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.

cover design and font choice

Today I'm looking different cover genres and searching for an appropriate font to match.


1. 'A View of the Cascade'

From a distance, this cover looks like it could be from a fantasy novel (to me, anyway). I think it's because of the muted, pink and green colour palette that somehow reminded me of the pretty glowy elves from Lord of the Rings. Anyhoo, on closer inspection it appears that the illustration is actually a really beautiful and traditional nature painting, with a few people in early 20th century dress. Because of all of these indicators, I decided on this font 'Fogtwo no5'. I think it's pretty classic and definitely signifies a vintage period, but I also think that it isn't too predictable and 'broadway'. 

 

2. ' Space Cats'

This a pretty cute illustration of a cat, in space (two of my favourite things). I really like this idea, and I chose a font that wasn't too traditionally 'childrens' because I think this image could possibly have potential with an older market too. 'Another' is a typewriter font with a rounded, approachable feel. 

 

3. 'Morning Dawn'

This design is a nice, fresh graphic design that doesn't give away much. Because of the palette and because of the style, I would think that this book is aimed at women. I decided that it didn't look much like a romance novel, so I settled on a memoir-type idea, and used a handwritten font called 'Hickory Jack'.

 

4. 'Demon Flight'.

This book with a demon on the front first indicated to me that I needed to take a wander down the 'gothic' section of dafont.com. However, after saving a few very garish and obvious fonts to my desktop, I decided on 'Optimus Princeps'. It's not quite as restrictive, and I feel that the cover of the book is deliberately enigmatic enough to draw a wide range of reader, and it should be complimented by a font that respects that. 

 

5. 'The Greatest Feeling'

This cover deserved a typical retro font, because of the mid century fashion illustation on the cover. I really like the graphic colour scheme, and I think the font could be easily edged up by colouring it acid yellow and outlining it in black.

 

6. 'Dancing: An Illustrated History'

This was my least favourite of all of the covers because it doesn't really say much except 'dance'. The fonts related to dance that I could find were all quite comical, so I settled for an aptly titled, 'timeless' serif font. 

 

7. 'POP!'

I really like this cover. I originally thought that this would be a 60s-inspired art book about pop art, but on second thought, it would make a really interesting contemporary literary fiction cover. I settled with the font 'Nova' in the end, because I thought that it encompassed the best of both worlds. This cover was definitely the hardest to look for, because I couldn't really pin it down

Now I'm going to make a full front and back cover from one of the illustrations above, I'll probably upload a separate post going through that though - look out for that!

Lionheart

In Thursdays session, Ness Wood of David Fickling Books (@wood_ness on twitter) came into the session to talk with the group about the book design process. It was a really exciting talk, and Ness' career has been overwhelming.  Ness also doubles as a book historian, and works with Queen Mary University. 

In the lesson, we were given the hardback cover to Richard Collingridge's Lionheart, which looks like this: 

We were then asked to formulate a different paperback cover, suitable for supermarkets with mass-market appeal. We were given the option of sketching or of using Photoshop and I thought I had better use the time to hone my skills. The illustrations from the book were available on Blackboard, and I had a look through to find a different image with both of the major characters that would be graphic enough to get noticed, and display the excellent illustrations: a major selling point.

pesky birds

I found this one, and I used the lasso tool to cut around the image - which wasn't very easy for a novice like me because of the hairiness of the lion and the trickiness of the birds. I thought the background could be more dynamic and tell more of the story, so I had a look through the illustrations and found the image below. The animals in the book are a main feature of the story, and displaying them more prominently on the cover was important. I like how in this image, the animals are peeking through the wilderness:

I then sought to put the lion over the more exciting background image, and I blurred and blurred and blurred to get rid of any pixel-y problems. I also cut out a few birds from the first image and positioned them so they were flying off the screen, which I thought looked quite hopeful and gave a nice uplifting tone to the image. Choosing an illustration where the lion looks quite sublime was an important factor in the process, because the book is about a child overcoming fear. Evoking that on the cover with the juxtaposition of a small child and a large lion was quite important. I also think that this nods to the original cover, where the two were contrasted in a similar way. 

 

For the final version, I manipulated the contrast, saturation and added a filter so the colours would be quite powerful for added visibility. I also used a similar font to the original cover on my version, but if I were to go back and change anything, I would probably make it bold so it would stand out more on supermarket shelves. The red star - which looks  quite gaudy on the image - symbolises a sticker of some sort. Possibly added by the publisher to show an award the book has been involved with (like being nominated for the V&A best illustrated book), or for the supermarket to place an offer or a price.

