Evaluation

I have mixed emotions about this module, at the beginning and up until reading week I found it hard to get into any of the projects. There was no clear reason why but I think the fear was of the amount of work ahead of me. After a few crits of constructive criticism, I started to stop being stressed about the amount of work and started to enjoy the process of developing ideas and handling that much pressure. There was quite a leap between second year workload and quality required and the effort and commitment needed compared to that of third year and I think that within this module I’ve learnt more about myself as a designer and my own practice than at any other point in the course.

I was coming in to college at 9am and leaving at 9pm quite often, but it wasn’t up until after reading week that I’d actually fully take advantage of this time and being as productive as I could instead of just been busy. I think that’s something in hindsight I would definitely change, making the most of the time I’ve got instead of thinking about what I’m going to do and actually do it.

Reflecting on the work I’ve produced I realise I haven’t worked in a way that ticks all the criteria boxes and maybe this is a problem I need to assess ahead of FMP, but I also think it’s a case of documenting my development and my idea generation. However I feel that my design practice is changing and improving, I’m in a place now where I feel more confident about experimenting with new styles and that I’m improving as a designer and pushing the concepts of a brief.

From the beginning of the module I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do and what areas I wanted to cover, this was mainly design for the fashion and art industry which two of the briefs covered (Blue Rinse branding and branding for a photographer) and I want to carry this forth into my FMP as I still feel strongly about designing for the creative industry and collaborating with different disciplines of creative. I also developed good networking and communication skills whilst working with the photographer and this has allowed me to get more out of a client than I would of normally and really helped with developing idea for the project (brief two)

Overall I’m frustrated with myself that I allowed myself to slip into a slow pace so early in the module and I genuinely think I made a huge mistake and ruined a potentially rewarding module. My time management and my documentation needs to carry on being at its recent level and go as far as improving substantially.  I’m disappointed that I didn’t quite reach the potential with my briefs and that I only did four but it’s something I’ve learnt from and I’m heading into the final part of the course knowing what I need to do and knowing I’m quite excited about turning it around improving from this module.

submission boards for brief four

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Submission Boards for Brief three

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Submission boards for Brief two

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Submission boards for Brief One

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Final design of the website

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Really happy with this now and quite looking forward to actually designing the site over the next few weeks after the deadline, realistically theres not enough time before the hand-in to start and finish this website.

Web page development

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I played around with the homepage and tried some experimental layout but it just wasn't working out so I stuck with quite a formal layout with the work and about at the top and my logo in the top left corner.

Labels in context

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Final Shots of Business card/postcard

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Printed collateral for Anna

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ISTD - Cover re-photographed

Again feedback back from the final crit advised me to re-take some of the photographs for the cover and have somebody hold and use the slip cover.

ISTD - Re photographed

After the low quality of the 1st shots and after feedback from the final crit I re-shot the ISTD in context with someone interacting and using the publication.

Grids and typography rules - ISTD

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ISTD asked in the brief to submit evidence of typographic skill and knowledge through examples of application. The layout of the publication followed an 18 x 24 grid system where only the pull quotes were allowed to ignore, but this was intentional as they had to be centred on the page to be able to work. 

I created a set of rules for how the speech in the text was 

distinguishable against the standard text. Instead of indenting the normal paragraphs I instead used a line break to notify the start of a new paragraph and for the speech I used an indent to signify a new character speaking. 

Proposed covers for ISTD

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These are the chosen designs for the proposed series of covers for The Waitress publication.
Each is a subtle hint to a part of the story. The thread relating to the cloth and the waitress sewing, the knife and fork as the setting is a restaurant and the dollar bills for the money that the waitress discovers in her purse.

Final shots of ISTD magazine

Final shots of my magazine belly band (slip) cover. The shots came out well and I'm happy to come to the end of this brief. Just need to propose another 3 covers and I'll be done on this.

Business card layout development

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Business Card/postcard layout Development

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Business card - rough ideas

ISTD Cover development

Moving closer to a final design for the slip cover, for the project I'm going to propose a series of covers this may include this design in various colour schemes or proposals for separate designs. The idea came from simple line drawings that started to form a chair but contrast with the title 'the waitress' giving a subtle mystery to the cover.

ISTD Cover mock up development.

