Creating a Scamp: Part One

 A scamp is the base form of how a piece is going to look and be laid out. This can then be used as a template for creating the final design of the product, in this case the e-pub, as in InDesign it is very easy to edit and swap out images and text without changing the format. 
This was very helpful, considering the fact it then allowed more experimentation and consideration for how the design will look while still selecting the right images and specific design work to include into the design. It also allowed a more clinical look at how the design and overall look will be, as the placeholder text and 'images' doesn't distract from the general layout and sometimes it is easy to get distracted by the pretty pictures and not actually consider the layout. 
Creating a scamp also helped with setting up the master page designs on InDesign, it allowing quick changes in designs without having to go through and redraw the whole thing or edit images multiple time, which then saves a lot of time in the long run. 
When creating my next design I shall defiantly form some kind of scamp or template first and try more knew layouts and design ideas to ensure that all of the work looks unique but also cohesive. 

Creating it as a scamp first also allows a full-scale mock-up, meaning that sizes and layout will be exact to how the final product will look. This really helps with creating the design as it means that it will be clear if the sizing for something will be too small and thus unclear or too large and overwhelming to the page.

Another benefit of a scamp, is that it means a design can start to be formatted and created before the designer has a clear picture of how they want to create a design. In this case I was unsure on how I wanted the basic background for every page to look, I knew I didn't want the full page to be some kind of pattern as that would be very overwhelming with text and then images on the top of it. Having my background pattern stand-in as this pink box allowed an easy visual way to work out how the design could look, using the block colour to also work out transparency and then ease of viewing on top of that. It allowed me to come up with the idea without having to create multiple designs in different sizes to see if they would work, instead streamlining the process to one size I know I need, a size that can then be used all the way through meaning there won't be any pattern going to waste. 

Then after getting the master pages done it was then up to adding in the placeholder text and image boxes, which would depend on the pages. This was another benefit of the scamp, being that each page could be labelled with the number of columns and specific layout that the client wanted, ensuring that I got this correct to match their brief so that they would be happy. 
If I continued this scamp I would defiantly test out more formats, especially for the text, working out what type of text would go on each page, how that would be specifically laid out; be it centre aligned, left aligned or justified. This just came off as rather difficult for me, as the placeholder text won't be exactly like the final text, there could be more or less words and paragraphs.
I would also create a secondary scamp that then builds upon this one, looking at specific colours for the target audience, how that would work together within the design without the pictures. This would and will be the second stage before I then go into creating the final design, building upon this scamp and comparing it to other layouts to ensure that it is as effective as I can produce.