civilized ku # 1181 ~ picture makers as designers
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 11:17AM 
Red work barge ~ on Lake Placid (the lake) / Lake Placid, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenIn response to my expressed desire (civilized ku # 1179) for picture books made by other picture makers, Mary Dennis wrote:
I have tried on several occasions to pull together some sort of book Mark but I am woefully inadequate in design skills. They always look amateur and tasteless in my opinion. The one that I did print and order felt and looked more like a childish, fat brochure than a photo book. I like the idea of a folio better ... It seems like a more manageable project than a book, at least for me.
In my experience, Mary is not alone in her perceived failure to design a non-"tasteless / amateur / childish" looking picture book. In many ways, this design failure is a bit of a mystery to me, especially so when the picture maker in question, such as Mary, is very accomplished, re: making well "designed" pictures. That is to say, pictures which evidence a creative and sophisticated organization / utilization of space on the 2-dimensional surface of a print. IMO, that skill is nothing if not a design skill.
That said, it is obvious that many skilled picture makers don't really understand that skill - in many cases, a rather intuitive ability - and, consequently, don't know how to harness it in the design of a page, much less a book.
However, that said, the real problem, as I see it, is simply that most picture makers ignore or forget the KISS principle. In my experience many of them try too hard to fancy-up a book instead of just keeping it plain and simple. They end up adding too many design elements and techniques which, unless one is very skilled as a designer, totally mucks up the look of the thing. In fact, a very skilled designer would most likely, in the case of a picture book wherein the star of the show is the pictures, keep it simple and clean looking, letting the pictures speak for themselves.
Think about it. How many picture books of the work of "famous" picture makers use any design technique other than clean white pages and occasional full bleed pages - in either case, one picture per page - to showcase the pictures? I mean, it doesn't get any simpler than that. The resultant look and feel of a book so designed can only be described as "elegant" or "classy".
The other design consideration which trips up many non-designers is the use of text/typefaces. Again, keep it simple, stick with classic book typefaces - Helvetica (sans serif), Times New Roman (serif) and the like. If that idea still perplexes you, just pick up virtually any professionally designed picture book and look at how the typography and text are presented. Pick a look you like and just flat out copy it.
All of that said, here's the best advice I give you - have your book printed by a provider which offers a blank full bleed page layout option. Forget trying to layout and design a book using provided page/layout templates. Those templates only for complete morons or, perhaps more charitably, those without Photoshop or Photoshop skills.
Photoshop (and perhaps other picture editing software) allows one to create editable type layers and unlimited picture placement and size. I just create a blank master page file sized to my intended book size and work from there. When all the pages are finished, I flattened the file, save it as a jpeg, upload to the photo book service provider and put them into the book in proper order.
It doesn't get any easier than that.
None of the above is rocket science. It doesn't take a design genius to make it work. And, in the digital design world, one can endlessly move stuff around and try different typeface fonts and sizes at will.
One of things I am considering, in an effort to help, is to offer book design help (I won't do it for you) to those who have a book in the works. A sort of critique which is designed to help the fledgling book creator get their feet on the ground, so to speak. No charge, just some friendly advice and perhaps a break on the purchase of the finished book.
Any takers?
Reader Comments (3)
This fairly well sums up what I did for my own first book (having no design training at all). I started by sitting down with a few photography books from my collection whose design I liked, and stole the best bits from each.
I combined this with keeping things as simple as possible, and was quite pleased with the result, which drew some positive comments about its design*.
*Admittedly, the comments were from friends, but they were un-prompted!
Unlike "facebook" your blog doesn't have a "like" button. If it did, I would have clicked it.
Some time ago, you wrote one (or two?) posts going into the details of all this. A very good article which I used to good effect for a photobook project.
Perhaps another basic tip is to use the same layout template for odd & even pages. Makes it easy to insert or re-arrange pages without having to adjust the margin offset.
Also, using the supplied page templates (that is, the simplest one using the guidelines you advise) might STOP people from doing over-the-top design work in Photoshop.
[I used Photoshop, but using a supplied page template has it's own merits and is not necessarily a sign of simple-mindedness. Just sayin' ;]