Shrinking Women Process Book

Who Do You Think You Are? Katie Ehrlich

Mood Board For my mood board, I looked for images that were editorials featuring women. I then looked for images of distortion and isolation to help convey the effect those editorials were having on women.

I also looked for color palletes that were feminine, but also serious and not frivolous.

Visual Inspirations The theme of my book is how women are perceived in society and how that affects them. Photoshopped imagery, found in magazines and ads, is a big culprit in creating unreasonable standards for women’s bodies. So for inspiration, I looked at more editoral-style and advertisement pieces. I particularly looked for large type interacting with bodies. For the images, I wanted the “in studio” look.

First Sketches I knew I wanted to play with the format of the book so I started by making several book mockups with varying page sizes. I also began sketching ideas of how text and possible imagery could interact.

First Drafts I quickly realized that having the pages shrink vertically as well as horizontally would limit me too much, so I decided to make the pages shrink only horizontally. The

biggest challenge with a format like this was fitting all the text. I only had so much space on each page, and I could only make the pages so small. I had to rearrange

the text many times throughout the process. As for the design, I originally had a white space around all the shrunken pages, created by the endsheets, in an

attempt to make it look more magazine-like. I also decided to use only photos with black backgrounds to provide a consistency and serious tone to the book.

I started to explore different ways the large text could interact with the image. I also started moving the callout text around to make it more dynamic.

Franklin then suggested I add in color. I used pink to highlight areas of the callout text, and added a magenta tint to the background.

I also got rid of the white border around the images because it seemed unneccessary and made the physical book awkward.

I then tried breaking the predictability of the book by making changes in color, scale, and orientation of the images. I also wanted to include spread of only image and callout text, but didn’t have enough space for the article text. To solve this, I changed the width of the text boxes from three

columns to four halfway through the book. This way, I had enough space on the smaller pages to have two or three columns of text.

I also moved the pages around so full-bleed spreads wouldn’t show in the margin area as the reader goes through the book. This way the “vast space” effect was saved.

I also made a test book to ensure the cardstock could be bound well and then had it printed at Hi-Tec.

Final Spreads For the final book, I decided to make the full-bleed spreads a brighter shade of magenta to make them stand out and break the monotonous darkness of the book. I completely remade some

spreads with more dynamic photographs. I also added some photos to non-full-bleed spreads. Lastly, I added pink callouts to the main body to add some visual texture and to make it easier to skim.