Picture Book
Storyboard
With the opportunity to create a short book, I wanted to tell a story akin to that of a children's book, but with a more mature presentation. I looked to styles like that of Toile de Juoy for inspiration at an artistic intersection between those two things. While in that thought process, I wrote a short story about a bee who works hard to harvest flowers and the satisfaction it gains at the end of the season. Again, I chose a subject matter that might be found in a children's book, but with a moral/message more relatable to an adult audience, all with the goal of creating a brief, nostalgic, satisfying reading experience.
Experimentation
It was decided that the cover would be screen printed, the art would be letterpress printed via laser-engraved stamps, and the text with traditional metal type. The latter two were both entirely new to me and took many iterations and failed attempts to "dial-in" a successful process. The laser cutter had to be gentle enough to not burn away detail, yet also strong enough to engrave deep in order to avoid leaving raised edges that might print around the art. Many typefaces were tested and a simple rigging system, involving magnets, rubber bands, and metal slugs was set up to enable many prints to be done in quick succession and with consistent spacing. A pair of stencils was created to make crop marks for consistent page size. After many trials on the laser cutter and Vandercook press, I was able to achieve results that almost perfectly matched the layout of my digital designs while also taking advantage of the texture and dimensionality of paper and ink.
Layout
Throughout the development of the project, the layout of individual pages remained unchanged, but the format of the book was changed from a gimmicky accordion fold book to a standard hard cover, due both to time constraints and the desire to have a robust, traditional-looking final product.
As the story was edited, slight adjustments were made to the scales of each image to maintain consistent visual balance and spacing across all the pages. From the existing images, a toile-esque pattern was created and digitally printed for use as end-papers.
Once the text block was finalized, a hard cover was created by cutting chipboard and the screen-printed book cloth to size and carefully gluing all components together. This process also included the addition of thin cloth on the spine for reinforcement, as well as headbands along the binding for impact protection.
Final Book
All of these efforts resulted in a concise little piece that it is pleasing to hold and look at. There are some problems to be ironed out, such as the disparity between different red inks and paper color, which, seeing the completed book, I now realize should be consistent throughout. But the pages themselves, the cover boards, the spine, and everything else all feels complete and high-quality.
The book is also very short, and could benefit from more art and story, a title page, and perhaps a send off or other surprise easter-egg or bonus piece of art at the end to extend and brighten the experience of reading. This is a project that I am already continuing to work on and one that I certainly plan to iterate and improve upon several more times.
