Consider the importance of books to you both personally and within a broader global sense.

First of all, think back to the earliest books you came across as a child, through your teenage years and early adulthood to where you are now. There may be half a dozen books which stick in your memory or are important to you in some way. There may be many more than that. It may be an early reading book, a particular image or short rhyme which helped you recognise letterforms. It may be the distressed metallic silver cover of a Salinger novel you read as a teenager, or the book you bought on impulse after work one day, seduced by the tactile quality of the cover.

Identify these books in your learning log, use photographs and annotation to create an illustrated list documenting the books that are important to you, for whatever reason.

Now, connect your influential books to those with a more global reach. Identify seminal works that have informed or challenged some of the areas you have identified. These may be scientific, artistic, historical, political, geographic, fictional, poetic or religious texts. For example, a book from your childhood could connect to other seminal children’s books by association, such as Heinrich Hoffmann’s Der Struwwelpeter / Shockheaded Peter (1845) or Charles Perrault or the Brothers Grimm. Likewise a book featuring dinosaurs might connect to Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species.

When we appreciate the breadth and influence of books, we begin to appreciate the extent of a book’s potential impact. Books carry and communicate ideas; powerful messages can be contained within seemingly innocuous bound paper pages. In your learning log, create another list of books, with accompanying images and annotations, which you believe to be more globally important, but connect to your first list in some way.

This activity will feed into your first assignment, so document your ideas in your sketchbooks and learning log to refer back to later.

Books

So I’m not a big reader of books! The majority of books that I own are either recipe books or reference books. However, this exercise has made me think about which books stick out in my memory from the present right back to my childhood and I wanted to use a of a variety of book types.

Book #1 The Blue Banana

This book sticks in my mind as one of my earliest memories and I even tried to find this for my kids when they were born but unfortunately couldn’t find a copy. I think that this really stuck with me because of the title and the thought of a blue banana obviously left a lasting impression. There were other books in the range which I remember having, but this was the one that I most vividly remember.

Book #2 The New Caxton Encyclopedia

My parents had the full set of these including an additional GIANT atlas. I remember flicking through these as a child and my dad sending me to find stuff out and come back and tell him what I’d learned. Another, more specific memory is jumping down the stairs in my childhood home and clattering into the bookcase containing these at the bottom.

Book #3 The Adventures of Robin Hood

This book holds mixed feelings for me. It was the first book I had to write a report on at school. It was a new school in Devon that I didn’t like! The story reminded me of my Nottinghamshire roots and I was familiar with the story and hoped that it would help me write the report. It didn’t!

Book #4 Farmhouse Kitchen

This was my mum’s goto cookbook. I particularly remember the recipe for chocolate buttons, a type of soft chocolate biscuit. Maybe this was the book that started my interest in cooking and led to me being in kitchens for a large part of my life? It was probably also responsible for my sweet tooth and love of anything baked!

Book #5 Jonny My Autobiography

This was a no brainer when it came to choosing my influential books. Jonny Wilkinson is a hero of mine and I read this while on holiday in the Caribbean. I was touched by the honesty of a man I held in such high regard and his vulnerabilities which I could relate to.

Book #6 Stop Stealing Sheep and find out how type works

This book is one of my recent discoveries and is by far the best and easiest to understand book on the use of type. It is written by the legendary German typographer Erik Spiekermann and explains type in layman’s terms and gives examples in context on every page of the book.

Wider Reach

The Blue Banana was written by Bronnie Cunningham for the Hamlyn Publishing Group. She also wrote for Puffin Books, where she compiled The Puffin Joke Book which was illustrated by Quentin Blake, who more famously illustrated most of Roald Dahl’s children’s books. Roald Dahl is one of the world’s biggest selling fiction authors with estimated book sales worldwide of between 200 and 250 million copies. It is said that Dahl’s George’s Marvellous Medicine was loosely based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Dahl also wrote the screenplays for the Bond film You Only Live Twice and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, both written by Ian Fleming.

The New Caxton Encyclopedia was first produced in serial form in 1966. The name refers to William Caxton, who in 1476 brought the process of printing with movable type to England. However, the encyclopedia dates back much further to 338 BC where evidence has been found of Speusippus, Plato’s nephew, recording his uncle’s teachings. In England a version of an encyclopedia was collated by Francis Bacon in around 1620 and was “to commence a total reconstruction of sciences, arts, and all human knowledge, raised upon the proper foundations”. Francis Bacon himself is also known for allegedly penning some or all of the plays attributed to the world’s biggest selling fiction author William Shakespeare.

The Adventures of Robin Hood is about the English folklore hero Robin of Locksley, a contemporary of King Richard I who is famed for leading the 3rd Crusade to retake Jerusalem from Saladin in the 12th century. This links to the bible as this is the reason behind the crusades to spread the word of God. Shakespeare mentions Robin Hood in his plays The Two Gentlemen of Verona, As You Like It and Henry IV parts 1 and 2. Errol Flynn is probably the most well known portrayal of Robin in 1938. Prior to this he played the lead in The Charge of the Light Brigade in 1936 which was based on the poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson in 1854. This poem was followed by the poem Last of the Light Brigade written by Rudyard Kipling 40 years later who is most famous for his book The Jungle Book.

Farmhouse Kitchen was a cookery series that was produced by Yorkshire Television and aired on the ITV network from 1971 until 1990. The earliest record of written recipes date back to Mesopotamian tablets from 1700 BC. One of the most famous ‘modern’ cookbooks made readily available to the public was Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management in 1857-1861 which is mentioned in A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus by Arthur Conan Doyle who is more famous for his Sherlock Holmes novels. Post-Sherlock his most well known work is probably The Lost World which was used for the title of Michael Crichton’s 1995 novel on which Jurassic Park was based, the cover of which was designed by Chip Kidd.

