Dinner party pages

Still working on creating a relationship with the images that are placed next to each other and getting the tatter to feel intimate and not decaying. The handwritten text are little stories about my early experiences with food in China, like little journal entries to give background on the images of Chinese food at the dinner party. Anyone have thoughts?

Final?

So, as I work on my book, I thought it'd be a good idea to continue working on my portfolio. So I've tried re-tweaking some of the text on this portfolio. Anyone have any thoughts? Type look tight? I'm planning on printing it out full size, holding it up myself and photographing it for the portfolio and trying to make it as good as possible before I do that. If anyone sees this, feedback would be great. Thanks.

The last of the "transition pages." I feel like, if these work, they'll be nice...trying to reiterate that idea of connection. Since the book starts off with all these colored lines going all over the place, and then they gradually become clearer patterns, I think there's a nice transition happening. And in this case, trying to transition from all these interest topics (city, art, food) to the "me" icon. Does that come across? Maybe it needs to be seen in context.

But in generally, right now I'm writing. There's a lot of writing to be done in this book.

Jenny's Cover

I'm working on a book cover for Teachers College Press right now and was hoping to get a little feedback. The book is about a girl who didn't quite fit into the mold of the elementary school system of a diverse, urban school. She had some bumps along the way, hence the slightly creased paper theme. I've gone through a bunch of iterations and this is kind of where I am. I originally was working with the title above her head (or perhaps on top and behind her head...) but it felt like it was pressing down on her. I'm not entirely comfortable with the placement of all the elements, and am still tweaking but thought I'd put it up. I'm not sure people are still checking out blogs but just in case, feedback would be lovely. Thanks.

Front Matter

I'm trying to resolve the front matter and the pacing of the start of the book and hoping to get some feedback (in part so I can then design the table of contents). I reduced a combined a few pages so it's not so slow and the preface is still going to get much longer to explain where the project is going. The interests map is still going to have the vellum layer which is going to mute those colors and I think my only real concern is that I feel like I need sometime between the Community Clusters pager and The City. All in my head or do I need something transitional there? I think the TOC will be a good transition between the interests map and the Community Clusters. Anyone have suggestions?

Thoughts?

So I've been trying to combine all the maps from my three sections and have come up with two variations, one keeping the bright colors and one going for a more muted tone with slight pops of color ala the greyscale interests map. Does anyone have a preference? (now that the grey is done, I'm leaning towards it since it moves away from the three other colorful ones and transitions into the Process section...) The left hand page is still just filler of course...
thanks.

Thought I'd put these up. There are the (quiet) transitions between the city, art and food sections. Like previously in the book, the lines will be printed on vellum overlaying the detail on the "interests map."

I haven't uploaded anything to my blog in a while so I thought I'd put some stuff up. He we have the title page and the "faux" title page and a few of the end spreads for each section. The copy still needs to be written for these but I've made a rough draft of the copy for the food. I've also starting working on a map that encompasses all three of these maps but have been having a little trouble making all the colors mesh together. Maybe drop back into the gray palette I established for the start of the book? More to talk about tomorrow.

start of poems

Here's the first "poem" I'm happy-ish with. Keep pushing it?


Here's two more, the top one was my first attempt and then because I liked the China one, I went back and redid it with lighter, thinner type but for comparison's sake, I thought I'd put both up. I like the colors but think maybe it's too jumbled and distracting. Thoughts?




Another, this time with colored text...once again kind of liking the soft colors... but feel like the text needs more...greater shift in scale? different typeface?

not finished yet....

So I haven't been able to finish the designing of the spreads yet but I thought I'd put up a couple of the illustrations. I'm envisioning "stories" next to the images explaining how these people and ideas are influential and maybe a timeline running across the spreads but I don't quite think it's all going to get dropped into place by tomorrow night so here's something to look at in the meantime.

Oh yeah, here's another revision

Food spread

I have a photo shoot lined up for some of the food section but in the meantime, here's another idea.

revision

So, trying to respond to L's thoughts and have moved the photo onto the next page, using this page more as a text page....but now kind of thinking that it lacks the energy of the last one. Maybe I'll try and rework the earlier spread with the new headline, treat it more like a feature opener and just include tiny bit of text... But thought I'd put this up anyway for any comments.

Art section

So I've been thinking a lot about how art fits in with the whole identity thing and decided that a huge part of making art and designing is the process. And the creative process starts with the blank piece of paper, sketches and the desk, where it actually happens. So we've got two "views" of the desk so to speak, an actual photograph and a "diagram" indicating everything that was on my desk on a given day (getting back to that "moment in time" idea). Hopefully there's a bit of playfulness tucked into the grid patterns.

Are there things I haven't thought about? Ways to improve this? I might include some influences, mixed in with sketches I've done for this book (so the book is getting a little self-referencial). Any thoughts? Art is such an important part of my life that I'm having a hard time seeing how to explain that visually, ironically.

Revised and new spreads

Art Spread

I've been working in this 'art' spread in the interests section of my book and feeling a bit stuck. I liked the way it looked sketched out but when I redrew it as vectors and colorized, it's not quite holding up for me. I kind of liked this idea of groups of people clustered together and then everything revolving but maybe the line work got too complicated? I've tried out a couple of different color variations but not sure. Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions?



And now here's another version with names, subtler color variations and simplified lines....

Individual/Community Poster #1

Interest lines

Here are two variations on the vellum overlay I'm thinking about for the areas of interest graphic. Each line connects the individual with his or her interests and in the second graphic, the lines have been color coded to show what type of relationship I have with those people. The thickness if also relative to the influence that person has on my life. I imagine the lines and the key to be printed on a sheet of vellum laid over the other graphic and have lowered the opacity in this case just to show how that might look.

Interests info graphic

Here's the start of my info graphic spread about people's passions. The size of the circles is proportionate to the number of people in my community who expressed these interests as the top three things they wouldn't want to live without. The distance between the circles is also roughly proportionate to how closely the different themes are related and then the color grouping and illustrated connection are symbolic of that relationship.

The second image was my first idea, all the names around the outside and then circles in the middle but I realized I just wouldn't have the space to fit it all in without looking cramped so it because these two page spread.

What I'd also like to do is run the list of names on the side of the two page spread and have a vellum overlay with lines linking the specific people to their interests. So that's still to come but I thought I'd put this up and see if anyone has feedback at this point. Some of the illustrated details might be too fine for the what I've got going on elsewhere so I might simplify things a bit or pull back on the colors. Thoughts?