26/09/2024- 07/11/2024 (Week 1-Week 7)
Lizzie Tanaka (0362065)
Publishing
Design | BDCM | Taylor's University
Task 2: Content Generation
LECTURES
LECTURE 1_Formats
The book
- One of the most influential formats since many important publishings are books
- To document and share knowledge, ideas, etc
- Understanding typography, spacing, and having a detailed eye for attention is important for designing a book. Moreover, mastering the publishing software is also required.
- Make sure to care for the users who will read the book
Historical Formats
1. Mesopotamia
- First writing system developed based on counting technology.
- Progressions from simple to complex tokens opened an opportunity for the first forms of pictography on clay tablets.
2. Indus River Valley
- While there aren't many known records, they are known to have complex system of writing.
- Cuneiforms was one of them, one of the earliest writing systems written on soft clay tables using sharp tools.
- Oldest surviving Palm Leaf Manuscript: from Nepal (800-900 CE). Palm manuscripts may have been used since the 1000 BCE in Indus River Valley.
3. Egypt
- Only scribes could read and write the Hieroglyphics
- Written on papyrus (made from papyrus plant) and tomb walls
4. Han (China)
- Chinese characters used to be written in vertical columns, ideally on a thin strip of bamboo. For longer writing, the bamboo strips are linked by a thread.
- Earliest known printed book is from the T'ang Dynasty, discovered in Dunhuang Cave in 1899 using a paper was in a scroll format.
- Confucian classics were published for the scholars including Buddhist and Taoist writings in the 10th and 11th century.
- Carving in reverse on wood blocks were first pioneered by China but was successful in Korea.
5. Turkey and the West
- Parchment paper was invented in Turkey around 197-159 BC, made from animal hide but was too heavy to be turned into scrolls.
- Paper only became widely available in Europe around 1400-1500 BCE
- Wooden blocks were sewn with a thread to hold them together
LECTURE 2: History of Print
2nd - 8th Century AD
China's Emperor asked that the six classics of Confucianism be carved into a stone (AD 175). Scholars who were eager to have a copy of the texts traced it by laying paper on the engraved stones and rubbed it with charcoal or graphite.
750-768 AD - Korea and Japan
Earliest known printed document is a sutra that is printed on a single sheet of paper in Korea (750 AD).
Buddhist Nara, the empress, had commissioned a large sized lucky charm that took 6 years to complete with a million copies shared to the pilgrims (768 AD).
Japan has the famous woodblock print, known as the Hyakumanto Darani with the earliest records found in Japan.
The first printed book was in 868 AD. The scroll was 16ft long and a foot in its height, formed by gluing the paper edges. This is the first printed illustration.
Movable Type: 11th Century
Movable type refers to the ready made characters or letters that are separated where people can arrange them in the correct order for a certain text, and can be reused. This is an important step prior to printing. This concept of movable type wax experimented in China but the Chinese characters had too many characters and it was too complicated. Chinese printers also used to fire their clay to become pottery, making it fragile.
Korea's Type Foundry (circa. 1380)
Koreans established a type foundry to use movable type in bronze. It was quite a problem when they were still using Chinese script. However, in 1443, they had their own alphabets (ashan'gul) which solved the issue.
Saints and Playing Cards (circa. AD 1400)
Printing from wood blocks was introduced in Europe where images were printed by laying a piece a paper on the carved and inked then rubbing it to transfer the ink.
Gutenberg and Western Printing (AD 1439-1457)
Gutenberg's name first appeared in a law case in Strasbourg in 1439. Gutenberg supposedly was capable of printing small items of text from movable type. One of Gutenberg's development in the printing press was applying a quick and consistent pressure. His skills with metal allowed him to master the manufacturing of individual metal pieces of type. The Gutenberg Bible had no dates as it was printed simultaneously on 6 pressed in the 1450s.
INSTRUCTIONS
In this task, we were instructed to generate our content for our book in the
next task. The written content would sum up to 3000 words. Alongside the text,
we were also instructed to produce 16 visuals
(illustrations/photographs).
Text Content
I proposed an idea for my content to talk about how I have personally changed
in the past year as I was living abroad. I wanted to talk about the personal
hardships I had experienced and how I eventually found peace and acceptance.
The chapter outlines like below:
- Chapter 1: The beginning (talks about the start of my dream to move abroad)
- Chapter 2: Feelings (talks about my expectations and how I felt during the
first weeks)
- Chapter 3: Finale (talks about my acceptance and how I've grown as an
individual)
During feedback, Mr Hijjaz told me that the idea sounded a bit boring and
plain. The overall theme of moving away and self acceptance was okay but I
should be able to package it in a more interesting way.
