Disclaimer: I’ve never been formally educated in design. The closest I’ve come to that is a web design course during undergraduate studies. Most of what I know comes from over a decade of programming and web design tutorials and the tutelage of co-workers. Books? I’ve thought about designing them plenty of times, but I’m a complete newbie to this.

You’d think that I would use the entry title for this, but I prefer to use the title more creatively… here is the main issue I am here to discuss. I want to design my book right now, and not just “write” it until I’m done. Is this idiotic? Isn’t the main point of writing a book the written word? No. Not for me, anyways. As anybody who knows me already knows, I am a picture guy. I prefer my news in pictures, video, and most especially info graphics.

I’m kicking myself though, because I’m spending so much time worrying about how to lay out the pages, thinking about the table of contents design (someone mentioned to me that I should design the TOC as a map of the USA, and I like that idea), contemplating the placement and typography for the title of the book on Roger’s excellently-designed drawing which is going on the cover, and other non-written aspects of the book. I’m concerned over how to design the photographs which make up the bulk of the book. I love that Anthony pushed me towards scanning every single image to keep a consistent aesthetic throughout the book, but I don’t have the skills, time, or money to get some decent color reproduction. Think about this: the pictures were taken on different cameras by (mostly) non-photographers, printed out on more than one printer on many different occasions, and then I’m going to scan each of them on a budget all-in-one printer, and then print them out again in a book. Did I mention I don’t have any desire to get into color management for this book? I’m glad that Blurb doesn’t offer color management for non-pro customers.

So, back to the main issue I raised earlier. Should I be worrying about these things now? I’ve so far written about the planning stages and the first 6 days of a 21-day trip. I have plans on writing appendices, as well as organizing some of the notes and comments my friends have made in yet more appendices. I’m even thinking about publishing these in separate volumes, especially considering that at the rate I’m going, I’ll be over the page limit for most do-it-yourself print outfits, which won’t print more than 500 or so pages per book (without the planned TOC, introduction, & appendices, I’m already at 150 for the planning stages + 6 days of travel).

There’s a part of me that feels I should just concentrate on the writing and leave the design for later when I actually know how much information I’m working with. Then I would just write for a while and put things together afterwards, leaving less time for me to worry about design and layout, things that I might change my mind about in the future anyways.

Design is so important in this project, though! The conclusion I’ve come to over and over again is that I should lay out my writing with pictures, and that by placing them together now I can make better decisions about the direction the book takes. And I can’t foresee myself taking any other direction with this book in the near future. So I guess this book won’t be seeing the light of day for quite a while.

Was this all just a rant?

While going through my journal pages — the ones that will end up scanned and placed into book pages — you will undoubtably come across about one crossed out word on each page, or some similar imperfection that I spent little-to-no time correcting. An example:

Why do I do this?

I do this for a number of reasons. First of all, I never make a mistake on purpose. Then it wouldn’t be a “mistake.” It would be, at worst, idiotic, and at best, a shallow attempt at art, in my opinion. But I am attempting to create art here. Art based on non-fiction with a certain pretense… but still art.

And part of my goal with it is to recreate something that never existed before: a travel journal with an account of the places I saw and the things I did. And part of beauty in creating a [written] journal is that you can’t backspace your mistakes. The best you can do is bring white-out and blot out memories line by line. I didn’t want to do this. So if a drunk hand used the letter “d” instead of “g” (or vice-versa; I do this constantly, both on keyboards and on paper), I make a snap decision of whether to cross it out or try to “convert” it to what I meant to write. Or if I use a word incorrectly, and I catch it, I fix it, first crossing out the failed word.

And if I miss a mistake? Well, that’s OK too. For now. I’m not sure what to do about mistakes that other people find, or that I find later when I transcribe the text onto my computer for posterity. I’ll write about that when I figure it out. For now, I keep track of them by writing “[sic]” next to the mistakes when I type up the journal pages.

As I’ve been writing this book, my compatriots who joined me on the trip (on which the book is based) have been reading it. Quite often, when we talk about what happened, I get complements on the quality of my “memory.” This always induces a smirk and a quizzical squint on my part (though they cannot see my face unless we video-chat, which is not often) because I don’t really believe my memory is all that accurate. What I do have to go on, however, is an album of about 1,500 photos in my iPhoto library. In comparison to trips I’ve taken since then, 1,500 photos from five people over the course of three weeks is nothing, especially when you look at the large gaps of time without any photos whatsoever, but the album is large enough for my purposes.

Anyways, I’d like to elaborate on my process of writing memoir-style for this particular project.

