Book Mock-Ups

Though I have been leaning more towards life-size prints I haven't as yet completely ruled out the possibility of a book as a means to display my images. I began to mock up some book-covers as possible solutions to this project, below are shown several possible layouts and colour schemes. The book would be comprised of a series of between ten and twenty images, and an introduction, detailing the intentions and briefly mentioning the methods by which I created these images.

I particularly like this one above, I feel the colours and simple layout tie in well with the images whilst not upstaging them. The scanned-in textured piece of paper which is taken from the piece of the polaroid which is usually discarded (and contains instructions and temperature development times) however, slightly detracts from the overall sleek look of the design. I may remove this in later layouts, though I found its absence made the design feel a little barren and flat. I wanted the pink lettering to tie in with the fleshy pink tones of the image and the dried caustic paste at the top of the frame without looking too feminine, the off-white background helps with this and offers a slightly less stark and 'rosy' feel.

This second design is not too dissimilar to the first, however the pink has been replaced by two shades of grey and the scanned-in piece, image and blurb have been re-arranged, whilst the portion devoted to the image and text works better the scanned piece had to be rotated, meaning that the text no longer faces the right way.

The blue in this layout is a little stronger than my previous colour schemes, as well as this the entire front cover is now an image, though, with enough empty space on the image the title and author labels fit in easily. The back panel is similar to the first design however the scanned-in panel is now on the left rather than the right. I liked the idea of incorporating the title into the image however I'm not sure that the images is 'clean enough' to be a cover image, what with the rough edging of the frame that I left on the original. This could easily be removed however the image itself then lacks the contrast of texture between the rough frame and the smooth skintones.

While the layout on this design is the same as the first the colour is radically different, the deep red is far too strong and tends to detract from the image, which should be the main focus of the cover, equally, the white lettering looks too officious and does not have the conotations of some of the more reserved colour schemes.

I've also taken some more photographs in a similar style, using the Polaroid 403r, experimenting with some black and white film. Unfortunately I am away from my scanner at the moment, but will scan in and upload them in a later blog post. I have also taken more photographs with the Bronica and intend to develop atleast two more films once I get back to uni and can access the darkroom, again these will be updated in a later post.