The decision to print the book and have it bound by someone else made it necessary to research places which would be willing to do so. Big presses were eliminated from the get-go because I would only be printing a single copy of the book, but I also had to find places which had more binding options than spiral binding. Which meant looking for places a little more elaborate than copy shops. After a couple of hours on the internet and taking a trip around town, I narrowed my search down to three places (that I could find, one seems to have disappeared). The first two did have another binding option, however the printing for the cover and the binding would have needed to be done in separate places. But the last option was golden because they did all the printing and binding in house and they had more options with perfect binding and stitched binding as well as the spiral bound style.

In this exercise I had to create at least 16 images to experiment with printing.

The way I work best is with a theme, so I chose something simple and very varied: plants. To brainstorm, I created a quick web with various ideas and imagery concerning plants and then used the internet to find some images to start from.

However, since plants are something I can photograph myself, I went outside to collect inspiration from real life. I am no photographer, but by taking the photos myself, I could gather elements that were interesting to me. I also stopped for a while to sketch, though I couldn’t stay long (because it is November and it’s cold), so I had to create some sketches at home. While I was walking around the neighborhood, I also picked up some leaves and other small plant life to include in the project.

Images off the Web

My Photographs

I did some sorting through the photographs before I printed any, to not waste too much toner. And I also edited them, mostly by cropping.

Drawings

Found Objects

At home, I created more drawings inspired by the found objects. I drew them with pen, overlapped their outlines, made stamps with the leaves, etc. My largest limitation was the lack of color, because my printer lacks color, so there really was no use in working with anything but tone in the first place. I only used yellow for one of the drawings because I needed a tone slightly darker than white, but had no grey pastels.

After I was satisfied with the number of photographs and drawings, I photographed them, took images into Photoshop to put two on a page (because I knew I would be making an A5 booklet) and printed those pages out. Next, cut and sorted them in piles: my own drawings, photographs I thought could stand on their own, photographs that were mostly texture, and photographs that were serviceable but didn’t come out as I thought they would and therefore would need some editing. I had about 42 images to choose from, so this meant I had to discard more than I realized.

Of course, this does not mean that the last section of photographs would be the only one edited. Most, if not all the images were edited by the end of the process. I mostly used black and white acrylic paint for this, in addition with some small touches in pen. I essentially continued building on my drawings by painting over them, especially the one with the people at the market, and brought others to a better finish, like the man reading beneath the tree.

I also used a lot of cutting and pasting to create new compositions. This took a lot of cutting out things and shuffling around pieces of paper until the image clicked together. It was rather an intuitive process than anything concrete. Some images I even left on their own, like the photograph of clover in a pipe, done based on nothing else but that I liked them that way. It is at this time that I had to make the decision of landscape or portrait positioning. I had most of the focal images chosen and based on those, I decided that a landscape composition would work best, this meant I either had to cut or completely discard some of my ideas to create new ones that fit.

After finishing up most of the compositions, I started sticking them to folded up pieces of printer paper. I didn’t try to create a narrative, but I did try to put them in an order that was visually pleasing to flip through. Being careful to not put too many drawings one after the other, only to leave photographs at the end, or trying to not create entire sections that were to light or too dark together, dropping more accomplished compositions between less accomplished ones to keep reader interest up, and so on.

After waiting for the glue to dry, I starting working over the compositions in order to bring them together better. Some by painting a background, by bringing out highlights or by creating borders. Thus finishing up the images.

To re-print these, I unfolded the pages and scanned them on each side, then adjusted the light and dark levels in Photoshop because they came out a bit grey. The images could now be printed on both sides of the page and folded to create the new, final booklet.

I think this was fairly successful as a printing exercise. Limiting myself to black and white was a slightly frustrating but rewarding limitation, as I could not create interest with pops of color. It would have been nice to have that option, especially considering the theme of plant life. The November weather turned out to be a blessing in that regard, since the black and white soberness fits better with autumn than it would have with spring or summer. But the limitation did help me focus more on shapes and tone than creating distractions with color.

If this were some sort of booklet or zine, I would have worked on the typographical elements a bit more. Perhaps create some cleaner layouts on the pages and added some text. But it works well as it is for a more artistic printing project.

In trying to identify an idea for the book I will be making, I considered the elements I have enjoyed working on in this book design course.

While working on this unit, I’ve most enjoyed working on creating books from scratch, both in design and the binding itself. However, I think this time, I will not bind the book.

As an illustrator, I obviously enjoyed creating the images myself instead of finding ones elsewhere and I have enjoyed getting pretty hands-on with printing and creating digital images. Surprisingly, I also enjoyed the typography section, and would like to explore it more. I did not take the chance to explore creating lettering or playing with words and letters in a more traditional way. I used a lot of computer programs, and I still would, but I think I would like to combine some more analogue techniques to create interesting images with text. This ties in with the interesting exercises with concrete poetry, which I also enjoyed.

I think I would like to select a paragraph or poem and create a booklet with it. In it, I would play around with the lettering and push the typographical elements while still maintaining imagery that connects with the theme or with the mood of the text and remains visually appealing/readable.