Book: Initial Designs

In my first initial idea for the book layout, I have chosen a clean layout with a simple front cover. The title ‘Fragile’ and my name as the only item. I have laid out each page with one image per page, in this design I have 10 pages in all with 10 images and a front and back cover. These images are not yet the final ones chosen for my work in progress portfolio, but I have chosen ones that I am considering.

The pages are set to 8” X 11” size as I believe this gives those images that are in landscape format, more space and clarity and a more suitable size for my book, as I feel any size small would disadvantage the viewing of the images which needs to be viewed at a bigger size. If these were to be displayed in a gallery, I would like to see them no smaller than A3 or 16” X 24”. This would bring the details out and allow the viewers to get close to the images. The similar reasoning behind the book size as I believe the details would become lost in the image size.

I tried out different font design within InDesign and I decided that Gabriola suited my work. It is a delicate, small, detailed font that mirrors the contours of the leaves I have photographed and that gentle, fragile appearance. I have used size 72pt for the title ‘Fragile’, so it fills the centre of the page, I am unsure if this is a suitable size and position in this design, my name is set to 36pt and the text under the image set to 24pt. After discussion in my webinar last week around my booklet experiment, one area of feedback was the text size and to try and avoid a large font. I agreed with this, as it may take the focus away from the work, so I have chosen a smaller size to see how it sits next to an image. I am unsure if I will place the text below each image, as I feel this could confuse the viewers as to the title and I feel placing a certain word next to certain images would remove my aim of allowing the viewer to associate the intent and theme of Fragile with different images in the series.

Fig 1: Laura Marsh, 2021, Cover and Pages 1-2 Layout

Fig 2-3: (Above) Laura Marsh, 2021, Page Layouts

My idea to avoid this, is to have the text listed on a page at the start of the book, page 1. This would give the viewer an idea of what the work is about and then as they view each image, they would be encouraged to associate the words to the work in their own way, with the word fragile included to tie the title to the work and an image. In this current design I have 10 images and 11 words, I would like to aim to have the same number for both to equalise and balance the correlation between the images and text, allowing anchorage for each image chosen. The words are arranged in no specific order in this design and something I will consider in my following designs.

Fig 4: Laura Marsh, 2021, Text Layout

I currently have white background for all pages in this design, this I feel is too bright considering my images are quite dark in tone and contrast, I may keep the pages with images white to avoid the photographs being ‘lost’ within the page, but I am considering changing the cover and text page to a darker colour, to balance out the colour tones in correlation to the work itself.

My next step is to design a cover that is more appealing and final as well as text layout and page colour. I will do this with InDesign and use a Zno.com as a possibly printer so I can use their specifications and design tools to see how it would look when it is printed.

Figures:

Fig 1: Laura Marsh, 2021, Cover and Pages 1-2 Layout

Fig 2-3: Laura Marsh, 2021, Page Layouts

Fig 4: Laura Marsh, 2021, Text Layout