Exercise 1: What is your role?

Working with the outlined publishing models, identify the various roles you (and potentially others) will be undertaking for assignment five. For example, you’re likely to be writing your own content, designing your book, editing and reviewing it. You may also be involved in the production, printing and distribution process. Consider each aspect of the book assignment and briefly list what roles you think you’ll be doing, and what these roles entail. Also, make notes of the roles of others who might be involved in your assignment and what their contribution is.

Where do books begin?

Previously in my graphic design experience, I’ve dealt with magazine design with the list of hotels to stay for travel destinations. Obviously, it’s different to book publishing, as those magazines served the purpose of promotion, but the concept is quite similar. I remember that originally there were multiple people involved in the process.

1 the customer of the project (hotel chains) → 2 the content writer → 3 editors → 4 marketing managers → 5 graphic designers → 6 printing company → 7 distributions and retails in the face of the travel company.

As far as I understand, here for my final assignment, I’m going to play multiple roles, and I believe that is going to be a good experience for me, as I can test different roles, apart from being just a graphic designer of the project. Most likely I will need the help of the printing company, depending on the design of the book, as if it’s going to be an artists book I can do it myself. Here I would like to analyse each role individually, following recommendations by Andrew Hasslam’s Book Design.

Generally, there are four simple models of book creation. The first, the traditional model, places the author at the beginning, but there are some alternatives, where publisher, editor, or designer placed at the start of the book chain.

1 Writer → 2 Publisher → 3 Editor → 4 Designer → 5 Production → 6 Printer → 7 Distribution → 8 Retail

1 Publisher → 2 Writer → 3 Editor → 4 Designer → 5 Production → 6 Printer → 7 Distribution → 8 Retail

1 Editor → 2 Publisher → 3 Writer → 4 Designer → 5 Production → 6 Printer → 7 Distribution → 8 Retail

1 Designer → 2 Writer → 3 Publisher → 4 Editor → 5 Production → 6 Printer → 7 Distribution → 8 Retail

The traditional model of a book’s creation places the author at the start of the production chain. For example, the author has an idea for a book and begins to write text hoping that eventually the finished work will be accepted by a publisher and become a printed book.

I think, for my book assignment most of the roles will be played by myself, but at the same time the customer of the project I can consider an Art College representative, and probably extra people who will be involved in printing. The Art College will judge how successful the final design will be and whether all points have been met, however, the whole process of book design and production will be managed by me. The model of a book’s development is often referred to by publishers as a “critical path”. Now I need to consider carefully what kind of key stages I will have to complete.

• Author / Writer of the content will be me. The ideas should come from myself according to the brief that will be provided by College. The overall project should be thought through, including a review of the subject and physical characteristics of my book and its cover;
• Publisher. I won’t need extra people to get involved, like agents or agancies, as the project is held by myself;
• Editor. I will be edditing my works myself, check it for errors and imperfections, correcting them and going back to the final checkups.
• Designer / Illustrator / Photographer that will be me as well. I will need to think through the sketches, decide on the format of the book and create a rough plan of actual design. If book will include illustrations they should be painted by me as well, or I can look for some royalty free images at library like Bridgman photography. I can take pictures for the book myself, that will help to create unique style, or I can adjust images in Photoshop, to make them look original, depending what design I’m going to chose, realistic one or abstract;
• Production will be decided when the brief will be read. If there are multiple pages book which should look like professional print, than I will need to go for the printing companies and explain them the requerements. If the book should look hand-made like, and have some room for inperfections, than I can do it myself;
• Printer same a as publisher, will be considered later, depending if I’m going to use my home gadgets and printer or printing comapny;
• Distribution this will be my role as well. I might will need to distribute books to the friends and family, or send some copies to the Art College. Also, I can contact to one of those Book fairs, look for upcoming events, and consider whether my books can take part in it;
• Retail most likely my books will be non-comercial projects, I can contact voluntary organisations, and give them away for free to some of the organisations that interested in exhibit or sale artists’ books for charity.