Tag Archives: Graphics assignment

Assignment Five: Your Choice – Part Three

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Brief 1: Book Design

Penguin Books have asked you to design anew house style for a collection of books on design for children and young people. They are starting with three titles: Colour, Typography and Photographs. Produce three covers – front, back and spine. The designs need to be recognisable as a series and at the same time be appreciated for their individual merits. The book dimensions are 190mm wide by 225mm high.

In addition they have asked you to produce the one on Typography, called A is for…Create an introductory chapter of at least four pages.

Thubmail sketches for a book design

Sketch 4

I started by developing the book covers based on the initial sketches (sketch 4).

As there was additional pages design involved in the Typography book I researched the main Pop Art characteristics:

  • Repetition
  • Recognizable imagery
  • Bright colours
  • Flat imagery
  • Celebrity/advertising images
  • Hard edges
  • Mundane reality and irony
  • Influence by comic books, newspapers and photographs
  • Consumerism and mass consumption
  • Blocks of colour

From this I developed a range of symbols in Illustrator as well as sketching a basic layout.  The biggest challenge seemed to be the wording and content, more so than the layout itself! It took me a while to decide what I would include in the first few pages. In the end I went for some background to typography and what I hoped would be some attractive exercises. I was a bit concerned that I had used a pop art approach in a previous assignment but I felt like my skills had moved on since then and I could be much bolder than I had been, I hoped that it would show my development.

I was still a little concerned that the book title is ‘A is for…’, which suggests a younger age group and an alphabet type book. I decided to overcome it by not making an obvious link and using A as the starting point for a voyage into typography, rather than a direct link to the words. I still wonder if young adults might be put off but hopefully the pop/graphic novel style would be attractive enough.

The design of the pages went through four main iterations as it developed:

I was looking for the beginnings of a book that was dynamic and interesting. I have used typography, colour, and layout (in other words pulling together all the elements of GD1) to try and achieve it. It took a little while for my ideas to surface but once they had I could see the direction I wanted to take. I printed each version as I went as I found it helped me identify issues I had missed on screen, like the stroke around the text box on page two, version two.

Pop art cover for a book on typography

Final cover design

I think the final version has a good degree of consistency even though I have tried to mix the format up throughout the pages. I am pleased with the result, not so much from the design point of view but because I can really see how my worked has evolved throughout the course and how my confidence has built.

Rework

Following feedback from tutor, which suggested in the politest possible way I had fallen into a common novice trap I did some rework on the covers. He highlighted that my chosen design appeared to have been designed as if the front and back covers would be seen at the same time and that they needed to be more distinct yet still being connected. I have therefore taken elements of front and back and worked them up further.

 

 

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Assignment Five: Your Choice – Part Two

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Brief 1: Book Design

Penguin Books have asked you to design a new house style for a collection of books on design for children and young people. They are starting with three titles: Colour, Typography and Photographs. Produce three covers – front, back and spine. The designs need to be recognisable as a series and at the same time be appreciated for their individual merits. The book dimensions are 190mm wide by 225mm high.

In addition they have asked you to produce the one on Typography, called A is for…Create an introductory chapter of at least four pages.

As I started sketching I was thinking a lot about what might encourage people to pick the book up. I thought it needed to be able to attract adults and young people as adults may be buying it for their children. I’m not quite sure where it came from but I remembered something from a workshop I did a while ago which highlighted how we are hard wired to be able to identify faces and that the eyes are an important element of that. I also came across Joel Meyerwitz’s book ‘Seeing Things’ on talking to kids about photography and the eye became a theme for me. I thought it might work because I could replace the pupil with symbols for each of the books in the series. I played with several versions and mocked up the cover for the colour book.

 

 

I was not as excited about them by the time I had finished as I hoped so I went back to my other sketches. I had decided that the books would be produced as the ‘Penguin Young Designers’ series and thought it might work to have the covers themed under a different era in graphic design (sketch 4). I then chose to look at Pop Art, minimalism, chaotic design, Dadaism, Surrealism and Grunge. I went back through my Pinterest boards and did some more research, and decided I would work up grunge (colour), Dadaism (Photographs) and Pop Art (Typography).

Thubmail sketches for a book design

Sketch 4

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Assignment Three: Colour Me

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A collage using orange showing things that made me happy in my childhood

Assignment Three brief:

Choose a colour that has a meaning that you want to explore and celebrate. Think about what the colour you have chosen means both to you and to other people and create something that celebrates that meaning.

This process started with a mind map and photos taken of items around the house and garden.  All the colours had meaning for me and I realised that I have quite a few favourite colours.

A collage of householditems showing my favourite colours

Colour Me mood board

I used Adobe Color CC to see what colour options emerged and I decided to go with orange and teal as that combined two of my favourite colours.

The orange comes from my favourite jacket, made from a glorious Irish Linen. It is one I made myself and always makes me think of my Irish grandmother who along with Mum taught me how to sew and knit. It always makes me feel happy and confident when I wear it and that was the theme I wanted to develop.

Having done a bit of research about colour theory I found the quote attributed to Frank Sinatra, “Orange is the happiest colour.” I decided this would form the loose theme I would work with.

The first idea I developed from a sketch and a physical collage, and included a number of orange things that make me happy. I played with different elements in Photoshop and while I like some of the combinations I didn’t feel it was going in the right direction.

The second idea I decided would be much more minimal and focused on the text and orange as the dominant colour. Initially the teal colour was too central so I moved it over. I liked this idea for its simplicity but was a bit concerned that it hadn’t fully answered the brief.

This took me to developing a further collage in Photoshop, using some of the elements of the physical collage. I wanted it to feel a bit looser than the earlier idea with a variety of textures as well as the designated colour palette. It includes my love of books, nature, and initially I went with a broader quote about happiness from “psychology now.’ I quite liked the layout and decided to add the photograph of me and my brother as children laughing and go back to the Frank Sinatra quote. While this was my preference feedback from family suggested they didn’t ‘get it’ and it was too busy and messy.

So I decided to ask for feedback from the Visual Comms Facebook group and they provided some very helpful feedback. The two preferences were the minimal version the square and the final collage. The minimal version with the squiggle was felt to be too distracting. There were suggestions for the minimal version about changing the typeface for happiness and its colour. I tried this out but the interplay of the colour made it too difficult to read so I changed the colour blocks instead. It is fascinating to see how many permutations there can be with so few elements!

One reflection suggested the flowers in the final collage were also not necessary so I tried a version without. Monica Pritchard picked up on the childhood theme with the photo and rippling pool water. I decided to take this theme further and rather than include things that make me happy generally I focused on my childhood in Australia and included elements that I think of happily – the tree frog on my blind, the Sulphur crested cockatoos that would steal the washing and follow me about, swimming, sunshine and freedom to play in an extraordinary natural environment. At that point I was going to be the next Gerald Durrell!

Final Selection

It was hard to choose a final version as in some ways it felt like I could keep working on them and coming up with yet more ideas. I want to select two rather than one because they are so different in approach.

I suspect that Monica is right that the stripped back version of the collage works best in design terms, although it is the version with the Australian flora and fauna that makes me smile the most.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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