MRP: My Book

As I have previously said I have decided to do a book on what on the images and quotes that I have collected over this period of time. I feel this is the best way that I can show the differences between this era.
I photocopied and scanned many images from Vogue magazines with the odd image from the internet or Chanel, Dior website to capture the fashion in ways I wanted to. I felt that delicate drawings where I would capture certain parts of outfits was the way that I would want to represent the 50's and 60's.

Here I wanted to try out different thicknesses of lines and colour to see what works and what didn't work overall. I do like how the images look in just black and white as I feel the images with colour take away the delicate essence of the particular era. I like how the features such as the material is captured which I think if it was in colour would not look as good and effective.

I tried to do collages of the images such as drawings and photos from Vogue (as seen above) I found this didn't work I looked a bit messy and almost ruined the drawing that I drew. So I decided to keep my images simple but effective.

As an experiment I tried to bring the drawings I had done at this time together as another option to have because at this time I was still unsure whether I wanted to have posters or a book. I thought as well the images after being brought together work well as a photo shoot in a way as it tells a story of the history of fashion.

Some more images that I have drawn.

After some thought I decided to go a head with the book idea as I feel this is a nice way to bring all my drawings together.

The next step is to figure out the size of my book, the help of Vogue and Acne paper made me chose the size of paper. I chose to use smaller than A3 size paper as i felt the off cut of A3 would be better than the extra size to make my book more personal. Again with the two magazine's that iv looked into i feel that the layouts are both really simple but make the information inside stand out i.e. the photography.

With the simple font, the use of white space and images they all create an amazing thing to read. This is what I wanted to bring to my book by using this as inspiration my text will fill the page the right way along with the illustrations.

Here is my first attempt, I feel this is very boring and not really what I was looking for as it's quite plain and boring.

After doing research into my layout I had to take the courage into just letting go of the layout playing around with the size of images and font's. Above are a few example of what I have chosen to do, I feel making the images coming off the page works better for the drawing over all.

I also chose to have certain images smaller some working with the larger images, in a way I see this as a photo shot in a magazine. With the smaller and larger images I just feel the size of paper does the drawing justice as you can parts of drawings.

Again I was inspired to try out different versions of the image, this I like as its a different way to look at the image and to show the way the lady is standing.

The next step was to find the right typeface for my book as I see the font being simple but effective with the drawings. I chose the font Bodoni as I felt that the font in normal and italic was beautiful and creative for my book. The font matches Vogue and Acne paper, I thought this was a good way to keep the inspiration of Vogue in my book.

Here I looked into maybe making my images a bit more developed and stand out. I had the idea of having a grey box in the background of my images to just show parts of the image or to simply show the image in a different light.

I original thought I could use the boxes throughout the book on every page to keep it constant however after testing this out I felt this was to overpowering and I just thought it looked very messy on every page. I then tried out choosing pages that I wanted to have the grey boxes on to then carefully placing the boxes over parts over the drawings that I thought needed to stand out. After printing it out and testing it this idea works extremely well and makes my book have a bit more of an edge to it, I also thought this was something that i could have on a few pages and different stages. I did this because I felt in a way its a like the layout of my images I wanted to tell a story throughout my book not having it all over the place, this would be very hard to read.

Above you can see how I have tried to keep pages in a similar layout so again there is a bit of a theme going throughout my book. This has made my book look and feel a lot better when you read it, so I am glad that I took some time out to look at a few examples of magazines to get an idea of how I can layout my book.

Front and Back cover

These two things are what I left till last as I wasn't sure what I wanted to call my book or how to finish it. I think this was something that I wanted to keep till the end so I had time to think about it as this is something that people will see first and last.

