I conceived and drew the illustrations entirely on a Macintosh computer (initially an LC with 4 megs of RAM and a 40 meg hard disk, later a 660 AV with 8 megs of RAM and an 80 meg hard disk). The initial sketches were created in Aldus Superpaint, using the pencil tool to create bitmap roughs. These were saved as PICT drawings, and imported into Adobe Illustrator as templates.The illustrations were then redrawn in black and white using the freehand tool, and saved as Illustrator 1.1 files. These were imported into Aldus Freehand, where they were assembled with the text (ITC Kabel). The Pantone colours were selected and applied. This file was sent to the printer, output as negatives at 2400 dpi and 150 lpi on an Agfa Accuset, and printed on a Heidelberg Sormz press at Imprimerie Gauvin in Hull, Quebec, Canada.
To create graphics files for Web browsers, the original Freehand files were adjusted slightly. All masks were removed, the colours were redefined as RGB, and the files were saved in PICT2 format. These PICT2 files were then imported into GIF Converter and saved in GIF format. An introduction together with the graphic files were then assembled in HTML by InterAccess Technology Corp.
Color representation varies slightly depending on which browser you use. We have found Mosaic slightly more accurate than Netscape so far.
... Sharon Katz - October 23, 1994
When I first saw the English translations of these poems I was immediately moved to illustrate them. I wanted the images to sit behind the poems, filling the full page. I was looking for a balance in which the illustrations set a mood for the page, but did not compete with the poems themselves. This was fairly simple when printing to paper. Black text printed in 12 pt type, at 2400 dpi, reads clearly over any light halftone screen.
Now as I convert this document to an electronic file I am struggling with design issues. I have chosen to crop the pages, rather than reduce their size, in order that the text remain legible. Even though the illustrations are cropped I hope the overall sense of the image and text working together still remains.
The original illustrations were created on a Macintosh LC in Aldus Superpaint. They were completed in Adobe Illustrator, saved as 1.1 Illustrator files, and brought into Freehand for assembly. They were then output to negative on on Agfa Accuset, and printed to paper by offset lithography.
The electronic file was created by exporting the files from Freehand in PICT 2 format, opening them in Adobe Photoshop, altering the colour mode to Indexed Color and saving to GIF.
... Sharon Katz - December 9, 1994.
The illustrations are monotype prints, painted in black ink on glass, measuring 15 X 22 inches. These images were laser photocopied in black and white and reduced to 8.5 by 11 inches. These reproductions were scanned into Adobe Photoshop 2.5.1, where they were gamma corrected, and colour adjusted to a 4 bit indexed colour mode. The text was created in Freehand, save as PICT files and brought into the Photoshop files as anti-aliased PICT.
The greatest challenge in preparing MY BLUE SUITCASE for the Internet was to reduce the colour palette from 8 bit RGB to 6 or 9 colours, while maintaining the clarity and aesthetic of the images. This was necessary in order to:
... Sharon Katz - January 17, 1995.
The illustrations for The Song of Moses and Other Poems were drawn in Adobe Photoshop 2.5.1 as black and white line drawings. The reference sources for these images are griffins from mediaeval Hebrew manuscripts. The drawings were converted into paths, and the paths saved as Adobe Illustrator files. The text was imported into the Illustrator files and combined with the illustrations. At this stage everything was still black and white. These Illustrator files were then opened in Photoshop at 72 dpi. They were coloured with a limited palette chosen from the cover illustration file because we have found that colour is more accurately reproduced in Netscape if all the files are based on a similar colour palette. The files were then saved as Indexed colour, 4 bits. In most cases there are fewer than 16 colours in a file, but the size of the file is dependant on the amount of detail and not on the number of colours. Reducing the number of colours does help to reduce detail, and therefore file size, though.
The cover illustration is a detail from the first poem in the book, rotated and embossed into the background colour. The griffin is one of the illustrations from the book, passed twice through a find edges filter and filled with a second colour. The author’s name is filled with a green created by the yellow fill of the griffin combined with the black of the image’s edge.
I wanted to give the book the feel of a manuscript page so it was important to me that the illustrations had a textured quality, in fact a hand-imparted printmaking feel. I played with the texture by adjusting the resolution of the image as I imported it into Photoshop from Illustrator, and playing with the number of bits.
I tried several fonts for the text, the issue there being one of maximizing clarity and legibility, while at the same time trying to maintain the feel of manuscript text. Unfortunately serif fonts did not translate clearly at 12 point, the serifs making the text slightly confusing. Helvetica, a fairly recent sans serif font, gave the best clarity, and I chose it for that reason, in spite of the fact that it is a modern font.
... Sharon Katz - May 16, 1995.