I am the unfortunate stage of being too close for comfort to the end of my course so I am going to have to act fast, I need to have my book turned around in a week! Obviously in industry it would not happen like this!

My workflow phases:

Phase 1 – Scoping

I know what I wish to do for my assignment 5, a book on Vernacular typography and I have a bank of images that I have already pre-anticipated and photographed and have ready sat on my computer. I won’t include this into my work phase plan now as I know that I already have them, but ordinarily time would need to be taken out to collect data, photographs, interviews etc for content for a book. I need to have at this phase a strong idea of what I want my book to be.

The next stage would be to plan what else needs to be done at the beginning stages, I have images, I need content but for that I need to research and that comes under the next phase… I know I have a short timescale to turn it around so I would need a day planning what content I would want to include in my book, I would plan this out around a flat lay plan, sketching pages of my book and writing what would go on each pages. This would be an idea to see what images I have and to print them out onto a contact sheet and choose which ones I shall be taking forward for my book.

Phase 2 – Creating content

The next stage would be to research thoroughly vernacular typography and make sure that there are no holes in my work. The last thing I want to do is to give inaccurate information about my chosen subject in my book. I also need to write all the content for the book as I am not only the artist and designer but the writer too. I then need to proof read over and over again to make sure that there are no grammatical mistakes, typos etc… I will also take the time to edit the photographs that I have banked and chosen to appear in my book and make sure that there is enough content to make a successful book.

Phase 3 – Design

This stage is where I would begin to start putting it all together, this is the phase that I don’t have very long to turn around. This is the stage where I set up the document correctly sized in InDesign and start making design decisions for the book such as the covers, the general layout, what colours to use, what typefaces to choose, arranging the type, creating grids and the placement of any images or my photographs.

Phase 4 – Pre-Production

This is the phase where my perfectionism comes into play and I get super anxious over checking and double checking absolutely everything! This is the point where I save the finished document to about 3 different external hard drives and then have to export absolutely everything! I will export to PDF so that this can be sent to the printers, I will export to PDF so that a digital copy can go online, I will export jpegs upon jpegs so that these can be uploaded to social media!

Phase 5 – Printing and Production

For my past few books I have printed them out myself by pain staking paginating the pages so that they will print on our awkward yet beautiful colour laser printer at work, this is all dependent on the size of the book though, usually the books and my zine that I have printed before are under 50 pages so that it is fairly easy and not too much time taken to do. If my book is quite big I shall upload a digital copy online and then send away to have professionally printed. Other than some post cards, greetings cards and promo stickers I have never had anything professionally printed at this level before so it would be an experience to go through this printing process and understand how to set documents up to print and how to send off for print.