Final Work on my Sketching People Book

Last week I officially finished work on my urban sketching book. Last Monday, my editor sent me a print-out (just done on their office printer) of how it looks so far. This was for us to go through together, over the phone, ironing out any remaining issues.

This is the first time I have seen the design of certain elements, like the title page and contents above. I just chose images, then the fairies turned them into something lovely! I am very pleased with how the chapter headers are all looking too. These were the images I chose when I was at the meeting down in London, but the graphics has now been fine-tuned and they are looking really punchy:

There are still the colour proofs to check, which are due in 2 or 3 weeks, and my final job will be to check over the re-anglicised version of the text, in just over a month. My English text has already been Americanised for the Barron's edition. All the main proofing and checking is done on this version, then it is turned back again to UK English. At which stage, I will quickly run my eye over things, to make sure the punctuation fits with the meaning I want to get across (control freak...).

As far as the real work is concerned though, I finished it off on Saturday. Hurrah! 

Earlier in the week, I went though my print-out, troubleshooting remaining anomalies and marking it up in red. I was looking at the image placement and graphics, re-reading through my text and looking at 'holes'. The holes were problems with guest images - people whose work I had selected, but who could not be contacted, or couldn't find the sketchbook the work was in. 

I was on the phone to my editor for nearly 2 hours last Wednesday afternoon, going through the whole book, pointing up things I felt still needed tweaking and talking through any last-minute text which needed writing to fit the new, replacement guest images we were choosing to fill the holes. Then on Saturday, I spent the day doing all the bits and pieces of final work.

The design team did a great job on the kit-list page, don't you think? Remember when I was talking about it all being photographed? My print-out is only A3, but the actual book is larger, so I can't wait to see the full-size proofs, where it will be all glossy and gorgeous too!