Guided Meditation Book

Layout, Typography, Art Direction, Visual Design, Copywriting, Image Generation with Midjourney

Tools: Indesign, Midjourney 4, Figma

Solo Project | Timeframe: Ten weeks

Overview: The intent of this project was to marry classic design skills like layout, book cover design, and typography with an exploration into AI Midjourney generated images.

Demographic: This book is a tool for yoga teachers who teach meditation and for those interested in learning more about guided meditation!

Challenge: How can I present a 49-page Google doc of unformatted text about a specific style of guided meditation and make it feel calm and enjoyable for those looking to learn more about meditation?

Furthermore, how can I design a book cover and curate imagery that will make people want to learn more about guided meditation with little to no previous experience? A secondary objective was to discover what generating images through Artificial Intelligence was like and if I could create prompts that resulted in a consistent look and feel.

Solution: It is my intention for this book to be both a practical teaching tool for yoga teachers and serve as a calm meditative experience for a reader who currently knows nothing about meditation. I accomplished this by curating calming images that reflect the state of being of the practice and by choosing typography and making layout decisions that will bring the reader to feel a sense of ease.

Deliverables

Flip through the book

Designed to feel calm and meditative to flip through and functional for teachers

Select Spreads

Process

Imagery

The imagery I generated for the book was inspired by impressionist painters like Monet to imitate the dreamlike state of being in a guided meditation. The ethereal thick paint strokes and warm colors reflect the experience of participating in the practice of yoga nidra. The images also serve as a means to navigate the book swiftly so that teachers can quickly find the beginning of each passage.

Typography

To simulate the dimly lit working environment of a yoga teacher I made sure to choose typography and leading that would be legible for teachers using the printed book as a script in a guided mediation class. It was also essential for the layout of the book to have a generous amount of negative space so that the type had room to breathe and the reader's eyes had moments where they could rest.

My perspective leading into start of this project.

I did some research into the best methods for engineering prompts.

I established the aesthetic style for the imagery created by Midjourney.

To speed up image generation I created a style in Midjourney that can be used repeatedly.

The original Google Doc I started off with.

I went through a series of typefaces before settling on Calluna.

I printed the text with various leading and body copy sizes to ensure that it was legible in dimly lit rooms and that it felt like there was enough breathing room around the copy.

The Google Doc freshly flowed into Adobe Indesign was very dense and unformatted.

I met with Jill, the SCCA Typography expert, to calibrate on the proper path moving forward.

Designing the Cover

When designing the cover, I had a moment where I wanted the book to have a more DIY punk-rock look and feel to honor the affordable and welcoming community I used to teach these guided meditation classes for. However, after careful deliberation, I went with the AI-generated imagery on the cover to match the tone and feel of existing imagery and typography. I also tested a breadth of solutions for different layouts for the front cover, back cover, and spine.

Final Insights

I am grateful for this opportunity to play with typography and layout on such a wide scale with words that I lovingly crafted. I am proud of myself for successfully managing my time and defining a set of parameters for this project to move it closer to completion. Currently, my friend, copy editor, and fellow yogi is editing the text so that I can move into production and sell this book which I am very excited to share with others!

Since I am still hesitant to sell a book with generated images, as I do not wish to profit off of potentially uncompensated and uncredited artists, I will have to regenerate the images using Adobes Firefly (ethically sourced generated images) or create art for each of the pages. My goal is to have this completed by the end of the summer of 2023.