update!

With my type choices ... chosen ... and researched, I decided to jump in and tackle the project of figuring out how exactly to layout a pocket accordion book in InDesign. I'm terrible at working in stages, and like to make the product as I go - if that makes any sense - so starting to work in ID really got me more excited about the direction of the book. The mock-ups photoed (excuse the i-phone) are scaled for 8.5 x 11 but I'll print the finals on tabloid so each pocket will be 3.75" x 3" - large enough, in other words, to not only have some weight but to also hold the characters that will slip in the pocket.

Here are some shots of my screen after a lot of trouble-shooting. For one thing, figuring out how many columns to create caused me way more trial-and-error than I'd like to admit. I'd committed myself to featuring 6 faces, but it took a sad amount of time to realize that the four-column fold would be the ideal solution - leaving 2 extra "pockets" to be transformed in their emptiness into the front and back covers. (I found this tutorial which, while kind of silly, made me really excited to add book-board covers and stitch the pockets - I'm a sucker for stitching and also think it will work nicely into my concept...) The second shot shows the page 1 and page 2 as well as (off the pasteboard) my aide to visualizing how this thing would fold up.

...But back to my concept. What exactly is that?

Well, loosely defined... The characters I'm featuring are all kind of neat typographic stories (or at least, I hope to make them so). Right now, I'm working in the default ID color palette - this is usually the first thing I change when I open a document because when are these colors ever appropriate? But I love the idea of referencing the print process with these - pure Cyan, pure Magenta, pure Yellow, and a standard mix for red, navy, and green. It's not a modern story, though, and digital printing is... so I threw in an art nouveau pattern on the background to bridge the gap, add some playfulness, and reference the inspiration for the project - mrs. eaves. (the font was created in 1996 based on the classic baskerville, who in real life had taken the real-life mrs. eaves as his mistress after her husband died.)

At any rate, beyond sizing, it took some playing to get the pages to print correctly. They're built double-sided, since i'll fold the text up to create the pockets. This means the text blocks have to be rotated 180 degrees and arranged right to left, rather than left to right.

I think it's finally gaining steam though, and I can't wait to bring these characters to life!