Publishing Design - Task 3A Book (And Then There Were None)

October 03, 2022

Publishing Design - Task 3A Book (And Then There Were None)

20/09/2022 - 18/10/2022 / Week 04 - 08

Ellyn Saw Mei Hui / 0353358

Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Publishing Design Task 03A

LECTURES

♡ All lectures and recordings completed in

Publishing Design - Exercises

INSTRUCTIONS

TASK 3A BOOK

♡ After having our content and finishing up our visuals, we are to determine the format of our book (considering size, layout, typeface, type size, etc.)

♡ Mr Vinod had already mentioned earlier that we will be using staple binding for our book.

♡ Our book size was also determined in our first exercise. The book will not be smaller than A5 and not bigger than A4.

TEXT FORMATTING:

Fig 1.1 text formatting - And Then There Were None

DETERMINING GRIDS:

♡ We also did this as part of our exercise 1 which is to determine how we will be using the grid system. We were told to come up with a total of 3 different grids to see which one we like best.

♡ At first I explored 3 different grids but I did not like how it looked so I decided to a 4th one.

Fig 1.2 Determining grids

FINAL CHOSEN GRID:

Fig 1.3 FINAL chosen grid system

LAYOUT PROGRESS ( WEEK 5 - WEEK 7 ) :

♡ Before starting this task, I looked around for some layout references to get some ideas.

Layout Reference:

REFERENCE (1)

REFERENCE (2)

Fig 1.4 layout reference #1

Fig 1.5 layout reference #2

ATTEMPT #1

Headings & Title: Merriweather (bold), 20pt
Body text: Lora (medium), 11pt

♡ This was a draft layout we did in class, from the first page until the end of 1st chapter

Fig 2.1 draft layout, attempt 1

ATTEMPT #2

Headings & Title: Lora (bold), 15pt

Body text: Open Sans (regular), 11pt

Fig 2.2 layout attempt 2

Fig 2.3 layout attempt 2

ATTEMPT #3

Headings & Title: Lora (bold), 15pt

Body text: ITC Garamond Std (book), 11pt

Fig 2.4 layout attempt 3

Fig 2.5 layout attempt 3

Fig 2.6 layout attempt 3

ATTEMPT #4

Headings & Title: Lora (bold), 15pt
Body text: ITC Garamond Std (book), 10pt
Imprint, Content & Reference: Open Sans (regular)

Fig 2.7 layout attempt 4

Fig 2.8 layout attempt 4

Fig 2.9 layout attempt 4

FINAL LAYOUT:

♡ Typeface used are the same as attempt #4, only with a few minor changes in the text size (for imprint, publishing company name and reference)

Fig 3.1 FINAL layout (thumbnail 1)

Fig 3.2 FINAL layout (thumbnail 2)

Fig 3.3 FINAL layout (thumbnail 3)

Fig 3.4 FINAL layout thumbnail PDF

BOOK COVER PROGRESS ( WEEK 7 ) :

♡ Barcode must have a white background with it

♡ My idea is to illustrate a empty room/closet because my title is 'And Then There Were None' and (spoiler!) the murder happened inside a closet.

Fig 4.1 book cover, Attempt 1

♡ I didn't like how my first attempt looked like so I decided try another one. Most of the layout remains the same except for the title, I made them closer to one another while also adding a distorted version with opacity lowered in the back.

Fig 4.2 book cover, 2nd attempt

FINAL BOOK COVER:

Fig 4.3 FINAL book cover (front, illustration with title)

Fig 4.4 FINAL book cover (back, illustration)

Fig 4.5 FINAL book cover (spread)

PRINTING PROGRESS:

♡ test print spread, printed at campus (b&w)

Fig 5.1 test print spread (b&w)

♡ b&w version, printed at campus

Fig 5.2 test print b&w book

♡ thumbnail test print at home to see the overall layout and colours of my book.

