I have just received an advanced copy of our Exquisite Book
! I couldn’t be more pleased with the final result! Today I wanted to share our ideas and process for creating the chapter openers in the book.
There are ten chapters in the book. Each chapter is a fold-out accordion of ten pages. Each of those pages has a piece of connecting artwork by one of our 100 contributors. Since each page connects to the next via the horizon line, we wanted to carry that through the book especially between each chapter. This way the entire book would be connected through the horizon line.
For example here’s three pages of one of the ten page accordions (artists: Mike Perry, Camilla Engman, Lab Partners- you’ve seen thumbnails of these pages before)
When thinking about how we should design the chapter openers spread we came up with a short list of ideas to keep in mind:
1. They should have something to do with the phrases we gave the first artists that started the chapter– In the Woods, In the Snow, In the Forest…
2. We wanted to make the chapter openers feel different from the artists pages. Since every page in the book was a full page of artwork, we didn’t want the chapter openers to be confused with those.
3. Even though they should feel separate from the artwork in the book, they should still feel handmade and feel like they matched the tone of the book.
4. The horizons needed to connect the last page of the previous chapter with the first page of the next chapter.
We decided immediately the chapter openers would be one color. That would set them apart from all of the artwork from the book which for the most part is full color. Then we brainstormed a bit and came up with the idea of using letters. Letters could spell the chapter opener titles but could also be the building blocks for the compositions we created. To make them a bit more intriguing we decided to make them look three dimensional. This way they could create a feeling of space in the drawings. We made the final letters using pencil, which allowed us to shade the letters and then made the pencil line blue, which made it feel a bit more playful.
The letters become tree trunks for In the Forest:
Giant A’s become mountains for In the Mountains:
To continue the theme of the book, where each artist was inspired by the last artist, we decided to use elements from the next artists page as a small teaser into the chapter.
For example, for In the Snow, we referenced Matt Leines triangle shapes that come one the next page. Triangles are popping up through the snow:
And in In the Ocean, we recreated Takashi Iwasaki’s crazy bubbles as a hint to what you would be seeing on the next page:
We also used the letters throughout the book as design elements like here on the bios pages- artists whose last names started with R or S had bios that appeared on this page covered is those letters.
How did we make all these 3-d letters? There were no rulers or protractors involved as you might think. We actually used a free 3-D modeling program called Sketch Up. Sketch Up is a Google program that anyone can download. Most people build shapes directly into the program but we brought letters into the program and 3-d-ified them. You can rotate around the letters and see every angle, you can add shadows by picking what angle you want the sun to shine. Here’s what a Sketch Up file looks like:
After we created the Sketch-Up file the way we wanted I printed it out and traced the letters in pencil onto tracing paper to give them the handmade feel. Then we scanned them into the computer to arrange in layouts.
Here’s some tracings:
The horizons were created just in pencil as well. Jenny went through many many pencils to color in all those hills.
Thanks for reading about our process. Let me know what you think! Pre-order the book here! More sneak peeks coming soon!
If you missed the first two posts about The Exquisite Book, check them out here and here.
Chronicle and Amazon now have our book ready for pre-order on their sites- so exciting! I wanted to share with you, finally, the cover of The Exquisite Book and our process of making the cover.
When we first set out to actually design the book, we had a really hard time. We had all the artwork from all of the artists for the book. Our next step was to create 10 chapter opener spreads that go in between the artwork, design introduction pages, bios and, of course, the cover. We wanted the “look” to be somewhat illustrative but still different enough to distinguish these pages from the artwork in the book. We decided to keep our interior designs monochromatic since that would help separate it from the artwork. After a lot of deliberation, we decided to use 3-D letters as the main design component. The letters spell out the chapter openers, “in the snow”, “in the village” etc, but also exist in illustrated landscapes they describe. It sounds complicated but I will share more about designing the interior at another time. I want to focus on our thoughts on the cover.
For the cover we wanted to incorporate the 3-D letters again to keep the whole book consistent. As part of the contract with Chronicle we needed to come up with at least three to five different cover designs to choose from. With the help of Brooke Johnson, the designer at Chronicle we have been working with, we came up with a list of the four things that were most important to think about for the cover:
1. The cover needs to reflect the artwork you will find inside the book.
2. The cover should be intriguing and striking. It should be something that stands out on a table among other books.
3. The cover needs to have a horizon line. The horizon line connects it to the interior pages and runs completely through every artists page, to the back cover.
