Finally, finally, finally my book is available for sale!

Nearly 400 illustrations, diagrams and tables all produced with Inkscape. I even used Inkscape to produce better looking versions of graphs generated my math programs!

The illustrations are all line art with flat tones (this works best with the printing process chosen - especially at the reduction needed for this project). Not the sort of thing most of you guys like, but Inkscape is really, really good for line art (I know many of you like photorealism and don't appreciate the minimalist appeal of B&W line art )

So many thanks to all of the Inkscape developers - you have a great program here!

I haven't put a link in to amazon as the book is a commercial project. If you want to look at it you can search for The Hot Air Balloon Book on Amazom.

fizzcat

Congrats! Well done one.

I`m kind a keen toward simplicity or minimalism and in this case I would go even further in simplification ,) Historic references (Lana`s airboat; Passarola) are really nice, but in case of a cover and those alike - I`d add a bit more contrast or threshold (so to say). Perhaps bit more volume to the outlines? Just a thought, but still - well done.

I had no input to the cover design. The graphic designer used illustrations from the book, but recoloured them and used them on top of a cloud background. Personally, I like the cover, but that sort of graphic design is not really my thing, so I cannot comment.

The main illustrations for the projects only have a flat grey background (no other tones) just to lift the illustration off the page. I did experiment with different outline weights before standardising on a set of lines. You have to standardise before you start so all of the illustrations look like a "set". I fixed the maximum line weight so the reduced illustrations don't look too "heavy", and the minimum line weight so the finest lines would still print when reduced to the final size. Some bits of professional illustration aren't exactly spontaneous!

fizzcat