Call Me By Your By Your Name Book Design
For this project, I redesigned and built a limited-edition version of my favorite novel Call Me By Your Name for my Book Design Technology course at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. When conceptualizing and executing the design of this project, my ultimate goal was to bring the strong imagery and themes in the narrative to the design itself. The author paints such a vivid picture of the world inside that weaves the timeless love story together–this is what drove my design decisions.
The San Clemente Syndrome Part Opener
Interior Spread Design
The Interior Design
When choosing typefaces for this project, I opted for a classic style. The story is set in the 1980s, but I wanted to create a timeless design. Elegant script (Adorn Coronet) and serif body copy (Sabon) were a must.
The interior layout was driven by the golden ration of book design, using wider margins on the outside and on the bottom. The folio was kept simple to go along with the classic style.
Several motifs were carried throughout this project, peaches being the most prominent. As a stylistic device they became the core of my design, used as an illustration on the full title page, a stamp on the front cover, and encases in vines surrounding the illustrated part openers.
The illustrations set the tone for each part of the book. With the vivid setting of the story and the attention to detail the author writes, these were made specifically to place the reader into the world of Elio and Oliver. These ‘emblems’ as well as the peaches on the full title page are all digitally hand-drawn my myself using Procreate.
Project Notes & Process
When initially brainstorming my project, I found it helpful to map everything out visually. These notes show where I wanted to go in terms of styles, illustrations, and additional touches to the physical book. Since I wanted to include divider pages before each part I had to visualize where they would be placed when I built my book, as they could not be paginated into InDesign. Very early sketches allowed me to plan out the emblem part openers as well.
The Bookmaking Process
The exterior elements were all chosen by designing from the inside out. Strong themes of the book include the incorporation of bicycles, music transcriptions, books, peaches, and summer. The end sheets of music notes tie into this theme, as well as the peach stamp denoting the front cover. The 4 different tip in sheets allude to the four colors of bathing suits represent the moods of Oliver mentioned in the first chapter. Green book cloth was chosen to represent the green foliage in the Italian countryside summer setting. The video below showcases the book building process and the end result. I have a new appreciation for book building and plan to make more books in the future.
Illustrating the Part Openers
Here are some quick excerpts from my illustration process. I chose black and white sketches so I could focus on the details of the scene while also keeping with the timeless classic theme.
Drawing the streetlights on 'The San Clemente Syndrome' part opener
Adding door details on 'The San Clemente Syndrome' part opener
