Inside Covers

Initially, I intended to have a pattern of repetitive tiny Milton's on my inside covers (you can see a scribbly mock up of this in my layouts), but I later decided that this would be too much and chose to have plain inside covers instead. However, the closer I got to producing the book, the less I liked the blank pages. For this reason, I decided on doing something I'd seen very evident in over book - using the pattern from the cover, but in greyscale. I also noticed that I had a lot about my Comic Nest group on my cover, but nothing about myself - not even my name! Though I didn't mind this, as this is typical for some non-fiction books, I decided to include an 'About the Author' section on the inside back cover...

Cover Design

Although I had a very successful and popular cover design in the 'self-help book' parody cover I created, I wasn't entirely happy with it. Although it was intentionally bad, I felt that hindered it's marketing ability (that was talked about in our cover design lecture). I also wanted something that really communicated my style and the style of the book - which is quite graphical and design-based.

One thing I did decide to keep from the other design was the book title. I had it there as a placeholder, mostly, and because it sounded like the typically conversational-type title a self-help book would have. But it came out as one of the most popular parts of the cover when presented to my target audience, along with the design of Milton himself.

After deciding on this title, I made the choice to include a photograph of pasta in the background. This is due to the fact that, not only do I think adding photography into a piece of art looks really striking, but also having food in branding has proven to be really attention grabbing (particularly to hungry people, which there will be lots of at MCM!). While I did try to take my own photos of pasta, they didn't come out very well (see below). For this reason, I decided to use a royalty free stock image I found online.

      

Below, you can see my final cover design...

Final Layout Plan

Above, you can see my final layouts for all my pages. The order of the pages was informed by my table plan. I wanted similar hacks to be near each other (starts with study hacks, moves through to home hacks, then food hacks), and similar design styles to be near each other (eg. with pages 8 and 9).

Layouts are the most crucial part of book planning for me. I find that once my layouts are finished, I'm more compelled to start the book itself. This is because - even though layouts aren't as necessary with this as they are with a comic - they take the intimidation out of starting a final book.

Font Choices

Font is something that is extremely important when designing a book like mine. I chose two fonts that were 100% royalty free, from DaFont.com to include in my book - one for headings and one for the bulk.

'MOON GET!' was chosen due to it's boldness, clarity, and how good it looks in all caps. I will use this font for titles and headings...

'Forced Square' was chosen because it's very edgy and modern-looking whilst still maintaining a lot of uniqueness. It's the kind of the thing that could be instantly recognisable if my book somehow became very popular! An example of both fonts are below...

Social Media Posts - 16/4

Today's social media posts were showing the bird I designed yesterday. I explained the reason and gave him a cute lil backstory to make him more relatable! As well as this, I posted the selfies we took in the meeting and explained briefly what was discussed to try to gain some hype for MCM. This was supposed to be posted on the weekend (as with all of our general posts) so as to not clash with anyone's day, but it wasn't done.

Potential Sticker Option

As discussed in the group meeting, I began designing a sticker idea for our free 'after-purchase' lucky dip. My prompt was 'red' (my colour within the group) and 'bird' (for the group logo). Below is what I came up with. However, shortly after producing this, the group altered their plan of what they wanted the sticker designs to be like. I don't mind that too much, as I wasn't very happy with this design...

Book Printing Costs

Although the uni printer offers very competitive pricing, I want a very specific finish on my book and it's cover. This is because I intend to market my product as more of a book than a comic due to the content. I hope to have a thick, silk finish cover, with natural inner pages. This is a quote I found for my specifications on mixam.co.uk -

This works out (when postage is included) to about £1.50 per book. Which is more than reasonable considering we today decided that we'd be selling our books for £5 each. I will most likely purchase my books through this site.