Ciociaria copyright 2011 Douglas Stockdale, published by Edizioni Punctum
The short story: my book design is complete (thank you Leonardo & Marco!) and the book is on press.
I guess you could say that I am on the bubble for becoming a published author, eh? Ciociaria now has an ISBN and soon the book will truly be in print. Amazing, but true.
I just received the book’s final cover image, above (draft version here), which is really the cover image on the dust jacket. I had attempted to nudge the publisher to incorporate a casebound book cover, but in the end, it is a hardcover with dust jacket. I had worked with Leonardo to size the title text and noodle the text location such that both the title and my name did not overlap a relatively light area in the Madonna photograph (the photograph was named by Marco upon first seeing it during the book design meeting in July).
We also finalized the interior layout, with a slight tweaking of the image sequencing. In a couple of the two-page spreads I requested that we switch locations of the facing photographs. The reason is that I had requested the change was when there was a two-photograph spread, the photograph on the right page would be printed full bleed, while the facing photograph would have the traditional white margins. Because of the book’s trim size, a couple of the photographs when cropped a little tighter for the full bleed lost something in translation, where as the facing photograph appeared more interesting cropped and full bleed. nice.
The other design element that we had experimented with was selecting a few of the photographs that were a single photograph on a spread and incorporating a full-page bleed. Some of these full-bleed photograhs had some potential but then the pace of the book felt too irregular. Although this design element might introduce a subtle tension to the reading of the book, it was just a little too unsettling for me. So we then we opted for the classic small white margins for all of the single photograph spreads, while for the two photograph spreads, the photograph on the right would be a full bleed. At least viewing the final design PDF, the book design reads really well for me. Now I am impatiently waiting to see the book in print.
Next stop: Rome for FotoGrafia Festival Internazionale di Roma and to see the actual book object. Wahoo!
Best regards, Doug
Singular Images 