For sometime now I’ve been working on a project I haven’t told many people about, but finally it’s time to let out the secret, if you read the headline of this post then you have probably guessed it, I will be publishing my first Art Book in the first quarter of 2010!

I’m actually very excited about this as went into 2009 with goal originally and have been working toward it slowly all along. The title of this book is “ARTFUL MANIPULATIONS”, a title which I believe is self explainitory. I have spent a great deal of time researching how to best approach this particular project. Even from the beginning self publishing is a very involved process that requires you to make several important and very well thought out decisions, and understand many things you may or may not have dealt with before. Fortunately I have a background in developing projects for print and have even dealth with magazine covers before.

ARTFUL-MANIPULATIONS-COVER

Deciding on what to do about the cover once I decided on the title was something I have been agonizing over for several weeks but a few days ago I finally decided on which concept I liked best and I have to say I’m very satisfied with the results. I wanted something clean and type driven that would stand out in a stack, but I also wanted something fresh and colorful, and uncluttered. I also didn’t want the type to feel flat, I wanted something that felt almost organic, vibrant, stimulating. The answer ultimately came to me int the form of a skittles commerical…

In addition to work you’ve already seen from me, this book is going to feature some never before seen work, some of it completely new, some of it that I had been holding back specifically to place in this publication. I would actually love to do at least two collaboration projects between now and spring to feature in the book, if anyone is interested please get in touch with me about it.

One of the hardest decisions I had to make was the size of the book dimension wise. The overall size does effect the price, and being this is my first book I didn’t want to make it too expensive, however I also wanted to be sure that the images would be large enough for people to really enjoy and feel it was worthwile. Ultimately I went with a landscape format of 10X8. My next choice would have been a square format of 12×12 unfortunately that would have nearly doubled the price, but I’m looking at that for my next self published book and will increase the number of images dramatically to compensate.

Of course we come to the main decision, go directly to a printer, or go through a website? Ultimately I decided to go with Blurb.com, part of that decision was influenced by a great article I read in Advanced Photoshop Magazine, issue 62. It had a lot of useful infomration, much of which I had come across in my own research but some great advice none the less. Ultimately Blurb.com would allow me to complete this project in more or less the way I had imagined it with little additional effort and with minimal cost, which for me was the main factor. If it were not for the additional artwork yet to be completed this project would take less than a month overall which is excellent.

So that is pretty much it for now, once the book is released I will be launching the micro-site for it, which is already mostly developed. I will keep you posted on that project as well. I would love to hear feedback about what images of mine you think should go in the book, or any questions you may have. I can’t wait to release this project and share it with you!