Page Design and my prior re-design

Page Design is the process of placing design objects, such as text, headings, and images, consistently and effectively on the page, taking account the information you are trying to convey, actual visual field, characteristics of the design object, and relationships implied among them. The definition I have chosen to improvise slightly on is long but, considering page design is not a one note process, necessary.

Kimball and Hawkins write a lot about the concepts that are involved and interplayed within page design, and it's impossible to truly hit on all of them because certain designs call for certain strategies but not all. One main concept mentioned by Kimball and Hawkins I took into consideration was culture. Culture is the relativity of objects and their location within a page design. In my redesign of Anthony Bourdain's book The Nasty Bits I had to remind myself of the conventional ideas of where components of a book cover belong.

Unlike Asian culture, American culture insists we read from left to right, and our book covers act on that. In my design above, I decided to use a picture where Anthony Bourdain is depicted as walking but the original photo I found depicted Anthony walking the opposite way, away from the book entry. In American literature, I figured that almost symbolized him walking away from the entry of his own book-- a bad way to start off someone's reading experience. So the first thing i did was make sure that he faced the direction of the book's material, not away.

Another component of page design is sequence. Sequence revolves around what order your page design objects are presented to the reader. It played a large role in my design as in the original, published design as well because for certain writers and celebrities the first component of a cover presented is their name. Anthony Bourdain is a very recognizable American figure and it needed to be represented well and atop of the pecking order, so to start off my sequence of components I put his entire name first. It allows people to see the book and immediately become curious whether they knew of the book's existence or not because Bourdain is a celebrity. Following his name was the title as well as his figure beside that with a bar code and quote from the times last because they are less recognizable or culturally revered as a title and last name is.

Another affect of my design was the use of power zone. Power zone is depicted in the book as the left side of the page as well as the top. It's as if you were to create a capital L and turn it upside down on the page. The use of power zone is used by having Anthony Bourdain's figure exist on the left side of the cover in the power zone. His figure is what I consider to be a "mission critical" object because he is the proprietor of everything written in the book and as well as the person selling his personality in the book. Putting Anthony in the power zone is to put him in an area of the cover that people naturally gravitate towards with their eyes.

Also, a large contributing idea to my design was of balance. I didn't want Anthony's body to be penetrated by any letters of his title because I knew, given the photo I chose, there would be room next to him to place it. With Anthony on one side of the cover it allows a dearth of space to the right of him of which I was able to fill with content.