Large Publication

Studio Brief 02

As designers it is our job to help the reader read the words by positioning text and images in such a way as to be appropriate for the content but also navigable by the human eye.

To be creative but effective with type it is essential that you have a clear grasp of the fundamental principles of type composition. It’s great to break the rules but learn them first, we have to understand what we're looking at and make informed design decisions

What is a book?

Dictionary definition:

1. a written or printed work consisting of pages glued or sewn together along one side and bound in covers
2. a bound set of blank sheets for writing in.

Books are objects, owned objects, manufactured objects, objects that have been marked by pencils and time and coffee cups and the oils from our skin. "A book is more than a bag of words," says University of Virginia's Andrew Stauffer, "These books as objects have a lot to tell us."

Visual Reasearch

Designing books with David Pearson

Idea generating for the brief

for the brief, we have to choose something to base the book about and here are some of the ideas that I wrote down

• Game of thrones
• High school guide
• Sailing
• Bad teachers from high school
• animation
• film prop design
• Creature art
• Concept art
• star wars
• dark souls
• guide to Leeds
• cook book
• Rock climbing
• scuba diving
• Scotland
• Cheat codes from games

after talking to my peers about my idea, the one most people seemed to like the sounds of was the teachers of high school one. while the others could work and turn out to make good books, I think I'm going to go with the teacher idea.

Teacher idea

For this idea, after talking about my ideas within a group crit, there are two things I want with it which are:

• Illustrations of the teachers within the book
• to have it in some sort of school note book design 

With this, i began jotting down my old teachers. But, due to the nature of this book, the names and likeliness have been edited to avoid any problems although i doubt any of my old teachers would see this any way.

Feed Back

• look into Mr Bingo Illustrations 
• Overall verdict of using the doodles is quite positive, so much so, a few people said to make the book purely about the doodles
• Have it as a School Book
• Or have it look like a sort of scrapbook by using the likes of lined // graph // tracing // tissue // ect.
• Try and get my younger siblings to doodle some of these
• You could have inserts within the book
• "I really like your illustration style and I defiantly Think you should use them within your book instead of getting an illustrator to do it."

Response

I'm really happy with the feed back I got from the second year students. A thing for me is that I don't really think the doodles that I do are good enough for work and the fact quite a few people told me they look great and that i should use them instead of an actual illustrator really boosted my confidence in what i do.

In terms of Mr Bingo, while his work is really good at portraying information, after people said to use my doodles I think ill go with them as it makes this project more a kindled to me. I do like the way the information is used and i might use something similar to it within my work.

With all of this now, I began to sketch out some design concepts for the book based of the feedback i got back. In the end I wanted to keep with the more simple ideas as it allows more room to add more to the concept if needed.

The Doodles

began to doodle the teacher to go into the book when its ready

Indesign layout

I was aiming for a school book feeling with this one and while i was a fan of it at the start, I took a proper look at it and realised how ugly it was. The font used (TW Cent) made it look squished, plus, the fancy header text (Edwardian Script ITC) that was suposed to look like handwriting looked out of place. Even the lined paper looks tacky. safe to say this ones scraped. Need a new one.

New grid

For this next one, I went for a New grid to use for the next design. Its a very basic grid but i think it will be fit for its purpose,

InDesign second Book design

Heres me over complicating the page layout so it would print right

This one I got carried away with and ended up making most of the book. Its size is based around that of a school book (103mm x 200mm) to make it look more like one found in a students bag. After speaking with peers about the design, what most of them suggested was to print the text of the book off and actually

draw the teachers on it to give it a handmade feel to it. With that it would also look like it was made for students by students. I do really like this idea and I think that might be a good option to follow. keeping with a school book theme, I though maybe just spaleing the book together would be all right but it would look really cheap so I decided to go with the Two Saddle stitch binding as it remains looking like a note book but has a sense of it being well made 

The fonts used are

• Nimbius light (body text) // black (cover title)
• Annie Use Your Telescope (headings) due to its highschool-esc handwriting style (going to call it AUYT for short)

After thinking about it, the front cover ended up with this basic looking design but its based on the colours and posters used from my high school. Unfortunately though, i couldn't find any photos of these as reference so I had to make do from memory (although its not much to remember as it is just text with a blue background). The text within the book was also designed to mimic that of the notes found in the notebooks of students. The AUYT font will be used scarcely with the main body of text used with the Nimbus font as its easily readable for readers 

Disaster (not really more of an expensive mistake)

Well, printed the book off but because i overcomplicated it thinking i was being clever all the pages printed off in the wrong order which was just dandy. That's

one way to waist your printing credit. Going to have to rearrange all of the pages and print it again. Lets hope I can get seen in a drop in at the digital print room. On the bright side the paper I chose to use (Antique paper) looks great with the black and blue text printed on it and it folds really well which will be brill for the saddle stitch I want to use. 

Printed of perfectly this time

Now that its printed right, the most stressful part(for me that is) is cutting the pages out. Cant tell you how how heart breaking it is to see the line you've just cut is printed wonky or if i slipped and cut too much off. Safe to say i had to reprint one or two pages in order to re-cut them. After painfully cutting out the pages I could begin actually bookbinding. Now, since doing the bookbinding workshop way back when, I've been making sketchbooks and the sorts back at the flat with makeshift tools. Unfortunately I don't have any bone folders but what i do have is a very sturdy pen lid that dose the same trick. As for dog clips, I don't have them either but neither did pound land. they had one better. An eight set of nylon spring clamps that do the same as dog clip but better. and lastly, i don't have a press but i do have a very heavy set of books. 

Now that i have my makeshift tools, i can begin to put this book together.

Finished Binding

Analysis // Feedback

now that I've got the book done, there are some aspects that i need to fix and some problems that I'm stuck with. Firstly the paper looks great and for me, i think it works well with both how thick it is and how it looks. But, unfortunately i cant go over the drawings in fine liner as it goes through the paper. While i could solve this with choosing a different stock, I wouldn't get the look that it has now with the slightly tinted paper. I asked a group of peers for advice and they stated that it looks fine without the  fine liner as it looks like its a little sketch book that students keep to doodle in. I showed it to some illustration students who said they liked the style of the drawing and thought the pencil drawings added contrast to pages which, in there eyes worked

Evaluation

This has to be one of my favourite projects this year. One of the main things ive been looking forward to try is bookbinding. Unfortunately i think i might have neglected this project a little bit due to other modules but apart from that I’m happy with how it came out, this project has also been a milestone in many other projects from different modules as I’ve found myself doing of editorial designs with making books or booklets. Not to mention all of the sketchbooks I’ve made for myself. While I’m happy with the look of the book, there are a few nit picks i have such as the indentations on the cover due to the guillotine and that i couldn’t use pen to draw the doodles. etc. But that’s something to improve upon next year