Gift Booklet: The Power of Jesus Christ in Our Lives Every Day
For the final project in my Graphic Design course at BYU-Idaho I was assigned to make a booklet to give as a gift. The booklet was to be a talk from the most recent General Conference, which was October 2023 General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I was to choose a talk that I wanted to share with someone I cared about and I made the talk into a booklet to give as a gift. Here is my journey on how I completed this assignment and what I learned along the way on this rewarding journey.
I first had to know exactly what was expected of me, so I made notes from the assignment brief. From this brief I realized my main goal was to make a document to be read. I needed it to be legible, readable, and invited the reader to participate. It had to be a 12 page spread, 8 pages plus a font/back cover and inside/back cover.
I knew I wanted to make this gift booklet for my dear friend and neighbor who is not a member of my faith. I wanted to choose a talk that was applicable to any one of any faith, so I knew a talk about Jesus Christ would be best. I had many talks to choose from and it was difficult for me to narrow it down. In the end, I was very pleased when I chose this talk because it spoke of so many different ways to have Jesus Christ in one's life every day.
Mind map of talk (left); thumbnails of possible booklet layout (right.)
After choosing the talk, I had to read the talk several times and circle words and subjects that grabbed my attention. I then made this into a Mind Map.
I also sketched layouts to experiment with different ways I could design the booklet. I knew that I had a few different possibilities that I wanted to take to the next step, digital sketches. Here are a few that I made:
Initial digital sketches.
Now that I had a few ideas, it was time to make my first draft. I had to have the page numbers and the footers included in this so I was able to see how long my chosen talk was and how I was to design the entire spread, including covers.
First Draft
I still wasn't too sure about the layout and was grateful there were more refinements coming. My next step was to receive some feedback from my peers and instructor. Most really like the eclipse that I had for my inside cover pages, but it was confusing because it had nothing to do with my talk. It just looked cool and I knew I needed some elements in the design. Oh, I also needed my footnotes.
The next step was to design the Front Cover Page. I had to draw more thumbnails again and I wasn't really looking forward to this step. I was able to put on some music and crank out some thumbnails because I was trusting the process, even though I wasn't quite sure of the direction I wanted to take yet.
Cover Sketch Thumbnails (left); Digital Sketches for Cover (right.)
Something happened next that I wasn't expecting. I knew which direction I wanted to go with. I knew I wanted to use some of the elements that I had made in my digital sketches for my cover. I really still loved the crescent, but it just didn't fit. I think it looked awesome, but it just didn't have anything to do with my chosen talk, so I chose another direction. Here is what my second draft looked like with my chosen color palette:
Second Draft
Bingo! I had a winner! The next step was to put the finishing touches on my booklet and to make the Photoshop Mock Ups.
I was able to find some great templates on Adobe Stock and I made a few so I could show what my booklet would look like in real life. I really love how it turned out!
In conclusion I am very please with the finished product. I learned many things about programming character styles and paragraph styles that will be beneficial to my future projects as a Graphic Designer. I plan on getting this printed and given to my neighbor. I hope that she will find the advice given in the booklet with the love that was given in creating it.
