One of my favorite books, the concept for our 2018 book was based in bullet journal imagery, so our goal was to create a book that looked very handmade (despite all being done entirely digitally). The theme resulted in some fun ways of including “artifacts” like ticket stubs, postcards, and “news clippings” which appeared paper-clipped or taped into the book.
The book was the result of a lot of experimentation and trial & error — for example, figuring out how to create the illusion of highlighter marks turned out to be much more complicated than originally anticipated. The theme also resulted in a bit of extra work (for me) creating illustrations & doodles that appeared throughout, including the full-page mandala designs for each of the 12 division spreads throughout the book (see several examples of the divider mandalas below). One of the bigger challenges was finding a way to strike a balance between the “messiness” of a journal and maintaining a consistency throughout the book.
Ultimately, the 2019 book was a triumph, and it was well-received by students and faculty alike.
