Art-book Inspiration: Blizzard

I took a trip to Barnes and Noble the other day; while there, this treasure caught my eye. I could probably have stared a hole into the shrink wrap as I debated whether or not it was criminal to remove the book from its packaging or whether I agreed with the $75 price tag.

Ultimately I opted against this purchase at this particular moment (due to my upcoming move), however, was prompted to explore what content was available online -- and looky, looky:

Parka Blogs offers a revealing review of the book, The Art of Blizzard Entertainment. Their photos of spreads and brief write-up provide a wonderful glance into the 375+ page collection of Blizzard's artwork and is worth a moment of your time -- even for art enthusiasts less familiar with the franchise.

Page Layouts 1.0

I'm currently toying with rough, rough layouts and pagination. A special note to the team: I'd much rather resolve design issues later than to restrict any creativity that might be flowing now. But, having references such as these should certainly prove helpful.

The mock-ups below are for an 11.25" x 8.75" Classic Hardcover book -- which deviates from our originally proposed dimensions noted in the sidebar. I'm thinking that these landscaped pages will add versatility to the layouts (not to mention, it will knock our book into a lower price range).

You'll note the space allotted for copy of some sort. It's been brought up by a few members of our team a desire to include a brief summary or information about the particular creature being drawn.

As always, thoughts and suggestions are welcome!

The Book

We're a ragtag group of professional designers, hobbyists and former art students who've teamed together to create a themed collection of illustrations. The initial thought has always been, in addition to brushing up on old skills, that we would all be striving toward a final, physical product. This end product? A book.

As this project is one of leisure, my goal is to keep costs low without sacrificing the quality of the final product. My solution: MyPublisher.com, a site that offers publishing services for single-copy, custom books.

While most of their examples are of photo or memory books, the creative freedom that their book maker software allows and their seemingly-always-available offers and deals are optimal for our project.

Additionally, their pre-defined specs allow us designers to focus on our illustrations rather than the infinite number of possibilities of printing. In the past I have purchased photo books through MyPublisher as gifts for friends and have been very pleased with the end result; but, to quote a great man, "... you don't have to take my word for it." The bloggers at "The Wily Hound" have an excellent post describing their experience with the service.

Enjoy!

Great Things

Great things are about to happen.