Brief
Use one or more of the following book related sayings as a starting point to generate visual ideas and responses:
● Bookworms ● A closed/open book ● The oldest trick in the book ● You can’t judge a book by its cover ● In someone’s good/bad books ● By the book
During this early formative stage, aim to be as wide-ranging and imaginative as possible in your ideas. ALL ideas are valid at this point, so don’t censor; this is not the stage to decide what is a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ idea – at this point they are all just ‘ideas’ with equal merit. Let one idea flow fluidly, intuitively and organically into another to make unexpected links and associations. Record your thought processes and ideas using thumbnail sketches, spidergrams and annotations.
Thumbnail sketches are a way of recording ideas through quick pen or pencil line drawings. The quality of the drawing is not important; a drawing of a person does not need to be anatomically accurate, for example. The drawing serves as a visual reminder to you of a fleeting idea. Aim to make thumbnail drawings in the same quick way that you make short written annotations – keeping up with the flow of your ideas. Draw a range of visual and conceptual possibilities using the book sayings as your starting point. Aim to spend 45 minutes working on this, generating as much content, potential ideas, thumbnails, visual metaphors or imagined books as possible.
Thumbnails can give an indication of composition and art direction. For example, how does the subject sit in the frame? How is the subject lit? What particular attributes does that subject have? Thumbnail sketches, along with annotations, are a good starting point to begin exploring these aspects.
I chose Bookworm and You can’t judge a book by it’s cover for my exercise.
For each of them, I made a mind map and couple of thumbnails.
Bookworm
My mind map was the initial approach of association with word “bookworm” as well as literal and metaphorical meaning. Book worm means that someone who reads a lot and metaphorically devour a book.
So for my thumbnails, I used books, worms separately or in a combination. I tried to use worms to make a text. Knife, fork and mouth for the metaphorical meaning.
For the colour palette, I thought the earthy colour would work because of the worms association with soil and earth. The recycled material can be used to give it more natural look.
You can’t Judge a book by it’s cover
For the next title, I chose “You can’t judge a book by its cover”. The mind-mapping for the second title was around judging and related elements, such as scale and gavel.
Self reflection
This exercise with a time limit helped me to just put my ideas down without being worried about small details. Making a mind map was very useful when I was making my thumbnails, since I already had some clues about the different subjects I wanted to work on. I’m sure out of the thumbnails I’ve made I can find some good ideas to work on as a final design.
Maryam: OCA Graphic Design 