Egmont Books

For the last session of the year, we were joined by Junior Project Manager Anna Robinette from Egmont Books.

Egmont's production process is particularly inspiring due to their use of design and experimentation. The recent title 'Seed' uses a beautiful holofoil finish with ink printed over the top. This gives a great effect, but adds to printing costs. 'Sedric' uses a shorter and wider book size to the normal B-format, which fits in with the concept of the stubby troll. The cover for this book was also printed on the reverse of the cover card, which means it has a rough finish. This effect can be a cheaper method of attaining a matte finish, but this side of the card tends to be more porous and more ink has to be used to give a bright colour finish, which can negate savings on paper.





















Egmont publish both magazines and books for children. I was intrigued by the amount of inventive and exciting products in the line, like the Minecraft Blockopedia and the Star Wars 'build a star fighter' book. These titles are said to have 'play value', and as such need to be tested using toy safety standards, vigerously.

 The children's range has crossed over into toys quite significantly, which has raised some issues for tax categorisation - as books are untaxable, but toys are taxed at 20%.

After displaying some of their work, Anna broke down the role of a production department within a company into the following responsibilities:

• Scheduling production and distribution: chasing up slow designe and editorial staff to ensure the product meets deadlines 
• Printer and supplier management: making an educated estimate regarding the projected sales for a title and sending this to print.
• Safety testing: sending products to be safety tested in the crossover toy/book field is extremely important to avoid customer issues, to prevent recalls and - in the worst case - an irreparably damaged brand reputation
• Digital production: sending briefs to app designers
• Product development: ensuring products are viable and safety-tested
• Costing: based upon pre-agreed rates for standard books and ‘spot costs’ for extra products like finishes, extra pages etc.

Anna stressed that the most important skill in this field was communication, as liaising between each individual department to maintain the smooth and prompt production of a product is the primary function of her role. I will take this on board into future roles.

One other importance in the team ethos at Egmont was sustainability, and the production department works with the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) which ensure that the paper used in all of their products is sustainable and ethically farmed.

marketing design

Today's session comprises two of my favourite areas within publishing: marketing and design.

We were given two book covers from different titles at Palgrave Macmilan. We were then asked to create a flyer/AI sheet containing all of the specified information on Blackboard.

The exercise was carried out in test-like conditions, and we had one hour to complete it. I found the most difficult area of the task to be the re-reading of the branding guidelines to check for correct spacing and positioning of the logo, and to ensure that all of the conventions were followed.

We were also given a set of swatches on Adobe Illustrator that we were to design with, these were colours agreed by the brand and were not to be altered. Working within these guidelines - although inhibiting creativity - worked quite well for me, as often in design the sheer number of colour, font, and styling options can be overwhelming. To have some rules and guidelines in place which can be worked around allows for much more of a straightforward creative process.

I think the colouration works well, and I also like the use of blocks, with the strip down the middle. I also like how I positioned the text inside the hat. I wish I could have used a more interesting font, as Helvetica is one of my least favourite defaults,  but I was required to follow the branding specifications. If I were to alter the design in any way, I would reduce the font size or change the bold option.

Picks of the Month: illustration and marketing design

Jim Kay

Jim Kay is a really interesting illustrator based in New York. He has come to (inter)national attention because of his recent work on the Harry Potter series. While I am not the biggest Harry Potter fanatic (which is sacrilege to say on this course- I do like still like Harry though) the dark illustrations really appealed to me.

 

The art style is actually very similar to my final project, which interested me from the beginning. I love the whispy use of pencil and the range of light and shade in the above drawing. He also works in mixed media, and has produced numerous 3D models for different exhibitions.

 

 

 

Jim details his design process on his website, and it's really very inspiring how he takes queues from all around him, in museums and on the streets. I am really excited for his collaboration with Harry Potter, and I think he could offer something great to the books, with a little extra magic.

Jonathan Barnbook

is quite different, and works with a range of companies to effectively re-brand and refresh. His website is particularly creative, and showcases the interesting use of composition and taste in his ever-changing style.

 

Jonathan has worked on Damien Hirst exhibitions, and more interestingly alongside the British Heart foundation. The style is very graphic and contemporary - which I very much like - and I appreciate the wide difference in colour, tone and graphics between all of the designs.

