Yesterday morning I was woken up to the sound of the postman knocking loudly on my front door. As I was about ignore him and go back to sleep I suddenly realised that it was the due date for my book delivery from Blurb. I quickly jumped out of bed and answered the door, and as I suspected there was an exciting book-shaped parcel with my name on it!
My first thoughts were “wow, this looks great!” but as I spent more time with book I realised some things definitely needed to change. The size of the book (10×8) is perfect and is just what I wanted for my project. I am also impressed with the hard cover which looks very professional, and the grey end sheets also look a bit more high quality than bright white, which I think can sometimes look tacky. I paid a bit extra to get the blurb logo removed from the book which I think is definitely worth it – nothing screams unprofessional like a random blue logo staring you in the face!
I opted for the premium lustre paper as I wanted a subtle sheen to my images without being super glossy – I think it was a good choice and the print quality seems fairly high. I was concerned about how much of my opening image I would lose as I chose to have it full bleed across the whole double spread and some of it could easily have got lost along the middle seam. However, it looks great and I’m really pleased that I went for it!
I tried out a few different page layouts to see what works and what doesn’t – when putting two images together on a double page spread I definitely prefer them being on separate pages rather than on the same page.
Despite being happy with the overall quality of my book the main issue was the length of it. As soon as I picked up the book for the first time it immediately felt too heavy and bulky. When flicking through the pages I felt like it went on forever! Cutting down images has been quite a struggle for me and I’ve done so many different edits now that I thought I’d finally nailed it – however I counted 66 photos which is far too many for this particular project!
After showing the book to Liam in a tutorial yesterday afternoon we spent some time rearranging the images and deciding on a smaller edit. We finally managed to cut out nearly half the number of images and got it down to the final 38. We rearranged the pages and worked out ways to show the changing form of water a bit better. We also talked about doing some images full bleed.
After a lot of work I eventually felt ready to order the final book (I really hope it’s the final one because my bank account isn’t looking too good at the moment)!
I have made the cover image full bleed, changed the layout, cut out images, made some images full bleed and edited the text ever so slightly. Fingers crossed it’ll turn out well…
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