OUGD404 - Studio Brief 02 - What is a Book? - Research & Content

Research - As a starting point I researched into the design of existing books that were sold at Colours may vary and Urban Outfitters, looking at the layout, type, bindings etc. This was to see and understand what other similar books are available on the market, which allowed me to try and make my own publication stand out on a shelf from the other available out there.

Drake Colouring book - Colouring book tribute to Drake filled with Drizzy-inspired
 line drawings  from various artists for you to colour in however you please.

ALL KINDS OF CARS BY CARL JOHANSON

The most aesthetic books on the market I found were the ones that made good use of white space (figure and ground), used minimal text, and bright bold, stylish illustrations - making them the focus of the book.

Content - For the publication I made a list of characters and content I thought should be included within the book. 

After conducting research into the most famous roles that Danny DeVito has played I started to gather the content that would go into my publication. 

The book would include: 

• Contents page
• A page about Danny DeVito himself
• Harry Wormwood from Matilda
• Frank Reynolds from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia 
• The Penguin from Batman Returns
• The Stripper from Friends
• Phil from Hercules 
• Vincent Benedict from Twins
• Amos Calloway from Big fish
• And the Lorax from The Lorax

Each character profile would contain:

• Character name
• The name of the film and year it was released 
• Most Iconic quote said by DeVito's character in the film 
• and an overview of the character's role in the plot 

Once I had decided on this I started to think about the illustrations I would include in the publication. At first I was unsure what medium to do them in as many of the books I had seen and liked contained water colour paintings and colourful illustrations such as in 'alphabetics'.  

One book that I was inspired by when looking at study task 06 was Matt Sewell's Garden Birds, as it too combined illustration with information in a clean, clear and aesthetic way. His water colour paintings were fairly simplistic and colourful however I felt it would be hard to translate this style onto a person especially when it was the same person throughput the book (not a variety of different shaped and coloured garden birds).

This is where I started to look at different illustrative styles that might be more appropriate for the look I was trying to acheive. 

Lucinda Rogers has been an illustrator whose style has inspired me for a few years now. I love the varying line strokes she uses to create more abstract and interesting illustrations. 

I also came across these illustrations by Evelyn Hahn. I love the distorted features in these figures and the use of dots and dashes as shading. I also love how she's roughly coloured in the dark areas with a sharpie. 

After thinking it over I decided to do my illustrations in pen and ink as it is something I wanted to experiment with and I thought it would create an interesting effect that would create unique results across all the characters including the animated ones like the Lorax and Philocetes from Disney's Hercules. 

These are the illustrations I drew for the book: 

Amos Calloway - Big Fish

The Lorax

The Penguin - Batman Returns

Harry Wormwood - Matilda

Frank Reynolds - It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Vincent Benedict - Twins

Danny DeVito as himself

Phil - Disney's Hercules

The stripper (officer good-body) - Friends

Danny DeVito as himself

I drew all of the illustrations using fine liners and ink pens and felt tips. I tried to use varying line weights and different strokes wherever possible.
Once I had completed the drawings I began to consider how I wanted the book to be printed and bound. I wanted the finished product to be a small, short, fat publication to resonate with Danny DeVito's famous size and shape. I also wanted the finished book to be something you might find in a trendy coffee shop etc. for customers to read so didn't want it to be flimsy. Many of the books I had researched such as 'Our Garden Birds' were hardbound which created a really nice, more up-market feel to the book overall. However only having 10 double page spreads It would be quite difficult to acheive a well bound book with this few pages. 

That's when I started considering board book. Children's books and books like Orla Kieley's 'Shapes' (which I also studied in study task 06) are bound on book board, allowing for fewer pages to create a nice small, chunky, hard back book. I felt this was a perfect route to go down as it would tie both the content and outside of the book together really well, while also creating an unusual aesthetic as board books are usually for children. 

However after thoroughly researching into the production of board books I soon realised it would be too difficult/ expensive to create to a high standard. This is where I went back to the drawing board. 

As part of our inductions to the course we took part in a bookbinding workshop that introduced me to 3 different methods of bookbinding: Concertina, Saddle Stitch and Japanese Binding. 

The concertina book uses an accordion fold so the pages are arranged in a fold out zigzag pattern and glued together to hold them in place. After talking to my tutor I realised that this would be an appropriate binding method to use as it could be hardbound and would be short and fat like the man himself. 

I also had the idea of putting a repeat pattern of Danny DeVito on the other side as a decorative element.

After deciding on this method of binding I started to put the book together in inDesign. To make life simpler I decided to create a square shaped book using 2 double sided pieces of A2. The pages would then be arranged in a strips on the A3 that could then be folded down into small individual pages.

As the book was meant to be '10 double spreads' and I was making a concertina fold out book I wanted to keep everything quite small so it was not impractically long when completely folded out. I also thought the smaller the better as it made the book 'pocket sized' and easily transportable as well as more interesting as a fun gift. 

This is what the layout looked like in inDesign: 

The blank pages at the end of each row were what I would be glueing to stick to the following set of pages. 

This method worked well as I could easily measure where the folds should be as when it came to folding everything had to be exactly the same size and shape so it all lined up perfectly when it came to binding. 

I made sure I made good use of the white space and filled it appropriately so there was just the right amount of information for the viewers.

This is he grid I used when making the publication to ensure everything was properly aligned. 

For my typeface I wanted to use a short, round text, to resonate with the rest of the book. 

I looked at a variety of rounded typefaces but whittled it down to 4: Avenir Book, Devanagari Sangam MN regular, Helvetica Regular and Tahoma Regular. 

I ended up settling on Avenir book as it was the most rounded I felt and was also really easily legible when printed out at a small scale. 

In one of the study tasks we made a list of graphic design rules that you should always follow when designing and laying out a publication, including:

1) Keep Line Lengths Short - A 66-character line (counting both letters and spaces) is widely regarded as ideal and anything from 45 to 75 characters is satisfactory.
2) Have a consistent set of fonts- 2-3 fonts maximum.
3) Never over-stretch type
4) Use the correct alignment - Flush left is the most appropriate as we read from left to right and there are no rivers created. Justified can be used; however, only if the text has been typeset correctly to ensure that there are no rivers.
5) Use a grid - This creates a structured page, which leads to the aesthetic layout of the piece working well.

The the title font I used a font I was fond of from a previous project 'Hallo Euroboy' and edited it in illustrator so it was more condensed and fat. Original Vs New Version:

Once I had completed the contents for the inside of the book I started designing a repeat pattern for the other side of the concertina book so it wasn't blank. 

I simply took all of the illustrations I had done for the content of the book and piled them together to make a busy repeat pattern. Once I had a square of pattern I duplicated it and then altered the edges so they lined up when repeated.