Alphabet Book

Z is for zipper (from $1 children’s purse from a flea market)

A few things I learned while making my first book with Apple’s iPhoto software. I’ve been waiting for the upgrade that would let me do two-sided pages.

I’ve been toying with the idea for an alphabet book for my friends’ daughter for some time — paying careful attention to her vocabulary and how reading is integrated into her life. Seems to be a common ritual before bedtime, so I intentionally tried to limit references to food.

So, out with ice cream and jelly.

I also wanted to pick up on words she knew. Colors are popular, so I made those lettered pages with four pictures of different items that could be explored.

The last part was familiarity. These are pictures of things she sees throughout her day. Family, animals at the zoo or aquarium and whatnot. I didn’t necessarily sanitize pictures to be ultra-simple. Some are decidedly complex with lots of detail to engage her mind. My feeling is that kids are often bored with dumbed down toys. Give a toddler a real cell phone versus a Fisher Price one, and I can bet you money which one they grab.

Some other insight on process:

I didn’t use the type tool in iPhoto, instead, pages with letters are actually an image imported as a ‘photograph’ after being set in photoshop.

The glossy paper and binding are nice, albeit there are still some artifacts. Resolution is quite good, but not remarkable.

If a photo looks at all dingy, BRIGHTEN BRIGHTEN BRIGHTEN. If I reprinted this, I would definitely pump up saturation and contrast on a few images.

It’s not cheap. Smaller books with fewer pages would not only be easier to produce, but much easier on the wallet. Oh, and I need an editor, there is a typo. Time for a reprint.

I took a few photos to document some inside pages