Graphic Design Service

GRAPHIC DESIGN – Old Book Digitization: Make Book Digital, Book Cover Re-Design, Book Transcription, Book Copyediting, Proofreading, Interior Re-Design & Typesetting

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Book Cover Design | Interior Book Design Typesetting

This project entailed designing a book cover and the interior book design for print on Amazon KDP, for client Herbert T Owens Jr., The book, titled “Simply Herbs,” required a visually appealing and professional cover that would attract interested readers, and a beautiful color interior.

Simply Herbs - Reverent Herbert T. Owens Jr. Book Cover Design Project - Paperback Book Cover Designer - Book Cover Design - Interior Book Design - Typesetting
Simply Herbs – Reverent Herbert T. Owens Jr. Book Cover Design Project – Paperback Book Cover Designer – Book Cover Design – Interior Book Design – Typesetting

The book is a paperback with dimensions of 6″x9″.

The design process included selecting appropriate imagery, typography, and color schemes that would reflect the essence of the content, while also ensuring the cover stood out in both digital and physical marketplaces.

The goal was to create a cover that effectively communicates the book’s theme and appeals to its target audience.

Book Cover Design by Content & Design Services

Book Interior Design Typesetting by Content & Design Services

Project Details

GRAPHIC DESIGN – Old Book Digitization: Make Book Digital, Book Cover Re-Design, Book Transcription, Book Copyediting, Proofreading, Interior Re-Design & Typesetting

Scope
All-in-one Book overhaul service where an old book was digitized. A new Word document created, and the entire book re-edited, re-formatted, typeset, an updated book cover designed, and self-publishing assistance was provided.

About

This project entailed a comprehensive suite of services for the book Essence Of A SAGA: A Complete History Of The Oldest Black Baptist Congregation West Of The Allegheny Mountains Historic Pleasant Green Missionary Baptist Church.

The clients required multiple services including old book digitization, book cover re-design, converting the book interior from PDF to Word document, content editing, typesetting, and publishing on Amazon KDP.

The book, a detailed historical account, needed to be preserved and made accessible in a modern format. The project involved ensuring the book’s design and content were updated while maintaining historical accuracy and integrity.

Problem

The clients, Herbert T. Owens Jr., and Rev. T.H. Peoples Jr., from Pleasant Green Missionary Baptist Church, needed to modernize and digitize a historical book, titled, Essence Of A SAGA: A Complete History Of The Oldest Black Baptist Congregation West Of The Allegheny Mountains Historic Pleasant Green Missionary Baptist Church.

The project was a very personal one for the clients, since this would be the 2nd and updated version of the church history since it’s inception in 1970.

Since the original manuscript has been lost, and the previous designer did not have the design files anymore, we needed to start from scratch.

The main focus of this project was to have the physical book scanned, and then digitize every page again, and then re-design the book cover and interior so that it as closely resembled the original 1st version as possible.

At the outset, it would be a challenging project, since we did not have any original digital files, such as a Word document to work from, nor a brand guide. A digital file would help us understand which type of font was used, the spacing, original images, and so on.

Solution

  • STEP 1 – The Word document of the original book was lost, therefore, to re-create this book and update it to a new version, the client mailed us a copy of the first version of the book. We patiently awaited the physical books arrival, and we and the clients prayed that it would not get lost in the mail, since this was the only copy left. Thankfully, the book arrived, and we got right to work.

 

  • STEP 2 – Our first priority was to ensure we keep the original, 1st version of the book in the best state possible so that we could re-assemble it after the scanning process. Therefore, we carefully dislodged the cover and pages, taking care not to cause any damage. We could of course scan the book as is, but since this was a paperback (softcover book) you would have had to hold the book open, and black shadows would cover the images and text, making it hard to work with later.

 

  • STEP 3 – We scanned the book cover, and the 241 pages. It was a lengthily process, since each page had to be reviewed after scan to ensure premium quality.

 

  • STEP 4 – Once scanning of each page was completed, we assembled the 241 pages into a single PDF, which ended up being a very large file. Now, the biggest step of all started, whereby we had to transcribe every page so that we could have a Word file to edit and update. The 2nd version of the book was going to be updated for the Church celebration of its many years in service to it’s members, so we had to have a Word file. We tried a lot of software to get the job done, but ultimately, without AI at the time, we had to check every PDF page for errors and issues introduced when converted to Word. We also had to ensure the exact text layout was followed exactly as in the first version.

 

  • STEP 5 – The clients send us the updated content to add to the book, and the new chapter additions.

 

  • STEP 6 – The entire manuscript was now put together in a Word document, and we worked for almost 2 – 3 months on a complete copy edit, line edit, and the a final proofread to ensure it was more inline with modern publishing practices of our day and age.

 

  • STEP 7 – We started the careful redesign of every page of the 2nd version, while holding true to the layout and presentation of the 1st version. This was very challenging from a design perspective, since we had to control how words flow from one page to the other, and could not use auto flow.

 

  • STEP 8 – All of the images used in the manuscript was lost, therefore, we again rescanned the pages with images to a higher DPI. The problem was that these images was a bad quality to start with, so the client asked us if we could improve the quality of the images with modern technology. So we set to work on editing every photo in the book, which took about 1-month to complete, since there were a lot of images.

 

  • STEP 9 – With the interior design and typesetting of the 2nd version of Essence of a Saga almost complete, we re-designed the cover as closely as possible to the original cover. This meant we had to recreate the tree graphic from scratch, and also find out which typography styles were used.

 

  • STEP 10 – With the book interior typesetting and book cover done, we put everything together into a PDF file, and send it off to the clients for final review. After several iterations, we had a final version ready.

 

  • STEP 11 – We helped the clients setup their Amazon KDP account, and also helped upload their manuscript PDF and cover to Amazon KDP on their behalf.

 

  • STEP 12 – With all the deliverables complete, we handed over the final files to the clients, which were a final Word document so that it can be updated in future to a 3rd version of the book if desired. A PDF printable file of Essence of a Sage, and the final PDF Cover Design printable file.

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Client Review

Herbert T. Owens Jr. & Rev. T.H. Peoples Jr

Graphic Design Service
Essence of a Saga - Old Book Re-Design . . .
Thank you for all your hard work.

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