I decided to expand the idea. I wanted to include some nostalgia theme in it
and I decided to talk about the three places I've went in Indonesia during my
childhood and the lifelong lessons I have unexpectedly gained. The book was to
be written in a relaxed, humorous way. I would talk about each place and the
situation where I would earn knowledge.
Mr Hijjaz commented that the idea is a lot better but it's still quite general
and I should try to find something that would make my story unique. When I was
drafting the story, I realized that in all three situations, my dad was the
center of the story. I proposed this idea to Mr Hijjaz; focusing the story
more on my dad. The idea was approved and I continued writing.
Visuals
For the visuals, we had to produce 16 illustrations/photographs. I'm not the
strongest in terms of illustrations, so I chose to do a simpler style. Mr
Hijjaz asked us to use AI to generate our style of visuals as a guide. I used
OpenArt to generate a style I would like to go for. Below are the results:
Fig 1.1 AI Generated Reference
Fig 1.2 AI Generated Reference
Fig 1.3 AI Generated Reference
For my visuals, the primary idea is the fig 0.0 (no 1) since I liked the flat
design and the geometric shapes, it feels straightforward but somehow more
relaxed. However, the colors would be much brighter than the muted one there.
Expanding on the idea, I wanted to play on the character's body proportion
instead of going with the usual size. I ended up with this character
idea.
Fig 1.4 First draft of characters
I showed Mr Hijjaz the progress and the initial idea of the illustration
style. I tried incorporating it with some text to see what it may look like.
Mr Hijjaz liked the proportions and suggested that if I had time, I can
improve the illustrations by adding grain to the shadows.
Fig 1.5 Draft with visuals 1
Aside from the illustration, I also showed my idea of using bubble speeches
for the quotes in my text. Each chapter has around 2-3. Mr Hijjaz approved of
the idea.
Fig 1.6 Draft with visuals 2
All illustrations are done in Adobe Illustrator on 240x155mm (my book size) or
480x155m for two page spreads. For the bubble speeches, I chose to do it on 240x77,5mm because I still have to explore the layout of each bubble speech as well later on. I focused on drawing the scenery as the story is also talking about the locations. For the color palette, I chose to center my illustrations around greens and blues to mimick nature colors.
Fig 1.7 Progress on visuals
For my illustrations, I've also added grain textures to make it less plain. I
used the gradient tool and the texture tool with stippled grain to create my
textures in all the illustrations.
Fig 1.8 Grain texture
FINAL SUBMISSION
Fig 2.1 Final PDF Content W7
Fig 2.2 Visual 1 - W7
Fig 2.3 Visual 2 - W7
Fig 2.4 Visual 3 - W7
Fig 2.5 Visual 4 - W7
Fig 2.6 Visual 5 - W7
Fig 2.7 Visual 6 - W7
Fig 2.8 Visual 7 - W7
Fig 2.9 Visual 8 - W7
Fig 2.10 Visual 9 - W7
Fig 2.11 Visual 10 - W7
Fig 2.12 Visual 11 - W7
Fig 2.13 Visual 12 - W7
Fig 2.14 Visual 13 - W7
Fig 2.15 Visual 14 - W7
Fig 2.16 Visual 15 - W7
Fig 2.17 Visual 16 - W7
Fig 2.18 Visual 17 - W7
Fig 2.19 Visual 18 - W7
Fig 2.20 PDF of Visuals
FEEDBACKS
Week 2
- The idea is too general, a little boring. Explore more on the way it can be packaged.
Week 3
- The new idea is better but still quite general, no unique points
- Centering the story around my dad is good
Week 4
- include mom somewhere in the story
- can change dialogs to actual language
- add endearment terms if you have any
- no need to recap each chapter, let the readers interpret it their way
- add a joke/humor in the serious parts too because the start of the chapter and the middle of the story has a stark contrast of seriousness and humor
- illustration: good style, it has an appeal. try adding textures to it if I have time, do a few more poses
Week 5
- Good visual style, expand more, do not copy the GenAI image.
Week 7
- The color needs to be more balanced with one another
REFLECTIONS:
This task honestly required more work than I had thought. It took me three weeks to get my story idea accepted and writing became harder each day. The ideas and words were flowing at first until I was stuck on the middle. The illustrations were even harder because I lack in my illustration skills. I opted for a simpler style, which I still struggled in, and tried my best to make it look nicer. It took me a while to settle on the character style and the first few illustrations were bad since it required time to figure out the flow and what worked and what did not on my illustration.
Either way, I am quite proud of the result, both in the story and especially in the illustration. There are still a lot of room for me to improve both aspects in the future.
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