Heyday Books & The Great Valley Center

August 13th—January 3rd; 4 months

To develop from scratch all content, photography, editorial, charts, graphs cover and interior design for the 112 page book. Take care of all printing and binding and final delivery of projects.

Heyday Books approached Alian Design to create what they called an "instant book". And that is what we did. In a short 4 months the book was done and delivered.

Alian Design met with Heyday Books (the publisher) and the Great Valley Center (the client) in early August to begin discussing the concept for the book; Its progressive evolution from section to section, what sort of message it needed to have and what photography, charts and graphs needed to be generated. A proposed page count of 112 pages was suggested and Alian Design was to compile, gather and manage all of the content development.

Going back to our studio we began a vigorous process of searching the internet for hundreds of images, articles and graphs. We contacted publishers, authors and scanned through hundreds of related books and newspapers. This research resulted in a final, rough draft and several cover concepts hinting at the idea of a blueprint. This first draft was nearly 224 pages—quite a bit over the proposed page count.

Mocking up the book in its initial incarnation Alian met with the publisher and client for a first pass review. The client was floored—we nailed it! But not so fast. There was a lot of thinning out to do. A lot of what we had thought—and spent a ton of time researching and gathering into somewhat of a cohesive piece—was getting ripped to shreds. Arguments were posed, expert opinions were noted and in 4 drives between Marin and Madera we came to a layout that was somewhat comparable to the book that was published. All the meantime we had hired a chart and graph designer and photographer who hit all 8 counties featured in the book to try to get the ideal custom shots needed for the book.

A few mock ups later and a very happy publisher and client we started the grueling process of preparing the document for press. Editors were sourced, proofreading commenced and final images were shot, color corrected and plugged into the layout. Alan Hebel spent the last 2 weeks prior to press tracking down the various sources for the countless images that were gathered for the piece. Contacting public libraries, calling publishers of various books and tracking down Getty, Flickr and Corbis images and making whatever final purchases and deals needed—Alan packaged the files for press and fought the final battle of getting a decent uncoated stock and soy inks from the printer at a decent price.

Printed locally by Watermark press the book was turned around and delivered in 3 weeks to the client, the publisher and a few advance copies to Alian Design.

Rejoice followed...

These are some of the early concepts for the book and ideas that shaped the final look.

While it is rare that Alian Design takes on the full editorial process and management of a book—we have done it for several titles in our arsenal and are happy to report that we thrive on this kind of challenge and over all involvement in a books life. Please contact us for your "instant book" idea—And we'll whip something up for you;)

Heyday Books, GVC, KGET news spot, San Joaquin Valley Blueprint, Alian News/Blog feature. Related books include Massive Change and An Inconvenient Truth.