Observation Journal: 20 ways with gold foil

Let’s get back to the making things type of Observation Journal page. The first half of this post is about the approach to an exercise, the second half of it is the resulting list of some possibilities to use foil on book covers.

Twenty Things

I’m a fan of the twenty things exercise, either starting with an object and working out twenty uses for it (my dad used to make us do this on long car trips); or starting with a question and listing twenty answers.

I think it’s fun, and it’s also interesting to watch the process of ideas being pushed through different barriers — for example:

• with the “twenty uses” version there’s often a point where the obvious gives way to the interesting and then to the ludicrous and then circles back to the intriguing;
• with the “twenty problems” variant it loosens my grip on the first/obvious choice I imprinted on (even if that turns out to be the final choice, it’s usually stronger for a bit of objectivity).

This is also why I’ve kept the self-reflection panels on the observation journal pages. Not just to do the exercise, but to step back and watch myself doing it, and learn. You’ll see here I noted on the side that “20 really is the magic number. 11 is where I had to look further/do more research.”

“Twenty things” has shown up in the observation journal before, when I was working out the colour treatment for Lauren Dixon’s cover: Observation journal — werewolf conferences and colour treatments.

This page was also for a cover — in this case for Juliet Marillier’s Mother Thorn, for which we had the opportunity to use foil on the cover of the special edition (out in April). But I hadn’t designed specifically for foil combined with a silhouette before. So I made this list of 20 WAYS WITH FOIL TREATMENTS. (The activity is also great for tricking yourself into working on something.)

Here’s the list (excluding the running commentary to myself alongside). It’s project-specific and non-exhaustive:

1. GOLD on BLACK (or colour)
2. BLACK on GOLD
3. Gold-limned silhouette on coloured ground (almost calligraphic)
4. Gold base/border on coloured ground
5. Foil highlights in silhouette design
6. Above plus gold background (2)
7. 5 plus flyaway bits in foils
8. Fine foil pattern supporting coloured silhouettes
9. Black on colour, gold lettering
10. Gold support/background for lettering
11. Colourised/textured silhouette with foil ornament bits
12. 1 but with many cut-out details
13. Multi-silhouettes, different foils
14. Silhouette (black on colour) surrounded by drawn foil pattern
15. Gold effect on blue texture
16. Gold silhouettes, deeper-coloured shadow
17. Black on colour. Only important details picked out in foil (e.g. figures, coins, birds).
18. Border in one foil, title in another
19. Foil silhouette on coloured ground with overlapping white title square
20. Spot gloss blacks with foil lettering background

You’ll see that my terminology here is not particularly technical! That’s one reason for accompanying it with sketches. Ballpoint drawings aren’t hugely informative for foil/colour treatments but did help me to think through the practicalities, and whether an idea reminded me of something I’ve seen elsewhere, or made me feel (to quote) “ugh”, at least for this project.

The next step (square box on the side) was to do a test version, to run through a few of these.

The final cover used approach C, which was a combination of 11 and 5, although there was briefly a 19 in the running.

Writing/art exercises

• 20 Things: Pick a handy object (or something you’ve seen today). Come up with twenty uses for it.
  • This could be as light-hearted as 20 Uses for a Plastic Fork.
  • It’s good for car trips and working out how your friends think, but it’s also good practice for just thinking sideways.
  • Afterwards, it can be useful to note where the ideas got more difficult, or sillier, or if you know where some of them came from. This is interesting, but you
  • It can also be useful for turning objects in a story into plot (or other things).
  • It could even become a project on its own.
• 20 Ways: Think of an aspect of a project that you are stuck on, or something you’d like to play with but haven’t quite managed to, and list 20 Ways To Deal With It.
  • I find this more useful when the initial problem is narrower — 20 Ways to Tell A Short Story is fine, but I can get past 100 without breaking a sweat. 20 Ways to Tell A Short Story In An 8-Page Accordion Booklet forces more invention. (These examples are from current pages of the observation journal, and I’ll get to them in time!)
  • Like Ten Terrible Things, I find this lets me have fun exploring options without feeling like I have to commit to any of them, or abandon my early ideas. The list is the point.
  • Sometimes your first instinct will still have been right, but you’ll be more certain of it (and have stress-tested it, and maybe come up with some new ideas for future projects), and you’ll have released your stranglehold on it a little, too.