Fig 5.3 test print thumbnail #1

Fig 5.4 test print thumbnail #2

♡ We were told to print our book in coloured version during ILW (Week 8) and we will be bringing it to class on week 9 to show Mr Vinod. After searching for multiple stores and comparing prices, the 2 final choices were Archprint and Angel printing but I decided to go for Angel Printing since they seem to be more experienced in printing books.

Fig 5.6 Angel printing @Bandar Sunway

Fig 5.7 my 1st & 2nd print

♡ First print, inner page: 128gsm art paper, cover: matte lamination

Fig 5.8 colour mock up - 1st print, gif

♡ Second print, inner page: 120gsm similli paper, cover: matte lamination

LINK TO VIDEO

Fig 5.9 colour mock up video

♡ I chose to print my inner pages on similli paper for my second time rather than art paper since I felt like artpaper will crease easily when it's folded. For some reason, staple binding is also not as good for art paper?? My pages fell apart quite easily compared to similli paper.

Fig 5.10 Creasing on art paper

FINAL TASK 3A BOOK SUBMISSION

Fig 6.1 FINAL Cover, JPEG

Fig 6.2 FINAL Spread 1, JPEG

Fig 6.3 FINAL Spread 2, JPEG

Fig 6.4 FINAL Spread 3, JPEG

Fig 6.5 FINAL Spread 4, JPEG

Fig 6.6 FINAL Spread 5, JPEG

Fig 6.7 FINAL Spread 6, JPEG

Fig 6.8 FINAL Spread 7, JPEG

Fig 6.9 FINAL Spread 8, JPEG

Fig 6.10 FINAL Spread 9, JPEG

Fig 6.11 FINAL Spread 10, JPEG

Fig 6.12 FINAL Spread 11, JPEG

Fig 6.13 FINAL Spread 12, JPEG

Fig 6.14 FINAL Spread 13, JPEG

Fig 6.15 FINAL Spread 14, JPEG

Fig 6.16 FINAL Spread 15, JPEG

Fig 6.17 FINAL Spread 16, JPEG

Fig 6.18 FINAL Spread 17, JPEG

Fig 6.19 FINAL Spread 18, JPEG

Fig 6.20 FINAL Spread 19, JPEG

FINAL TASK 3A BOOK (PRINTED)

LINK TO VIDEO

Fig 7.1 Colour mock-up

Fig 7.2 Colour mock-up

Fig 7.3 Colour mock-up

Fig 7.4 Colour mock-up

Fig 7.5 FINAL book flip through video

FINAL TASK 3A FLIP BOOK

Fig 7.6 FINAL flipbook

FEEDBACKS

Week 05 - 27/09/2022

General Feedback:

- Don’t spend too much time on one layout, look at thumbnail size to see the flow

- Details can be fixed later

- The word 'imprint' 'author name', etc do not appear on the page itself
- There must be the word 'content' on the content page
- All headings need to be in the same size and position

Lecturer Feedback:

- Placement level of information (author, copyright etc) is weird so I need to make it consistent
- Headings must be consistent
- Mr Vinod suggested that I could reduce the point size of my texts and increase the leading since having texts from top to bottom is very crowded
- Adjust my margins better it will look a little nicer
- Add more breathing room

Week 06 - 04/10/2022

General Feedback:

- Full title page will look more grand than the half title page
- There will be a total of 32 pages (minimum) in our book excluding the cover page. If we exceed 32 pages, we must add another 4 more pages due to the signature system
- Cover page will have 4 pages in total (front back x2)
- Test print on bnw first before finalising the book to check our type setting
- Prepare bnw book mockup next week
- Pullquote does not have to be strictly readable because the pull quote already exists in our body text.

Lecturer Feedback:

- I can start the book with illustration or I can use that illustration for the book cover but I would have to add in the title and everything

- Align my text to either left or right on the full title page, don't have to be one side left and one side right

- From layout perspective, there's consistency in the headings

- Consistency in placement of text except for the introduction page

- Be more consistent with the starting point of my text, a hangline - where my text hangs from

- I can put my subtext on top of the page but I would have to give a comfortable spacing before I start a paragraph.