Jonny My Autobiography is written towards the end of Jonny Wilkinson’s career after the 2003 World Cup when he scored the winning points to win the Webb Ellis Trophy. William Webb Ellis is credited with ‘inventing’ the game of rugby by picking up the leather and pig’s bladder ball during a football match and running with it. This type of ball is mentioned in Tom Brown’s Schooldays by Thomas Hughes who also studied at Rugby School. Tom Brown’s Schooldays is credited with being a direct inspiration for J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series of novels.

Stop Stealing Sheep and find out how type works’ title is credited to the typographer Frederic Goudy who said “Anyone who would letterspace lowercase would steal sheep.” The phrase to ‘steal sheep’ appears in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in which it refers to taking a risk. Twain also penned A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court which is credited with being the foundational work in the time travel genre. However, this had been preceded by other time travel novels including The Time Machine by H.G. Wells who along with Jules Verne were called the fathers of science fiction. Prior to his literary career H.G. Wells was a biologist who followed the ethics of Charles Darwin who wrote the Origin of Species one of the fundamental science texts ever written.

Conclusion

This was a challenging exercise. As I am not a big reader it was tough to find books that meant something to me. However, once I got started I found it really interesting how 6 books from different genres could be linked with some of the most influential works from history…I went from a TV cookbook to Jurassic Park!!!! This has opened my eyes a lot more to how books are related to each other you can draw inspiration from a book’s origins and influences.

Sources

Pinterest.com

wikipedia.org

http://www.britannica.com/topic/encyclopaedia/History-of-encyclopaedias#ref307698

http://www.bl.uk/medieval-literature/articles/william-caxton-and-the-introduction-of-printing-to-england#

http://www.englishforums.com/English/StealSheep/bvlrvg/post.htm

Newton and Ridley, the brewers best known for their pub, The Rovers Return, are opening a cafe/wine bar nearer the city centre.

The bar is designed to appeal to younger women and sophisticated young men. The brewery has identified a gap in the market and wants to provide a ’sophisticated and relaxed’ venue for the ‘discerning’ drinker. This bar is to be called the French Hen and will be in direct competition with the cheap ‘binge drinking’ venues on the same street. The brewery is also trying to enhance its own image as a ‘respectable’ alcohol vendor.

They want you to develop some ideas for a logo, to be used:

• on covers for the food and cocktail menus
• in colour on the signage outside, and as a cutout for a window detail
• on T-shirts for the staff and paper napkins
• for one side of a beermat, the other will carry advice on sensible drinking.

There are many conventions that have been developed around the marketing of both bars and products to this age range. You need to be conscious the whole time of avoiding clichés and stereotyping.

Draw up at least three ideas to start with. Be critical of your work. Check it against the information you have here. Will it do what the client wants – and how will you know?

When you have decided which one you are happiest with, mock up the menu covers, the outside sign, the window detail, a T-shirt, paper napkin and beermat. Does it all still work?

Research

Another branding exercise, which I like. Having worked in a few bars over the years I’ve not really had much of a chance to do any branding bar a few posters.

My first port of call was to mind–map The French Hen.

A few key words popped out but I needed more visual references for bar branding and chickens! So I started a Pinterest board.

Pinterest

This threw up lots of thoughts on the branding. I particularly liked the overprint stuff (no surprise there!) and the use of a hen in the imagery. At this stage I wasn’t sure as to whether use the them in combination or separately, or whether the imagery would be literal or stylised. I then started to doodle some ideas.

My initial sketches were around the initials FH. I seemed to be leaning towards a typographic solution to this brief. Illustration and sketching have never been my strong point and I found it difficult to put illustrative solutions down. I am much happier working digitally, so I moved into Illustrator.

The brief said that the new brand needed to appeal to young, possibly affluent professionals and away from the binge drinking culture associated with other city centre bars. So the brand needed to be on trend and pretty clean.

The above designs were the ones I came up with digitally. My personal preference was the interlocking monogram and the hen with the type reversed out. But I’m biased! So I asked my family and peers for their opinion. They agreed on the designs that I liked as well as the orange design which they felt had a modern/retro feel. They felt that some of the typographic designs looked a bit sports bar–like and they red and blue colour only exaggerated that. It was also suggested that they were quite masculine and this didn’t fit the target demographic.

This led me to decide upon the hen logo as the direction I wanted to go with. The feedback on the colour palette told me that it needed to be more subtle and subdued. So I started with the blue hen which I had added texture to in Photoshop before importing it into Illustrator and adding the type using the font: Explorer P Sans. I also placed it on an off–white/cream background.

I lied this, but I still wasn’t 100% happy, it needed more depth/texture. In my research I had come across the the idea of using foot/claw prints, so I added it to the background.

Now I was getting somewhere. I then decided to follow up on the monogram idea and create one to use as part of the brand. I also had the idea of using a kind of rubber–stamp effect to overlay the design which would depict the brand’s message. I used an online tutorial for making postmarks to create the stamp.

I then went on to create some colour variations for the brand. I also tried it with a more handwritten font: Americus Sans Aged.

At this point I thought I was ready to start mocking things up. Then life got in the way and I had a break from my design work. When I returned to this exercise I was no longer enamoured with this design. I felt it looked quite childish and not fitting the brief. I needed to refine the idea and make it more appealing to the target audience.

I decided that a better image of a hen was required. Some of the imagery collated on my Pinterest board showed some vintage images which had some sort of overprint effect. I found an image on Shutterstock that I liked and started again.

I used the hen image I had purchased from Shutterstock as the basis for my design and added a type overprint which was similar to a postmark containing the name of the bar and it’s tagline and the date it was established in American Typewriter.

This was a lot more mature and hit the brief better as a higher class of bar. I also created a black and white version of the combination mark.

