History of An Object Layout 1 + 2 Take2

This is the second try at completing the first and second spread of my book on the history of the lawn. The feedback that I received from the class was that they really enjoyed where I was going with my opening spread.  I played around with combining the two layouts that people really liked, but they didn't really look good together.  So I ended up trying the layout without any text at all again.  And ended up seeing how just an image could impact the spread.

This was the spread that combined two of the good spreads from round 1.  I tried the title text in a bunch of different locations on the left side, but none of them really worked. What is pictured above is the layout that looked the best of what I tried.

I was trying to work the title into the page on the left, because I thought the title helped make the spread more effective.  But all this rendition of it did was really add more white space to the spread.

There was only a small difference between this layout and the one above.  I was trying to see if I changed where the title aligned if the spread would feel more complete. It definitely added more positive white space, but it still didn't fully feel complete.

I moved the subtitle to the left page and changed the column width on the right.  I made the column width on both sides of the spread the same.  The page on the right is not just a large block of text and makes the left page look really empty.

This is my favorite of the first layout. I think the use of the bright/normal green of the grass really adds to the layout and helps to make the direct connection to the subtitle located on the next page. I had played around with adding the title and subtitle to the page on the left, but it did not look good.

I still had a bit of problems trying to figure out a good way to display the timeline would it just being another textbook timeline.  My main difficultly is making the assets work with the columns.

I just refined the line up details of all of the pieces on this spread.  I kept all the text at 8.5/13.  I made the dates - bold oblique and lined them along the timeline with the line dropping down from the date to the caption to the image.  I wanted to keep the eyes moving and keep the important information sectioned together.

I used the same layout as above, but experimented with pt. size and physical characteristics.  I made the date size correspond with the subtitle size on the first spread.  And have the date caption character appearance to be the same as the main text as the introduction.