Sunday, 5 May 2013

Creation of my Front Cover

My front cover was always going to be the challenge of this project. I find laying out my photographs in a book format easier than creating front covers, as I produced many inner book layouts than front cover formats. However, I wanted to create a traditional leather photograph album, which meant scouring the internet for images of leather, as I had none to take my own of, and did not have the suitable lenses to take photographs with. Therefore, I took two images from the internet to use.


I used this shot of leather that I sourced from Google Images (unprofessional, I know), to use as the scrapbooking material used on the front cover of my photo album. The photo albums we have at home all have a scrapbooking effect, whereby scrap pieces of leather have been used to create a border, where the text has been placed into. I used this colour and texture of leather to recreate this common composition.


I used this leather as the background mainly for the colour that was used. I love the burgundy tone that it has, and it was one of the few photographs that I could find that was of high enough quality to fit onto the scale of my book. I have learnt a valuable lesson here, I could have saved time by taking my own photographs rather than scouring the internet looking for decent images that were usable.

I decided to crack on with designing my layout for my book. I chose the title "Photo Album" after trying to think of a simple but suitable name to title my book. Photo Album seemed like the perfect name because it is the analysis of how we are ignoring our good old photo albums and using modern technology instead, the recreation of the photo album.


I added the text on the front cover, a quote from my foreword that a friend wrote for me saying "a photography is a memory, so why need it be any different", and the words on the spine that read "Photo Album, a photographic study by Laura Parkinson". I decided not to include my name on the front cover as I felt it took away from the natural photo album look that it gave, allowing it to be noticeable for what it is.


To make the front cover look more authentic, I added a drop shadow to the second leather addition, to make it look like it was attached to the page and was in front of the background. It gave it some more depth and made it look believable.

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