I was much happier this time around and the design seemed a lot more cohesive and gave an image of a more classy establishment. The combination mark could also be separated out into the stamp and the hen and used as separate elements across the brand. The design was to be used in one form or another on menus, beer mats, napkins, wine list and t–shirts. So I went on to mock them up. I wanted to create a mockup that contained all of the elements to display them as one consolidated image. I started with the menu, This was an area I was very familiar with due to my 25+ years in the catering industry. I mocked this up as a clipboard containing an A4 menu with the logo and a few brunch items.

For the napkins I used the foot/claw–print pattern without a logo to subtly carry the brand through. The beer mats had just the stamp from the logo on one side with the foot/claw–print pattern and the colours reversed and on the other side was the drinkaware.com message in the opposite colours. The wine list was a bi–fold A4 with the logo wrapped around the front and back. The t–shirt was the only item that threw up an unforeseen problem. Initially I placed the logo on the lower part of the right–hand side of the t–shirt. My wife pointed out to me that this might not be visible if a staff member was wearing the t–shirt behind a bar. As a result I made the logo larger so it could be seen over the bar.

The brief also asked that the bar signage and window cutout. The signage was straight forward as the whole logo was to be used.

I wanted to do the window cutout in a gold leaf effect to convey the higher class image that the brand was trying to convey.

Overall I think I had done the brief justice and created a brand that appealed to the target audience and conveyed the desired message.

Unfortunately I didn’t stop there! One of the ideas from my original sketches had been playing on my mind throughout the whole process and I decided to try and work it through.

The idea was to combine the words french and hen into a single wordmark, to use the whole words rather than the initials or a monogram.

As in my sketches I used Helvetica for this attempt as I didn’t want this logo to rely on imagery or anything too gimmicky. I overlaid the 2 words and then turned them into outlines. I had to do this because the stem on the R and the H were different thicknesses and the shoulders didn’t quite line up. I adjusted these so that they aligned properly by moving the points and anchors so that the letters overlaid perfectly. This was my first attempt:

I really liked this. I’m not sure as to whether it’s my preference for typography or not, but I felt that this was the strongest of the 3 ideas to date. The feedback I received was positive, but it was highlighted that it wasn’t that obvious that there were 2 words there. I too had thought this and has already decided that hen needed underlining.

This was better and I liked the colours as they represented the French flag. The feedback I received also said that there wasn’t enough contrast between the 2 words, so the colours needed working on.

The feedback I received on my colour samples were that the blue/yellow showed the most contrast. As I had used those colours in the previous exercise I dismissed them. I also felt I wanted to keep the French national colours, so stuck to the red and blue.

I used the Illustrator colour guide to find a high contrast combination of red and blue. These weren’t the an exact match to the French flag colours but they worked for the contrast and were still recognisable as the French colours.

I then went on to create a greyscale version of the logo to check it would work in black and white as well as a lettermark and a shortened version of the name which could be used to describe the bar…“Let’s go to the Hen”. I particularly liked the lettermark as it didn’t use the initials of the bar and was quite distinctive.

I then used the same mockup as in the previous version and used the lettermark on the header for the menu and the ‘The Hen’ was used on the t-shirt and the full logo was used on the wine list. I kept the same pattern on the napkin as the previous mockup.

For the window mockup and the bar sign I used the lettermark and added the full name to the window cutout.

This was by far the better of the 3 designs. It’s modern, clean and trendy to appeal to the target clientele. It would be easy to reproduce without losing any of its clarity and it doesn’t have too much detail that could be lost at different scales.

Conclusion

I do enjoy branding design and logo work. This did take me out of my comfort zone a little in that I started along an illustrative route which is not my forte and struggled at first, but through research and looking at my initial sketches I eventually found the strongest idea and rather than complicating the matter the simplest design came through in the end and hopefully created an eye catching and memorable brand that would resonate with its audience. This has showed me the importance of sketching and researching fully before finalising a design. It has also shown me that maybe some time away from a design gives you the chance to look at it with fresh eyes.

Resources

• Pinterest.com
• Shutterstock.com
• Designcuts.com
• http://www.fuzzimo.com/photoshop-tutorial-old-postmark-stamp/
• Procreate

The Chance Housing Association has been set up to try and help first time buyers get onto the housing ladder and they want you to develop a brand image for their stationery.

It is important to them that the Association is seen as being different from the other local housing associations – more modern, more helpful and definitely welcoming to young people wanting to buy a house.

They want to use their logo on their letterheads and office stationery and it will also be used somewhere on the sheets that hold the property details. It also needs to be reproducible in the local newspaper and professional trade magazines.

What to do

• Research other housing associations’ and estate agents’ styles. Look at other publications designed for a similar audience. This information should help you identify as much what you don’t want to do as what you do.
• If this was a real job you would need to visit the housing association’s offices and website, if it has one, to see how many decisions they have already made – for example they may have painted their sign silver and dark blue and used a particular font. As the designer you may want to continue with and develop those decisions or change them.
• Using just typography sketch up some designs. You want to come up with at least three initial ideas to show the client. In this instance you can decide which one you think works best to further develop.
• Mock up a letterhead and business card using the logo and house brand. Look in you local newspaper and mock up an advertisement to fit in the paper. Measure the space carefully remembering to leave sufficient margins so your text isn’t cramped. Photocopy in black and white onto cheap paper – does your logo still work? Have any fine lines got lost? Are the differences between colours still discernible?
• Show your designs to your friends and family. What is their feedback?
• If you need to, go back and adjust your artwork. If all is well make up a presentation pack to show the client – in this instance your tutor.

Keep all your work and record the process in your learning log.

Research

This exercise really interests me as I enjoy logo design and branding.

So, first things first I started by mind-mapping.

