In February, one of my tasks has been building brochures for Distant Era’s various photography services and web pages detailing Distant Era workshops for Gen Con 2023.
Learning the Skills
Between 2019 and 2022, our tiny publications team at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago had our hands in every part of the book publishing process. One of our many tasks was layout and design, and it was here that I started to get cozy with Adobe InDesign. Eventually, I came to prefer this part of the work. I make no claim of being a strong layout designer, but nevertheless I enjoy the process. At the OI, I’d work on projects like the one below, choosing how to position layouts, captions, and the like.
Most of the periodicals I worked on at the OI had established templates, which were helpful to use as I learned InDesign. In the time since, I’ve started to discover new techniques while exploring Distant Era brochures.
Last year, one of my goals was to make PDFs for the various photography services I do. That year was mostly consumed by other projects, though I did get my fine art portraiture brochure completed.
I created a new one in February for live action role-playing game photography, since I’m photographing a few more such events this year, beginning with Auxientia in May. Here’s one of my favorite two-page spreads from that one, showing the two types of photography offered at the event. I had fun using all the available space for the photographs and then creating vertical banners sampled from the page colors, which faded along a gradient.
Web Pages vs. Brochures
I realize I could just create different web pages for these different services. However, I’d like to keep distantera.com simple. Each client has different needs, and the brochures are a place to go into depth about the specific kind of service a client wants rather than confound them with information.
New Projects
I’ve started to create a new brochure for each Distant Era personal project. These serve to explain the project to the subjects and outline the project goals. Here’s a look at the one I did for The People of Light and Shadow, which I sent out once I had a group assembled. It’s strange looking back on this now as the mission statement before any of the series had been photographed. I feel like we were faithful to the goal.
In February, I also created one for the next potential Distant Era project to follow The People of Light and Shadow. It’s still in its nascent stages. Here’s a sneak peak of what the cover of that style guide looks like.
I enjoy designing the brochures, but I need to do them in quiet times where things aren’t too busy. It takes focus to think through the design, and even if I’m not executing a complex book with chapters, footnotes, indexes, and appendices, the design often takes several iterations to get right.
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