Keyline Pie » Projects

Project 3 Possibilities (Part One): Sex and the City The Movie Book

Danielle — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:59:03 +0000

I strolled through the library last week looking for possible, “coffee table”-worthy books that were in need of a redesign. Since my aim for my book design class is to have three, portfolio-ready pieces, I think the coffee table test is a good indicator of what can be achieved. I checked out three books from the library, but as I started scanning them in, I eliminated one from the project possibilities. The first book that made the cut (or failed my own, arbitrary design litmus test, as it were), was Melcher Media’s Sex and the City: The Movie photo book.

Front Cover

Back Cover

I picked this book mainly because I am familiar with the content, having watched each season of the series, as well as watching the movie. Familiarization is a good thing. The second reason for picking up the book is because I just knew that the photography was going to be amazing, what with the fashion and elegance the series exudes. Sadly, the book makes a mess of it (in my eyes, anyway). While the pages contain a lot of content–there’s a table of contents that includes two introductions, background on filming, recaps of every season of the series, the movie itself, and acknowledgments–the design is all over the place.

Page 10	Page 13
Page 37	Page 174

The text pages (as shown on pages 10 and 13) are blocked in by photos that run along the top and bottom of the page (using the entire width of the page), confining the text to the middle of each page. The combination of the color behind the text, and the excessive leading given to the body text, makes the copy difficult to read. Combining that with the distracting photos (and the occasional photo bubble laid over an image), doesn’t do justice to the words or the images. Additionally, as you can see from the side by side images above, the height of the images isn’t consistent throughout the book either.

Page 92

Further along, when the images become the most central part of the book, the words and image treatment is reversed. Text is confined to thin, colorful rectangles at the top and bottom of pages. Sometimes, though, the text box and enclosed text sits three inches above the bottom of the page to make room for images. Other times, text boxes interact with the images to create a pattern of squares on the page. Because of the colored text boxes, the vast catalog of images for the book go to waste. Even without a lot of text on the page, the book occassionally tries to function as a flipbook version of the movie, as seen on page 92 (above).

My redesign of this book would attempt to respect the visual imagery of the movie’s still photography, while giving the text the room to breathe so that a reader would want to actually read the copy.

First Completed Book: The Elephant’s Child

Danielle — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:34:19 +0000

It’s been a long time coming, but I finally have a moment to post images of the finished layout of The Elephant’s Child, Book Design’s first project. Once I’ve gotten the fully assembled book back, I’ll post a picture of that as well. But for now, JPEGs extracted from the PDF file will have to do. Let me know what you think.

Back Cover, Spine and Front Cover

Title Page

Half Title Page

Chapter One Heading

Chapter Two Heading	Chapter Three Heading
Chapter Four Heading	Chapter Five Heading

First Page of Chapter

Text Treatment

The Elephant’s Child

Danielle — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:48:41 +0000

This summer, I’ve enrolled in the book design class at the University of Baltimore. Since UB’s summer session is a short eight weeks, the class instruction (and time to complete a project) is a whirlwind. The first project is to design a book for the Rudyard Kipling short story, “The Elephant’s Child”. After several revisions, I feel I’m close to being happy with my cover design.

Since I am not an illustrator by any stretch of the imagination, obtaining art for a project is always a challenge for me. Especially when there is no client to bill for the work. I found some exceptional paintings from artist Aria Eden which I used to create a rough mock-up to present to class. After attempting the first cover, I was told that artwork created for the story itself could not be used-even unpublished artwork. D’oh!

The Elephant's Child Book Cover Concept (Version 1)

Scouring the Web, I found a beautiful sketch of an elephant’s face. The artist added pink watercolor to the sketch to soften the pencil lines. The use of pink gave me a unique color palette to work from to create the back cover of the book. Sadly, a week after first presenting the cover, a comment was made that the illustration looked like a body part that rhymes with “heinous”. Needless to say, this was a bad thing.

The Elephant's Child Book Cover Concept (Version 2)

Back to the drawing board, I found myself scrambling. Until I found Khawan Barton‘s fantastic sketches on Flickr. Khawan’s elegant sketches of elephants gave me the opportunity to use a more wistful font choice for the title of the book. The only comment in class was that the artwork needed a little more “meat” behind it. I am guessing this means a little more substance to help support it. The result is below. I’m fairly happy with it, though now I’m not sure about the color of the title in version 4.

The Elephant's Child Book Cover Concept (Version 3)

The Elephant's Child Book Cover Concept (Version 4)

Booklet Feedback Requested

Danielle — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:03:56 +0000

As I work on the revision for the instructional booklet, I’m testing out various colors for the hands in the instructions. Below are three options. What are your thoughts?

No Color Option

25% Black Option

25% PMS 4535 Option

A Great Guide to Bookbinding

Danielle — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:03:34 +0000

Ever wondered how you can bind your own book without outsourcing the job to a bindery? Here’s a wonderfully excellent guide from No Media Kings on how to do just that. The guide breaks everything down from supplies to step-by-step instructions and everything in between. Happy binding!

Christmas with the Clauses

Danielle — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 15:32:15 +0000

For your pleasure, I’ve posted my revised narrative, Christmas with the Clauses. An original Seussical, with help from my friend Dan McGrain, and narrated by the wonderful Sid Whatley. Enjoy!

[youtube R1nwYL4ZBEo nolink]

Note: The file is rather large so it might take a few minutes to completely download. If the movie doesn’t load, please click here.

The Cost of Printing

Danielle — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:40:52 +0000

I’m curious to learn where people go to print out their rough drafts, comps and revisions. Before project three, I’ve printing everything at work. The upside is that I do not incur any costs, but the downside is that the printer is not properly calibrated and tends to print colors much darker than they actually are.

At the start of project three, I used Kinko’s. This is a place that is absolutely evil in my eyes, so to use their services again is costing me on so many levels: personal pride, wallet, time, frustration, energy.

I haven’t used the lab on campus yet because I’m never in the neighborhood. I’m wondering how everyone else is handling things.

How New Is New?

Danielle — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 01:06:45 +0000

I was planning on writing about the new spa treatment of fish in a bowl nibbling on patrons’ feet. Lo and behold, there is an article in The Baltimore Sun’s Web site on Sunday. How wonderful! Left scrambling, I’ve narrowed down my choices to two possibilities: a sanitizing grocery store cart and some innovative applications in dental research.

But, just how new is new? The grocery cart has a number of press releases that have been indexed by Google, but is a press release enough to make it old news? Even if was dated three days ago?

Admittedly, the cart interests me more, but I have more (inside) information about the dental research applications. A conundrum indeed.

Interviewing My Profile Subject

Danielle — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:04:38 +0000

After talking to a few of my friends, I was finally able to pin one down long enough to do an interview. I’ve interviewed people before, and while most interviews ended up as a podcast, I did publish one article based on an interview. And I was able to make the story as long, or short, as I wanted.

Having only a maximum of 250 words for this assignment is going to be a real challenge for me. I would never have thought I’d admit such a thing. The challenge for me is usually getting started on structuring a profile, and making sure I hit all the major points from the interview. With the word limit, the profile needs to be short, sweet and to the point. And also interesting. Very challenging!