Graphic Systems mock ups

Part of the hand in criteria is to produce at least two fully mocked up books complete with your covers. So here they are, shot very professionally...in my kitchen... I went for my two favourite covers of the set, Walk in the woods & Down under.

Backs of both books.

Backs & Spines 

Backs & paper sides. For the paper sides I just used a flat tab that I drew vertical lines down, I think it works pretty well as an illusion.

Front covers

Front & paper sides, illusion in full working mode.

Fronts & spines.

Overall I'm really pleased with how well these have turned out, they look like real book covers & are effective both individually and together which is pretty much what I was aiming for so that's good.

Graphic Systems: Neither her nor there Compeleted

The book cover for the sixth and final book in the series, Neither here nor there. I like the pink on the blue, it's working really well I feel, and overall looking back through the colour schemes of all 6 they fit together well as a series. The smaller illustration here is of a piece of swiss cheese, as mentioned in the book & the main illustration is of a pigs head with an apple in it's mouth, also mentioned in the book. This illustration is a little darker than the others in terms of content but they vary from book to book so I don't think this is too much of a drastic problem. I like the layout on the front a lot, again it is differnet from the others but the themes stay consistent throughout. As a whole series i'm really pleased with the work, the colour schemes, layouts, illustration & type are all working well together as a system.

Graphic Systems: Down under completed

The fifth book cover is complete. This one is for Down under, a book about Australia which is why I've gone with this colour scheme. I have already used yellow, which would of been first choice, so I had to go with this light brown which is as close as I could get and think it works well to reflect the country. It also works well with the green on top and the bright orange really stands out. The small illustration is of a boomarang for obvious reasons. The large illustration is of a Nothomyrmecia Macrops which I find really interesting. It is a species of ant that was thought to have died out 100 million years ago but has been found living in colonies in the Australian outback. It is a species left from when wasps were evolving into ants (which in itself I find fascinating, although the shape of them is a give away if you think about it). On the back cover I've gone with the same kind of format that I used on the first book, with an illustration down one side and then the quotes on the other. In this case I think that this has worked particularly well and has created an effective layout. Overall I'm really pleased with this one, I think that the layout, illustration & colour scheme & I think they are all working really well together to give a representation of Australia and the trip.

Graphic Systems: The lost continent Completed

Continuing my speedy work on this project I give you; The lost continent. Here, obviously, we have again a similar layout to the ones designed previously. Today's illustration is of a portable gas stove (as mentioned in the book), I did a little bit of research into it and this is the sort of style that was around in the time that Bryson is taking about. I like the knobs on it, I think they work really well with the white set against the coloured backing. Continued is the type as well. The additional illustration above the authors name is of a corn cob, a reference to small town America & also mentioned in the opening of the book. The colour scheme is staying basic, one main colour, white, and smaller pieces of additional colour. The box on the back on two of the covers has a black circle around on the inside, the other two don't. This is because two of the covers have a lot more written on the back, I'm going to split it three to three to keep it even. The layout on the fronts also been changed around again but this is acceptable as the system allows the movement as long as it's fairly similar.

Graphic Systems: A walk in the woods Completed

Another book cover busted out in a day, even though I had a crit all day at uni. Speed. It's getting easier now that I've figured out my system for setting up the files & getting things in the right place. I really like the colour scheme on this one, I think the green and the brown are working really well together and the yellow of the bears face really stands out as it's the only other colour. This ones got a leaf as the extra little illustration above 'Bryson' which is obviously derived from 'the woods.' In addition to this I've also added a couple of little twigs onto the back cover box as it was brown which made me think "tree." Overall I think this is another successful cover. It's slightly different to the others; as it had such a vertical illustration I had to move the bear to one side and have the text on the other but I don't think that this has effected the layout negatively at all. It just adds a little more variety to the set. The crit went well today, my designs recieved a good reception and the only problem that came up were the use of the grid to get sections like the 'Black Swan' logo & the barcode in the same place every time. So I edited my grid system and simply dropped the barcode and repeating text at the bottom of the back cover onto the master page. Problems solved.

Graphic Systems: A walk in the woods illustrated

So I'd had a super productive day anyway getting a whole cover done and thought I'd crack on and try and do as much of another one as I could. I read the first chapter and a half and discovered that about 80% of it is about bear attacks. So obviously I chose to illustrate a bear... it turns out I can't draw bears. I spent an hour and a half sketching really awful bear faces and then rubbing them out. So this one took forever to do even though it's so, so simple. But I'm quite pleased with the end result, it's consistent with the others but works on it's own as an illustration as well.

Graphic Systems: Notes from a small island Completed

After faffing around with the style of illustration for so long and taking forever over the first cover it was time to pull my finger out. So I bashed this one out in a little under... lets say 8 hours. A days work (although I won't be stopping yet). I've added in the blurb here, my own abridged version in fact since the one on the back of the book was near enough a full page. I've also got the swan up in there and I even did all the nerdy stuff like making sure the sections of the spine line up with the ones on the other cover. Next!

Graphic Systems: Notes from a small island

Second book cover. Same illustration style as before with the cut out paper. I'm really pleased with how the boxer shorts turned out and I've picked the colour palette to reflect the UK. However after talking to Neil I think I may need to rethink the colours slightly so as to keep it more consistent with the brightness of the first cover. Other than that I think the layouts are working well. Obviously this still needs a couple of pieces adding such as the Black Swan logo, the blurb and the quotes on the back.

I tried making the backing brighter so that it matches the first cover a bit more but I think it just looks a bit washed out and makes the illustrations look a little lost whereas the textured quality of the first one helps to hold it all together so I think I'm going to stick with that one.

