About the Project:
This project was a class assignment set up to have us create a square book with a topic of our choice. The requirement for this assignment was to have at least 14 pages that were designed so they fit together seamlessly. This project was created to help us research, write, and design our book entirely.
The Challenge:
My main goal for this project was to properly research and convey themes of youth education and the LGBTQ+ community. As this is an important and large subject to cover, I needed to make sure that my information was correct and properly portrayed these themes and information.
With only a few weeks to complete this project, a big challenge was time management and multitasking to make sure I had a decent amount of time to research and write my page information while also designing the visual elements simultaneously.
Early-Stage Sketches:
These sketches were my initial ideas for different two-page spreads and individual page layouts. I started out by brainstorming key associations within the topic and mingling these elements with calm, non-distractable designed pages. I was able to determine what ideas I wanted to avoid and which would be more successful in representing the topic.
This step of the design process allowed me to put my ideas on paper before jumping into the digital phase. I was able to make notes on placement specifications on where visual design elements would be arranged to coincide with the chunks of text.
Digital Mockups:
After solidifying my information into body text and determining design layouts, I began to mingle the two to fit certain pages in Photoshop and InDesign. As you can see, the finalized designs are similar to my sketches but include pastel rainbow colors to represent the colors commonly used among the LGBTQ+ community.
The overall color and design style for this book revolved around youth, education, and pride themes and ties. A typical educational theme for youth is pastel colors and shapes as these elements attract their attention and help them feel calm when in learning environments. This idea fits both into LGBTQ+ and youth themes in an educationally understood way. These choices in color, style, and font give the book a childlike style while juxtaposing a strong subject matter and bringing it to a lighter, reflective level for readers.
