Midnights Booklet: Documentation Part 1

Blog Post 11

Midnights Booklet: Documentation Part 1

Introduction

Hi everyone! I’m excited to document my journey in creating the Midnights booklet. 

Inspiration

As I began to brainstorm for this project, I felt very lost. Being a CTD major, I have a lot of background in terms of fabrication: in my arsenal of skills, I could woodwork, 3D print, draw, sew, et. cetera.  

Having so many options at my disposal, I struggled to lock down one singular idea. So, as I often do, I headed to Pinterest and began surfing. I typed out “graphic design outputs” into the search bar and saw one idea that stuck out to me: a visually-succinct booklet that is centered around one topic. Knowing then that I wanted to create a booklet for this project, I began the phases of visualizing and planning.

An example of a cohesive booklet design – Pinterest

Another example of a cohesive booklet design – Pinterest

Vision

Most of my original concept for this booklet involved music, whether it’s song titles or song lyrics themselves. I loved the idea of working with an artist whom I enjoy listening to, so I’d have a nice physical memento to keep with me as a result of this project.  

Eventually, I landed on Taylor Swift’s studio album, Midnights. I feel that Swift’s deep lyricism and vibrant world-building in her most recent album will lend itself well to the outlet of my project. My vision is this: Each page in this booklet will correspond to a song on the album, meaning I’ll have at least 13 page spreads if I don’t include the 9 additional “3 A.M. edition” bonus songs. 

As I thought about the booklet’s function, I decided that I wanted the final product to be a highly polished physical artifact; think a nice, custom-made wedding book with high-quality photos inside, including a cloth cover and thick, glossy pages.

For my design aesthetic, I did some more digging on Minimalism and landed on a subset of the aesthetic, which is known as Duotone Minimalism. Duotone minimalism uses (as the name implies) two colors for the entire design. Also, other elements like font and imagery must be minimal. I thought that this aesthetic will help the book employ a succinct visual identity, as well as challenge me as a designer. In most of my designs, I love using a lot of visual elements and bright colors. I felt that “boxing” myself in would both challenge me and help me grow in getting my ideas across more powerfully and simply.

Initial Sketches 

Once I had a solidified idea, I moved onto storyboarding; I started out by creating an outline for the booklet in Canva. 

Then, I created a timeline with checkpoints to ensure that I’m working on this project in a timely manner.

Final Design Plans 

In my next blog post, I will talk more about my design process for this booklet. However, I’ll give you a snippet of how I started out my designs. I streamlined my design flow by starting out with completely black and white, rudimentary designs. After I had layouts for every page, I felt more confident to move forward with graphics, color, text, etc. 

Looking back, I’m glad I stopped and pivoted when I realized my workflow wasn’t serving me. It definitely helped me to make quick progress with so many pages to design before the deadline. 

I’m excited to continue documenting and sharing my process! I hope you enjoyed reading about my early steps in this project!