Guide book - Initial Ideas

Leading on from the first critical feedback session, I was able to take some of the opinions and digitalise 3 different concepts that could be used as the final book design.

IDEA 1
The consistency within this concept comes from the text being aligned on the right at the top of the page. There is design freedom with how the images are presented as it is clear that in some cases the text is not easy to read if it overlaps the image too much. The right alignment/placement was chosen as a way to reflect the content, going against the norms of society and then reflecting this in going against the norms of alignment legibility. 
Figure 1 shows a way in which the sections could be divided, taking the colour of the rainbow on the left hand side of the page and then the text inverted over the top. This very clearly shows the start of a new section.
A problem was found with this particular design layout, shown in figure 2, with the amount of content given for the first section of the book. The overlaying of text on the image would not work because the section needs to be a minimum of 2 pages long so that the next section starter could work in the same way. Figure 3 shows a solution to this, expanding the image across the double page spread and then placing the text where there is less darkness in the image, still sticking to the top right hand corner concept. 
The artwork section at the back of the book would be good if the designs could be ripped out and then used as individual postcard sized prints by the readers, meaning that the design needs to be carefully thought about. The first approach is shown in figures 4 and 5, having the image as a full page on the left and then the writing to match it on the right hand side with the same placement as the rest of the book. The only design problem with this would be that there would be a large number of extra pages in the book that may not necessarily 'bulk' it out in a positive way. The more pages, the money spent on printing and this is something to consider. A solution to this was explored in figure 6, a page per print with the text in the top right hand corner. This works well, but as a creative I would not want to have writing over the prints that I choose to stick on my wall.

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IDEA 2
This idea works on the different ways in which the text on the artwork can be solved, looking at ways the reader will be able to find out about the art, rip it out and also not have writing on it. One option is to have previews of all of the artwork within the section, presented within a modular grid (figure 7) to keep an organised layout and overall appearance. This could then be presented with a list of the artists details and short sentence about the work, before presenting full page images of the artwork. Or as an alternative, figures 8, 9 and 10 show how the image could be on the left hand side page with the dominant colour carried over to the right page where the text can then be placed without ruining any part of the print. The landscape designs (figure 10) would be placed facing outwards, maintaining consistency and less confusion when it comes to reading the book. The pages would be perforated so that they could be easily torn out of the book without effecting the rest of the bound pages. 

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IDEA 3
A completely different approach to the layout design for the content given is to have the book landscape, representing the shape of the actual rainbow flag. The first page of the book (figure 11) has the rainbow colours with the section titles on the right hand side. Keeping the right alignment was decided upon because it is a strong way to present the content that I have been given to work with. I started by keeping each colour of the rainbow and gradually building them up as the sections progressed, but this was having too large of an impact on the content that needed to go on each of the pages. To resolve this problem, the only colour relevant to that particular section was kept on the page. The different ways in which the content could be placed on the pages has been explored briefly, allowing for a visual design to be established enough so that I can get feedback on the different concepts that could be used for this book design. Figure 12 shows the image placed centrally with the writing on the opposite page placed with in the column guidelines. I think that as the design experiments went on, I learnt that it was best to ignore the background stripe across the page as it did not actually have any consistency within each of the sections, so a design concept for one section may not actually work for the next one. 

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All of these designs have elements that work well, some parts that need developing and lots in common that could be all merged to develop a strong concept. One element that I have noticed that needs the most development is how the sections are divided so that the reader can quickly access the particular section they are looking for, without having to flick through all of the pages of the book.