This project consisted of hand-crafting a hardback book filled with samples and images of many parts of graphic design that would be useful in the printing process such as substrates, finishes, or even different means of printing stuff out. We put all of these samples into a single piece that we can use to our advantage later on for refreshers on all these important things.
When I started thinking of how I wanted to structure this book I first thought of how I wanted to position the samples and definitions on the page so that they fit together well while also being very compact. When it came to sample size, I chose 1” circles for the actual samples I could gather and then images from the internet varied in size so they would not appear too stretched inside the tight quarters that I have created for this work. The shape helps me know if I should be looking more closely at sample to see a specific effect in it.
First, I decided upon what colors I wanted to use for this book. I wanted to use the complimentary colors blue and orange because they are my favorite colors and I feel they draw me in so I would actually come back and look at this. For the cover though, I used an old shirt that I could no longer wear anymore. I chose this shirt because even though it is no longer in the normal sense of a shirt, I could reuse it for this so it could still continue to serve a purpose long after its original purpose is gone. After deciding upon these details I started thinking about ways to make the pages more engaging while not being too busy so I decided to go with a simple line straight from the bottom left up to the top right, with the color not intruding upon the word space so it doesn’t cause visual tension. I decided to use blue for the lines and orange for important text such as new sections of the book, similar to how numbers would separate chapters in a novel. This gives an interesting dynamic between the words and the pages that helps separate the different sections and with the page numbers being colored the same orange color so you can flip through the book and tell where the sections change. After all these things were decided it was just the process of putting them all together through InDesign and then putting the real samples with the newly created book which was created using the steps at: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-bind-your-own-Hardback-Book/ . Once all of this was complete I had a brand new book to add to my repertoire.
Putting this book together has made appreciate the work that printers go through a lot more than I originally did because it has been a process getting everything working in just a way to make things actually come together. It was fun though. Putting together books is such an interesting thing to do. It’s one of the things that you would never think about because it is one of the many things that we always take for granted. We've always had the final project, but actually going through all the steps to create the book from cover to cover is an experience that the children’s book couldn’t even match. This feels even more personal than the children’s book, because this is entirely my creation. I put everything together with my own hands, and that is a feeling that just can’t be matched by anything else. I hope that I can continue to grow my knowledge and skills in all of these categories of design and more. It’s such a fun thing to be a designer!
