Practice brief: double page spread design for hobby book

Practice brief for Briefbox.

The brief:

A hobby magazine are looking to bring out a modern and playful book called ‘101 things you need to try’. The aim of the book is to have a range of diverse illustrations of some interesting hobbies or things you generally enjoy doing that other people may not have tried. Think of your favourite hobby and create a double page spread to explain what is is and to get people interested in it.

Cross stitch isn't a hobby of mine but in the process of making this I might have convinced myself to give it a go 😂

For the body text, I wanted to use a minimal sans serif font so as not to detract from the intricacy of the cross stitch lettering, and I felt Gill Sans Light worked nicely.

I included a stylised '99' as I liked the idea of the hobbies being numbered from 1-101 throughout the book.

I chose to have page dark and one page white, just to make the spread pop and increase the contrast. I also used neon colours within the cross stitch lettering to give it a more modern feel than what you might traditionally associate with cross stitch.

The second design in this shot is my original design, which I hoped I could get away with when I mocked it up in an actual book spread, but the gutter really swallowed the text. I kind of knew that would happen but I really wanted to make that lovely symmetrical design work. Oh well! It'd work nicely in poster form 😊