Writing during the trip

Much prior to this trip, I had bought my first ever travel journals. Two large-size graph-paper moleskines were to be my starter journals for a trip across the American continents, with some über-fine-point pens to write with. Since that trip was still at least 3 years away, I thought that taking them on this trip would be a smart way to begin documenting my travels. I actually believed that I should create a book about my travels back then, and knew that the best way to accurately document my activities was to write a journal on-location.

Though there is documentary (photographic) evidence that I did indeed write in those journals during the trip, I certainly did not write a lot. I wrote exactly one page, including two entries: one from Chicago, and one from a side-of-the-road pit stop in Wyoming.

I did not feel at all like writing while I was on the trip. I never wanted to be sitting with a pen in my hand, writing about what I saw that day or what happened to us at any given moment. Many interesting things happened, of course, but I never had the urge or the ability to put them into writing until over two years later.

Why? I guess doing things and documenting things are very different, and unfortunately for me “right now,”, during that trip I just wanted to do moreso than document.

Photographs, the exception to the rule

During this trip I truly fell in love with photography. I bought a fancy almost-SLR camera (Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ30K) and some conversion lenses specifically for this trip. I won’t go into a review of the camera here, but I’d just like to point out that it’s a fabulous camera, especially for the money. It made for a good transition between point-and-shoot cameras that introduced me to shooting and the rangefinders & SLRs that I prefer to shoot with today (though my main digital is still the FZ30K. My other cameras are a Casio Exilim, Zorki 4K Rangefinder, and Minolta SRT-201).

Somehow, I didn’t feel that photographing the trip would take away from that “experience” that I was looking for. I’m not sure if my friends felt the same way, because I took many more photos than any of them did. Of the 1,500 photos I have, 1,000 are mine, and the others are split between the other four. Also, I got the impression during some of my photography sprees that the others weren’t too enthused about my constantly aiming cameras at their faces. I believe that this fear of being the center of attention dissipated as the trip unfolded, similar to how documentary crews capture better footage as the subjects begin to forget that they are constantly being filmed.

How I handle writing now

So, if I have pictures for some times, but not all times (I didn’t take too many pictures of us eating breakfast or brushing our teeth, for example), how do I remember what happened? The answer: I don’t. I don’t remember every single thing that happened. But I do have vague recollections of our daily habits and what probably happened.

Case in point: I don’t remember exactly what we all ate for breakfast on July 17th, the morning we left our campsite near Mount Rushmore heading to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. But I do remember bringing quite a few packets of oatmeal to serve as our de facto breakfast food, especially on camping days. I don’t want to skip long periods of time just because I don’t remember the specifics of each moment, but I have to draw a line at how accurate my assumptions are. Unfortunately, there is no formula for this; I handle it on a case-by-case basis.

Other ways to remember

1. Talk to the other people who were there.
2. Nag Shane for mp3s of the audio recordings he secretly made during various stretches of driving.
3. Visualize the drives and experiences based on the happenings which surround them in time. In other words, remember what happened before and after an “empty memory,” and try to fill in the blank.

As you can see, my memory isn’t as great as some people would think. Nonetheless, my goal for the reader is to convince them that I really do have the world’s greatest memory. And my number one tip for anybody planning on writing a book about an experience. Take lots of notes! And pictures! And videos! And audio recordings! But most of all, have experiences that are so good you don’t have to write them down to remember them. Those are usually the best (or the worst).

I knew what I wanted to write about — my road trip in 2006 — but I had no idea how to start writing. I had never embarked on such an ambitious project before. So I did the only thing that felt natural: I thought back as far as I could, to my earliest memory of the road trip.

In this case, the first thing I thought of was my dining room in the Abdab. The Abdab was my home from the summer of 2005-2007, and it was a home away from home for many of the friends of its inhabitants. We would play host quite often to Zach’s, Greg’s, and Max’s friends (they were my flatmates), since our home offered a warm atmosphere without the specter of parents lingering over us as we partook in activities they may not have approved of. This mainly meant we wanted to drink in peace (Max did not drink, but he definitely was a great friend to have around when we would drink, especially if we started doing wild things. His camera was always at the ready).

Naturally, then, the Abdab was where the first plans for the trip were laid out — literally laid out on the dining room table. Shane, a friend of Zach’s who I had met about a year before planning began (do I really have to introduce everybody in the book and in the blog?), supplied the map (and the beers, since he was the only 21-year old of us), and we supplied the space. It was a match made in heaven.

That memory was the first that I could recall regarding the road trip. Unfortunately, I cannot recall when we first discussed the idea, or when we made plans to make the plan. But I worked with what I had, and came up with a concept.