I'm really excited that my Photoshop skills are improving, and I'll let you know if I get any feedback on my version of the cover.

cover design layouts

Today I'm focussing on the really technical, IT-based book design aspects. I'm practising my use of Adobe InDesign and Photoshop and I've really been enjoying it. Here are some technical things I've learnt this week:

Standard Book Sizes: 

Picture Book - 240mm x 200mm

Paperback Fiction Book - 198mm x 129mm 

Hardback fiction - 216mm x 198

Terms

Some terminology commonly referred to during this aspect of production are:

• Bleed - a 5mm allowance along the outside of the cover, where no detail is printed. This protects against the cover being cut short. 
• Gutter - the mid-section of the cover, where the spine sits after printing.
• Turnaround - An allowance that allows extra space on a cover jacket for the flap to fold over easily.
• Board Allocation- on a hardback book, the card is sometimes 3mm thick. Designers allow for this during the design process, so the cover fits over the whole book.
• Slug area- on Indesign or Photoshop, the area between the bleed and 5mm above, where the fold lines are placed to indicate where production should cut the card. 

Here is an example of a picture book cover, laid out on InDesign and the cover created in Photoshop: 

And here is my attempt at a hardback cover jacket, I also designed a basic cover design on Photoshop but ran out of time to place the cover onto the file:

I will be sure to update you on my progress!

Picks of the Month: designers and career goals

I'm stumbling onto some really great resources this week through recommendations and research, here are some interesting book-design-related finds of note from this week that I've taken inspiration from:


Ted Talk with Chip Kidd

 

Chip Kidd is a successful book designer and this TED talk was a really interesting look at book marketing, and also a pretty entertaining piece of media. Chip talks about the relationship between design and marketing in a fresh and accessible way, and his story is inspiring for a sapling publisher like myself. 'Not treating your audience like a moron' is something I'll definitely take on board through to my future cover designs, and I think it's pretty transferable to all visual industries. 

 

 

Interview with Suzanne Dean - art director at Random House

 

The ways in which publishers decide to re-animate their backlist really interests me. Art Director Suzanne Dean talks in detail in this interview about her re-designs for titles like Psycho and The Man with the Golden Gun. I particularly like the fact that the designs have a running aesthetic, and Suzanne states in the interview that it was important that the 'visuals cohere'. I think this adds a sense of ownership to the backlist on the publishers' behalf, and enhances marketability by building such a visually contemporary collection. 

The lesson today pushed me to utilise InDesign like never before, and I was able -through careful coaching by the brilliant Becky Chilcott - to design both picture and hardback book covers at the end of the lesson. 

imagery and me

Becky began by offering a few designers and illustrators of note to research and admire:

Peter Mendelsund - Italo Calvino
This interview discusses Peter Mendelsund's design process, and it's a really interesting insight. Some of his designs are below:






















Alice Todd- The Art of Being Normal
Is a really interesting and graphic book cover. The use of colour is inspired, and I particularly like how the design continues through the book. The image really fittingly describes what the novel is about, and the cover in its entirety is very marketable and visually drawing. The endpapers are also notable for their simplicity and effectiveness.

Lisa Jones
Lisa Jones' illustration is really quite different to the content that I've previously researched, but the apparent simplicity of her design can go on to have a really impactful visual appeal. Her work is cute, colourful and graphic and fits the child-based target market really effectively with an added modern illustrative aesthetic for booksellers and parents.

The lesson covered a lot of terminology about the use of images in cover and book design, I've noted some important terms below:

Picture Rights

Rights Managed- buying exclusive rights to an image for an agreed time period

Royalty Free- anyone can download and use for free

Micro Stock- amateur photos, creative commons on websites like Flickr, Wikimedia.

Colour Printing

CYMK- Cyan, Yellow, Magenta and Black are the four colours that all standard colour printing is done with. Adjusting these levels can provide most colours that you would require, but not all very bright and neon colours.

RGB- Red, Green and Blue are the three colours that make up all digital images. Altering these on photoshop can give all of the different colours.

Pantones- Pantones are specialised colours that cannot be created effectively using CYMK printing. These colours can be ordered and overlaid on a book cover. Use of these colours usually adds cost.

Image Quality

72 dpi- (dots per inch) is usually fine for files that will only be viewed through a digital medium and not printed.

300 dpi- is a print quality design setting.

Some places that book designers tend to research illustrators are listed below:

• Pintrest
• Deviant Art
• Twitter
• Dictionaries
• Illustrator Directories 

To end the lesson, I tried to enhance my Photoshop skills by trying to manipulate a using an illustration of children with varying degrees of effectiveness:

 I've been working on my final project to put all of these new skills into practice.