For the Documentary Project, we were told to portray an intriguing person, group, place, idea, or issue. We conducted interviews and gathered secondary research sources to develop a distinct perspective about our subject\u2019s significance in the community and world. Our research paper from English serves as the copy for the book we created in Design and an animated film. This unit emphasizes narrative-style journalism, and I’ve come to realize that I like this type of storytelling a lot.<\/span><\/p>\n I decided to create a documentary on teenage mental health because it is a topic that genuinely interests me and one that I personally struggle with.\u00a0I\u2019m not going to get too in depth about what this project means to me, since I touch on it in my personal essay of the Senior Reflections unit, but I will<\/em> say that this is my favorite project of junior year and, dare I say, my whole high school career (thus far). I\u2019m glad I was able to go out of my comfort zone in reaching out to potential interviewees and learn a lot of important storytelling techniques I can utilize in future projects. On top of that, I was able to create something I was genuinely proud of while<\/em> getting recognized for it.<\/p>\n Essentially, we designed a book in InDesign for our research paper we wrote in our English class. We produced everything from our book entirely on our own- from taking pictures, to formatting the book, to design the front and back covers. The tricky part was that the book and research paper was being created at the same time, so you\u2019re probably wondering, \u201cHow did you know the amount of pages you should make?\u201d The answer is: I didn\u2019t. I simply created the pages in hopes that everything would fit. Most of it fit when I replaced the placeholder text with my research paper, but for the parts that didn\u2019t, I had to FORCE it in. This included subtly changing the font size, decreasing the kerning, and anything I could do to squish the characters together while leaving an ample amount of room for them to breath.Book<\/h2>\n
\nBefore I go into the challenges I faced, let me clarify that I don\u2019t regret choosing to design a book over a magazine article (which was the other option). Being able to design a commercial product is a very valuable asset when applying to jobs, and being able to hold that product in your hands is extremely satisfying.
\nThat being said, InDesign hasn\u2019t been the kindest to me. In fact, the application and I ended on a bitter note. Yes, it was my fault for corrupting the file in a way that made it impossible for me to upload my file to Blurb, which is the program used to actually create the physical book, but I don\u2019t appreciate how it works in that way. All I did was create copies of the file, because I was told it\u2019s always good to have copies of your files… but alas, that pro tip is what screwed me in the end. On the day before the deadline, I had to copy and paste all of my book elements into another file, which was an extreme pain in the butt. Just keep in mind that I had to measure everything out and make sure that all the elements were in the exact same position…
\nSo did I hate every ounce of InDesign\u2019s being when I was creating my book? Absolutely. But would I create another book sometime in the future? You bet your bottom dollar, because art makes it worth it.<\/p>\n