NEXT STOP EVERYWHERE is a two-year long project that I undertook to document my travels. Previously, I had combined my love of writing with photography into my Globetrotting Elissa blog but nothing compares to holding a physical book. With a BFA in Graphic Design from Chapman University, I decided to design, write, and publish a photography book entirely from scratch. Two years later, I am proud to share the final product with you and I hopes it inspires you to explore the world… whether your local wilderness or someplace more exotic. My passport is always ready. Where to next?
For a project like this, most people may be tempted to use templates. As a graphic designer, however, I find I have more customization when I design the spreads myself. Taking into consideration the traditional book layout with front matter and back matter, I carefully started assembling book pages by creating a six column grid with .1667 inches of gutter space in between columns. On the rest of the page, I set up 1.125 inch margins on the top, .8 inch margins on the bottom and .75 margins inside and outside. Once I had a basic master page to work with, I set up running heads, page numbers, chapter titles, and all my character/paragraph styles. I also made sure to mind the gutter and ensure perfect bleeds for images. Once the tedious work was out of the way, I set up additional master pages (eventually designing pages A through K) to visually vary the layout of photos and captions throughout the book. See below for a sample page in the design stage.
Once the book was designed and formatted, I went back through multiple times with grammar check and spell check and ran multiple color proofs. I used a third party seller, Blurb, to publish my book while still making decision designs such as paper type, what kind of cover (image wrap vs. book jacket), and end pages. See below for some sample guts.
I also designed the book jacket, using measurements provided by Blurb for a 240 page hard cover book. The cover image was done in Adobe Illustrator using clipping masks and imported as a link to InDesign to complete the rest of the book jacket design. See below.
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