Studio Brief 3 - Tell an Untold Story Pt 2: The Picture Book - Roughs and Book Layout

Development of ideas, roughs and book layout

Looking back over my research and knowing I wanted to take my audience on a similar journey that I had experienced, I wanted to focus on important checkpoints and scenes along the journey for artwork and also include images of some of the souvenirs I collected. This wasn't an original plan, but looking at the collections I made - I found the items really interesting and unique to my location therefore didn't want to miss them out whilst telling the story throughout the book.

The overall theme of the book is the stepping stones and the journey through the Cheedale valley in order to get to them.

Layout of book: Concertina vs Saddle Stitch

Having a concertina book works well with the idea of a journey. The flow of the pages helps give an insight into the stages along the journey and adds a sense of flow/milestones in which the audience has to take to reach the end.

Possible page layout for concertina:

Saddle stitch:

A saddle stitch book would be easier to construct and works well with idea of collections in a conventional book style. Within the brief there also seems to be more freedom in terms of sizing of the pages in comparison to the set size of A5 portrait for the concertina option. This could benefit me in terms of final artwork size and shape.

Side ideas: 

If I was to create a book full of just scenes, I would like to also create a miniature book (which could be presented in a pocket attached on the back page of the book). This little book would have a collection of the souvenirs to be found along the journey and could be read in conjunction with the main book, each item relating to each scene in order.

I also looked into the possible layout for a pocket page book. Each page of the main book could be a pocket, with main artwork on the pages and souvenirs hidden inside each page relating to the outside artwork. I really like the cleverness and interaction of this idea however I am not sure it meets the brief in terms of a saddle stitch book as the binding and page fold is very different.

Throughout generating of ideas process, I found it beneficial to explore how the artwork could be presented on each page. I began looking at frames and what frame for the artwork worked best for each possible book layout.

Roughs

Overall I found working with quick roughs really beneficial and I am happy with the ideas and decisions I have made in terms of content and what artwork I want to feature on each page of the book in order to tell the story.

I would really like this book to be concertina, as I think it will work well with the artwork I plan on generating. In sticking with the brief, each page will be A5 portrait and feature 16 pages of artwork (Front cover, back cover, and 14 pages dedicated to the journey and the collections/souvenirs relating to it).

Now to create the artwork