 

 

 

 

Jonathan has significant ties to publishing, and produced a coffee-table style art book tribute to David Bowie, after his death earlier this year. He has also worked with French company Fiell Publishing to create some colourful and psychedelic designs, below:

 

 

 

 

 

image and text design

Image Manipulation

 

Today I've been manipulating images in Adobe Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator. This will be the primary method that I will use to formulate my endpapers for the JSS assignment, as only one Pantone or shade of CYMK is permitted. I am now going to break down what I worked on with each image:

Bear one (brown): I created a greyscale image in Photoshop and saved it. Then I changed the Image Mode to a bitmap, and saved it as a .bmp file. I then added the file to InDesign and edited the colour to a nude swatch that I created from Adobe Illustrator.

Shakespeare: To create this bitmap image, I saved it as a greyscale image at 1200dpi. I used the Image>mode feature again to save it as a bitmap.tiff image. From this, I placed the item into InDesign over a tan background. I then changed the B/W image to a one-tone red. I think these colours work quite well together.
 

Bear two (pink): I re-opened the photo of the bear in Photoshop and saved it as a bitmap.tiff image at 1200, I edited the bitmap type to Halftone Screen which gives the image a comic book effect. From there, I placed this file into Indesign and changed the colour swatch to a Pantone+ Solid Uncovered in a light pink.

There are multiple versions of bitmap manipulation, these include: halftone, threshold, pattern and gradient. Each one gives a slightly different effect.

Text manipulation

For the above text, I utilised Adobe Illustrator to create the text using vectors. This is a better alternative to editing text on Photoshop because quality is not lost. 

I ungrouped the letters so each could be edited and manipulated individually, I enjoyed working in this way because the letters stayed crisp and were of print-quality. I then copied this smart image into Photoshop. By using the enter key after doing this, I could edit the text in illustrator and the smart image would transfer over to the Photoshop file automatically. This will be invaluable to my final typesetting and cover design assignment! 

typesetting fun

Today we put into practice the weeks of Indesign knowledge we've accumulated over the course. We were set a task to typeset Jane Eyre. 

I used paragraph styles for the chapter headings, main body, first paragraph and for the poem at the end. I adopted a custom baseline grid, adapted the margins, found out how to use drop caps, mastered master pages (finally!) edited images in the file, and I added an extra fancy detail on the bottom of the master page to reflect the Victorian-era text. 

I edited the text quite extensively to exclude double spaces, incorrectly used dashes, double lines, unnecessary capital letters, orphans, widows and quotation marks. 

I think the effect works very well. I set the leading at a very specific 18 pixels, which creates a nice space between the lines to adds readability. I will use all of these techniques in my final typesetting assignments.

Picks of the Month: book design geekery

Four Corners Books

Four Corners Books is a really interesting publishing company with a really unique and strong aesthetic. The titles are designed individually with reference to their content - which range from classical literature to non-fiction. Each title contrasts so effectively against the Scandinavian grey/white of the website background, which separates the company from most online booksellers.

The company is a really good example of how book design can carry through and influence the company aesthetic. The pricing is a little more expensive - at twenty pounds for a hardback - but this is understandable due to the collectable nature of the novels. Four Corners seems to occupy a space in-between coffee table books and classic fiction that not a lot of publishers have dared to explore.

Below is an example of Gustave Flaubert's 1856 Madame Bovary, adapted and designed through a simplistic, mixed-media aesthetic.

Smithsonian artists' books

The USA's Smithsonian museum have an excellent collection of artists' books. These range from traditional books with excellent illustration and design to actual works of out that do not function through readable text, but just use the physical form of a book to tell a story or to convey a message. I have pictured a few of interest below:

Eye Magazine

'Books without words' is a theme I'm really into today. Eye Magazine has a great selection of wordless books, ranging in theme but mainly centered around art and visual culture.

 

Outdoor Gallery by Yoav Litvin focusses on graffiti of note found in New York City, it features Banksy and Normal Rockwell and a few other unexpected characters. 

London Letters by Roger Perry features large, black and white images of politically motivating 1970's graffiti. Juxtoposed against one another, the layout is poignant and emotive in a way that stark images  alone can be.

designing a cover

 

I designed a cover in today's session, from this original image:

 

I added a black back cover from the cover grids set up in week 3, and I used Photoshop to clone stamp some of the starry imagery around where I thought the blurb should be. I tried to turn the different images on angles so it wouldn't be as obvious what I had done, and I think this has been successful.

 

I used the font that I found in the last exercise, and I think that works in practice. I also think the spacing of the author, title and quote works visually.

 

The colouration is particularly effective on this cover, as all of the colours used are picked with a dropper from the original image. I feel that this adds some sense of continuity across the cover.

If I were to change the cover, I would manipulate the title so that it was more inventive. I would possibly experiment with a pink or teal drop shadow, or change the leading. This would make the title stand out more, and also open up opportunities to add different finishes.