I also started a Pinterest board to collate brand identities of other housing association.

Pinterest

There were lots of different housing association logos out there of varying types and styles. They featured various elements in there design including houses, keys and doors. As the brief wanted a typographic logo I wanted to use some of these symbols as part of the typographic solution. They also seemed to be predominantly sans-serif fonts used. Again, this fits in with the brief as the logo/brand is to be aimed at a younger audience and sans-serif fonts give a younger, more modern feel. Colour palettes varied, but most seemed to use just 2 colours. Some designs used acronyms for the logo and the full name as a subheading while others used the full name as the primary logo.

Design

I then moved on to sketching out some ideas. Included in the sketching I picked the colour palette that I was going to use based on what the colours represent – blue for trust and yellow for optimism, 2 virtues that are important when it comes to helping people on to the housing ladder.

I then moved on to render what I thought were the strongest ideas digitally.

I presented the above 7 designs to my family and peers and explained the ideas behind my designs. The general consensus was that the top left and bottom right were the better 2 designs. Of the 2 I thought the bottom right was the better option as it was clearer and it looked ‘friendlier’ than the other design. It also lent itself for wider applications better than the other design e.g. as an icon for a mobile app. I went on to develop the logo further.

At this point I felt that I could start to use the design for the actual stationary required by the brief.

I started with the letterhead. I used a variation of the of the logo with a large blue background as the header and then a small blue shape to balance the logo in the opposite corner. The layout looked a little bare, so I decided to use the key icon as a watermark on the paper with the opacity reduced to 20%. I made 2 options with the watermark in different places.

The layout showing the majority of the key was the stronger of the 2 as in the other design the arc was too dominant.

I then went on to design the business card. Following on from the letterhead I wanted to create a card that carried through the theme. Again, I use the key icon as a watermark and used a variation of the logo without a background and the type in blue. The person’s details also reflected the blue colour. For the back of the business card I used the key icon on its own. I also created another version reversing the icon colours.

I really liked the way this turned out.

Next was the newspaper advert. While working on this exercise the thought had occurred to me that housing associations sometimes have for sale/sold signs outside their properties. I decide to mock one up.

This could be used as a mockup to present to the client. I then thought that I could use this as the basis for the newspaper advert. I found a suitable newspaper mockup and based the design around the smart object in the mockup. I looked at similar adverts to see what information needed to be included. I added a bar at the top and bottom of the advert on which to add the text and used the corporate colours. The type is reversed out in white and uses the same typeface as the logo to give it a cohesive look.

I was very happy with this design, it had turned out better than I thought.

I then wanted to mockup the rest of my stationary and wanted to mock it up as if it would be presented as a mockup to a client. So I set about finding all the elements I needed to mockup my designs. I found a few extra bits to add to my mockup which included some key-rings to keep the theme of home ownership going and I branded them to match the stationary. I also added a document folder which again was branded in corporate colours.

When branding businesses they also need some sort of guidelines on how to use their new identity. This can be a simple style sheet or a book of brand guidelines. This should display logos and icons in all their variations, the fonts used, the colours used etc.. So I made up a simple style sheet to help define the brand guidelines.

Conclusion

Along with the typography section of this course, this has been my favourite exercise. The feedback I have had from other people has been very positive, especially about the mockup of the final design and I think that this is because I enjoyed it so much. I have done some logo/branding work before and have drawn on that experience in this exercise. The mockups help visualize how the designs would look in the real world and help clients picture their brand in use.

Overall, I think I have answered the brief successfully and have produced a typographic logo/branding solution that appeals to the target audience and stands out from the crowd. I have learnt the importance of legibility and using fonts/colours appropriate for the audience and the business being branded and how simplicity is often the best solution when designing logos/brands.

This exercise is about how you deal with two different spaces to work in.

You have been asked to design an A3 poster and an accompanying double sided A6 flyer to promote a singing course run by an organisation called SingOut (all one word). They have very little money so want to print these posters on their black and white photocopier. You can use a colour paper if you want.

You may want to include an image such as a drawing or photograph, but be very careful with photos as they tend not to reproduce well on a photocopier particularly if they are colour photos. You will need to check by printing off your design and/or photocopying it.

The information they want to give is:

• Do you love to sing?
• Join us for an exciting opportunity during the day with a professional vocal coach. Learn to sing different types of music, vocal techniques, meet new people and have fun!
• 10.30 to 12.00 every Tuesday from 11 March
• The Community Centre, Charlotte Church Road
• £60 for the course
• No experience needed/no requirement to read music
• For more information call 011779 8765432 http://www.singout.com

The first thing you need to do is work out if you have all the information you need to fulfil the brief. If not what is missing? Work out the hierarchy of the information. How will you divide your information up to fit on both sides of your flyer? How will you link the design for the poster with that of the flyer? How can you make the poster eye-catching and effective with such a limited palette? Which typeface or faces will you use and why have you made that decision?

When you have finished pin your poster up and critique your work. What do you think?

Keep notes and sketches in your learning log.

Research

For this exercise I started by researching both one-colour and singing lesson posters and flyers. The restriction of the one colour added a new dimension to the design process. I started collating images that could relate to the subject matter or were single-colour print jobs and started a Pinterest board.

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/northernbloke/college/poster-and-flyer/

I then mind-mapped for some more inspiration.

From the imagery collected and the mind-map  I then went on to sketch out some rough layout option in Procreate.

Design

From my research I liked the idea of using a photo in single colour, similar to the duotone effects I had used in the Colour Me assignment, but this time the effect would need to be achieved with one colour being black and the other being determined by the colour of the paper it was going to be printed on. The photo used would have to be high contrast as it needed to be reproduced using a photocopier. The one-colour restriction didn’t mean that only black would have to be used, hues of black(greys) could be used.

