The Publication Breif - First Draft

Of the three briefs, there are a number of reasons why i choose to work on the publication brief and why at this point I feel specifically a book would work best to allow a viewer to immerse themselves in my work. My work has been and continues to be a very intimate exploration of my own past experiences with fear, sexuality and fetish, and also depicts an almost psycho-analytic process to visualising these experiences. As such, I feel the experience of viewing the images should also be a very intimate experience, hence why I decided on a book.

There have also been other reasons, such as the constraints of my day to day life, work and budget. Although I understand that for these briefs an actual product (exhibition, Workshop or publication) is not technically required, is is recommended we complete a final physical end product and I agree as the experience and knowledge gained in doing so will be integral to the FMP. So for me at this point, a publication fits in best with my budget and time constraints while allowing me to create a physical final product.

With this in mind I have come up with a simple first draft. For this design I have used some favourites of mine from my current work, and supplemented these with work from the previous module, though of course the final product will contain only work produced during this module. I have used Adobe Photoshop to deign this initial layout, while I know the industry standard would be Adobe InDesign, I don't currently have access to that software. Luckily in recent years Adobe have added many features to Photoshop that allow for good design practice, including the ability to add multiple Art boards, witch I can use to design separate spreads. Its worth noting that I also have access to Pixelu Smart Albums due to my work as a wedding photographer, and while this is a fantastic package that is specifically designed for book making, its purpose is for creating quick aesthetically pleasing designs to go out to clients on an individual basis, and as such is based on using pre-designed templates. There is the option to custom design layouts, but I feel Photoshop offers more to me in terms of creating a photobook for my project. Below is an example of the page setup I use in Photoshop, while its not perfect, the guides in photoshop allow me to set up print guides for the Bleed, Safezone and Gutter. These are the same on every artboard, and will allow me to be consistent with my design choices on each spread.

What follows is the initial draft of my photobook. The spread are 10 by 20 inches witch will result in a 10x10 inch photobook. This sizing is based on my experience of wedding albums and a number of photobooks I own, I feel that this size is comfortable to hold and read in the hand without becoming cumbersome, but also allowing a good size image to be printed on the pages with enough DPI for detail.

I have kept to a simple layout to start with for a number of reasons, first of all this allows me to get to grips with how the images look and feel on the page and in the space before I start making big changes on the page. it is also inspired by multiple photobooks I have borrowed and many that I own seem to follow this similar style: the left page blank while the photo is placed central on the right with adequate negative space. To me, this means that there are no distraction from the imagery, and as someone who would rather rely on my images to tell the story than text, this appeal to me greatly.

In reviewing this first draft however, I have noticed that I am not happy with the crop ration on all of my photos. My images this module have been mostly uncropped as I didn't feel I was cropping with any good reason other than to give the look that I was shooting on medium format. However, on reflection I feel that the 4x5 crop I began to use last module fits better on these pages than the 2x3 crop I have mostly used this module, and for the final product I may well recrop all my images to 4x5 to suit.