Final Statement : Book Covers

The final set of book covers are finished now, complete with their own little books to wrap around. From the last round of revisions, I changed may things, but most of them were tiny details meant to help unify them as a set of books.

Don't Try This at Home is a collection of short stories told by chefs about their mistakes made before they became successful. It relates to my icons and my story because of a the disaster aspect of the short stories. To convey the theme of the stories on the cover, I combined a stop sign with a rather unappetizing piece of food. This combination of normally unrelated objects makes a message of warning.
Good Housekeeping's Family First Aid is an instructional book focusing on first aid you should know for accidents that might happen around the home. Because of it's family-oriented theme, it seemed appropriate to show a children's toy patched up with a band-aid, an easily recognizable object related with the medical theme.
Food Preparation and Presentation is another instructional book, this time about the art of food presentation. Even though it's a pretty formal topic, I decided to go with a lighter kind of image, adding bow-ties to cooking utensils. I tried to keep away from actually showing food on this book cover, since it would have been redundant, both because of the title and also because of the food images in 2 of the other book covers in the set.
The Frantic Family Cookbook is a recipe book containing fast, healthy meals for busy families. Again, I wanted to avoid being too redundant with the title, so I avoided showing a family, or children, or recipes from inside. Instead, I used a clock to indicate the fast-paced theme of this book, but used it as a plate on which one of the meals is placed.
By juxtaposing seemingly unrelated images using a simple plain background, bold complementary colors, and clear imagery, these book covers are meant to represent their contents by hinting at their overall theme.

Book Covers 2nd round

SO. From last time, I have made some changes to the book covers and added some elements as well! :

I found some more suitable band-aids to paste onto the teddy-bear, and instead of only having one color in each element, I added some of the pantone red to the bandaid to give it a bit more dimensionality.

Ew gross! So for this one, I changed the food in the middle and added a little red in the shadows. I also added a bar across the food to make it look more like a warning sign!
Again, I added mixed the colors in both the clock and the food. I'm getting more confident when it comes to mixing the colors, and figuring out how mixing them can add more depth.

In this book cover I changed the contrast of the bows so they stood out against the background more. But they need some more work. :)

These are some backs that I'm playing around with as an alternative to the recipe card backs. Not sure which I prefer yet, but I wanted to mess around with it.

Book Covers

Initial Concepts:

Here's some of my sketches for the book cover brainstorming. After the first mind-mapping bit, I tried to take ideas and objects that I thought of and incorporate them into the covers. My original idea was to combine images with patterns that related to their content. So while doing the thumbnails sketches, I also thought of textures that might be appropriate for each one.

The concept is to combine objects that would not normally go together in a fashion that they convey the idea of the novel, without being too obvious. For example, with the "Frantic Family Cookbook," I am combining a clock, used as a dinner plate, with a meal.

Here's the sad attempt at the first round of digital renderings:

I used several stand-in internet images so I could get an idea of what it all looked like. So embarrassing, these are not good at all! But, I was able to make some decisions from these. After this round, I decided to remove the textures from the background. I also knew I needed to change up the composition of the page, because heck, these are not only ugly, but SUPER boring. So after Collecting a lot more images heeeere's what I've got:

These are scans of the printed versions, as opposed to the digital files. I think they give a better idea of what they actually look like, where the colors are too similar and need some work.

Food Preparation and Presentation: From looking at the print, it's obvious that I need to adjust the colors so that the bow-ties are more visible against the background. You can see that the images are very flat, and I like that style, but it's not apparent through all of the book covers, so that is something that I will be working on unifying.
Frantic Family Cookbook: This book cover is a bit different in the fact that the face of the clock wraps around the spine and onto the back of the cover, which none of the other images do that much. I'll bring the size of the clock down a bit, and also the fork, so that the idea of it being a plate is more clearly conveyed.
Don't Try This at Home: This cover needs a lot of work. In comparison to the others, it is not as full. Plus, it's hard to understand what the image is. I will be adding a bit of red to that piece of food to see if I can give it enough dimension to make it legible. It's difficult to find an image of nasty looking food in a book or magazine, since I don't think many people want to see that. The lines above the food aren't working, so I will be working to try and find a solution to that today as well!