I started by finding a suitable image for the design. I used pexels.com and searched for singers; sing; music; microphone and concert. The image I settled on was of a woman singing. I thought that this pose would make an interesting composition.

I imported the picture into Photoshop onto an A3 canvas and converted it to greyscale and then played with the levels, contrast and brightness until I achieved what I thought would make a good image that would hold up to being photocopied.

I then added an adjustment layer to simulate coloured paper. I decided on yellow paper as this would produce a great contrast with the black.

This produced the duotone effect I was looking for. Now to add the type.

I wanted the type to have a hand–drawn look to give the flyer a handmade–gig–flyer look and the relaxed look, so not to make the poster/flyer too intimidating which could put people off. I picked a font that I had on my computer called Americus Sans Aged, it is a bold, all–caps font with a hand–drawn look. I used this for most of the type on the poster/flyer. I also used Avenir Next for some of the information to give some contrast to the type elements of the poster/flyer. I also used this because Americus Sans Aged doesn’t have a pound sign to use for the price of the singing lessons!

I used the dark area of the singer’s dress to my advantage and reversed some of the type out of it in yellow.

The title question was the most important, so this was positioned at the top of the hierarchy followed by the date/time and the contact information. The description of the course came next, then the address and finally the disclaimer about not having to have any experience. I felt that this was the correct hierarchy because this would be what mattered to me if I were interested in the course.

I then noticed that I hadn’t added the price. I tried adding it in the negative space to the right of the singer’s head, but couldn’t get it to look right on the page. I then referred back to my research and I had highlighted the idea of a spotlight. I dded a circle to represent a spotlight over the singer, but for it to show up when printed the spotlight would have to be a dark circle which I then changed the opacity to give the impression of a spotlight. I reversed the price of the course out of the spotlight area. This looked much better and the whole design looked better with less ‘white’ space.

I was very happy with the way that this had turned out. I asked my college peers what they thought.

The feedback was very positive, but it did throw up a point about the reproduction of the poster on a photocopier. The edges of the poster may be lost due to the way copiers work or the poster not being straight in the copier. This led me to add a border to the design to compensate for any distortion.

I then went on to create the flyer. I thought this would be easy, but splitting the type over both sides of the flyer proved trickier than expected. I had to decide what information needed to be on the front of the flyer as this would be read first, and what to relegate to the rear.

I set up 2 A6 artboards for the front and back of the flyer, and this time added a border. I wanted to repeat the image from the poster and copied it across. This time the image wouldn’t take up as much room as the type would need to the main element of the flyer as the flyer was more about giving information rather than attracting attention. So I made the image smaller and the headline bigger. I also divided the type in the description and only used the first sentence on the front of the flyer. I made the contact details more of a thing on the front as this is what people need to find out more information. The rest of the type was placed on the back of the flyer along with another set of contact details. I didn’t want to repeat the picture on the back but it did need something. I added the spotlight/circle element on the back, but placed it in the opposite corner.

I think that these both work well together and are cohesive enough to make it obvious that they are about the same event. The design lends itself to being printed on different coloured papers for more variety.

I then mocked–up the poster.

Finally I printed out the poster and flyer to see if it worked in the real world.

Conclusion

This exercise turned out to be trickier than I thought. The limited palette and reproduction method added an extra something to think about. It made me think more about how the end product would be reproduced and the limitations this gave. It also made me try and use the single colour printing creatively and think about different hues and how the use of coloured paper could be advantageous to the design. Overall I think that I successfully answered the brief. The input from others highlighted the variations in printing that may occur which I then accounted for by adding a border to the design. It was something that I hadn’t thought of before but will bare in mind going forward.

For this exercise you are going to make up a poster list for yourself. It is intended that you keep it pinned to a noticeboard or wall to remind you of the dates and, as it will be there a long time, it needs to look good.

Start by collecting all the birthdays of your friends and family. You’ll need their name and birth date, to decide whether or not you buy them presents or just send a card, text message or email.

When you have all this design a page to include all this information for example:

Now you design your own ordering the information that best suits you and including as much additional information as you would find useful.

Ideas?

This brief was probably the most uninspiring to date. I needed to do some research to get some inspiration. I started a Pinterest board.

Pinterest

My research found that most birthday lists were pretty much the same. There were a few exceptions but most were divided into 12 boxes into which names and dates could be added.

So I then began to collate the name s for my birthday list and whether they required a text, card or present or a combination of the 3.

Design

My initial thought were that I wanted to steer away from the 12 box design and try to do something a little different.

I thought that I didn’t need to show all 12 months, only the months containing the birthdays in question. That meant 8 boxes for 8 people. My initial idea was to represent these as pages from an old desktop flip–calendar. This involved me creating 8 boxes with the dates and names on them and some way of displaying what each person gets on their birthday. I decided to do this by representing then with icons of a mobile phone to represent a text message, an envelope to represent a birthday card and a present to represent a gift. I thought that these might also need a key to show what they represented.

This design served it’s purpose but wasn’t very inspiring! So, back to the drawing board.

For my next design I decided to use the names of the months as the main element of the design. I stacked them on top of each other and highlighted the months which had a birthday in them. This design reminded of the design I did for the previous exercise in that it reminded me of a timeline. This led me to put the birthdays along a vertical centre–line. I again added the symbols that I had used previously and to make them stand out from the background I chose a high–contrast colour from Illustrator’s colour guide. I decided not to add a key for this one as the list was for my benefit and I would know what they meant. The background still had a lot of negative space so I added the words ‘birthday list’ in the same font(Futura) with a 20% tint to make it subtly blend into the background.

I was much happier with this design as it was out of the norm and was visible from a distance. There was also an element of overlaid type in the design to add interest to anyone looking at it.

Conclusion

This was a tough brief to interpret and try and do something different.