That dining room table

That first concept was to include a picture of the table — and the map too if I had a picture of it — along with a description of the place “where it all began.” This would presumably set the scene for how a road trip might begin, especially interesting to someone who might not have ever been on such a trip before. I thought that it would make sense to start small, and then build up to the first step on the gas pedal.

Unfortunately, there was no picture of a dining room table, with or without a map. So what now? I have a habit of sketching imitations of my favorite artist’s work. They often involve flowers, wheat fields, paths, and people (I have never been any good at drawing people), and since they are sketches, they would probably fit in with a journal-style writing, and the themes are represented in the trip which took us down park paths, by and through flower fields, and down roads surrounded by wheat and long yellow grass.

What this got me was the idea that perhaps I could sketch the scene myself in a style I love to imitate. Roger King of the Pine would draw all of the band’s artwork in a rough pen & ink style. Here is an example of the front and back cover for one of their 7″ splits:

I’ll right come out and admit that I have nowhere near the talent Roger has. I got as far as drawing a semi-3d dining room table with Shane’s head right above it before I realized it was a completely lost cause. I can handle drawing the “sewn patch” thing and the 2d flowers and grass sketches, but people, tables, and other three-dimensional objects were out of the question.

A compromise

This led me to a compromise. I would write about the dining room table, but there would be no picture or sketch of it. The best I could do was use a picture of the dining room from when we first moved in, sans table at the time.

I still wanted to incorporate drawings and sketches into the journal pages, so I decided to do this in a few ways. The first way was that I would begin different “entries” or “sections” with a title and miniature drawing underlined with a line of “sewn patch” stylings:

The second way was to draw one map of the proposed route, and then a new map for each new drive right before I began writing about it, each surrounded again by the “sewn patch.” For each of the “new” maps for each drive, I would include the previous routes and end with that day’s destination, so that the reader might feel like they are making progress with each new destination they read about:

The final way I planned on incorporating Roger’s style of artwork into the book was by asking him to design the cover of the book. I sent him a picture and an explanation of the book for inspiration, and he has agreed to do the artwork! I will hopefully have it in my hands tomorrow, and I’ll post the results here on the blog.

Now I can begin

For me, these decisions marked the beginning of the writing process. A bit convoluted, yes, but they laid down a foundation of style that was crucial to work out before I began writing, since handwriting is a lot more difficult to rewrite than words in a word processor. I couldn’t exactly white out an entire paragraph if I decided to draw in a title at the top of the page a month after I first wrote it.

On the flip side, these decisions also limited me going forward to a specific style if I wanted to maintain continuity throughout the book. So far, I think I’ve made the right choices, but I won’t know for sure until I change my mind. Hopefully those changes can wait until the 2nd Edition.

I mentioned before that I wanted to write travel journals during my journeys, but always failed. When I decided to write about one of those journeys years later, I had plenty of design choices to make, one of which was how I would lay out the text.

My main options in text-layout were:

1. Long typed narrative
2. Blocks of typed text (which do not connect narratively)
3. Captions only
4. Handwritten narrative
5. Handwritten journal

Let me explain why I didn’t choose 1, 2, 3, or 4.

Long typed narrative

This is how most books are written. The only breaks come where a new chapter or section begins.

Pros: If you know your typography and book design rules, these can be easy on the eyes and easy to read (assuming the prose is enjoyable, of course). People are comfortable reading this format, and it usually makes the best use of paper space. More efficient use of paper = less paper used = saving the trees of the world = saving money.

Cons: Boring! It doesn’t work well with photos — publishers always put them on a dozen or so glossy pages in the middle of the book, completely out of place (and always the first page I turn to). The photo issue was a deal breaker. Denied.

Blocks of typed text

Think of these as “memos” from the trip. Not as long and detailed as diary or journal entries, but not as concise as photo captions. Also differentiating them from captions, they do not have to directly relate to the photos.

Pros: Instead of dedicating the writing and reading to long descriptions of events one after the other, this works well for myself — I just don’t know what to write half the time — and for the reader — since you probably don’t want to read my rambling run-ons page after page. Also, this works much better than option number 1 in terms of photo placement options. Blocks of text and photos are both (usually) rectangles, so they can be placed on a grid, or perhaps haphazardly, like a collage.

Cons: Someone wishing to actually follow my journey may have a difficult time tracing the route using blocks of text that might not be placed in a logical order. The same problem as before could present itself because there is not any connection between each block of text. If there were, it might be hard to follow.

Captions only

The book would be a photo book. Captions would be the only text outside of the supplementary sections, such as the preface and epilogue.

