Earlier this week Joan and I decided to have some business cards made with a picture of the Graphically Illustrated Kindle book cover. I checked into several options for getting the business cards made. We chose to use a small printing business not far from where I live.
When I first went to the printing business and spoke with the man at the counter I showed him the book and told him we need the color on the business cards to be like the book cover. He called a young woman named Jamie to come help. It turns out that Jamie is a Graphics Designer. I sent her files for the book cover and for what we want on the back of the cards and also left a copy of the book for her to use.
Yesterday afternoon I received an email from Jamie saying they were not able to get the color "quite right" from the files I sent. She asked for other kinds of files, but I didn't know what she was talking about. So I called her.
I explained to Jamie how I got the file for the book cover ... setting up the blocks, taking a picture, uploading the picture to my computer, and using an application called "Paint" to put the text on the cover and save it in the format needed for the book cover. When I mentioned the Paint application, she asked if that's how I put the color behind the blocks. This isn't what I did and I explained to her how I setup the blocks on a piece of poster board that was the bright yellow color that we wanted, put another piece of the poster board behind the blocks, and took the picture.
When I finished explaining this process, there was a few seconds of total silence.
Then Jamie said that she had never heard of anyone doing anything like this and that it was ingenious.
Later as I was thinking of what Jamie said, I recalled how I had prayed asking God to help me with the book cover, and just "saw" how to do each step to get the cover created. I didn't know how to even start to do this before praying. But after praying it was not hard to do what I "saw" to do and the book cover turned out very nice.
It never occurred to me how different this way was from conventional ways of creating a book cover until hearing Jamie's comments.
One thing that was interesting to me ... as I told her how I setup the blocks with the poster board, Jamie said "So that's how you got those shadows!". This was obviously something that caught her attention. On the book cover you can see shadows from the blocks and I like that very much. Gives a 3-dimensional look to the blocks. This is not something I had even thought of doing. The shadows were just there, on the picture, as I setup the blocks with the poster board and lights as I saw to do.
Jamie used the word "ingenious" to describe the way our book cover was created, and I believe that is accurate and that it is because God showed the way and gave the ability to do this.
Comments from Joan Boney
This entire book project was very unusual from beginning to end.
I was often shown by God how to do the things that I did.
I've never really seen this book as a book... it's really an artwork and some kind of very unusual project of extremely high quality.
The one thing I know for sure, God showed me at the
beginning of this project... never compromise anything ...no matter how
small it is.. if it needs to be changed change it...do whatever you need
to do to make it quality... don't let anything get past... keep this
standard and that's what we have done even to now.
We worked on a handout and we sent a copy of the
handout to our little church group ... the text is alright but the problem was
the printing.
We tried do printing at Staples...my mistake. It did not come close to meeting the standard of the book.
What I heard is it would be like Neiman Marcus gift wrapping one of their items in toilet paper.
When I saw it, I said... this cannot be used... and that's
when Pam and I came up with another idea which is being printed right
now and we will send to our little church group as soon she has it back from printer.
We had to go to a real printer to do this work to get
the quality that we want. I knew it had to be the same quality as the
book.
I'm not exactly sure where it will be used or when it will be used.
I just know it is the same quality as the book itself.