I went back to basics with this idea, I needed to get away from a computer screen so made some analog layers of type and image to test out different layouts. I think I'm going to do this more often as it was so much quicker than messing around on software. I'm happy with this idea as it fits the story well and is quite a minimal design which lets the content speak for itself, I needed to create something that wasn't too 'noisy' to make an impact on the concept of the magazine.

Concrete poetry cover idea

I experimented with the idea of using one of my original ideas from the beginning of the ISTD brief and using concrete typography and  using letters from the inside of the magazine and projecting them onto the front sleeve to form the title of book and the author, however it didn't quite work as the point size was too small and the transparent stock just didn't suit being a slip cover.

Cover Idea - ISTD - development

Development of an idea I had where the entire content of the publication is overlayed and printed onto the slip cover with the title layered over the top. I got three experiments in and decided it just didn't feel right for the magazine and had no real relationship with the story.

ISTD Cover Ideas

Several rough ideas for the ISTD Slip cover, I'm trying to keep it minimal and primarily typographic. I've also still to decide on the stock, not sure if to stick to the transparent paper or move onto a thicker stock to give a more sturdy feel to the publication.

ISTD Publication - Bound (stapled)

Some quick shots of the bound publication, more directed product shots are to follow but just needed to record my process of producing and binding the magazine. The only issue I'm having at the moment is that the publication is difficult to read through more than two pages unless there is a light source behind the magazine. However the concept of the magazine and the layout still allows it to be read page by page like a conventional publication and the concept can still be understood when you reach the centre spread.

 

ISTD - publication before binding.

Just in case anything went wrong with binding and cropping the magazine I documented how the publication should look and how it functions and also how the pages work to form a double page spread.

ISTD Publication - Printing errors and typos

I knew before sending this publication to print that there was a high possibility that they'd be problems due to the thin weight of the stock that I'm using, so the expected happened and the printed chewed up one of the spreads but surprisingly only happened once. So after re-printing the spread and having everything else printed I noticed there was a huge typo in the header of the centre spread where I'd spelt Zipes 'Ztipes', unfortunately it was the same spread that I had to reprint the 1st time so that had to be re-done. So far these are the only problems I've had so fingers crossed everything goes well from here.

Istd Mock up

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The 1st prints came out okay, had to manual feed it through an inkjet at home. They was obviously a few mishaps but a few changes in the feed settings sorted that out. The stock works great, the transparency is just perfect. 

ISTD Publication page numbering soultion

Finally come to a solution of how to number the pages, I've decided to use graphic elements instead, below is an example of how the centre fold should look and at the foot of the page sit 7 lines each representing a different page that contains content. Each line will sit on a separate page and as the reader progresses through the magazine the lines will be spaced to subtly represent the stitching of the chair, this was a considered design element and I wanted to somehow visualise the fabric element of the story whilst also being as functional element such as page numbering.

 

countdown to final boards being sent to print

Barcode page numbering idea

I started to think about page numbering and elements that are common in magazine and that made me investigate barcodes. The general idea was that each page would have as many lines as the page number that it was and through the transparency of the stock would form a barcode. Through experimentation and development i soon found out that this would not work and that the idea was quite weak and after talking with Arthur I realised that it was purely a visual element and had little connection to the story or format.

Time till my boards go to print

Printed rooster tail Flyer

Final printed resolution for the Rooster tail flyer. Pretty happy with the outcome and got some good feedback from around the studio. I've also started to realise I'm using different typeface for each project, which had been done deliberately to suit each project but I wonder if I could somehow implement a type rules into her brand such as certain type for body copy etc.

Letterhead and business card

slip cover idea - ISTD

Progressing from the belly band idea I started to think about having a slip cover that was 3/4 or 1/2 the size of the magazine. The slip cover could have die-cut letters to reveal the publication inside or be the same stock as the magazine and be transparent or even be thick stock to make it more sturdy and be embossed.

Cover and belly band idea

I was visualising how the cover would look when I started to think that the transparency of the paper would look good as a cover with all the layers forming a shape of different opacities. So I developed the idea of having a belly band which had printed on the front and back the title and details of the concept of the magazine.

Snask email pdf

It's a bit out there but after reading Snask's blog I felt that this channelled their sense of humour perfectly (hopefully) This came about after John organised us to send Snask a email pdf trying to get an internship in Stockholm, Sweden.