HOW TO CREATE ILLUSTRATED POETRY

The landscape of poetry is changing. Step aside, sonnets, for what makes great poetry now - is plain unexpectedness. Some poets create surprise through short anecdotes, some through unique formatting on the pages - and the upcoming KREST Publishers release 'Love and Lies' does it through illustrations in combination with the others. Illustrated poetry is not entirely new - in fact, poet Kwanele Sifunda drew inspiration for an illustrated anthology from the modern poets like Rupi Kaur. Here is a rundown of the process it takes to create an illustrated anthology: 

 

PLANNING YOUR ILLUSTRATIONS

 Dependent on the amount of time available for the book, the poems may be ordered before choosing illustrations, or the illustrations may be chosen first. 'Love and Lies' had a tight timeline of 10 weeks, meaning there was not a second to spare! The poems to be illustrated were chosen beforehand so that the drawing could be done while editing went on. Self-publishers may not have this time constraint and what they often do is create a layout board before starting anything else. A layout board depicts the pages of your book as squares, and in each square is a note about which poem or illustration will appear on that page.

The entire anthology may be illustrated or they may be interspersed throughout for a nice surprise. 'Love and Lies' has a total of 30 interior illustrations, across 136 pages. Traditional publishers work on project budgets, and this determines the number of illustrations that go in. Self-publishers get to determine to their own budget for their illustrations. 

Once the number of illustrations have been determined, it's time to choose the pictures! If it's a children's book, the pictures should be about storytelling. Think along the lines of the Dr Seuss or the Gruffalo books. All the pictures are of scenes that happen in the story/poem. Adult poetry has symbolic illustrations. The pictures are loosely connected to the messages, emotions or meaning of the poem. See the 'Love and Lies' illustrations below, for a better idea of symbolic illustrations:

A poem that references difficult memories as a song on repeat, is accompanied by a picture of a broken and battered violin.

 

 

 

A poem that likens tired love to a drying river is accompanied by a picture of wilting, dying flowers.

A poem about self-love is accompanied by a picture of a person blossoming like a rose.

 

CREATING YOUR DRAWINGS

Poetry sets far better with minimalist or line art drawings as compared to heavy pictures (with the exception of children's books, of course, which need large and vibrant pictures.) It is important that your illustrator understands the aesthetic of the book. 

 It is also important to choose an illustrator with sufficient knowledge of your publishing format. If you are creating an eBook, for example, you can work with any digital artist or graphic designer. Things get a bit tricky when printing a paperback/hardcover so it is important to choose someone who has knowledge of print media. They will need to know how to work with colour models, print resolution, different paper types etc. They should also be available to you at any time as the printer might ask you to make adjustments on the images.

KREST is lucky to have worked with talented illustrator Bryson Byroo on 'Love and Lies'. All the interior illustrations seen in this blog post - and a host of other fantastic ones seen in the book - are done by Bryson Byroo. Contact details will be included below, should you be in search of an illustrator for your own anthology!

The stunning cover seen below was originally digitally created by talented local Jodi Uys, and recreated for print by Bryson Byroo. Should you need any digital work done, contact details for Jodi Uys will be listed below.

Interior artwork done by illustrator Bryson Byroo.

Cover originally designed by Jodi Uys and recreated for print by Bryson Byroo

 

Illustrations need to be sent as png, svg or pdf images so that your layout designer can adjust things where necessary. Some programs illustrators use: Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, Adobe Photoshop. It is also possible to work with scanned images, but the industry is moving in a slightly more technological direction.

HOW TO LAY OUT YOUR ANTHOLOGY

A variety of programs exist for typesetting. The most prevalent in the industry is Adobe InDesign because of its variety of tailoring features - however, it may be difficult to use for those without a technical background, and is expensive.. Other paid programs include QuarkXpress and MS Publisher (this one is relatively easy to get the ropes of, although little support is available when you do run into trouble.) Microsoft Word is not recommended unless you don't have access to anything else, but it is free and easy to use.

The layout designer you choose, again, must have some knowledge of print principles. Laying out poetry in a book is different from creating social media cards. You need to take into account that A5 books have a lot of white space when placing short poems, and long lines in a verse may run over onto the next line, requiring hanging indents. Text will need to be balanced across both sides of a double page so that the eye is drawn equally to both of them. 

It is ideal to get a layout designer to do this, but should you want to attempt it yourself, here is a crash course in poetry book design that will get you started nicely.

Extract from 'Love and Lies' by Kwanele Sifunda, depicting text and illustrating falling within a pale green typesetting margin.

 

GOING INTO PRINT WITH YOUR ILLUSTRATED ANTHOLOGY

Before sending your print-ready document to the printer, do a few last minute checks. Is your page count divisible by 4? Are your margins alternating correctly to allow space for binding the spine? 

Printers help with most sizing issues and touch-ups. Where you need to do your duty is with the colour scale and the finishes.

Contrary to what one might think - it is the colour printing where you don't need to make special concessions. If you have done an adult illustrated anthology, however, it is likely you have included minimalist line illustrations in black and white. And believe it or not there is more than one shade of black! It is important that your illustrator and layout person have set all your artwork to 'single process colour black' before this goes to print... otherwise you will have an angry printer on your hands, because they've had to use all their colour ink to create different shades of black!

Also make sure you've selected the correct finish for your cover - a glossy finish or matte finish (shown below.)

A gloss finish cover - more shiny

A matte finish - more plain

LOVE AND LIES RELEASING SOON!

'Love and Lies' by Kwanele Sifunda will be releasing Saturday 3 October 2020. The anthology will become available as both paperback and eBook from the KREST online bookstore, and as ebooks on Amazon US and Kobo UK. It is an anthology well worth the purchase. To close off, here's another tempting bite from the book!

Contact KREST Publishers: info@krestpublishers.co.za

Contact illustrator Bryson Byroo:  brysonbyroo@gmail.com

Contact digital artist Jodi Uys: thelittlefenfox@gmail.com