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THE MAKING OF THE BOOK

In in design

I looked towards the magazines, such as Creative Review, for inspiration on how to lay out my book. I noticed the pages were squared, and sometimes had 4 collums, or 6.

I decided to go with 4 collums, and 3 rows for a guideline's of my book. When people viewed my book, I wanted the picture and age number to be the most powerful, 'in your face' thing. Therefore as I wanted this project to be more visual then reading, I chose the image on each page to be the same size (if not, bigger) than the text, and linked the colour of the number, to the picture, which I thought would've given it a theme of a certain colour each year. (at a young age, they start of quite basic, and primary colours).

Before I looked toward magazines, books, newpapers and other sources to base my book around, I came up with a couple of designs, which imediatly I didn't like. The first one was too hard to read, and I felt that it didn't flow as well as the one I have now. It was low on colour, and characterisitc; therefore, I chose to dump this design.

I liked the idea of this second draft. It was somewhat pleasing to look at, in a way, although, as I started designing it, I instantly knew that I'd come across problems when presenting the rest of the work, writing and pictures, over the number. Although I did lower the opacity of the other numbers (of which the page number wasn't) considerably, I still think this would be irritating to look at, and read.

So again, I trashed this design.

Firstly, before any sort of designing on the computer, I had to decide what dimentions I wanted the grid system to go by, through out the whole of the book. I knew this was an important step to do first, before you start. I looked towards magazines such as Creative Review, as I liked the way the whole book way portrayed, in the way it was layoured out. I decided to go with 4 collums, I did this by selecting the master pages to set all of these guide lines and gutters to where I wanted, on all of the pages, at the same time.

Once I had all the guide lines in place, I then had to add images and place holder text, so I had an idea of where this book would end up looking like, so I could evolve around that design. As I put the text in, I know I was a clean, sharp place where the text is and isn't. I tried using 'justify all lines', which meant every line was pushed, strached, or squiged to the nearest side of the text box. I really liked the look of this, as it looked clean, and easy to read. However, it wasn't as easy to read. Because of the automatic changing in kerning, and tracking, this would mean all the spaces in bettween each letter, is completeley different to the other. large spaces in one place, and tiny spaces at another time, made it very hard and awkward to read, therefore, I decided to go with another layout of the text, while keeping the sharp look.

So I tried spacing it out, and aligned the text to the left. I didn't mind this way, it was easier to read, but wasn't pleasing to the eye, and didn't fit in with my theme of boxed, clean, and simple shapes.

So the way around this problem, was to keep the text boxes in the guide lines and gutters, but to keep the text aligned to the left. This would love both problems, but I still liked it. 

Having it this way, meant it was practical, and comfortable.

With the slightly easier option of aligning the text to the left, but keeping it tight within the collums. I think this provided a fine balance of style, and functionality.

THE FRONT COVER

photoshopping and camera skills

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For the front cover - as the title is Me In 16 Pages - I thought it would be a good idea, to take a photo of me now, and photoshop it into an old photo, of my self. So I set out to look for a photo which would be reletivly easy to do this. When taking the photo of me now, I had to consider the distance of which the photographer was, the high off the ground, the angle, and the exposure. All of these point will make it that more 'realistic', if I got them right.

Once I got the photo, I cut out the photo of my self, and put it next to younger me, while consider size, and angle. I could now (as I had a side by side comparisant) correct the contrast, black and white point, brightness/exposure, grain, sharpness, and quality. Once I had all this done (while making a lot of layer masks), I then finished.

To finish it off, I merged all the layers, and corrected the over all contrast, colours, and grain, to make it that bit more real.

 

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