Sample of work: Joke Book. Design the cover and interior for a joke book. Then typeset all the pages.
For this project, I worked really closely with the author. A big part of the job was to ensure that the overall look of the book would resonate with the target audience. It is a politically incorrect joke book so I had some room to play in terms of design. The interior of the book is designed in black and white to save on printing costs. The project also includes book cover design and creation of an epub version.
Cover design
The cover was really fun to design. I was given a very strong image to begin with. It set the tone for not just the book but the design of the cover. I started by deep-etching to remove the background in order to really highlight the image. The bold red and yellow were chosen to make the cover really stand out. Initial research into the design for a joke book, as well as this audience suggested that yellow background would be the best solution to grab attention. Ensuring it looks like a joke book at a glance. Additionally, the starburst sticker-like design creates some extra tongue-in-cheek humor. It says: Warning! Contents will offend.
For the back cover and spine, I employed simple conventions. The ripped paper effect wraps around the spine and continues onto the back cover where the big pullout blurb sits. As well as using a strong grid on the back cover allows everything to have its space. Moreover, the image on the back cover is actually the same image as the front without the background removed and flipped. Easy.
Here is how the half title and copyright page look. The credits for my work are listed as:
Cover design by Kassandra Bowers (Lakazdi)
Typeset in Calluna 11.5/14 by Kassandra Bowers (Lakazdi)
To balance out the space on the half title, the grey torn paper takes up more of the page. It made sense to not have the man on the motorbike image again because of black and white printing.
Book interior
Several spreads from throughout the book. The page numbers and book title are along the bottom, also on the torn paper effect. Employing this motif throughout creates continuity. So you see this also on the chapter opener pages.
Various formatting styles are used to typeset this book. There is normal blocks of text but also a variety of other styles including:
- numbered lists
- sub-headings for jokes with a name
- breaks using three asterisks
- scripts
- each section starts with an introduction that contains a dropcap.
I also turned the book into an epub using rich formatting, hyperlinks and reflowing text. It is available for sale on the Kobo store with DRM. And is also available on the authors personal website. You can buy a copy of the ebook here.
Client Testimonial:
It was a pleasure working with Kassandra. She is creative, understands deadlines and willing to listen.