- Check my point size and leading, what we see on screen is very deceiving

- If I decide to play with my pullquote, then I will have to be consistent for all of them

Week 07 - 11/10/2022

General Feedback:

- Test printing thumbnail in colours to see if the colours are able to turn out nicely
- Submission for blog task 1 & 2 will be on 18th October
- 1st colour mock up of our book must be done before we move onto task 4

Lecturer Feedback:

- Make my full title bolder and change the author's name to a lighter weight so that it is easier to distinguish between the both
- Reduce the point size for the publishing company's name
- Move up my contents to align it with my imprint page
- The spacings of my text looks uneven so maybe I could try to reduce the point size to 10pt and use left align instead of left justification
- After that, I can try to adjust the ragging of my texts so that it will look more well balance
- Move my reference list to the left

Week 09 - 25/10/2022

General Feedback:

- Decide on a grid system, must be functional for the content that we have

- Test out different types of grid system, test font size for screen reading

- Screen reading documents are not the same as hand held documents (screen reading pt size starts at 16pt and above)

- Add neccesary descriptions in our brand guideline

- Do not have too small of content in our pdf, maximise the space in our document

- Need to include images

- Most important positioning is the navigation bar, does not need to be standard but needs to be visible, constant and conitnous, not too big but not too small

- Have 2 options next class for our ebook.

Specific Feedback:

- For the printed book (colour) Mr Vinod suggested that my imprint size could be smaller

- Publisher size could also be smaller too

- I also have an orphan text on one of my pages so I was advised to fix that

REFLECTIONS :

Experience -

Honestly this task was quite challenging and was totally a new experience trying to creating a book. I realised how hard it was to come up with a good layout. Creating layouts that are exciting and able to surprise reader requires time and effort. It was fairly difficult for me to find ways to position my texts nicely. Some areas will have 'orphans' and some areas will have a blank space because there were not enough texts to fill the space. But after many trial and errors, I managed to find the one that I am satisfied with. I also learnt that consistentcy is key when it comes to placement of informations (in terms of text headings and text alignment). Though it was hectic as there were many heavy modules going on at the same time, this task gave me an insight as to how publishing works and how attention to detail is very important. Creating layouts can be quite interesting to work with once we've figured out the grid system that we want.

Observations -

I observed that flow and transition are important in a book design. We can surprise readers by creating an exciting layout on every page (like enlarging certain images or playing with the pull-quote) but it must also have a good flow. The overall layout must be cohesive but has variations to them. It is also not necessary to fill up the whole page with text, allowing some room for blank space is helpful as it allows the reader to have 'breating room' while reading. It also doesn't overload the reader's brain with too much information at once. Having an interesting cover will also help to attract people into picking up your book.

Findings -

I found that pullquote does not have to be strictly readable and we can use typographic systems to play around with it as a pull-quote is already existing in our body text. I also found that I'm (kind of) lacking in terms of creating layout. It takes me a few tries to get used to it so I think this is something I should work on and improve for my future works! I also found that looking at thumbnails after creating a layout can really help us to see if the layout has flow and transition. Test printing how our spread looks like before finalising everything can further help us determine if our texts looks too big/small. As Mr Vinod said, what we see on screen may be a 'lie'. It could look nice on screen but ugly when printed out.

FURTHER READING:

Guide to Book Layout: What Makes a Book More Readable?

This blog talks about the key elements of a book layout and details that may make the book more engaging to its readers. Firstly, cover design plays an essential role as it helps to attract reader's intitial interest. However, layout is also just as important as the content inside is what makes the reader keep reading the book! Key elements of a book layout includes, alignment, spacing, grid, margins and trim size (for printing). As for the inside of the book, typography, line spacing (align text evenly to avoid orphans), white space (ensure sufficient space between text & images. Do not cram many elements into a single page) and also art / images.

Search This Blog

Ellyn Saw Mei Hui (0353358)

Publishing Design - Task 3A Book (And Then There Were None)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Advanced Typography Task 03 - Design Exploration & Application

Information Design - Weekly exercises

Publishing Design Task 02 - Content generation

Advanced Typography Final Compilation and Reflection