4. The cover could convey the “exquisite” game we had the artist’s play.
We came up with four sketches for the cover. Here they are in the order that we liked them:
SKETCH 1
This first design was our favorite. We felt it was both playful and sophisticated and very striking. It’s also colorful which hints at the inside. We sort of envisioned this cover as a planet or globe and since each chapter opener was a landscape, we felt this embodied all of them.
SKETCH 2
This design is a visual map of the artists names in sequential order as they appear in the book. It starts with the authors and then a cloud to represent “in the clouds” and then each artist in the group is connected by a line. The next group is connected with the last via the next icon for the chapter opener. We liked this design because it shows the participating artists in a long winding strand. The map would continue to the back cover for the rest of the artists in their sequence. This cover is also interesting because you don’t realize what it means exactly until you see the inside of the book. So later a reader might go back to the cover and be excited to realize this was a map of the inside. We also like that the cover creates a graphic image from far away, but leaves more to discover when you get up close.
SKETCH 3
This cover was the most representational of what you will find on the inside of the book and explains the game in a direct, visual way. It shows a transition from page to page, similar to the transitions between the artists pages. We also added graphics that were used in the chapter openers as hints of what’s inside.
SKETCH 4
For this cover we wanted to experiment with using some of the artwork from inside of the book. Using a rectangular shape, we collaged pieces from different artists pages making connections in line and color to mimic the game you find inside.
Chronicle liked both option 1 and option 3. We were sold on the first cover but thought maybe we could improve the third cover so that we liked it more. We came up with a new sketch of the third cover. We added color and a little bit more of an interesting visual:
SKETCH 3 revised
Still, we felt this cover lacked the intrigue that the first cover had. We made our case to Chronicle and they agreed. We would go with sketch #1. We were so happy to have nailed down the cover! I remember getting the approval email as I was walking down the street and yelling out a big “YES!”
We had some minor type revisions and re-drew the design by hand to get to the final version. Here is our final cover (from our book proof):
An here is the whole wrap:
What do you think?
Happy New Year everyone! I couldn’t wait to start off the year with a huge announcement I have been dying to share for months. For the past year and a half, Jenny, Matt (my ALSO partners) and I have been working on curating/authoring/designing a new art book called The Exquisite Book which will be published by Chronicle Books this fall!
We are so excited to have Dave Eggers of the popular McSweeney’s, 826 Valencia program and screenwriter for Where the Wild Things Are contributing an illustrated introduction to our book!! We have always been inspired by his work and are so thrilled he will be involved in our book.
The book idea is loosely based on the game started by the Surrealists in the 1920′s called the Exquisite Corpse. Our version is played by 100 contemporary artists, illustrators, designers and comic artists.
Here is how our project is set up: There are ten groups of ten artists participating in the process. Each artist is contributing one page to the book. The first artist was given a few words to inspire their drawing. Each of the following artists saw only the page that immediately precedes their own. Each artist is using images (and optionally, words) to create their continuation to the story, and the inspiration for the next artist in line.
Besides continuing the story of the last artist, there is another, more visual, connection between the pages. Each artist has a horizon line in their image that starts on the left side of the page and ends on the right. Where the horizon line of the first artist’s page ends, is where it begins for the next artist. (The horizon line part has been very loose and it has been exciting to see how everyone interprets it.)
We set up a simple website to help us organize and schedule all of the artists. You can check it out here. We have an incredible line up of illustrators, fine artists, designers, and comic artists which you can check out in the Artists section. Many of them are artists I have written about on the blog so you should see some familiar names. We picked artists who we felt were good storytellers so that hopefully when the book was complete it would read as ten short visual stories.
The best part about this book was that it was a complete experiment. With most art books, the artwork that goes into it is curated, hand picked by the authors. Since each artist made an original piece for the book we didn’t know what we were going to get. It was really exciting to see how each artist interpreted the last artist’s page and reacted to it. Sometimes it’s really literal, the characters and ideas are carried to the next page. Other times the artists reacted to color or an overall feeling they get from the last page.
At this point we are just finishing up the final design files to send to Chronicle. We have also nailed down our cover, which was probably the hardest part of designing the book. (I will share more about that another time)
Below I am sharing a peek into the book- four continuous pages from one of the groups. From left to right they were made by artists Mike Perry, Camilla Engman, Lab Partners, and Nick Dewar.
As the publication date gets closer I will be sharing more and more into the book and the process of working on it. Hope you’ll be as excited as we are about it!
Image on homepage is some of the many sketches for the title page.
