Based on your work from the previous exercises, think about how your designs within the context of the book. For example, visually explore how your artwork sits within the format of your A5 pamphlet – how the page might frame the artwork, how different pages sit together or how you might begin to develop a narrative across multiple pages.

This process might suggest new ways of presenting or developing your work. Think about how you want to finish your artwork, whether this is through typography, illustration, photography, drawing or another format.

Critique your work – what has the format of the pamphlet offered you, how might your ideas develop further, and how has your understanding of creative book design changed through this exercise?

OCA Book Design 1: Creative Book Design

This exercise is an extension of the previous one. I think I will use the assignment in this part to frame my thinking around this so I can talk about my findings in more practical terms. I think this will enable me to respond to this exercise better.

After spending a little bit of time on developing my first assignment, I felt like this is a good time to think about these things.

I feel like that the book/pamphlet format offers you a few opportunities but also presents a few challenges.

For example having 2 sides that you can work with with a very visible divide in the middle. This great chasm can make or break the layout. As a designer you need to be very aware of it. This divide can also provide with some unique opportunities when it comes to designing, For example you could lay out text on one side of your spread while covering the other in illustrations.

The margins of the pages are usually reserved for information such as the title of the publication or the chapter and page numbers. This is a space that can be quite useful for extra information that doesn’t necessarily belong in the body of the content. By keeping these margins consistent you can make the publication more professional looking in my opinion. Breaking the rules you set out can also be an invaluable tool. For example if you would like to bring the attention of the readership to a certain element on the page, you can break the structure that the eye expects and thus elevate certain element.

Printing your designs can be quite crucial as they sometimes come out completely different when printed and can help you make better decisions with certain elements, such as the font sizes and the opacity of elements for example.