EDIT FROM EACH SHOOT

I tried to shoot a lot of images each time, so I had plenty to select down from. Also, I shot with the same equipment, lenses and with a similar lighting in the studio or at a similar time of day/type of weather, when shooting on location. I kept a relatively simple set, and tried not to shoot with a busy background, so the images match more easily. Taking this more minimalistic approach will give me more freedom when doing my layout in indesign. I tried to narrow down to 3-4 images per outfit, per background, per shoot. Some I immediately narrowed down to 2 and some I kept more images from, so I can turn them to black and white, so I can use in between my colourful images.

FIRST RETOUCHING

After each selection, I started retouching, first in Capture One and then in Photoshop. All of the retouching was relatively simple. In Capture I just made sure it's exposed correctly and colour match between the shots from each session and did some very slight skin retouching. I'd use Photoshop mainly to add background wherever necessary. Why should wide, when you can add more background? Just kidding, this time I just had to add more, because backdrops are finite objects. Anyway, after this, I started exporting my images to try and make my final selection. 

FINAL SELECTION

I did a low res JPEG export of my selected images and did a first print run to make it easier to select my final images and to see how the images go together and what would be the final thing that's going to group them together. I have images in many different colours, but at the end I am just going to focus on 4, 2 warm, 2 cold and I think those would be blue & purple and red & yellow. The good thing is that I have models overlapping in different colours so the book shouldn't look too repetitive, in terms of one model, one colour, one outfit type of thing. I'd like to have a good mixture. 

INDESIGN INSPIRATION

I have been looking into fashion look books, since the beginning of the term, I picked up a few booklets, from several shops and look at several brands online, more so, their editorial part for the spring/summer season. Also I have been looking at different graphic templates. At the beginning I thought I'd add a lot of graphic elements to my images, different lines, symbols and drawings, but I will know once I have at least half of the images as to how that will look on the final product. I definitely haven't picked a delicate documentary subject for my images, so I'd like the book to look very easy on the eyes, almost playful and fun. Once I start my layout in indesign I'll do my best to reflect that. Of course, any added design I'll do in Photoshop, as I'm far more comfortable with it.

PRELIM INDESIGN

I started doing my first indesign layout when I finally had all the images pretty much ready, any further retouching will be done, post layout when I know exactly what I need from each image. In class I finished my first draft design. Once again, because of the minimal look of the images, I am trying to be bolder with the actual framing and placement of the photos. I'm going to keep the pages white, there is enough colour in each image already, so this is going to make it look more homogeneous. My first idea, was to extend the background of each image to the whole page, but I feel like I'm losing impact that way, framing the images to one part of the page is going to make it easier for the eye to immediately go to the main place of interest. The idea that I developed in class was to cut the images into mini frames, in a collage type of way. I have separated the page into thirds, this way I can have images taking 1/3, 2/3, 3/3 and a full bleed which will ignore these constraints. So far, I have one image that will be bleeding from edge to edge. 

PRINTING SHOP RESEARCH

Over the course of this term I have searched for different print shops, I asked several people in second year, about where they ordered their book from last year when they were doing the same brief. So far, I have made the following list of possible places:
Digital Printing, Blurb, Mixam, Bob's books, Doxdirect. Another option is to print here at the print shop, this way I can even do a larger format book, A3 perhaps?, but since I've never been the DIY type and don't have experience in book binding, I think this will be a plan B. Reviewing those places, I found out that not every print shop does universal page sizes and since I'd like to have full layout control I'd probably go with a place that does standard A5,A4,A3 sizes. Blurb has their own sizes, for standard landscape it's 20x25 which is slightly smaller than A4, which I think is too small. Bob's books has their own indesign template, but I have already done one preliminary design by myself so again I wouldn't like to start from scratch. I guess it will be between Mixam and Digital Printing and I really like Mixam's website. I asked Ben from second, because he said that he used it to print his book and he said he was happy with it, so I'll probably go with them. You can customise pretty much everything on their website and it's very easy to use, you can do your own layouts and just upload the PDFs when ready. I just need to make separe documents for the pages, covers and spine. The spine was a weird one?, but the website says that if you don't upload a separate spine file they will just print you a white one. It looks like I'll go with either a stapled or perfect bound softback book, depends on the number of final pages, because if it's perfect bound and the pages are quite thick it might snap very easily. I don't like the wiro option as it doesn't really fit the idea of my project. 

GRAPHIC DESIGN

Okay, here comes a little trick up my sleeve, one of my best friends is a recent graphic design graduate and over the next few days, before I send for print, I will be going over my stylistic choice for the design of my book. Even though I have done one preliminary design, I have 4 different options that I'd like to discuss with him:
Collage framing, Full bleeds(added backgrounds), Blurry backgrounds of the same image or Close up(zooms). Also I am hoping to get a few suggestions for fonts for the cover of my book. 

After a pretty much 2 day constant conversation, I know what I want to do. His first reaction at my design was that it didn't flow, because I'm using frames that are too different, unfortunately true, so I started making my other design. The background extension was waaaay too bland and didn't grab the attention at all, since certain images could only be extended one way, it didn't really change the composition of the image, it just added more blank space. I did the blurry option to several images, but none of them worked as well as the one where the model is extending his hands to the side. It works well there, because it feels like a continuation of the frame, but on all other images that I tried, where the pose wasn't symmetrical and the crop was a little to one side it just seemed like a splatter of colours, for absolutely no reason. Last and turned out to be the best option, was the one with the zooms. I was a little worried that the images would become way too pixelated, however, it should feel like a magnified glass, a glimpse at a detail. Also they seemed low quality in indesign, but after exporting the images looked fine. Finally, I told my friend the type of font that I am looking for, a clean, modern, simple, easily readable writing and he send me about 10 options. I picked one and used to different types(bold and thin, I think) to write my name and title on the cover.

Below you can see all of my design progressions. 

FINAL INDESIGN

After exactly 20 different layouts I was ready to send for print, yes! I exported the pages the cover and the spine onto different PDFs and loaded them into the Mixam's system. So far it looks good, but I won't know until the book arrives. It is scheduled to arrive on the fourth, which gives me a nice 3 day gap, for any unforeseen events, but I'm hoping it will all turn out well. I chose gloss photographic paper for the pages, which will give them a nice shine, I think of it as one more layer on the images and the covers are matt, because it's just the writing and that should make it more readable. 

PRINT - EXP. DELIVERY AND FINAL PRODUCT

I will update this part once the book arrives.

A last minute hiccup happened today, Mixam failed to deliver on time, so I had to call them this morning, to find out who is delivering my book. I found the company, called them and arranged to go and pick my book up from their warehouse. I had to travel for more than an hour in each direction, but at least I have secured my submission a day before the deadline. Even though, I sent my book for print a lot of time in advance, it seems I didn't choose the right company. The final product looks good, the images are fine, however they have moved my last page(black) to page number 3, which is were my sequence was supposed to start, so that moves all of my images by one page. I like the outcome, but that is another mistake on their end, so I won't be using them any more.