I’m creating my first-ever notebooks this season and I thought I’d show you the design process from drawing to finished design. One day I’ll learn how to record what I’m doing in Photoshop and you can see alll the steps it takes to get a piece to the final layout stage.
Let’s get started!
I did the drawing above for a portfolio piece a couple months ago and thought it would look really sweet on a pocket notebook. This is a scan of the original artwork (background in acrylic & pastel, bird in conte crayon, charcoal, & colored pencil), so to get a wrap-around cover, I definitely needed to do some manipulation with the piece.
First, I needed to set up a file to the specifications of the print shop I used to produce the notebooks. I decided to go with a 3.5 x 5.5 notebook. In printing, you always need to include 3 things:
1. Bleed - This area is an extra .125” on each side of your piece. This is if your image needs color/ink printed all the way to the edges of your piece (‘full bleed’). It basically ensures that when the printer trims your pieces to size, you won’t get a weird white line around the edges if they accidentally trimmed a little outside of the trim line.
2. Trim Line - This is where the printer aims to cut your piece to size. Print shops often print multiple images of the same thing on one large piece of paper and then cut everything down the the proper dimensions.
3. Safety Margin - This area is .125” from the trim line, towards the inside of the piece. All of your important information of the piece (lettering, parts of an image you definitely don’t want cut off) needs to be inside this area. Like the bleed, this ensures that when the printer trims to size, important parts of your image don’t get cut off if they accidentally trim into the image past the trim line.
I also added a center line where the cover will be folded, so I don’t put any important information along that area. Finally, I added center lines for the back and front so everything is aligned properly! Sometimes, printers will want you to do the back and front on separate files (as my printer did), but I like to start it out this way so I can get a full picture of what I’m designing.
I placed my artwork on the right hand side of the workspace (the front of the notebook) and as you can see, I zoomed in on the bird and cut down on the empty background space around it. I then copied that image to the left hand side (the back) and had to do some manipulation to cover up the bird and make it into a simple background. I could have just painted a new background, but this way saved me some time! I also covered up the writing on the envelope and made it a little whiter.
The envelope lended itself well to add a little title for the notebook, so I picked a pretty font, placed it on and erased some of the bottom parts of the letters to make it look tucked behind the bird’s wings.
In my poster design of this image, I placed a scanned in black charcoal texture. I really liked it, so decided to use it for the journal as well. I started out with it black, but as I kept designing, I wanted to soften it up a bit, so I changed it to this greenish-blue color.
At this point, I thought I was pretty much done, but after I sat on it for a day, I felt like the back needed a little something extra. I mocked some things up and after getting feedback from my art group, I decided to add more to it.
I had this wallpaper design (it’s a vintage design, so I’m able to use it freely) saved from a previous project and thought it could add a nice touch. As you can see, I heavily manipulated it in Photoshop - turned the flowers into solid shapes, had the color almost match the greenish-blue of the border and then lightly erased it in spots for a really worn feel. It feels a little busy when laid out flat, but when folded, it helps add a lot of interest to the back cover and adds just the tiniest touch to the front without overwhelming the bird.
Next, I added my logo and information about the notebook and voila! Notebook design complete and off to the printer.
Can’t wait to get my hands on them and I’ll be sure to share them in my Instagram stories when they arrive!
Thanks for following along and as always, if you have any questions or comments, please drop them below. I’ll be sending out a shorter newsletter in December without a blog post, but I’ll be back in January!
♡ nicole