Visual Book Project

The assignment was to create a visual book, combining everything we had learned all semester into one final project. There were virtually no restrictions, other than we had to have 12–14 pages and use a combination of text and imagery. The broadness of the assignment was both exciting and terrifying; I could do anything I wanted but also had to choose a topic with my choices being … everything. After lots of thought and deliberation about how I could use colors, images, and different illustration styles, I decided to create a visual book on the topic of self care, using plant images as analogies for the text.

Choosing a Topic

With the scope of the project being so broad, I spent a while deciding what I wanted my topic to be. Julia had reminded us to start thinking very early one, and I knew immediately I wanted my topic to be about self care, whether it be a motivational book of quotes or a illustrated manual. Some of the ideas that I initially had included a book of my favorite feelings or favorite little things in life, a book of reasons to smile, how to be happy, or a pep talk or affirmations book. All of my ideas fell under the same genre, and I knew I wanted it to be a small and decorative picture book rather than a serious, text heavy book. My ideas reminded me of the types of books you’d see at Urban Outfitters or the types of posts you’d see on perfectly curated Instagram accounts. With the last project, I had created high detail, extremely explicit illustrations, so I also knew that for this project, I wanted to challenge myself in using a more minimal/abstract style, which also fit the genre very well. Drawing inspiration from this aesthetic, I started to brainstorm ideas. I also happened to visit a number of museums that weekend, and browsing the gift shops saw various books whose styles I liked.

Brainstorming

I started by brainstorming my content — including text, illustrations, illustration style, and layouts. I looked to Instagram to collect this as well as Pinterest and just online sources. Before talking with Julia in class, I had originally had the idea of the book being an analogy with a very literal “how to take care of a houseplant” beginning, with suggestions like feeding it, watering it, etc, and a final page saying something like “and in the same way you can take care of yourself” — a very explicit a-ha! moment. After talking my idea through, some ideas that were bounced included not having an explicit a-ha! final page but instead using quotes that are paired with plant imagery, or plant images with human expressions, or even maybe not using plants as my analogy. One idea that I really liked was thinking of my book as a compilation of Instagram posts and drawing inspiration from curated self care/wellness Instagram feeds. Taking all of this into consideration, I did more digging online and these are some of the images I used for inspiration:

Instagram posts that I saved and liked for their imagery or quote or illustration style

I also started thinking about how I wanted to present my book — page size, shape, colors, etc. Going with the idea of Instagram posts, I chose to have square pages, and kept my book relatively small at 6 x 6 inches. I also created my color scheme, sticking to pastels and multiple tints of the same 6 colors.

Sketches

I started in my sketchbook, first starting with the text content of my book by writing down every quote/phrase that I saw and liked, then stringing them together into combinations and in an order that made sense. Having decided on still using plants as my analogy given how well they fit with the quotes, I also started to brainstorm plant imagery that would match well with different phrases. I started splitting them into pages, and tried to have spreads that continued from one page to the next in both text and imagery as often as possible when it fit.

Digital Iterations

For my digital iterations, I started by creating my grid, then laying out the text boxes and leaving image boxes for where I wanted everything to be.

Initial layout — I was using a huge font size because it filled the space when I was looking at it on my laptop. After talking to Robert in class & printing the pages out I realized it was way too big, and adjusted my font size accordingly.

Mostly finalized spreads — I had originally liked the idea of having one black & white and one colored page per spread, but they felt incomplete.

I started adding colored backgrounds and liked these a lot more!

After having the layouts done, I started working on the black & white line illustrations for each page. I knew I wanted to eventually add color, but wanted to have the line drawings done first. I did quick ones so that I would have illustrations for each page initially, and came back for small final details at the end. I then played with color, using different styles such as accents of color along the lines or fully filled in shapes or colorful backgrounds with black & white illustrations. In the end, after trying all of these out I settled on the left side of each spread having a colorful background, with black & white illustrations, and the right side having a colored illustration. After finalizing illustrations I chose my font, Felt Tip, which looks natural and handwritten, which I felt matched the message of my book best. Screenshots from my iterations of each spread are below:

Cover

For the cover, I chose my favorite illustration (aside from the final page which I wanted to only use once) from the spreads, which also fit well in the grid that I had chosen. I tried a few different things, including a white border all the way around, 3 different colors of background, bolded, and unbolded title, before finally deciding on my cover.

