The Secret Garden
The Secret Garden
Embedded Files
Artwork sourced from Text Books of Ornamental Design: Nature in Ornament, by Lewis F. Day. Published 1894, London: B. T. Batsford
Deliberately designed to be aesthetically pleasing and legible in both black and white and full color printing
Bleed has been cropped from the images here; artwork extends through the bleed in the original files for ease of trimming
Finished April 2025
Pages: 426
Title Page
Title Page
Used isolated chrysanthemums from the body page borders
Copyright
Copyright
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Page numbers on the left instead of the right
Uneven text frame shape + long chapter titles made it difficult and awkward to use tab stops; putting the number first with an m-dash looked nicer and made formatting simpler
General Design Overview:
Everything is in shades of brown for softer contrasts, so that the design feels worn and faded
Fonts are red-browns to have enough contrast for legibility
Frames are yellow-browns and creams for softness
Bamboo frame tangled in plants to evoke an overgrown trellis
Plants in the front matter and chapter start pages were selected and placed to feel weedy, like an untended garden
Body pages have fuller plant matter with more flowers because I wanted them to feel (1) like a dense bower, through which the garden is glimpsed; (2) like plants that have not been pruned in a long time and have gone wild (like the moor; like the 'Magic' that healed Colin); (3) something abandoned but still beautiful (like Colin, like his father, like Mary, like the garden)
Chapter Start
Chapter Start
The hardest page to design in the whole book: visually balancing the chapter titles (which varied quite a bit in length), the drop cap, the chapter number, and the illustrated frame was finicky
The composition lines draw the eye to both the title and the dropcap, so they needed to not be competing for attention. They also needed to not disappear entirely from notice
The vinework along the top is pretty but busy, so layering important text either over or under it would have been unreadable
Body, Left
Body, Left
Page numbers in top outer corners, on a leaf
Not many options given the crowded nature of the frame
Needed to maximize available space for text body (89k words)
Best place to put them that didn't feel crowded or awkward
Body, Right
Body, Right
Went with serif fonts for the text bodies because it was cleaner and felt more refined
Used handwritten and cursive fonts for chapter titles, headers, and the TOC to carry through a touch of human messiness
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