Thursday, January 29, 2009
BLURB Book in the Making
I've been stuck about how to create our honeymoon photo album. I know I'm going to do it through Blurb, of course, (like our wedding album here) but I don't want it to look just like every other vacation book--at least not on the cover. Inside the book I want the pictures to be big and plentiful. Just like I like my women..uh, wait.
I think I've mentioned before that I would LOVE to do book design, and how do you get good samples of how great you would be if you don't make books? I'm taking this honeymoon book as a challenge and a chance to create a great sample of my design work potential.
So last night I googled "best book cover design" And I found this website, which isn't plentiful in posts, but had a plethora of good ideas. I was actually to the point of thinking: Okay, so I just need to create a frame of some sort around one of the photos from the book and put some type on there. But after looking at that website, I felt challenged.
So all of these photos are the pieces leftover from my scissors and xacto knife frenzy for the front cover. Here below is the rough draft. I didn't plan it this way, but the colors are actually my wedding colors!
Here are questions I'm asking myself about where to go next:
1) Should I go through and change the colors of the individual letters and objects like I planned originally or leave them?
2) Should I make it look more graphic, and less photographic? (As it is, I put these on the scanner bed without the top closed so I could get a nice shadow)
3) Does it look too childlike? If so how to tweak it?
4) What kind of design parameters does this set out for the inside of the book?
5) Do I need more elements or more negative space?
6) Is there anything I'm missing, and will it look dated in 5 years? (With everything with the wedding, I obsessed about looking dated--you know, like those 70's weddings we all laugh at. It's probably inevitable at some point, I suppose)
Feel free to weigh in!
Here is one of my inspirational images--I love that pinwheel, and all the colors, so that's why I'm torn about changing colors on the cover page.
(From this AT post)
Labels: design, weddingness
Read or Post a Comment
When I do the squint eyes composition test I feel that the upper right corner needs a wee bit of something besides the date, another little doo-dad because all the weight seems to be in the lower left corner. No, not dated, not closing the scanner top + adding a shadow would be great.
Overall, I can see why you are an Emmy award winning grahic designer!
I recently saw an article about good book design. If I can remember where I'll e-mail you the link.
GREAT cover. I agree about the addition and my only other opinion is that the "o"s and "p" in honeymoon and sept 2008 should be filled in with something...your other details are so cute that the "blankness" in these letters is distracting. How about tiny rough silhouettes or caricatures of you 2 by your talented hubbo? Or little pieces of scanned fabric - a nice coarse weave for textural interest - to fill in those letter "holes"?
So cool and have lots of fun revisiting all those places as you design!!