Resorts at Sea: July update

Ok, so I may be putting the cart before the horse on this one.

The bulk of my research so far is in digital form, and one can only look at PDFs for so long until the eyes start moving independently of each other.

To take a break, I started sketching page layouts just in case things ever progress to the point of actual publication. Yes, there's Blurb, and Xlibris, but I'm still old school when it comes to my books -- no Kindle for me -- and I'd like to aim for a traditional publisher; there are several dedicated to maritime topics.

(Since this will be an image-heavy project, I can also see a companion video, and perhaps even a traveling exhibit with replicas of the furnishings and art in question. If not for my involvement with the New Harmonies exhibit, I dare say I wouldn't have even thought of the latter.)

Right now, I'm looking at the finished (written) product as a kind of exhibition-auction catalog hybrid. Since the time period coincides with a break from traditional interiors in ocean liners, I started looking online at modern art exhibition catalogs. (And more PDFs ... *sigh* ...)

Anyway ...

Pages are -- at this point -- 8"x10". The body of the text is Palatino, a typeface created in the late 1940s, and for the headers, why not use the granddaddy of all modern fonts:  Helvetica, from 1957.

Right now there will be at least 15 sections each detailing a ship or class of ship. Each section, as shown above, will start with a full page graphic taken from a relevant advertisement from my collection with maybe some text from that ad. I like the white space on the facing page and I'm toying with carrying some over to the main graphic. Not sure yet. I like the Delta Line ads of the 1950s (example below) with their photos in different geometric shapes; individual pictures, yet pieces of a whole. It might be worth exploring.

Succeeding pages (above) will be clean as well. Right now, I've two columns. Three may be crowding it a bit, but they would offer more flexibility with image sizes and placement. Now I can get three if I do the layouts horizontally this way ...

Hmm ... I see some advantages, but I'm not completely sold on the first two pages. Probably because I scanned the main graphic with a vertical format in mind.

Knowing how the information will be placed may ultimately decide what I end up using. Not that editorial exceptions won't be made, I'm sure. :)

Postscript

I stated "no Kindle for me" towards the beginning of this post. While I may break down eventually, I'm sorry, I love a book in my hands. One that I interlibrary loaned several times while in high school finally came into my possession via AbeBooks. No, not the actual book, but thanks to whatever printing process they used, it smelled the same, and you cannot get that through Kindle. (Not yet anyway.)