Book Design

So I have tried to tackle book design!  I have decided to create a book to go in with the map and route description in the walking pack to tell people about the Roaches area and the myths intwined within it. This has stemmed from the fact I have been trying to take too much on within the project and after WIP presentation it seemed more like 6 projects than just one. I have started to narrow down my options as to what exactly should included in my walking pack and viral campaign.

I have scrapped the  treasure hunt idea, deciding to keep it simple with the walking pack just including the map, route description (done in a narrative way) and the book will hold information on the area and the myths of the walk so people can refer to it.

To decide on a size for the book I thought about how big it needed to be for people to read easily but not so big that it was difficult to carry around on the walk. I have settled on a traditional portrait size book in keeping with the old style theme, and the measurements are 17.5cm x 10.5cm. I got the idea for this size by looking at route cards and Harry Potters ‘Tales of Beadle the Bard’ Collectors edition book, from which I got a lot of my inspiration for tis particular aspect of my work from it’s style, layout and design.

Layout out example from 'Tales of Beadle the Bard'

I have also decided to hand make the book so each one would be different if it was to be released to the hiking world.

I started to play around with layout ideas, but thought the simplest would be to have an equal margin around the sides to keep the images and text aligned equally. I don’t want to overcomplicate the book as things are usually better if they are kept simple.

Layout idea

I did a few sample pages  to have a look at how the typeface and image stylings worked together. After several trial and error attempts I came up with the one above. It is a little rough around the edges, but the idea is there. Simple text and image balancing each other out.  Originally the paragraphs had line spacings rather than indents but i felt this was not really suitable for the theme, and was not in keeping with the medieval stylings it has taken on. I also tried centered texts bu they looked more like peoems. i i had the skill to dwrite a pem about each area, that would have worked quite well.

Anyway I will show them in tutorial and get some feedback on them.

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