I put my dissertation editorial together over the last couple weeks.
Here are some samples of the outcomes:
I wanted the editorial to look as much like an old mass market paperback as possible so I made it the same format. This was originally at 4×7 inches but I found this format hard to design for; It was too small for multiple columns. I opted for the next novel size up, at 5.5×7.5 inches; still pretty small and still a MMP size. The square block on the front is an encoding of the entire dissertation. This is a reference to the work I created as my dissertation artefact and encoded the entire novel in binary on the cover. Inside, I originally wanted to try making the entire thing in spot colour. I had started with making it in red, black and white, with full colour images but I found some problems with that : for one, the images seemed all very incongruous with each other, and for another I feel like a lot of my editorial tends to default to red white and black. I wanted to make something that was different. I went in planning on making it in spot cyan but ended up choosing red for some in- chapter titles. The one exception to the cyan images were my artefacts themselves which I put in full colour, as it felt best to represent them properly, especially seen as they all play with CMYK colour channels as part of how they work.
I put the images in cyan with a colour half tone effect for a couple reasons: for one, it unites the entire editorial a bit better, as I discussed. Another was to account for the DPI differences between the images; my strategy was to place the images raw as jpgs onto the pages until I was happy. I would then turn the Jpgs into psds, resize them to be exactly the correct size at 300dpi and throw the half tone onto it to account for any loss of quality and set it monotone there.
I am sorting out getting it printed perfect bounded as the above mock up shows. I was originally going to go for thin uncoated pages like you’d find in a old paperback, unfortunately, seen as the book itself is about 60 pages long, this made for about 2mm of spine! So Ive oped for slightly thicker paper, still uncoated to retain the texture of a paperback, with a 5mm spine instead. this is still slightly thinner than I would have liked but it’s an improvement. I will be ordering the cover slightly thicker with silk coating, again in order to emulate a paperback.
Billy Barnes 