Reverie
GRAPHICS, SOURCING, ART DIRECTION, Book Design
Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Aftereffects
Reverie is a heartwarming fanart book project based on the series Jujutsu Kaisen's touching bonds between the cast. The book consisted of 4 organizers and 30 artists. As one of the organizers I took on the role of Graphic Designer and Book Designer while training and receiving support from an intern. The theme of this project is in its name : Reverie.
Intros GIFS
After finalizing and recruiting the project's artist list, I quickly got to creating introduction videos for the team in order to take advantage of the initial hype around the hit series and let potential customers be aware that this project is starting. A few of the artists on the list also had their own fans, so we wanted to reach a large audience early on to create enough marketing momentum from the beginning to the end.
Cover Design
I had already envisioned a fitting design for the cover and enlisted the help of one of the artists on our team to help it come to life. In the series, the main characters make a trio that parallels the adults of the series who used to have their own trio. That created a present vs past relationship and I wanted to depict the feelings of the characters through that. Reverie is about nostalgic memories after all. I created a composition where the present trio would be face front and close up on the cover while the past trio would be on the back and facing away from the main trio. This would create the idea that the past is already gone but their feelings and memories would stay in tact with the footprints.
Page Compositions
The book was split into the four seasons of the year to represent the passage of time. The art reflected this and we divided and placed artists in different seasons based on their preferences. To ensure the book and seasons were cohesive I sent in mood boards for each season to inspire their colors and settings. To add to the theme, I researched and sourced a local printer for linen type paper, which is often associated with nostalgia and memories, in order to create an end product unique to other books in the market while leaning into its theme.
Once all the art was sent in, it was my job to create page compositions to pair the most well suited art together into one spread. I put into consideration the overall colors, content, and drawing styles of the artists to decide what to pair together. The images shown are some of the page compositions. For Spring (top image,) I paired the pieces with the characters outdoors together. In addition they both had a lineless style, making it easy to tie them together as a spread. I used this type of guideline to compile the rest of the pieces together.
Preorders, Marketing, Shipping
I made several graphics for our marketing campaign to advertise the purchase of the Reverie book and/or bundle as well as graphics for the store. We had three different three different tiers, each with different items. We decided on a preorder system as we wanted to make sure we didn't over or understock for this one time sale. During this period we took to sourcing our merchandise by talking to various factories. The team lead and I both had some past experience in sourcing so we were quickly able to choose a manufacturer to create samples.
We ended our preorder period with a total of 600 orders after two months of keeping the store open. After confirming our samples and logistics we placed our orders with our manufacturers and waited for them to come in. To keep our customers updated, I staged, photographed, and edited merchandise photos as they came in. Afterwards all that was left was to pack and ship out.
Final Thoughts
This project was tied up after shipping fulfillment for the team ended. I have helped run and design graphics for several other book projects, but Reverie has been my most favorite and the most meaningful for me because of the amazing team I'm proud to have been part of. The final product turned out beautiful, even more so knowing all the research and sourcing I had put into it. I hope that our customers and the rest of the team loved it as much as I did!
