Insignificant Wranglings

Today’s Plan:

• Review Project Two
• Confirm Project Two Groups
• Golden Section/Ratio and Page Design
• Book Production Research Project
• Break
• InDesign #7

Review Project Two

Let’s (finally) do this.

Book Production Project

Today we begin our second project of the semester. It is my goal that we finish this project over Spring Break. For the next few weeks, you will be using InDesign and Photoshop to design, arrange, flow, and produce a book of poetry from an author in public domain (note: a few people have asked if they can produce a volume of their own work; I don’t have a problem with this, although you might end up working alone). I’ve selected poetry because it requires far more attention to layout and typography than a regular text.

You will be working in teams of two for this project. We will form those groups either at the end of class today or at the beginning of class on Thursday. Each group will select a poet and produce a book of approximately 30 pages. In addition to poems, each book must include:

• A front and back cover design
• A title page
• A copyright/copyleft page
• A preface [you are responsible for writing the preface, it should be at least two pages. If you run out of things to say, you can flow some Lorem Ipsum.]
• A table of contents

You might include other pages–for instance, part of an introduction by your author. You should include page numbers. You might also want to think about the design of your pages and whether you can include simple illustrations (strategically, perhaps not on every page).

As with our first project, we will do research into poetry editions in order to inform our design process. This will involve both digital research (into the covers for previous editions, Amazon can help here) and physical research (going to the library and looking at previous editions of the poems, getting measurements of page size, checking out typography first hand).

You can find full .txt files of poetry in public domain at the Gutenberg Project. Here’s a small list of the many authors the Gutenberg project includes:

• Wordsworth
• Coleridge
• Blake
• Dickinson
• Swift
• Shakespeare

You are not tied to this list; I only ask that the poet you work with is in public domain, as are all the files stored on the Gutenberg website. Essentially, you will likely have to work with authors who published prior to 1920. In the other class, I have a few people who are working with the bible (specifically, the songs of Solomon).

In the past, I have seen students create volumes of children’s poetry with illustrations. This makes for a more difficult project, but, if done well, I will reward the ambition.

Finally, I have a creative writer in the other class who is creating a volume of her own work, and another person who is creating a volume of a friend’s work. I have no problem with that so long as the author provides you permission.

Golden Section, Grids, and Page Design

First, I wanted to discuss the Golden Section, a system for determining proportion that is one of the fundamental principles of graphic design. I’ve assembled a few articles:

• Steven Bradley, How to Use Golden Section Proportions in Page Design
• Designing on a Grid
• Short Advertisement on Grids
• A 35 minute video tutorial on using Grids in InDesign

Production Research

In today’s class I will ask you to begin researching your book production. You will spend some time here in the classroom, and some time over in the library. You will submit the fruits of today’s labor to me as a memo via Google Doc. Be sure to set the documents share settings so that anyone with the link can access, change the then submit your link to the document via Canvas (change the “Anyone with the link box, and set it so that people outside of USF can access”). Your memo should have a heading, a summary section, and then three discussion sections, detailed below.

The first discussion section should concern research into covers of your poet. I recommend using Amazon, in addition to other Google Image searches. You should copy and paste copies of the images into your Google Doc (be sure they are appropriately sized). I’m looking for at least 5 covers–enough for you to get a sense of trends or the range of different approaches historically used. This is genre awareness.

The second discussion section should deal with the physical dimensions, layout, and typography of the volumes. For this, I will ask that you go to the library. If you have a ruler, then bring it. Find copies of your poet in the stacks. Take pictures of some key sections: title page, table of contents, a few pages of poems inside. Take measurements on the book’s dimensions. Take measurements of a page, too: how large is the margins? Also, look to see how things like footnotes are handled (if they are at all). You should do this for 3 volumes, if possible. If there isn’t three volumes of your poet in the library, then look at comparable authors (in terms of movement, time period, style, etc). You should be able to look up your poet in the usf catalogue before you walk over.

The third discussion section will address the homework for the next class. I would like every person in your group to go to a different book store (so, if you are a one person group, then I expect you to go to one bookstore, if you are a two person, two stores, etc.). I want you to document what edition of your poet is in the store, and to take photographs of up to 3 books of poetry on sale. This will give us two pieces of valuable information: first, we will know what cover you are competing against, and we will get a bit more of a sense of the genre of contemporary poetry covers.

Homework

As I indicated above, your first homework assignment is to visit a bookstore. In order to make sure everyone can complete the homework, make sure the person who created the document has shared it with everyone else before the end of class.

Finally, there is one more chapter in the InDesign book that I would like us to do–chapter 16. This chapter focuses on longer documents and gives information on setting up a table of contents.

Here is the shortest video guide I could find for setting up a book cover, spine, and back cover in InDesign. If someone finds a better one, let me know. Note that our book has chapters on importing graphics and setting colors–you might skim those sections as needed for creating your front and back cover.