STEP 1: Give your book a title.
To help you decide on a title, here is a list of the components of the book that need to be included:
- An interview with myself as a stranger who I meet ten years from now.
- An interview with a person I admire now.
- An interview with someone I strongly disagree with, but like or love anyway.
- An advertisement for a product I love.
STEP 2: Write down the number of pages you’d like to have in the book.
STEP 3: Write down the height and width of the book you plan to make.
You may want to consider how much paper you can collect in the next month. I'll have the materials for you to make the cover and to do the binding stitching, but you'll be responsible for collecting paper for the book pages. You can use paper that you or others would typically recycle or you can purchase paper if you want something particular--there's really no wrong answer for paper gathering. The only thing you'll want to keep in mind when gathering your paper is that each piece should be the width of the entire book when it's open. So, for example, if you are making a book that's five inches wide and five inches long, when you open the book it'll be ten inches wide. As a result, you'll actually want paper that's five inches by ten inches to start with. If it's larger than that you can cut it down, but you'll want it to be at least that large to begin with. You'll probably also want to have 50 pages in the book--at a minimum. Aim high.
Title, page number, paper type and source, and book size are due on Tuesday, November 10.
STEP 4: Take a photograph that you'd like to use for the cover. Keep in mind (in terms of the composition and the orientation of the image) that you may want to allow that cover to spill onto the back, as well. Also, I want to encourage you to consider making the photograph of yourself--particularly if you're thinking about making a journal. What is something you like doing or that you know is obscure about you? Maybe ask a friend to help you take a photograph that you'd feel proud to have on the cover of your book!
STEP 5: Make sketches of the cover you’d like to make.
Of course the hard and fun part of designing a book is designing the cover. With your dimensions in mind, sketch 10 different half-sized designs for this book--back and front. Since we're using both photography and typography, make sure to include both of these aspects in your sketches. Play with layout. The elements that must be in your design are a title, subtitle, photograph, and author. If you'd like to include more than those details, that's also ok. The photograph should make sense with the content of the book, but don't be afraid to work conceptually.
Before you even begin, it might be fun to here what Christoph Niemann has to say about layout design!
Sketches are due at the start of class on your class day during Week 11 / November 12 or 13.
STEP 6: Design the cover on the computer.
For this step we'll use Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. If you'd like the pages to have content, we'll also use Adobe InDesign.
Here are some examples of covers that were designed last year when we did a similar project:
Final PDFs of covers due on December 11.
STEP 6: Print the book cover and any designed pages out from our printer.
STEP 7: Bind the book.
We’ll do this step together. There are lots of ways to bind a book, but I think we’ll probably chain stitch these. If you have another method you’d like to try, see me ahead of time to be sure we have the materials to accomplish your goal.
Final jpeg image of finished, bound book in Schoology by December 18.
Credits:
Created with images by fotoblend - "a book old read" • James L.W - "Books" • Patrick Tomasso - "untitled image" • Joanna Kosinska - "Minimal pencils on yellow" • Karim Ghantous - "Classic mid-century Penguin books, 1 of 2" • Thought Catalog - "the book used here Seeds Planted in Concrete by Bianca Sparacino"