Interpretation of Text - Final Thoughts

With the hand in of the IOT project coming up tomorrow, I have finished my work in the project and upon reflection, am very happy with how I have progressed in this Unit.

I started out without the 'Gardening on a Shoestring' book itself, working using plants that I own and cuttings that I have been growing for inspiration. I also visited the garden centre to further inspired myself, and tested out a wide variety of mediums during this phase of my development.

When I received the book, my illustrations became more focused, and after my critique, I began to settle with a few mediums to work with. My illustrations were based on topics in the book itself, and I started to work on initial ideas for infographics based on these topics. Once I had decided on my pages, I started to work based on these, and that's how I came to develop my final illustrations. I did them on A4 paper, as it was suggested that the drawings would be more effective if they were drawn large and shrunk down, and this worked perfectly.

I am very happy with my development in this project. I have developed a style of infographic over the course of my work which I am very pleased with and I feel that it is very suitable for the book I was given for this project. 

Final Illustrations

Using photoshop to combine my hand drawn illustrations and my edited page templates, I have created my final page layouts. These consist of 3 single page spreads and one double page spread. I utilised the layouts that I played around with during my development and I am very pleased with the outcome of my work.

The page size of the book 'Gardening on a Shoestring' is smaller than A4 size, and as a result I had to measure out the size of the page and draw a box around the page layout. This will be cut to size when printed to ensure my final publications are accurate to the original book.

Here are the digital copies of my final pages

 

Here are my final printed pages. I am very pleased with how they turned out, I feel that they have a very professional look to them, the illustrations are subtle and informative and really support the text, so I have achieved what I set out to do in the IOT unit. I feel like the style of the illustrations really fit in with the book as well, they are not overly decorative and this is something my research has helped me to achieve. Overall I am very happy with my final pages!

Finalised Front Cover Idea

As I am very pleased with my finalised logo design for the cover of 'Gardening on a Shoestring', I decided to go ahead and finish off the cover design completely by adding the text. I decided to go with the idea of having the text wrap around the circular infographic.

This is the initial design I came up with. I used the shape tool to draw a circle, and the horizontal text tool to place the writing on the lines. I like how this looks, however the text was too bold and detracted from the handmade look of the drawings.

This is the text I have decided to use. It is a lot easier on the eyes and does not take away from the drawings, but is light and elegant and fits with the style of the graphic perfectly.

Front Cover Rough

 As part of the brief for sector 4, I am required to produce a rough for the front cover of my chosen book. I have based my design for this on a piece of work I did previously in the project during my sketchbook development. I did a circular infographic based on the method of growing succulents from cuttings, and this inspired my front cover design.

The circle for this infographic contains different pieces of gardening apparatus, and as you follow the illustrations it shows the planting of seeds and potting. I drew out the initial sketch for this and scanned it, colouring it using photoshop. This is the same method I used for creating the infographic that inspired this.

This is the scan and what it looks like with the colour applied in photoshop.

This is the finished infographic. The title of the book would either wrap around the circle or be placed in a box across the centre of it. As I am only required to produce a rough idea for this cover illustration, I will not be realising the final design. I am however very pleased with the outcome of this infographic.

Final Illustration Progress

As the IOT project comes to a close, I have been producing my final illustrations to put on the selected pages of the 'Gardening on a Shoestring' book. 

My selected pages are; Page 25 'The Water-Bottle Watering System', Page 30 'Pots with Panache', Pages 92-93 '10 Pricey-in-the-store Crops' and Page 100 'One Pot, 10 Crops'.

I have developed my drawing style for these selected pages and from this I have produced my drawings which will be coloured in watercolour. I will also use Photoshop to move the illustrations and place them appropriately within my layout.

Page 25

Page 30

Pages 92-93

Page 100

I will be using Photoshop to format my scans to make them look like blank pages ready for imagery. The scans I took from my 'Gardening on a Shoestring' book will be 'cleaned up' on photoshop using a method that I was shown by Vincent, which involves removing the tint from the scanned pages, removing the photos and making the black text bolder.

This example uses a page which I will not be creating illustrations for, but demonstrates the process of cleaning up the scanned image to make a blank template for imagery.

The scan taken from the book

The cleaned up scan

Drumleaf Bookbinding Workshop

 Today I attended a workshop for Drumleaf Bookbinding. For this workshop I was required to bring a metal ruler and Scalpel. I felt like it would be beneficial for me to attend this workshop as I hope to make my own books in the future.

 I started out folding 2 coloured pieces of paper and 14 pieces of cartridge. This method of binding works best with arouns 10-10 sheets. I then used a bone folder to flatten the creases.

 

We then alligned our sheets, with one coloured sheet in the front and one in the back. When the sheets were alligned, we placed them on the edge of the table with 1cm overhang, and then put weights on top. We then covered the edge in PVA and left it to dry for 30 minutes.

We then used japanese tissue paper to cover the spine. We cut the paper with 2cm extra to fold over.

 We then bagan to make the drumleaf. Starting by leaving both the front and back pages loose, we beagn gluing together every 2 pages. These pages were those that were seperate sheets at the beginning of the process. We did one from the front, gluing a 5mm line on the edge of the page, and then flipped the book and did one on the other side, and continued doing this until the entire book was done. We were using rough paper to keep the lines clean.

 We did this to every set of pages until the whole book was done, and then set a weight on top to flatten.

 Then we began making the spine. Using a piece of card the length and width of the spine of the paper, we glued it to a sheet of bookmaking fabric, with a 2cm border, and then folded over the top and bottom flap.

 Taking care not to put glue on the card, we glued a thick line of PVA on the fabric, covering all but the card.

Then we set our books under the weights again, with the spine overhanging and the weghts putting pressure on the glued section. 

 

The next step was to cut out the front cover from a sheet of cardboard. For this. we had to measure the front of our books from spine to the end of the cover, taking 1cm away to allow for the spine, and adding 1mm extra, so my original width of 15cm became 14.1cm. I then measured the height and added 2cm, making 21.2cm.

 I did the same to make a cover for the back.

 

  The next step was to cover the front and back with my chosen design. For this. I chose my 'Doggy Do's" pattern that I painted in gouache last year. To make this fit the cover, I draw an outline around the card and added a 2cm border, to which I cut slanted edges to make folding easier.

 I then lined up my card with the box I had drawn, and folded the flaps down, gluing the top and bottom first and then doing the sides after the others were stuck down. I did this on both covers.

I then measured 1cm from the spine of my the back of my book and marked it. I then covered the whole back sheet in PVA and stuck on my back cover, lining it up with the 1cm marks I had made. I then turned the book over and did this on the front.

 I then put the book under some weights to allow the glue to dry. I left the spine overhanging the edge of the table to ensure that maximum pressure was applied to the covers.

The finished book!

Page Mock-Ups

Before starting my final drawings, I did a few mock ups of 3 out of the 4 pages that I will be illustrating. The only reason I did not choose to do the 4th page spread is because I already know what I will be doing with it, and the other few pages are those that need work. These are my second lot of mock ups, and are more refined after conducting my research.

These are 3 of my chosen pages. I scanned my book, removed the photos and then printed the templates to work on. I feel that these layouts are easy to follow and will look very good in colour!