Good Housekeeping's Family First Aid Book: FIRST I need to change the title so it is correct! While working on this project I seemed to have gotten the name mixed up, but I noticed it yesterday, thank goodness I caught it before the end of the project. For this cover, I'm going to get new bandages that are more legible. My goal is to find ones when the middle part of the bandage is more define, like a stereotypical one is. The ones I'm using currently are not as legible as I'd like them to be. Also, the bear is wrapping around the spine a little too much for my liking, so I might bring him in a little so that the spine is more bare.

Mind Mapping Book Covers

So here are some of my preliminary mind maps for my brainstorming for the book covers! I have been breaking the titles apart word by word, to perhaps come up with some not-so-cliche ideas. Looking up the synonyms and definitions of these words has definitely led to some new thoughts that wouldn't have occurred to be otherwise.

I'll be image-hunting this weekend, visiting bookstores and the library to see what I can find. I still want to continue with the idea of using texture as unifying feature, using it as a background or something. I'll also be figuring out what I can take pictures of myself!

7 Deadly sins • Final Statement

This project has evolved a lot through the course of its production, and the changes and improvements that have been made, I think, have made it a pretty strong representation of the sins:

The beginning sketches messed around with the themes in a really elementary manner, trying to make it super obvious which picture was each sin. While this was a nice way to help understand the meanings of each of the sins, each idea was a pretty typical, expected representation of each sin. Moving forward, I tried to think of ideas that were still clear and understandable, but not as cliche. Here are some of my early sketches for some of the sins:

Even in the drawing stage of this project, I realized that I wanted to pay particular attention to the facial expressions on each of the chicks. Drawing this was a lot easier than making it work on the actual chicks. Formally, the chicks are just a piece of really fuzzy pipecleaners with legs and eyes glued on. With such a simple object, it was a fun challenge to try and convey their emotions while keeping everything as simple and crafty(since they're so crafty-looking to begin with). Even just adding a pair of eyebrows to the little toys made their emotions recognizable; it's crazy how something so tiny can make such a big different in our understanding of emotions. Then it was just a matter of twisting and standing or sitting them in a position that helped to further convey the sins they were representing.

In order of appearance in book:







In the end, I chose to have 4 photographs containing text, and 3 without. I think this is a good split down the middle. I considered having each composition contain speech, then reconsidered, because it seemed like overkill, and too redundant. In the opposite direction, I also considered trying the photos with no text at all, but decided against it. The sin that each photograph is representing it clear without the text, but I liked the text to help reinforce the theme, and also to add a bit of humor to the images.

The book:
For the cover page, the index and the colophon, I kept the text all pretty simple, with the added character, the text-made chick, peeping up every once in a while. Minimal color, just an Easter-y pink, was used. Craft-wise, all the images printed out pretty well, and the construction of the book turned out really well.


Overall, this was a really interesting project that tested my skills in ability to compose interesting and informative images while keeping the set as a whole cohesive and visually compelling. Also, this was a fun experience in constructing and setting up artificial environments for the subjects of my photos, even though in the final images I chose to omit most of the extra details that the environment provided.

7 sins (including the missing WRATH!)

Ok, so here's the first round of photos for the 7 sins chicks! I've got a lot of things I need to work on, with with the weekend to do it all, I think there will be enough time to get everything done properly.

PRIDE
For pride, I think the message is pretty clear, and I like the composition, but I'm going to redo the word bubble and try taking the photo with different colors of "floor." Looking through my photos, they're all very colorful, but not totally cohesive. Some are darker than others, or more saturated, and I want to pay more attention now to making all of them match better. Light colors like this one are my goal!


