I’m working my way through the elements for the first lesson of Sketchbook Design. I started by finishing the previously unfinished pages and adding elements to make said pages look better. Lesson one has seven different elements one can use, and here are three of them.
Adding the border around this color swatching chart really helped this page come together in a way I like a lot now. This page was one of those that sat for a long time in the “I don’t like it but what do I do with it?” arena. It is amazing how much the border helped. So did adding the stenciled column, but in many ways that feels like it reinforces that border even more. That’s where the eyes goes, right to those colors and it’s little border. This page also has that strong text block, which I like for the journaling, but it’s the border I felt did the best work for this page.
For this one I had those weather cards just hanging out there, and the collage ephemera just floating. I wondered how to create a cohesive page. I tried this strong color block, and suddenly this page really came together and looks like one page, rather than random elements. A few pages early I have a solid color background with weather cards on it, but the color block somehow makes it look even more intentional than the solid background. The horizontal aspect gives it shape and movement. I also notice the choice of color strongly impacts the feeling and the color story, perhaps coordinating with other pages in the sketchbook as a whole.
I held the white at the bottom and the right side of the color chart to really help the colors here shine. This page is to document this purchase, and keeping the design asymmetrical with that nice white edge makes this one feel almost soothing to me.
