For my next layout experiment, I took into account what both Chris and Geraint said to me last week. Chris suggested that I try full bleed images and also experiment with the smaller images, possibly removing them altogether. 

Geraint agreed with what Chris said, and also would rather the hero images were on the right page. He suggested that I repeat my hero shots, so that I have 2 hero shots per character rather than 1, as I have a lot of material to work with. 

For this layout I started with one, full bleed hero shot of each character on the right page, with the left page blank. Then, I did my poetry pages (8 in total), and I kept these very simple- blank white pages, with the poetry aligned to the right side of the page, in a typewriter style font. After the poems, I did another set of full bleed hero shots for each character, but I tried to pick contrasting images to the first set, so you can see the other side to them. Some characters don’t have contrasting images, so I just went with images that were quite different in terms of how close I am to the camera, or which way I’m facing. 

After this, I did my grids which are the same as last time. 

Finally, I did a back cover- for this I used a white texture for the background, and added some writing on top, which completes the title. The title for my book is “I am…” and the back cover summarises what I am, after seeing all these characters. 

Overall I’m really happy with this layout, I like the simple structure as it focuses on the images rather than an intricate, distracting design, and allows me to really show off each character. Having two sets of hero images lets me display the best images of each character, and then the grids allows the audience to look deeper, and really see the full extent of the characters. 

I also like the simplicity of the poetry pages, having them in the middle means they aren’t connected to a specific character- they represent the book as a whole. 

I still have some work to do as I haven’t retouched my images yet, so that will make a huge difference once they’re done, and I also need to reorganise my grids as some of them need rearranging slightly to break up certain shots.