For the past few days, we’ve been working on was the liner notes for the upcoming Bobbledy album. We wanted to include a letter from Drew about what he was thinking about the songs when he wrote them. He sent us some notes for each song, and we decided that instead of a letter, we would do a folded sheet of paper, so it would look kind of like a little pamphlet to go with the album.
Matthew edited Drew’s blurbs, added some framing language, and had me read it. I thought it sounded good, but he had described in writing how it should look, and I had no idea what he was talking about. So, he sat down and sketched it out for me on the back of a manuscript.
That might look like a bunch of scribbles to you. It kind of did to me, too. So, I’ll help you decipher it. The very top drawing is mine, so we’ll get to that in a minute. The second drawing is meant to show the monster from the front of the album on the front cover of the leaflet.
See?
So, after Matthew drew that and said that the monster should be on the front with the title of the album above and below it, I put my foot down and said, “No way! The title should be below the monster, stacked on two lines!” and scribbled my little sketch, meant to show the monster above the writing, like this:
See? It’s all totally clear. And make sure not to mistake that inky smudge below for anything that I wanted on the cover. It’s just a smudge. Matthew’s not entirely on board with my idea, but he said he’ll look at the real version before making any final decisions on it (since you can tell so little about how it’s actually going to look by that sketch I did!).
The second drawing is the page when it’s unfolded, showing the different pieces of writing and how they relate to the images we’re including.
Originally, the weird rectangular boxes were meant to be writing, and the circles were meant to represent drawings. (see?) But then he realized that he actually wanted the writing/drawing combination blocks to be divided by more writing, which is what the lines labeled “writing, too?” are supposed to be. I’m supposed to gather from this that the blank spaces on the right hand page are actually filled with horizontal bands of writing, so that the writing/drawing combination blocks and the just writing blocks alternate with each other. This might not be clear to you, but it was immediately clear to me, and that’s why Matthew and I work so well together.
Finally, the last little bit is supposed to be the back page. At the top is a paragraph thanking different people, and down below is a list of words.
You see, because I already knew what the content was supposed to be, I didn’t need any more explanation than that weird little drawing.
Stuff like this happens every day. We forget that it’s an important part of the process sometimes, even when it’s for something as simple as a sheet of paper that’s getting sent as a little extra that a lot of people probably won’t even read. Which is to say, we spent a lot of time thinking about it even though it doesn’t look like much.
And all of that before I do any actual designing on the computer. Because that’s what I’m supposed to be getting to now. I’ll let you know how it turns out.