I think I have done something different and interesting that I would happily have it on my wall as a reminder. The few people I have asked have said that they liked the design and agreed that it’s something they haven’t seen before and was easy to understand. It was also mentioned that I was beginning to develop a recognisable style which I’m not sure is complement or not.

Oh, and I forgot my sister’s birthday!!!!!

Find some examples of information graphics. For example bus timetables, city maps, diagrams or representations of statistical data. Look at the way they are designed and try and work out the decisions the designer made. What can you learn from them and when would it be appropriate to use a similar design solution?

For this exercise you are going to describe your immediate surroundings using information graphics; this could be a plan of your desk, the layout of your house, the arrangement of objects in your cupboards or your morning journey; anything will do.

Before you start you will need to think about scale and about how you will break down the information for your design. Create a graphic that represents an aerial or front on view of your location. Be mindful of the hierarchy of the elements in the composition and the dynamics needed to draw the viewer’s eye from one stage to the next. Use typography, numbers and colours to describe what is being represented. You may want to produce a key to help us understand what is being shown, as well as a diagram title to put things in context.

Keep all your sketches and notes in your learning log.

Research

First thing to do was to research infographics of different types and styles.

What are infographics? Infographics are a combination of information and graphics. They are used to present complex info quickly. They can be used tell a story; to make connections more obvious; to make data understandable; to explain an issue. 90% of information that comes to the brain is from visual stimuli.

I started collating a Pinterest board of designs that caught my eye.

Pinterest Board

The pins I collected covered things like statistics, timelines, maps, guides and situations. They were all different in their approach, some were typographical, some illustrative and some used photographs. These gave me an insight into what this exercise was about.

I also used a couple of books that I have for inspiration, An Introduction to Information Design by Kathryn Coates & Andy Ellison and How to use graphic design to sell things, explain things, make things look better, make people laugh, make people cry, and (every once in a while) change the world by Michael Bierut.

The Michael Bierut book goes into designing the infographics and maps etc. for the New York Department of Transportation and the signage for Governeors Island.

Design

Initially I wasn’t sure what to base my design on as I don’t really have a desk as such, my house layout is pretty straight forward and I don’t have a conventional commute!

There were lots of infographics in my research that involved timelines, I thought this could be a possibility for my design.

My day job involves a lot of travel around the U.K. and wondered whether this could be used somehow in my design. I decided to explore this idea.

There was a distinct possibility that this could work. My initial thought was to use the variety of destinations that I visit with my job and how often I visit them. This would be some sort of map infographic showing the places I visit, how often and for what purpose. I started by creating a map of the south of England which I traced over a Google maps image and marked all the locations that I travel to for work as well as my home location. I then drew lines between them in different colours depending on the type of learner that was located there.

I played around with the idea of placing icons in each of the destinations representing the number of times I visited each location in the past month. I wasn’t happy with the way this was turning out. It was looking too busy and messy and infographics need to be clean and clear so they can convey their message. Back to the drawing board!

While researching infographics I had noticed that quite a lot of them were based on a timeline and my mind map had thrown up the idea of a rota. I wondered if I could use my work rota to produce an infographic. I decided to mock up an idea.

I started by drawing a vertical line on the page to represent the timeline. I then applied a grid to the page with 7 rows: 1 for the top(title), one at the bottom(footer) and 5 in between for the days of the week(Mon to Fri). I made 2 equal sized columns either side of the timeline.

I began by adding the abbreviated date for the 5 days of the working week. I wanted to place each day on alternate sides of the timeline and aligned the dates accordingly. I chose the font Impact for this exercise as it is bold and easy to read and condensed enough to fit in the timeline. Again, in Impact I added the places I was due to visit the following week. As identified in my original idea, it could be a good idea to indicate the distance to the locations. I decided to use a car icon to represent this. The varying mileage on the rota meant that the icon needed to represent both small and large numbers. So looking at the largest and smallest values I decided that the car icon would represent a set distance of under 50 miles and this could be repeated for the larger distances e.g. 1 icon for 29 miles and 5 icons for 218 miles. This would need to be explained with the use of a key.

Next came the type of visit. In my role I train both butchers and bakers so I needed an icon to represent both. I chose a joint of meat for the butchers and a loaf of bread for the bakers. I added the relating icon to the locations. I then occurred to me that I could use these icons to represent the number of learners were in each location.

The only confusing part of the rota was Tues/Weds as these days included an overnight stay. I illustrated this with an icon of a hotel. Again, this would be explained with the use of a key.

After I had added this information I took a step back and looked at all the whitespace on the page. To help with reading the information I added some geometric arrows to help illustrate the direction that the infographic needs to be read.

There was still a little too much white space on the page so I added a polkadot texture in the same blue as other elements on the design and changed the opacity to make it a little more subtle and not detract from the main information elements of the design. I also added some not–objective crosshatch elements overlaying the design to give it some depth, so it didn’t seem so flat.

Final Design

Conclusion

After initially being stuck for what to do for this exercise I am very happy with the outcome. This design is bold and clear with lots of contrast and the message is easily understood. I asked friends and peers if the message of the design was clear and easily understandable and the response was positive. The addition of the key at the bottom helps in understanding the symbols and the only criticism was a spelling mistake in the text at the bottom which I quickly changed! The alignment of all the elements relate to each other by aligning them on a grid and the limited colour palette helps with the clarity.

I think that the end result is very successful even if the subject manner wasn’t straightforward and conveys what a typical week looks like for me in my day job.

Choose a book by an author you are familiar with. You are going to design two different covers for it, one using illustrations or photography and the other using just type.

Design the whole cover including the spine and back page. Include the title of the book, the author’s name, a brief description of the story and any other information you think is necessary.

