Work for Today: Tues 9/17

Hi everybody. I'm too sick to make it in today – I do feel better than yesterday, and am planning on being at school wednesday and thursday.

This is my agenda for today – I was going to orchestrate looking over your six pages, and coming up with a title and cover image for the book. Let's see if you guys can can wrangle that yourselves today, with a little bit of written instruction. Extra credit for anyone who takes the lead on this.

Here's the drill – everyone pull up their six pages on screen, and just go around the room showing off the pictures, just so everyone can get an idea about the content of the book. It doesn't have to be an in-depth critique, just a look at what everyone's cooked up. Maybe there's some "theme" that sort of emerges from all the work that might suggest a title - but probably not.

Have somebody go to the small whiteboard in the room (you can erase what's on there), and brainstorm some potential titles. They can be completely off the wall - you can look at the past books, on the bookshelf by the window, to see what other classes came up with. The best titles, I think, are the somewhat random ones. The worst title was definitely "Moobs." I tried to talk them out of that. But failed.

So - someone should stand at the whiteboard with a marker, everyone should stand in a circle, and just run clockwise around the circle, with each person calling out their idea for a title. This is just brainstorming, no one gets to opt out because they think their idea is lame. The person at the whiteboard writes down the title options. Once everyone has given out a title, you can open it up for people to call out a few other suggestions, or possible combos of the titles that are already up.

Then it comes to a vote. One thing to keep in mind is that a good title isn't just something that sounds good - it should also lend itself to a good, strong cover image. Whichever title gets the most votes wins - and then, spend the remainder of the class having each person create their own version of what the cover should look like, including the title. Same dimensions as the interior – 7.75" square, 300 dpi, with and eighth-inch bleed.

On Thursday, we'll take a look at all the covers, and take a vote on the one we'll use. Second place winner gets the back cover.

Hope that all makes sense. If not, feel free to have someone call me at 415-845-5670. I'll sound like a dying muppet, but can still talk.