Today’s Plan:
- Introduce Book Project
- Work of Art: “Judging a Book by Its Cover”
- Group Formation
- Homework
Book Production Project
Today we begin our second project of the semester. It is my goal that we finish this project over Spring Break. For the next few weeks, you will be using InDesign and Photoshop to design, arrange, flow, and produce a book of poetry from an author in public domain (note: a few people have asked if they can produce a volume of their own work; I don’t have a problem with this, although you might end up working alone). I’ve selected poetry because it requires far more attention to layout and typography than a regular text.
You will be working in teams of two for this project. We will form those groups either at the end of class today or at the beginning of class on Thursday. Each group will select a poet and produce a book of approximately 30 pages. In addition to poems, each book must include:
- A front and back cover design
- A title page
- A copyright/copyleft page
- A preface [you are responsible for writing the preface, it should be at least two pages. If you run out of things to say, you can flow some Lorem Ipsum.]
- A table of contents
You might include other pages–for instance, part of an introduction by your author. You should include page numbers. You might also want to think about the design of your pages and whether you can include simple illustrations (strategically, perhaps not on every page).
As with our first project, we will do research into poetry editions in order to inform our design process. This will involve both digital research (into the covers for previous editions, Amazon can help here) and physical research (going to the library and looking at previous editions of the poems, getting measurements of page size, checking out typography first hand).
Starting next class, we will spend Thursday’s working with InDesign.
You can find full .txt files of poetry in public domain at the Gutenberg Project. Of course, the link to the Poetry mainpage is broken today. But I did look up a few poets to see what was in public domain (essentially, think of poets from before 1915):
You are not tied to this list; I only ask that the poet you work with is in public domain, as are all the files stored on the Gutenberg website.
Work of Art
As with our last project, I want to think rhetorically about designing a book cover: how do we walk the fine line between attracting attention to the book, staying true to the expectations and conventions of a generic book cover, reflecting the content of the book, and operating within (and yet beyond) the specific history of the specific book in question.
I want to watch an episode of a now defunct reality competition series, Work of Art, because it addresses (if tangentially) many of these issues.
Group Formation
I’ve set up a discussion forum on Canvas to facilitate group formation. If you know what poet you want to produce, put up a post. If you are interested in working with someone, respond to the post. I am looking to keep this to groups of one or two, but we should be able to make it work.
Homework
For homework, I would like you to play around with InDesign and get a sense of the workspace. Please complete InDesign Classroom in a Book, “Introducing the Workspace.” Remember that you can do this at home if you have a computer and broadband internet access via the USF apps portal (it will require you follow the documentation and download the Citrix Receiver for mac or pc). If you don’t have a computer or broadband, then you will have to find a lab or a computer you can use on campus (I am pretty sure the library computers have the Adobe Creative Suite). Submit any files you complete while working on the tutorial to the assignment portal in Canvas.
