The Handmaid's Tale
Book Redesign
Client
Graphic Communications Book Design Class
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Deliverables
Handmade Book
Dust Jacket
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Goals
Redesign the American Classic The Handmaid's Tale
Print, Sew and Glue together 'Limited Edition' Book
Rebrand the novel to gain new audience of readers
My Roles
Redesigned guts of the book with new page size and margins, Printed guts, Hand-binded book, Designed New Dust Jacket to Market the Book
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About
Book Design
Cal Poly Graphic Communication 439: Book Design is a class that requires the redesign of a classic novel paired with the printing and hand assembly of this 'limited edition book'. For this class, I chose the novel The Handmaid's Tale, for its amazing imagery and old and outdated layout that I wanted to change to spur interest for newer, younger readers.
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General Overview of Project Steps
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Document Setup
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Formatting text
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Critiques
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Revisions
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Ordering Paper/Gathering Supplies
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Test Print
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Adding Illustrations
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Press/Prepress Checks
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Printing
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Folding, Gluing, Stitching & Assembly
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Research &
Initial Layout
Initial Steps
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Select book choice
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Locate text file for book
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Create project profile with goals
and intentions for project -
Create InDesign document
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Set initial margins & guides
Locating Text File
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After selecting to redesign The Handmaid's Tale, I had to locate a .txt file that had the text of the entire novel. ​I would later import this file into Adobe InDesign and format it using paragraph styles.
.txt File of The Handmaid's Tale
Creating New Document
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I created a document at the default size of 6'x9' and quarter inch margins, both of these would later change. I then flowed the .txt file into my document and began to gradually format.
Page Size & Margins
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When finalizing page size and margins, I wanted to allow room for a bleed on a 12'x9' Press Sheet, which lead me to a page size of 5.75'x8.75', slightly less than the 6'x9' default. Lessening the page size lead to an increased number of pages, and would require more signatures to sew when binding, but I made this decision to allow bleeds in illustrations that were to be added later. Margins were based on the golden ratio.
Styles
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Comparing to the paperback copy of The Handmaid's Tale that I have, I went through each page of the book creating paragraph and character styles for each chapter opening, quote, part opener, new paragraph, and more.
In addition, many individual words had to be italicized throughout the book, making me pay extreme attention to the smallest details.
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Before creating styles, I tested out various typefaces and solidified my typography.
Branding
Before solidifying all my type styles, I tested several typefaces, drop caps, pop caps, small caps, and many other elements to determine the look of my chapter openings, and thus the look of the inner book guts. This took a lot of trial and error, as the setting of the book is technically futuristic, but realistically felt like that of the early 1900s. Thus, I did not want to go too modern or too old fashioned with my typeface choices.
Typography
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Ultimately, I chose Rosella Solid as my headers, page numbers, and chapter numbers. Adorn Serif was used as a supporting typeface and was the typeface of my fictional publishing company, Genie Publishing. All body text used the Sabon Pro Family for its beautiful but easy to read characters.
Color Scheme
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The book essentially chose its colors for me. I knew I wanted to do line drawings for each of the 15 parts in the book. The pages were to be an off-white color, and red is a prominent color in the book, so I chose a blood red as the color of the book cloth.
After solidifying my layout, I read through the book entirely to catch any typos in my .txt file (there were quite a few!) I also followed along with my own paperback copy of the book, italicizing and adding other character styles where need be.
Illustrations
Next step was to add illustrations. This was not required, but I felt that I personally wanted to add another element to the book to make it enticing to the reader. The book was divided into 15 parts, some containing a single chapter, others containing many chapters. For each part, I included line illustrations of scenes in the book, drawn using Adobe Illustrator and a Wacom tablet.
Each illustration was carefully thought out to represent the scenes in the book. Many took several hours to execute for how elaborate the scenery I chose to portray was. I used many reference images to trace over and create the overall scene I wanted.
Production
For this 'limited edition' book, part of the submission for this project was to print, blind and assemble the books ourselves.
Gathering Supplies
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Over the course of this project, I had gradually been gathering supplies, such as calculating and ordering paper from French Paper (I chose PopTone 70lb. in the shade Whip Cream). Additionally I had made several trips to Paper Source stores to search for the perfect end sheets and book covering.
For this 'limited edition' book, part of the submission for this project was to print, blind and assemble the books ourselves.
Printing
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Printing took a bit of testing in regards to imposition, which my professor Loraine Donegan helped with, as well as bleeding the illustrations I made off the page. Luckily my calculations were correct, and my press sheet size had no problem printing bleed on our Cal Poly Xerox press.
Assembly
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Assembly of the book was quite extensive and took 3 full days to complete. It required folding, nesting pages, sewing, gluing, and attaching the book cover. While I could explain all this, it may just be easier to watch my process below.
Product Photography
Dust Jacket
In addition to designing our own hand binded and printed book, our class was tasked with redesigning the cover of our book of choice. We were to update the cover to appeal to a new target audience.
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General Overview of Project Steps
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Research & Mood Board
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Document Setup
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Locating text and images
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Design Iterations + Revisions
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Mockup
I always thought that this cover design was not as eye catching as it could be. While it does portray a powerful scene in the book, the mood never felt as sinister or dark as the actual book is. I wanted a bold cover that caught attention and made readers want to investigate more, and ask questions.
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Specifically, since many high school students read this book in English classes, I wanted to appeal to students with a bold and modern look that made them interested in reading.
Original Cover of The Handmaid's Tale
Mood Board for The Handmaid's Tale
Finished Design
A Different Take
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Using the core colors of black, white and red, I created a cover design that reflected the design featured in my opening pages of my hand-made book. The 'Eyes' are a common theme throughout the book, and one commonly glossed over in new designs spurred by the creation of the Hulu tv show The Handmaid's Tale. I wanted my design to be unique and do a different take on the imagery in the novel.
