to extend the number of pages. If I had more time, I would love to do more stories and also have the original illustration style that I wanted to have. Instead of drawing it out digitally, I would have loved to hand drawn all the images so that it was complicated and full of color. I think that would have been a lot of fun to look at as well.
Additionally, I learned from the final critique that it would have been great to incorporate my own handwriting. I would also want to change the dedication and the last page font into my own handwriting. I think that would give it a more personal touch to the entire book which would could have been better.
When looking at everyone else’s books I saw that it could have been also very cool to have a big square book. If I had more time, I would have definitely tried to print a bigger book to see if the overall aesthetic worked better.
