Limited Edition Book Design

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

book-cover.jpg

Skills & Tools Used

  • InDesign

  • Illustrator 

The Project

For this project, I chose to redesign and build a limited edition version of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I redesigned every element including the font choices, margins, title page, chapter title designs, page numbers, end sheets, and the cover.

The Process

After finding the full text online, I first had to go through the text and change any errors. I then had to stylize the text using paragraph and character styles in InDesign and choose important elements such as a typeface, header content, and chapter title styles.

Upon finishing and printing the book, I then had to fold, stitch, and cut the signatures and glue them to the book casing, which I also constructed myself. For my cover, I used a maroon book cloth with gold handmade paper end sheets and finished it with a small gold lightning bolt and matching gold bookmark ribbon.

The Design Elements

These images feature some of the design elements that made a big impact on my overall design. On the full title spread, I featured a watercolor image of Hogwarts castle (not my image, credited on copyright page of book) as well as a logo I created for a fictitious publishing company and the font I chose for the titles and chapter names. This font is called Dalliance and was found on Typekit.

The next image shows and example of one of my chapter titles. I featured a cluster of stars which I took from the original printed Harry Potter book as an homage to the original edition. For the chapter title, I used Dalliance once again and the body text is in Adobe Caslon Pro.

The last image shows a typical page within a chapter to show the header and the paragraph styling I did for sections of the book. For my header, I have the book name on the left and the chapter name on the right. I did this to make is easier for the reader to find their page. I also showed the styling I did Harry’s acceptance letter. This is the only color I used within my book and is one of over 65 paragraph styles.

Building the Book

The first step of building the book was to print and stitch the pages. After doing so, I applied book paste to the spine along with the end sheets and held it together with clamps to dry. Then, I added mull, a type of cheesecloth, a strip of scrap paper, my ribbon bookmark, and the headbands at the top and bottom edges of the spine to finish preparing the book block. Once the book block was ready, I glued the binders board to my book cloth, using a ruler to calculate their position and placed book weights on top to dry. Once that was dry, I placed the book block in position and added glue to the end sheets. Once I closed the book, therefore connecting the outer and inner parts of my book, I placed a book weight on top for 24 hours to allow it to dry completely.

The Final Book