Pros: Photos everywhere. One of my personal goals was to showcase the photos to provide a visual narrative where possible, and while most of the photos are obviously amateur, they impart a personal feel to the trip and the book. My personal feelings aside, sometimes pictures tell a better story than words.

Cons: Sometimes pictures don’t tell a better story than words. Like I said, this is not “portfolio-quality” photography. National Geographic would want nothing to do with this. Also, there are some portions of the trip with a surfeit of photos, while some events have a dearth of visual representation.

Handwritten narrative

Think of a handwritten version of the long typed narrative entry on book-size paper. Chapters, sections, parts, all the same, but handwritten for a personal touch.

Pros: Shares many pros with the long typed narrative. Gives a sincere, personal touch to what is a very personal experience. Feels like you are reading a diary entry, getting a glimpse into the writer’s life that few would be privileged with.

Cons: Handwriting is in the vast majority of cases harder to read than even badly designed type. And for a book which could easily reach novel-length before it ends, this could prove difficult and ultimately frustrating.

Handwritten journal

Something of a cross between the handwritten narrative and the blocks of text, it is comprised of handwritten journal pages which are significantly smaller than traditional book-size diaries and journals.

Pros: It provides the personal touch of the handwritten narrative with the adaptability of the blocks of text, and without the tendency to ramble on if given the opportunity with plenty of room on each page of the narrative versions and fewer pictures to get in the way.

Cons: Again, handwriting — mine particularly — is difficult to decipher. I not only have subpar legibility, but I tend to use some phrases that probably make no sense to many readers, which compounds the issue.

In the end, I decided to go with the fifth option of a handwritten journal. This is absolutely a very personal subject, and I wanted people to get that feeling when reading it. And I also feel that showcasing photos is important for this project. So a traditional book-style narrative wouldn’t work well in my opinion.

Another benefit to the handwritten journal is that it gives me, the writer, the feeling of writing a journal. I am not afraid to acknowledge the fourth wall, so I don’t have to try and fool the reader into thinking this is a bona fide travel journal, but the format certainly helps give me a feeling of travel journaling while writing about my experiences.

Although the length of the text may well reach tens of thousands of words, I believe that the small pages will help convey a sense of ease to the readers. I imagine that people who commonly finish a page before putting the book down for later reading will have an easy time finishing up one of the miniature journal pages before putting the book down. On a similar note, I imagine that the personal nature of the small journal pages will make the reader more at ease with the book, feeling free to jump around to different pages, not afraid that they’ll lose their place.

Essentially, I think that the handwritten journal offers a great compromise of personalism, great photo compatibility, and narrative flow without the pressure to read chronologically, at the expense of some readability.

I hope you will agree.

When I moved into a new flat with Edyta (my girlfriend) in September ‘08, I had plenty of free time on my hands. The first few weeks there I assembled furniture, applied to schools, and read. A lot.

I like books. I like traveling. I like pictures (especially big ones). And I like writing. I decided to write a book. The truth is, I don’t remember exactly why I decided to write a book. The only thing I remember about the decision was that I knew exactly what I wanted to write about: a road trip I went on in 2006. The reason for that was likely because most of the pictures around my flat are from that one trip, a trip which profoundly changed the way I see the world.

A chunk of inspiration started flowing once I found out about Blurb, a service that lets you design and print your own books on-demand. Then you can either order them and sell them yourself, or post them on Blurb’s online bookstore for any price above the wholesale cost, receiving any profits from each sale. I found them through the Flickr blog, and their service seemed like a perfect fit for my needs:

• Small print runs (as small as one)
• Large format for photos
• High quality paper
• I can design it myself
• I get to keep all the rights to the book

Brainstorming with Edyta, one of the threads that came up frequently was travel journaling. During my undergraduate studies, I always imagined that I would write frequently and profusely, with the idea that I would then have plenty of documentation of what it was like and how I felt at each juncture. My memory is OK, but if I were to ever put down memoirs, I wanted vivid descriptions of my experiences and environments to draw inspiration from.

Unfortunately, there have been quite a few trips during the years since I made that promise to myself, and I haven’t written more than a few short journal pages on any of them. I have a hard time putting into words what is happening around me, and writing takes away from actually doing things and talking. If I could, I would have liked to have transcribed videos of the trips, but instead, the best I’ve got to remember the trips by are the pictures that I and others took.

The Concept

In the summer of 2006, I drove the perimeter of the United States with 3 friends (and a fourth to join near the end). And given my interest in travel journals, I thought it might be interesting to rewrite my experiences in journal format. Then I could scan each page and place them alongside pictures to form a visual narrative of the trip.

I will post more detailed descriptions of the design portion in their own posts.