For the name of my book I wanted something that was a bit different and that was a strong name for the rest of my book. I tried different names:

La Femme Iconique (the iconic women)
Fairer sex
The age of women
La Femme Belle (the beautiful women)
La Femme salihouette ( the silhouette of women)
Classic look
Classic fashion
The classic women
Changes of women
Iconic fashion
Iconic times
Femiana
Independent women
Complete women
Inamortal (female lover)

These were a few ideas I had for my book, like I said I wanted to try something different. Out of all of these names I really like "La Femme Iconique" as I feel that the iconic women just speaks for the book. The idea for this project was basically about how women were perseved in the 1950's and 60's in the way of fashion and fashion is such an iconic aspect of a women's life.

I tried out different ways to have it on the page, using the same Bodoni font throughout the book this is automatically to be used on the front page. I tried having the name in capitals and lower case to see how it would be on the page, I felt that the lower case title worked better for the book as the capitals just shouted the words out on the page and I didn't want to have this on the front page. I again wanted something very simply and just clean for the front cover, this is why I kept the front cover just with the title, it's more effective this way. I thought it would be a lot harder to pick and chose an image for the front cover so keeping it plain was better and again more effective.

Here I was testing another name that I came up with however I kept the original name as I really liked it.

The back page was very much the same as the front I wasn't sure how to end my book as the middle and now the front cover was so strong. I again didn't think that an image would finish of my book well and it would be hard to chose what the image would be. I left my book almost unfinished till pretty much the last day before printing and my last page to this point was a qoute from david bailey.

“I like the magic, I still like the magic of developing something coming out and it’s still magic to me”

I think this is a strong quote and again finishes of the my book really well, as it is a kind of metaphor for fashion, photography and women's attitudes. Fashion is magic and the fact that women have become more freer this is again magic and changes are still being made today.

The back page was completely finished with my name and date of my hand in.

Editing

Through my final stages of my book I decided after printing what I thought was my final design to delete some images that I though were not my best drawings. I had already previously redrew some images as I felt they weren't the best and I could have drawn it a lot better.

These two images I decided didn't really fit in with the other images in my book as I just felt they weren't my best and I thought the other drawings were a lot stronger for my book.

Along with editing this was the time were I had to really think about my layout and also the time for adding or taking things out of the book.

To make sure that the text is the same throughout the book this was one of the big checks as well as spell checks. When I printed my book off to check that everything is okay I realised that the spacing and some of the font's weren't the same, which I am glad that I did as it looked very messy when printed.

Paper

For my book I have printed it out on normal paper from the mfd printer, to test the layout etc. Now it's at stage where I have to look and chose the paper for my book this is something that has to work for my size. I want the right paper that will make the drawings standout on the page, I also want to have a nice feel to the paper as this is one of the most important aspects a book.

I tried cartridge paper as its more of a textured thicker paper that I think will give my book a good professional feel. However I think this is something that needs to be tested.

Another type of paper that I want to try is 100gsm laser, inkjet paper , as this will have a nice soft feel to the paper but also be a bit thicker to normal paper.

To conclude this I decided to use both types of paper above as i felt this was a nice combination of textures. I ultimately wanted to have one type of paper however when I was testing them I felt that both were really good for example I liked how the cartridge paper made drawings that were on there own more effective and stand out in my book.

The above image is a thicker paper I decided to use as I felt the paper I used for the rest of the book was to thin and it might benefit from having a thicker cover to give the book more structure.

Binding

Binding of my book was the most difficult and stressful time through this processes as its the final stage of putting my book together. I had already decided that I would perfect bind my book, however I decided to do the front cover by hand. My first attempt to bind the front was very bad as I hadn't used the thick paper yet, I used PVA glue at first to attach the front and back cover. However this made the paper go wrinkly and not very professional looking. As you can see below:

This is when I decided to use the thicker paper and use another way to bind the front and back cover, this is when I used double sided sticky tape to get a much neater finish.

Extra's

While I was binding my book I used an extra bit of card that had the title of my book on as this was something that I was going to remove after perfect binding it together. Before I took this off I realised I actually thought this was a nice extra for my book as it's a carry on from the front page.