For the cover image (and all of the left pages of each spread) I started by changing the line fills to white, then added more white to fill in the shapes.

Spread 1

For my first spread, I knew I wanted to use sun and rain imagery, and felt that a sunflower would be most fitting for that.

I drew the 2 sunflowers roughly first, before working on the illustration on the right. I struggled the most with this illustration in terms of how to compose all the pieces — the rain, the flower, the rainbow, so as not to look awkward.

I tried a few different ways of coloring the rainbow, using no black lines, tracing black lines, and black lines between the colors before settling on the right one.

In terms of composition, it looked off, and after applying a quick grid I used the rule of thirds to position the flower and the clouds.

I used my first spread as my test page for different typefaces I had been deciding between, trying a serif, sans serifs, and handwritten fonts. I liked the handwritten ones best, and chose the one with better readability.

Spread 2

For this spread, the imagery also came pretty naturally, and I found reference pictures online to base my sketches on.

For the left page, I had started with a sunflower, but ended up using that illustration for the previous spread (to keep the sunflower imagery consistent) and drew a new flower instead.

I had drawn the first watering can freehand without reference but felt it looked weird, so I found a reference to trace resulting in the final illustration.

Spread 3

The left page came pretty naturally as well, while the text and illustration of the right page took me the longest to finalize. I had reached somewhat of a brain block at this point, but after spending more time looking online and on Instagram settled with the imagery and text below.

I tried a couple ways of coloring the images, but ultimately kept the style consistent with the rest of the book.

Spread 4

For this spread, I knew what imagery I wanted to use pretty quickly, but struggled a bit with the composition, in terms of what text to put on the second page and where to place the butterfly, which I had drawn in a separate Adobe Illustrator file.

My first cocoon illustration I drew quickly as a placeholder, so that I could figure out the composition and text first.

After redrawing the cocoon and adding more details to the branch, I started adding color.

I tried a couple styles, following the styles I had tried for the last page, and in keeping consistency chose the rightmost one.

Spread 5

While I had used the plant analogy, I wanted to feature a person on my last page, but keeping with a minimalistic illustration style kept her unclothed and expressionless. I thought of using a fetal position, consistent with the idea of growth, and came up with the following illustration. I had started with 2 styles of adding color, eventually coming to a middle ground that felt most consistent with the rest of the book.

I used the image on the left as reference, and traced it for the figure in the middle of my illustration.

I started with the figure in the middle, then surrounded her with blooming flowers.

I tried different methods of experimenting with color, including leaving the figure uncolored at first. I felt that this caused the figure to be lost in the flowers, and decided to color her as well.

I tried a few different styles of coloring the image before settling on the final image used in the spreads, as seen below.

For the image on the left side of the spread, I had originally drawn the 2 houseplants, but ended up using the one on the right as the illustration for another spread. The plant on the left that remained I felt wasn’t exciting or interesting enough to stand alone, which is why I drew a new plant, a calla lily plant, for the page instead.

The reference I used and my outlined version of it.

Back Cover

For the back cover, I had talked to Robert about what kinds of things I could do for the cover, and he suggested just using imagery from the inside illustrations. I started with the row of succulents, but wanted to add a short saying or quick motivation below it, and thought it would be cute to make it a plant pun. A quick Google search later, I ended up with “Rooting for you” and accordingly changed the imagery to the one I had created with roots in it. I chose to keep the color the same as the front cover, which I had decided earlier.

Feedback

Unfortunately, I was out sick during interim critiques so I was unable to get feedback from the class, but I was able to get feedback from Robert via slack and in class. The main things we talked about were adjusting font size and spacing by printing my spreads out and looking at them in book form instead of just on my laptop, and just remembering to be consistent but interesting with style and layouts. Because of the minimal text and illustration style, I was worried most about having a book that felt empty or incomplete, but was able to bring in detail with some of the line drawings, textures, and colors.

Final Spreads

Final Reflection

I loved this project and how I was able to tie together everything I’ve learned this semester into one final book that I am proud of and on a topic that I care about. I was fortunate enough to be accepted into the Design minor program this semester, so I am looking forward to continuing to learn about Design in my next 2 years at CMU. I’m sure that I will continue to apply what I’ve learned in future design classes and just to everyday things I do, whether it’s creating a powerpoint presentation for my business classes or putting together reports. A big thank you to Julia and Robert for everything this semester!