OVERVIEW OF PROCESS

Early Designs

This stage explores aesthetics and pacing. These are conceptual sketches—not sample pages—to enable us to provide direction. Some designers send sketches or moodboards with color palette options, font options, or existing visual materials that support the proposed designs. Others prefer to send a few examples of actual spreads. The most important thing is to show two distinct directions for the potential look and feel of the book.

Let your contact at Timber know if you have questions or possible solutions relating to the structure of the book, relationship of parts, pacing, or other challenges.

Deliverable: sketches, moodboards, color palettes, sample spreads, or other materials as discussed with in-house contact

Sample Pages

This stage incorporates feedback from Early Designs and develops the concept for review by the whole team. You’ll submit 15-20 spreads to give a comprehensive look at all components of the book. These spreads should include samples of typical pages and any special design elements—part openers, sidebars, photo and caption treatments, front and backmatter, charts or other visual elements. A good practice is to include the longest and shortest chapter titles, plant entries, etc, to show how your treatments will manage those extremes in addition to the more “average” pieces. Along with the PDF, you should deliver an estimate of extent based on design concept and length of final manuscript.

Deliverable: PDF of 15-20 spreads showing all features of proposed design + estimate of final extent

Progress Pages

This stage allows you and Timber to identify any problem areas and adjust the approved design as necessary to keep on-track for first pages. You will deliver 100+ pages of the in-progress layout, built using the final manuscript in a clean, final InDesign document. The editor will supply any corrections needed for first pages.

Deliverable: PDF of 100+ final(ish) pages, packaged InDesign file (links not needed), and updated estimate of final extent

First Pages

These are the pages that will be sent to the editor and author for review so they should be polished and tight. All layout questions should have been addressed at Progress Pages, and any problems encountered during layout should be resolved before submission. These are also the pages that will be indexed, so page flow should be final.

Deliverable: PDF of complete layout + packaged InDesign file (links not needed). If a tint test would be helpful, discuss with in-house contact.

Second Pages

This stage addresses comments and corrections from the author and editor. You will receive the current working InDesign files (in-house designers frequently need to make minor edits to first pages before sending to author, so please work from the files supplied by your Timber contact), a marked-up PDF with editorial corrections, any new art or graphic elements, and an index & photo credits document. Since the book has been indexed, no page flow changes should occur outside of changes specifically requested by your contact.

Deliverable: PDF of complete layout + final packaged InDesign file (links not necessary)