Handwriting Typography Round 2

Handwritten book colophon

Friday was the second, and final, session of my handwriting as typography workshop at the San Francisco Center for the Book. Our project was creating a small book from a 500 word prose in our own handwriting. 

Chapter II of Through the Looking Glass

My prose was an excerpt from Chapter II, The Garden of Live Flowers, in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. As most people know, both Alice in Wonderland and Through the Glass are mainly composed of dialog which, it turns out, is quite hard to layout in handwriting. Our instructor, Georgianna Greenwood, helped me decide to make the dialog run-on so it would look like prose and be easier to layout.

Ruling pages

Before we could get down to writing, we had the tedious task of ruling all the pages. 

Cover

I was thrilled to see the flower and paisley print cover paper Georgianna chose. It fit my prose perfectly.

Opening/half title page

The first page you see when you open a book is called a half title or dedication page. Because my excerpt began in the middle of a chapter, I chose to use the first sentence of the chapter instead.

Title page

My title page came out a little crooked, it's hard to center your handwriting when you don't have a computer.

Title image

Title image and chapter opening spread

There is often a title image or ornament next to the chapter opening,traditionally on the right. I chose to do a line drawing of a house and garden for the title image because, in the beginning of The Garden of Live Flowers, Alice tries to get to the garden but keeps being lead back to a house. 

Double page spread

It's hard to tell from the picture but, every time the flowers speak, the text changes to green. I did this to make the run-on dialog a bit easier to understand.

This book wasn't perfect but it gave me many ideas for future art projects, especially because I love writing and literature so much.