Graphic Systems: The Thunderbolt Kid Complete

Here's the remade baby mounted on yellow as it will be on the book cover. 

I made this for the back of the book to keep the theme consistent.

Here's the final cover design. Overall I'm quite pleased with how this one's turned out. I think the illustrations and the type compliment each other and the colour scheme is working well. I like the layout on both sides and the spine. I spent ages going through typefaces for the blurb and eventually pick Garamond premier pro. I think it's more formal than the illustrations which is good, but isn't too old as to the throw out the balance of the piece. I've used the same font for the quotes underneath but in italic, with the writer of the quote in the same blue as the colour scheme.

Graphic Systems: The life and times of The Thunderbolt Kid

So the new project is to design a series of 6 books for an author. I've chosen Bill Bryson. The set has to have a graphic system which takes in to consideration all of the elements of a cover such as size, colour, type, imagery, layout etc. I did my research and such and decided that the best course of action was to create the illustrations first and then to work the type/layout around the central image. After showing initial scamps at a tutorial I was advised that this was a good idea and that the integrated type/imagery was working well. So without any further ado, here's what I've been working on:

Scamps. The first book I'm working on is "The life and times of The Thunderbolt Kid" and in the first chapter he gets given this doll which he hates, and so comes the first mention of 'The Thunderbolt Kid' so thats why I'm using it.

This is the ugliest baby that anyone has ever drawn.

Starting to experiment with illustration styles, I decided beforehand that I wanted to use paper to create some block colours & then work over it to introduce some details.

This is the first version I mocked up that everybody seems to love. I like the style of the illustration & I think the colour scheme is working really well but I thought the illustration might have a few too many colours in it for what I was trying to achieve. I could be wrong though. Also I like the type for the author's name, but the rest of the type is a little bit weak. I chose a yellow backing for this book, because it's a thunderbolt colour. Each book will be different colours.

Second mock up. I quite like this style of having just a bit of colour with a photo & some line drawing, I think this works well... although looking at it on screen it kind of looks like a manta ray with a baby's face stuck to the bottom which is a little disconcerting. However the type is much better at the top here, much more in keeping with the illustration style. The type at the bottom bled too much and was just generally unstyled.

Third mock up. Trying it from the other side, it didn't really make much difference, I don't like the author's name type and I had some more bleeding issues with the ink but I think 'The Thunderbolt Kid' rendered quite nicely. Almost there.

Extra baby. When asked everybody liked the drawn baby and not the photo one. So I tried to make a mix of the two by placing the photo style one onto the blue backing rather than straight onto the yellow backing. I'm not sure which photo baby I like better but looking at them both on screen the blue backed one looks less like a manta ray which is probably a good thing.

Knocking out some more text to try & solve the bleed issues.

Fourth mock up. Using elements from several different places to try and create a better version. I don't think this ones worked particularly well, everything's a little too spaced out and it seems a little incoherent.

Fifth mock up. This one feels a lot more coherent and I like It a lot more. I think theres still some work to be done, the author type needs adjusting as do both bits of type at the bottom, but the title & the illustration are solid. I feel like they are really complimentary here.

Sixth mock up. Again trying to incorporate the photo baby into the work, seeing if it was just the detail in the papoose, or if people just liked the face. This seems like it almost works but isn't quite there, if I was to photoshop the face in better rather than a quick knock up then it would probably look quite good but at the minute I prefer the drawn face.

Book Binding

So we did a book binding workshop which was highly enjoyable. This is the first book we had to make, I didn't like this very much as it was a bit too simple and made pretty much out of paper and so couldn't really be used in a real world setting.

I used it to write up book binding in. The only thing I did like was the use of coloured stock on the inside to make the pages.

This is the second book we made which I much preferred as it is a hard back book with a spine and so I found it much more realistic. I used a spine section on both sides of the book so that it opens out properly. I also used various stock to make the pages to give it a handmade feel as well as using different sizes of page to make it more interesting and give it strange compositions inside. I also made a textiles spine cover for it to stop the thread getting snagged/broken and to make it look a little better. I may also cover the rest of the covers although I'm not really sure what with.

Overall I'm really pleased with it and I am going to use it as a sketchbook at some point.

More Things I Like To Read

An Illustrated Life.

I LOVE this book.
It's full of proffessional illustrators and graphics designers personal sketchbook work.

It's great to see that even the professionals draw completely random bollocks sometimes as well.





Outsiders.

Huge mix of artists and Media, really interesting.
Small articles but this is absolutely packed with hundreds of different artists from street art to fine art.








Juxtapoz, art and culture mag.
This is my favourite. I've got a subscription
It's an American magazine featuring loads of different artists with loads of in depth articles and interviews with them.




Lots of pictures of zombies in this one. yay.

Things I Like To Read.

FeFe: Free Entry Free Exit

Pretty decent graphics/illustration situation.
Monthly Book.
Can't really call it reading as it is almost entirely large double spread prints of work, but it's really good to look at all the detail and such.
Has small articles about the artists near the back.





Illustration Mag.
Good old fashioned illustration mixed with a few contemporary artists.
Lots of articles and guides to doing things yourself etc.











VNA: Very Nearly Almost
Street art mag.
Better than things like Graphotism and that due to the fact that it has a much wider range of media and also has a fair few articles rather than just being endless images of standard graffiti.







Territory.

Interesting mix of photography, graphics and illustration.
Some really good in depth articles about the artists they feature.
Well worth a read.