The illustration on the right (7.4 x 9.4 inch original) was clipped from the PEI brochure. This book, with its companion CD-ROM, describes Protection Elite International, a personal protection and investigation firm.
This 16-page book is designed for executives, professionals and public personalities. The goal is a custom, conservative, open look, with new ideas at every page-turn. Everything could have been said in four pages, which would qualify it for mass-mailing postage discounts; it is, however, targeted at those who don't read mass mailings.
Click the picture to view a screen-resolution PDF (980KB, Adobe Acrobat 4.05 Portable Document Format) brochure, or hold down the SHIFT key while you click here to download a copy to your computer.
acrobat reader
Whether brochures, catalogs and books are printed in-house, by a commercial printer, or the local photocopy shop, the trend today is to use PDF documents for masters. Pictures, text, and fonts are gathered-together in one file. We never worry if the right are fonts installed, if page numbers mysteriously change, or colors match. I heartily recommend Adobe's Acrobat Reader, a free download, available for most operating systems from adobe.com.
design notes
The book introduces Protection Elite International services to potential clients. It presents a quality, professional company image, in a format that is easy to find on a stack of papers, with value-added features that encourage the client to keep the CD-ROM and book... and to call when they need these unique services.
As you open the PEI PDF book, keep in mind that pictures are screen-resolution (72 d.p.i.), to minimize file size. The CD-ROM includes a multi-megabyte, high-resolution version, from which the book is printed.
The book is two-page spreads, printed on both sides of the paper; each even-numbered page is paired with the following odd-numbered page. Each spread is a chapter.
The cover, in a separate PDF document, previews the themes that appear in the book. Printed sparingly on a dark gray, coarse stock.
Page one. The value of words is inversely proportional to their number. The first and last paragraphs--only 25 words--add weight to this sparse, almost Oriental, page.
The title bar was created before 9/11/01. The World Trade Center remains as a reminder of the importance of personal and business security.
Page two's text weight is twice that of the previous page. Color is seen only in the sky and earth. It's serious, almost somber.
A parchment sheet is bound in the book before page 3. It's reminiscent of how velum sheets covered color plates in books a century ago. A few lines of text, in the beautiful, italicized Leawoood type face, are centered on the parchment.
The collage on page 3 began life with an indigo background, which drenched the page and darkened the tone of the book. The background is now worn and faded, nearly white on the edges. While the background fades to white, the objects on the page do not. I removed the exposed blade from knife on the right. The 5-rings logo lies behind the image, like a watermark on the page.
The airport picture on page 4 is an illusion; the building and plane were photographed separately at a private airfield, and the sky is from a tropical beach. The group picture was essentially repainted; the tree in the background is reminiscent of Jenny and Forrest's tree. The sky in the third picture (the small jet plane) was changed to be more like other skies on the page, while shadows on the subjects were lightened.
Page 5 begins with kick fighters--the subjects blended-into the background, so I separated and lightened the background. The helicopter portrait has an artificial sky, the tail number is replaced with coarse squares; I lightened the helicopter to separate it from the man. The mirror/gun pictures were taken with a 500MM lens from about 50 feet away (the only parts truly in focus are the tips of the barrels). The Air Force jet has nothing whatsoever to do with the book; it adds personality.
When you lay-open the book on pages 4-5, or view it as facing pages in Acrobat, you'll see that the collage from page 3 is repeated, converted to black and white and fading to nearly white at the edges. It's now a textured background, not the subject.
Page 6 makes one point. It implies more about the value versus the cost of things. The 5-rings logo is a character in a custom font created for PEI; the font is used in company letterheads and forms, to simplify adding the logo to any page.
Page 8 has a very complicated background. The tiger began as color clip-art, the schematic is a Leica camera; all are tied together with a checkerboard. The Harley-Davidson / Porsche / spy-computer image is a single photograph, taken in a garage (another personality picture).
Page 9 took multiple photo sessions and several hours to create. Notice the building and plane repeated from page 4. I stretched and lightened the building, invented the left side, removed the green van, and other bits like that. The watch and Suburban were photographed after lunch, in front of a nice little Mexican restaurant. The background began as a horizontal mountain scene, but stretched and bent and shaded so that little of the original remains. The chess board draws you in, and relates to the previous page. This page is symbolic, with cues just for its intended audience (I personally don't own a wristwatch... let alone a Rolex; my only weapon is a little red Swiss Army Knife). It's not supposed to look real.
Page 9 is more than 500MB of pictures. It takes several minutes just to load the image, and about 35-minutes to export it to a one-layer, 32MB bitmap--If I hadn't done the bitmap, displaying it would've just about choked Acrobat Reader.
I reused the portrait background from page 10 on page 12. Hershel's portrait was challenging, because somebody had painted the whole thing black--you couldn't even see his shoulders.
Pages 14 and 15 began as high-resolution scans of each document. You can read the tiniest print in the high-resolution PDF.
The Samauri on page 16 is another heavily-edited object; it repeats the oriental feel of page 1. A final repeat is the text block on page 16, which is similar to the overlay sheet before page 3, though the font differs. You can see the objects on this page, including the Samauri sword, if you visit PEI.
themes
The philosophy and preferences of PEI are shown in the airplanes and equipment. Several themes repeat, with variations, throughout the book. For example, there is a tiger on page 1 and a dissimilar one on page 8. The title bar is repeated, but it's in color only the first time, and it is mirrored for left and right page headings. The gray background on pages 4-5 is reinvented on page 8--though the image changes. We see the Rolex twice. Of course, the squares on page 8 are reinterpreted on the bottom of page 9.
The five-rings logo appears frequently; sometimes as the font, but often as a three-dimensional image (it's in the collage above, on the door of the Suburban). The final page of the book describes the logo.
colophon
Prepared for reproduction from PDF masters. Layout created with Adobe InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop. Primary fonts are Leawood Book and Adobe Myriad; AmericanTypewriter, WontonICG and a custom font are used sparingly. Photographs were made with Canon cameras. Most photographs were made with 17MM f/4.0 Wide-angle, 50MM f/3.5 Macro or 100MM f/4.0 Macro lenses.
about
We offer documentation and design services, from a page to a book. Plus, we do custom font design, programming in C/C++ and Assembly language, and consulting.
r_harvey
The illustration on the right (7.4 x 9.4 inch original) was clipped from the PEI brochure. This book, with its companion CD-ROM, describes Protection Elite International, a personal protection and investigation firm.