As you are working remember that your design is intended to help a reader know what the experience of reading the book will be. Is it a serious text book or an off-beat funny novel? Are the readers expected to be young women or older men and does this matter? Is it an ‘easy read’ or ‘literary’? Does the publisher have a house style you need to be part of?

When you have finished critique your work – which of your two designs do you feel works the most successfully and why? Make notes in your learning log.

The book

The book I chose for this exercise was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick. This is the original novel for the basis of the Bladerunner films. Philip K Dick was a science fiction author who’s books are the basis for many Hollywood blockbuster films such as Minority Report and Total Recall. I hadn’t read the book but had seen the Bladerunner films. I decided to buy myself a copy. The book gets its title from the lead character’s ‘pet’ android sheep that he tells everyone is real as live animals are a status symbol in the story’s post–apocalyptic setting and also the idea of counting sheep to fall asleep.

Research

I began with Pinterest and looked at covers of Philip K Dick’s novels and started a board. This also included some other sci–fi novel covers.

Pinterest

Most of the book covers I found were illustrated and only one or two were typography based. The imagery used seemed to be mainly illustrating elements of the story in quite a lot of detail. There are some that are more abstract and minimal, these seem to be more modern printings of the novels. This seemed to be the general rule for the majority of the book covers with there only being a small number of exceptions. Purely typographical covers seem to be somewhat unusual when it comes to sci–fi novels and I only found a couple.

Mind map

I then moved on to mind–mapping ideas for my designs.

The word sheep I feel is the most prominent word within the title that would produce the best imagery, so I honed in on that.

I then moved on to drawing up some layouts with and without imagery; with and without sheep.

I liked the idea of neon lighting (re: Bladerunner) being used in the design to represent the dystopian future that the story is set in. I also liked the idea of using computer code or binary in the designs somewhere. I liked the origami idea but this was more of a Bladerunner reference rather than the original story.

I then jumped on to the computer to mockup some of the stronger ideas.

Design 1 – Typographic

I initially wanted to create the neon effect for the type only design and watched a few tutorials online to get the gist of how to get the desired effect and then I had to find a suitable font for the type itself. I found a font called LIBRARY 3AM Soft which had a double stroke which would give a really nice neon letter effect. For the neon to stand out this would need to be on a dark background. I set up my document with 3 art-boards for the cover, back and spine and filled them with black. I then placed the text onto the cover in as large a size as would comfortably fit. I wanted to emphasise the words electric sheep and have them illuminated and the rest of the title switched off. To highlight the words electric sheep I added some effects to give it a slightly 3D look and to make it glow. I also duplicated the layer and placed it behind and applied a blur to give it more of a neon glow. The rest of the title wasn’t given any effects to give it the look as if it was a neon light that wasn’t working. In the same subdued colour I added the author’s name in Avant Garde and the publisher’s combination mark. Above the title I also added some small, leaping sheep and applied the same neon effect to them.

I added a sheep and the title onto the spine of the book as well as the publisher’s lettermark using the same styles as on the cover.

For the back cover I started by adding the barcode which had to be reversed out of a white box to make it work. I then added the type which was again in Avant Garde. This comprised of a paragraph advertising the book and its author, a couple of paragraphs about the story and some reviews all reversed out of the black background in white. I then added the publisher’s combination mark in the same style as the cover and spine. I wasn’t sure how to recreate the neon effect on the back cover and this took some working out. Eventually I ended up adding a line that encompassed the type and repeated the neon effect of the front cover.

Design 2 – Illustrative

For this design I again set up the 3 art–boards. Once again the sheep would be the focal point of the book cover. I wasn’t sure how to show the sheep on the cover but I knew that I wanted it to depict the sheep as “electric”. I liked the yellow and black colour scheme from one of my page layouts in the last exercise, so I started by putting down a yellow background with a slight gradient on it. During my mind–mapping the idea of binary had come up. I decided to make an image of a binary sheep. I did this by masking some binary numbers on top of a silhouette of a sheep. It was at this point, while trying to fit it on the cover, I decided to use the image across all 3 art–boards. For this design I wanted to reflect the binary numbers in the font used. I used the font American Typewriter Regular as this resembled the original machine font used in binary. I added the title and the author’s name, giving the title the larger size as this was more important. The colour of the type was picked from the colours of the binary numbers in the sheep image as was the publisher’s lettermark.

The image wrapped around the spine and left little room to add the title, author and publisher. I squeezed the title and author onto the yellow area below the image and placed the lettermark at the top of the spine.

The back cover had to show a lot of type and the wraparound image took up a lot of the space. To get around this I placed another yellow box over the back cover and reduced the opacity to knock back the black image. This gave a better, larger base on which to put the type. I used the same type as on the previous design. I put the advertising paragraph and reviews in American Typewriter to tie it in with the cover and the story synopsis was in Futura to contrast the other typeface. Again, I added a barcode and the publisher’s combination mark.

Conclusion

I enjoyed this exercise in exploring different approaches to the same subject. The brief gave both freedom and restrictions to design the covers. It also gave me the opportunity to read a great science fiction novel.

This exercise brought together the skills of layout and hierarchy in regards to both type and imagery. It made me think of the book cover, spine and back as a whole rather than 3 separate, individual elements.

I feel that both designs are strong and are both clean and give the feeling that they are  science fiction novels. The type–based design has some elements that could be removed to make it a pure typographic design. The spine of the second design seems cramped and may need more work to make the title more legible.

I personally like the cover of the first design as it reflects the dystopian feel that is portrayed in the book and the subsequent films. But, as a whole design I think that the second design works better and is more eye–catching and would attract readers better than the first.

Addition

I then played with a third design that related to the films more than the book but I enjoyed doing it but I felt that it didn’t do the book justice as the origami was used in the Bladerunner films and not the book.