GREED
There are a lot of problems with this photo, beginning with the color. It's too dark, and when printed, waaaay too saturated. I need to mute the colors down and try to keep with the bright Easter colors! The word bubble on this is too dark as well, and I'm going to try using a darker color for the writing on it. Also, getting the focus right! Gotta work on that! Ah, and, making some poker chips, too.


GLUTTONY
This one is one that I'm actually quite pleased with, so I will probably leave it as-is for now. If anything, I might just re-shoot it with different lighting, just to see what it looks like. I'm not going to change much about this one though.


ENVY
I want to stick with this idea, because it seems that it pretty clearly conveys the word that it's supposed to. Once again though, it's not very cohesive right now, so I'm going to take it with some different color choices to make it look right!


SLOTH
This one certainly needs some more brain-storming! My idea was that the Sloth chick was being lazy, and not helping out his wife-chick with all the children. But reading seems to be too active of an activity for sloth, so this needs some work. Focus is a problem again, and the composition of everything is pretty weird. I will attempt to fix this. Also, the golf-course-green floor is leaving the scene. Blech.


LUST
I've got the idea down on this one, but the photo still isn't doing it justice. There are some issues with the color in this, and part of it is because it was taken in poor lighting, boo! I'll be using good light this time, and things like the hearts and the chick's beak won't be lost and blown out of the image so much. Also, the friggin word bubble is sideways! How sloppy! I would really prefer for it to be straight on, so that's another thing I'd like to take note of for the retake.



Here's the late arrival:

WRATH
I'm gonna ask some people what they think of it tomorrow!

Sinful Chicks

So, this weekend was full of construction of my 7 deadly sins pictures! I've collected a lot of materials, make a chick-sized stage, and have started making the items for each of the sins. I haven't taken any formal pictures, because making each one makes such a mess, I would rather get all the construction out of the way, and then do all the shots.

Show biz is tough for chicks. There aren't many benefits, either.
So I fibbed a little, I've taken some shots. But they're TEST shots, so they don't count! This is more of just a record for which ones I've made stuff for. So far, I've got most of Lust's props done, most of Greed's, and I'm pretty much done with Envy.

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Seeing what string looks like. I was thinking of changing it to fishing string, but I'm not so sure now, I kind of like the crafty look of the normal string. I'll see what it looks like with some of the other sins. Hmm hmm hmmmm...
Just for fun: If you have lots of time on your hands and something really tiny like miniature dice with you, try accidentally throwing them away in a garbage can filled with AIGA lunch leftovers! You'll have lots of fun sifting through all the trash while smelling a weekends-worth of food. Wearing grocery bags as mittens is recommended, though.

So yellow! I've got lots of colors papers and patterns, different ones for each sin. This will not be envy's colors, of course!

Final Photo; Vladmir Nabokov

Here's the evolution of project 2 for Image class.

I chose the Russian author Vladmir Nabokov Known for such novels like Lolita and Speak, Memory, he's pretty well known for his stunning and controversial writings. He was not only an author though. He was a chess player and an entomologist, talented in anything he took an interest in.

So here's the first attempt. It has a lot of compositional problems and overall is pretty boring. I decided to keep messing with the elements of the photo, and add some more objects to help further develop the personality of Mr. Nabokov.



This is the second attempt. The composition is way too centered, but the slanted book is a bit more visually interesting then just having them stacked. I added flags to show his diversity, since he was a multilingual and also since each one represents a place he lived in at some point in his life. They're a little too cliche though.




These two are my final. The first one is the one that I sent to the plotter, and turned in for critique. The indexes for Nabokov are his books, the checkers, and butterflies, for the reasons I explained at the top. The symbols are the map and the owl. The map, is of course, representing his international life, and the owl is a representation of his wisdom.

As for the second image, I was so horrified by my stupid spelling error that I tried my hand at a little photoshop-editing to see what it would look like if I weren't such an absent-minded idiot.