Having received
my first draft photo book back from ‘Blurb’ I posted a copy to my tutor,
together with a progress update – this constituted my 6th and final
assignment for this course. I’ve now had feedback from him in the form of both
a tutor report and a final ‘Skype’ tutorial and I’m very pleased to know that
I’m almost finished, with plenty of time to prepare for submission. I can’t
believe that after almost 10 years of part-time study, I’ve almost reached the
end of my degree course: what will I do with myself afterwards?
The bulk of the
feedback concentrated on the design of the photo book. Since I have practically
no experience of book design, my tutor’s comments and suggestions in this area
were very welcome and much appreciated. These are discussed below, but first
I’ll look briefly at the contents of the book.
Book Text and Images
The text and
images are fine in their current format. The images (including the new ones)
“work harmoniously” and “front and back cover images work well”. I had already
planned to correct some technical issues relating to some of the images in the
book and I will make these corrections in the next week or two, in order to
produce a complete set of images that can go into the final photo book without
further alteration. The square format and 50% saturation work, so I will make
no changes in this regard. Likewise, the text is fine (as it has been for some
time) and could go into the final draft of the book ‘as is’.
However, I will
have to make some changes to the text and possibly add more images, in order to
accommodate alterations to the design of the book (see below).
Book Design
General
Design
·
My tutor felt that the feel and tactility of the
book could be considerably improved by losing the gloss cover, although
softback (as submitted) was fine. He suggested aiming for the tactile nature of
Kennard’s “@earth” book (which I have). As for many of the bullets listed here,
he suggested research in the form of looking at and handling a variety of photo
books would be invaluable. In the light of these comments I will avoid using
gloss on the cover, but will likely switch to a hard cover (as for Kennard’s
book) for the final version.
·
He liked the (relatively small) size of the
book, making it feel “like a keepsake, or memento”. I had favoured using a
slightly larger size (21cm instead of 18cm) for the final version. However, I
will probably now retain the original size (if possible), at least for the
final draft (see below).
·
The text on the front cover (Times New Roman,
bold) was too large and heavy. My tutor also suggested moving the title and
author to the bottom of the front cover page, with title aligned left and
author aligned right. I’m happy to go along with this, but will consider other
options before making a decision.
·
The design, with all photos on the right page,
“is classic but works well”.
·
The inside typeface is mismatched: I will alter
this.
·
The pages in the draft book were not numbered.
There seems little reason to number pages, except for reference purposes if I
decide to include explanatory text with my assessment submission. I’ll make a
final decision about numbering at a late stage.
Specific
Issues
The two biggest
issues that I have with regard to the book design are dealt with below.
·
The amount of text that accompanies each image
in the book is very variable. On some pages there was so much text that I had
to use a smaller font size to accommodate it on a single page. I realised at
the time that I would need to do something about this in the final draft of the
book, but was hoping that by producing a somewhat larger book I would be able
to use the smaller font size throughout and that the text would then be clearly
legible. However, my tutor (and I can see his point) felt that I should simply
use less text per page, with more space, on every page. This may involve, as he
said, “increasing overall size or number of pages”. This leaves me with a
significant problem: should I try to remove some sections of text on
particularly ‘wordy’ pages in order to produce a roughly consistent amount of
text for each page or allow the text to ‘roll over’ onto a second page? In the
latter case should I produce additional image montages, use (say) additional
Nidderdale landscapes or simply leave the right hand pages adjacent to the
‘roll over’ text blank? Adrian Clarke used a variation on the ‘Nidderdale
landscapes’ theme in his book “Gary’s Friends”. This is the one dilemma that
remains for me to solve.
·
The one-off ‘graph’ that my tutor and I are both
very keen to incorporate into the final book was included in the draft book as
a (2:1) ‘letterbox’ sized image across two pages. However, the centre of the
graph was, predictably, lost in the guttering. Whilst my tutor has been keen to
incorporate the graph as a ‘foldout’, this would be challenging to achieve. I
attended a photo book publishers’ fair at the Tate Modern (London) a week ago
and had a chat with a knowledgeable gentleman from the “Self-Publish, Be Happy”
company. His advice, which I intend to take, was to make the graph the centrefold
of a stapled book, when there would be no guttering.
Future Work
I am planning
to sort out as many of the outstanding issues relating to the production of a
final photo book as I can in the first three weeks of June, before holidays
start to eat into my time. My immediate plan of action is to:
·
Make final alterations to the images that I
already have, so that they are ready to incorporate in the ‘assessment’ version
of my photo book.
·
Make a decision on how to modify the text and
whether to produce extra images (see bullet point above) and then carry out the
necessary modifications.
·
Make recommended alterations to the cover
design.
·
Incorporate the graph as a ‘centrefold’ in the
book, once other alterations have been made.
·
Continue researching the design of photo books,
then make decisions about the size, tactility, etc. of my final photo book.
·
Research opportunities for self-publishing.
·
Having incorporated all the design alterations,
produce a ‘final draft’ template and obtain the book from ‘Blurb’. This book
could be used as a ‘fall back’ for assessment if I am unable to produce a
stapled, self-published version in time for submission.
I will
concentrate on the “last level of experimentation” (self-publishing the photo
book, with final alterations) in July and August, prior to submission for
assessment. I still plan to produce an accompanying multimedia presentation for
assessment (time permitting) and will likewise obtain prints of all the images used
in the photo book, during this period. My blog will be developed throughout,
until close to submission in September.
