Unit 7: Narrative - Ashen Bloom The Book!

Hello Everyone,

I'm back and once again posting on our old Smoke Stack Blog, I know I said I wouldn't but I couldn't resist on posting about our books finally arriving at my door (and a week early at that). I wasn't sure what they would come out like mostly worried that something would get clipped out of the prints frame or that some undetermined bleed factor would cut away important content. Never the less they are here and everything is accountable with one rather annoying little exception. They are darker then I thought they would be...

It's not a big problem for the brighter images in fact it makes the book look more authentic and older but some of the factory images are blotted out because of their darkness factor. Rather annoying but I guess it wasn't going to be perfectly perfect. Never the less they still look cool and are well worth the £20.00 asking price, its still an awesome thing to have in the portfolio (with future others :)

Everything has been printed professionally and I especially love the hardcover its really awesome, I thought the internal white pages would irritate me but surprisingly they are okay not bright white, a little darker which kind of works with the book. I was a little annoyed that I couldn't rotate the rear blurb logo so that it was in landscape that's another minor problem they really need to consider a land scape option not everyone prints in portrait! I wasn't sure if the pages would print the right way but I guess I managed to fix the bugs present.

There are 4 copies of the book (Books Yes Books image) one for each of my partners and me one for the Uni to throw in amongst the other talent on our course. Its really quite a handy little book I think we probably have one of the smallest books but its cool because its mini, much more handy then carrying around a massive bible. I will probably go on our private facebook in a bit and inform my old team that the awesome books have arrived and to check out this post so they can have a tiny sneak peak before I bring them all in next week.

The inside of the book is pretty crisp and clear as I said aside from the more darker images it contains which is a bit of a shame considering how awesome everything else is. Don't let me put it down though its not as bad as I'm sure its sounding coming from me... Those that know me know I am a glass half empty kind of person. All of the book is still awesome and I think its pretty well done when you consider how unknown this was for me trying to use a portrait blurb template to create a landscape print... Something I don't encourage for those looking to do this in the future.

Last but not least I will say the books most greatest feature is that it has legs (no not actual legs but it can stand haha). Don't worry I didn't make it walk across the carpet or anything quite as crazy as that but it was just a nice thing to note at the time when I was trying to figure out the best shots to take with my camera. Anyway I'm hoping my partners in crime Lydia and Anita get a kick out of them and if anything I hope they will look back at this little book from time to time to remember the Bloom project, I certainly will when I'm showing this as a portfolio piece or something haha.

Well I think that really does do it now, I wasn't going to do a further post past the deadline complete one but I think this one was the exception that proves the rule. After all this book is post Ashen Bloom and is just a final statement of all our hard work. Anyway I think I'm done waffling and now I really have covered absolutely everything (I have Photoshop Phil lol).

Take it easy people, look forward to seeing you guys in the new year wherever you may be or if you are like me and are working through it haha good luck!!

Over & Out,
xXStItChXx

Unit 7: Narrative - Art Of Blurb Printing

Hello All!

First I would like to say Merry Christmas to all I know it is just round the corner but I am still wrapping up a few things (haha wrapping). I have yet to Christmas up my personal blog like I promised Sammy (don't worry Sammy I haven't forgotten). We will just see what magic I can actually whip up, anyway onto Business...

Today I finished development on our Art of Print for "Ashen Bloom" which I ordered 4 copies costing roughly £80 give or take a few pounds. We have it coming from the printing company Blurb which allow you a Book Smart program to custom make your own design. I am a little worried that they had no option to alter the Orientation of the book so I wound up sticking our pages in hoping that they would print correctly... Never the less if there are problems I will be contacting them.

I have used Blurb in the past for book like photo albums so I have been familiar with their software Booksmart which allows you to create your book directly on your PC. I prefer this method mainly because you actually get control of your book before it goes to press. The only discernible problem I have found is that orientation is not possible which is a bit annoying if it is your goal to make a landscape book in the small dimension. Still we will see how the books come out if something goes wrong I will be demanding my money back or some alterations to be made :)

The image above shows the Booksmart program for our Ashen Bloom Booklet, the page on display is the first actual page of the book which I decided to coat a nice shade of black to keep in the flow with the actual book design. I couldn't have brown in some instances so I decided to contrast that with black something which is annoyingly ignored for 2 of the uneditable back pages which will be white but I'm hoping that won't be too much of a problem as long as the content is Rich and tells me that I have done a good job :)

The image above shows the 2 page cover - the front to the right and the back to the left. I wound up creating a tonne of picture pages to forge the layout for our book. The cover is a complete image wrap which cost a little more for a hard cover but I couldn't resist I didn't think this book wanted a dust jacket I just wanted it to be a handy little display piece. I can't wait to see the finished print this will be my first actual book printed FOR ME!!! Of course my work colleagues and we already know that the Uni want one so we have sorted that out too in the 4 we have ordered...

The last image is the overview of all of the pages in our art of from here all you generally do is click order book from the bottom right. Of course at this point it is advisable to go through and check that the bleed areas (areas in which the book will be cut) are not removing content from the book or altering anything that is needed. Suffice to say this process probably took the longest when printing I couldn't just insert the pages from the original Art Of, I had to custom design the placement of some of the text and engineer it so it was not within the bleed zones...

Art Of Ashen Bloom - Blurb PDF
The last thing I thought I would embed was the PDF created by Blurb when I uploaded it to their server. The book will be created from this PDF taking into consideration the orientation provided by the Booksmart program. It's not perfect and probably not one I'd advise to try and read unless you want to download it and orientate it the correct way. The real annoyance is the blank white pages that are hiding behind 2 of my designed pages the layout wouldn't let me edit the back pages so they are white in comparison to my dark layout...grrr oh well.

Well I think that's enough on the book, its all been ordered and I expect it on Jan 08 2013 which is the expected delivery date. We could have got it sooner but at quite a bit more expense and It didn't make sense to me... there is no rush, although I cant wait to see it in its full glory. I just hope the damn thing prints correctly as it is not a portrait layout its very much based on landscape. Still I orientated everything correctly so it should do its job - I hope.

Anyway hope everyone is having fun out there!!

xXStItChXx