Choose a magazine, newspaper or journal and work out the grid or grids they have used. You will probably need to look at least four pages to get a feel of the layout.

Measure the size of the pages, the margins, the text columns and the gaps in between them. How many columns do they use? Is it the same on every page?

Can you identify the fonts they use? Do you have it or one with similar properties?

How do they use photographs and illustrations? How much ‘white space’ on the pages is there?

Draw up a two page spread using the same grid as the magazine. Indicate text using Lorum Ipsum and indicate images by either filling a picture box with a 10% tint or using a picture from your collection.

When you have done this see if you can develop the grid further.

Select a title and images and see how many variations you can come up with. What happens when you alter the body font or headline font? Do different kinds of images change the ‘feel’ of the publication? Do you think the readership for each of your variations would be the same? Does the image you choose suggest a different design? Which ones work best and why?

Grids, guides and gutters

“The grid is used by the typographer, graphic designer, photographer and exhibition designer for solving visual problems in two and three dimensions. The graphic designer and typographer use it for designing press advertisements, brochures, catalogues, books, periodicals etc., and the exhibition designer for conceiving his plan for exhibitions and show–window displays.”

Grid Systems in Graphic Design by Josef Müller–Brockmann

A grid is a skeletal framework used by designers to organise information within a spacial field. Grids can also be used to design logos and webpages, but mainly they are used print.

The most basic grid is a single module defining the margins of the page.

While single-column grids work well for simple documents, multicolumn grids provide flexible formats for publications that have a complex hierarchy or that integrate text and illustrations. The more columns you create, the more flexible your grid becomes. You can use the grid to define the hierarchy of the publication by creating zones for different kinds of content. A text or image can occupy a single column or it can span several. Not all the space has to be filled.

A modular grid has consistent horizontal divisions from top to bottom in addition to vertical divisions from left to right. These modules govern the placement and cropping of pictures as well as text. In the 1950s and 1960s, Swiss graphic designers including Gerstner, Ruder, and Müller-Brockmann were the kings of modular design.

Grids can be designed using various other methods depending on the size of the page. The page can be divided using the golden section or something similar depending on its size. A fibonacci sequence can also be used to set column widths.

Grids can be overlaid on top of each other to create more complex layouts. The grids don’t have to run vertically and horizontally either, they can be set at any angle.

Grids can also be broken!

Devon Life…again

I picked up a copy of the August edition of Devon Life and took a look at the layout of the spreads.

This time around a closer look at the page layouts showed a lot more intricacies in the grid layout.

I chose the 4th spread to look at as the first page uses a different grid on top of the 7 column setup.

As previously analysed Devon Life use Baskerville for headlines with Times for the body type. Additional type and photo labels are Avenir. The magazine uses a lot of photographs to support the articles that are a high quality and give the magazine a high class feel.

The first page has an image that runs across into the second but only by half the width of the first column. The main part of the article is split into 3 columns which sits centrally and doesn’t align to any of the 7 columns. The headline and subheading sit centrally above that.

The second page sticks a little more to the 7 column setup apart from the last piece of type which runs down the middle of the last 2 columns.

Versions

I then played around with a few different layouts using the same title and same grid and used different hierarchy with type and images. I tried using single columns as for type spreading out to a 5 column block of type on another spread. I wrapped type around an image. I did a spread with no images but on a 3×5 grid.

This first design was based around the image of the astronomical clock in Prague. The headline was reversed out of the photo in a white sans–serif font which bled into the opposite page which has a lot of white space around the 2 columns of type and the labels for the 2 images used a single column in a smaller but bolder font to make it more legible.

Overall, I think that this layout looks upmarket due to the large amount of whitespace giving it a clean, crisp look. I think it looks like a high–end travel brochure or newspaper supplement.

This second design had a strong visual element due to the nature of the image that I had chosen. I wanted this to be the main focus of the spread and with it being such a strong shape I wanted to wrap the type around it. So I drew a circle over the top of the image and wrapped the type around that. I then placed the headline across both pages to contrast the fairly standard columned layout. I reversed the last paragraph of type out of a box to represent a summary or more details about the article. I maybe could’ve made the headline weave through the handle of the clock.

I think that this layout looks like an article that would be seen in maybe a house and home–type magazine or a high–end women’s magazine and is very bold and eye–catching.

This third layout was an experimental indulgence on my part. I decided to turn the layout into a grid of square text boxes with a paragraph of type in a few of them. I also carried on the time theme by using some Roman numerals from a clock face as other typographical elements. I also highlighted some of the text box edges in red and used these lines to add something extra and interesting the contrast the black and white layout.

This article would suit a specialist typography magazine or a design article due to its unusual layout. This may prove tricky to read if you didn’t understand what it was.

The fourth designed returned to an old favourite, overprint. I wanted to use coloured type on this design as I had used black or white on the previous 3. The image plays a large part in this design but in a subdued way. I overlaid the headline and subheading in  a contrasting colour. The body type was in the same colour as the image and was placed in a single 2 column block divided by the subheading. I added a stylised date in outline so that it didn’t detract from the main elements of the article.

I think that this is a very stylised layout and again would suit a specialist magazine or perhaps a corporate brochure.

Verdict

I think that my personal favourite and the one that works the best is the 3rd design, but I think it needs more work but its very striking. It uses the grid in a different way and that is what makes it stand out.

Conclusion

This exercise has shown me how the grid and layout options can seriously change the feel and look of the spread. The grid is a very useful tool and can be used in so many different ways, not just vertical and horizontal. The grid gives form and structure to design and helps elements on the page relate to each other. Besides the grid there are other typographical systems that can be used such as axial, radial, dilatational, random, modular, transitional and bilateral. These can be researched in the book Typographic Systems by Kimberley Elam which shows examples of all of these systems in use with the same pieces of type shown in the different variations.