John's Panelreader

No Staples Book Final

Final Design

Above is what my double page spread ended up looking up like. I took a picture before it was folded because it's easier to see the actual design that way.

So above is the inside of the no staples book. I ended up with an extra copy since I forgot to remove the template, but it became useful for this post.

 Here is my double page spread once folded and cut. There is a special way of folding your final design in order to make it into a book. I also cut away the white border with a guillotine and put a cut down the centre of the spread, this is essential to make the book, otherwise it won't fold properly.

There is a proper way to fold it. Half way though it looks somewhat like this, and then you fold it up and it then consists of a front cover, 2 double page spreads and a back cover and no staples.

Here is the final folded design. I like it, but I would improve it if I did it again by making my background a lighter shade of green or by adding more light greens, since this version looks slightly too dark.

At last, a some-what professional picture of my final design:

No Staples Book Work in Progress

Inside of book

work in progress shots

I used a awful lot of layers in order to create this Photoshop. As you can see from the images above and below, I used a lot of Magic Wand tool (which selects a certain desired area) to change the colour of some keys and key holes to a different shade of green from the rest, creating some diversity.

I just kept repeating this effect, changing the shades of green. It took some time, since there are some very small areas where you have to zoom right in in order to select them.

I chose a set of keys that were overlapped and decided to create a repeating pattern for the inside and covers of my no staples book. I added in random keys in-between the pattern to make it more interesting. In terms of a simple title "Keys n' stuff" was as straight forward I could come up with.

Double Page Spread

work in progress shots

I started by simply copy and pasting over keys from another Photoshop document which had a scan of my drawn keys on it that I had changed the threshold of, to make them fully black.

I added in more keys, slowly, making sure to change the layout from the drawn sheet of keys. I also changed the sizes of a lot of them, and ran some over the sides to add some variation.

Finally, all of the keys were on the document.

Lastly, I did the same as I had done with the spreads and the covers. I removed some areas of colour, leaving white, and I changed some of the shades of green on the keys, all with the Magic Wand tool

No Staples book first drawings

Keys

 Above is the first sheet of all of my completed drawings. As a topic, I thought keys. They are all generically the same, therefore quite easy to draw quite a few times. I enjoyed my keys topic, there are quite a few interesting key designs, like the bird-looking one for example. I drew these keys by looking up images of them on Pinterest, a very useful site for searching for images. I created my own board on Pinterest specifically for keys and then picked my favourites, and these are the ones I ended up with. I tried to a pick a variety of interest ones and some more simplistic ones, in order to get a good effect on my no staples book, and not have it be too complicated or too simple.

Above is one of my keys that I drew. This has to be one of my favourites. I hadn't tried drawing with a fineliner before, and I was pleased with the outcome. I attempted some shading around the outside of the key that didn't turn out too well, but gives the key a slight 3-D affect.

 I used a couple of pens to draw all of these keys. The one on the left in the image above is a ballpoint liquid gel-pen and on the right is a fine-liner.

The key above is probably my top favourite out of all the ones I drew. I didn't quite manage to capture the intricacy of the original unfortunately. I gave this key a shadow, which works well enough, but I didn't shadow all of the edges. I drew this key with a gel-pen, which I used for most of the drawings.