After summarising what I have learnt this year and looking at other peoples self promotion work, I have decided to have a list of what I want from my information pack.
To express that I have really enjoyed making books this year - Instead of creating a pack of different little things, I want to create a book which includes everything to represent that making books has been one of the things that I have loved to do.
Typography - I would like to work with a lot of hand rendered typography/illustration throughout the book, both edited typefaces and drawing my own to express my growing love for type.
Binding - I would like to do a more complicated bind furthering my skills and experience in this workshop, to result in a hardback bind.
Screen print - I want to screen print the front cover of the book, I liked the finished produced of the typographic self promo piece I had found in my research, and would like to create a metallic finish, which will be achievable through screen print. This show both my love for type and screen print.
Style - As I have only been studying graphic design for one year I found that unlike many of my peers who had been studying previously for a year or two, and were starting to develop a style, I couldn't see one emerging in my work. I knew that I preferred illustration over photography, and I enjoyed a wide range of processes, but I would illustrate in a range of ways, use a range of colours, and whichever typefaces I felt were appropriate to the brief. This being said, I have found it hard to come up with a consistent theme normally found in promotional packs and so my book will be in a mixture of styles.
Concerns for the environment - I wanted to show my growing concerns for having a lesser impact on the environment, although I am quite uneducated on how to design ethically, and it is something I want to learn, I wanted to show my willingness to learn about it by printing onto recycled paper.
Below I have made a list of the areas I want to talk about in my book and titles I will give these.
Time Management - Time is key.
New design processes.
Alternative media.
Adobe suite - Almighty Adobe.
Working in groups - Group work.
Research and concept.
Ethical design - I like to pretend im an eco warrior.
Designers I like - Design that makes me go woah.
Work I enjoyed doing - Work that soothed the soul.
In the future - In the futura.
With all the sections planned I used the summaries I made of the year, in the first post to help me write my supporting body copy for each area which can be read below.
Time is key.
The common man is not concerned about the
passage of time, the man of talent is driven by it.
- Shoppenhauer.
Coming to LCA and experiencing the first year has not only taught me about myself as a designer, and a vast amount of skills. It has also taught me about this very important thing called time. Being able to catch on quickly, has helped me to become a very loyal friend of time. I have constantly set myself schedules and stuck to them in order to succeed on the course, I have adapted to the changes of time, responding to briefs ranging from one day to six weeks, as well as adjusting to those time periods in which we have more than one project to complete. Handling this important aspect has taught me about good practice for the future, balancing the elements of design such as, initial concept, early designs and the finished product in order to reach deadlines. But also managing to create a sense of symmetry in my life with committing to other things that I enjoy.
New Design Processes
A wave of new design processes have swept me up this year, and its been a really great experience not just to learn how to create these designs digitally etc, but how to produce them via different processes. I have become versatile In printing on different stocks, previously when designing I would always reach for the same white card as this was like a safety net, however I have found that considering stock is benefecial to how your design is portrayed, how if feels to the audience, how the certain grain or colour of paper can effect how the audience percieves the product. I also really enjoyed learning how to screen print, and being able to actualize the effect that screenprint gives within my work, although the process of setting up screens is a long one, The results and feeling of accomplishment I have gained makes it all worth it. I also experienced binding for the first time in one of the later projects, and it has really reinforced my love for the physical aspect of graphic design, really being able to get my hands into projects has inspired my design practice for the future and I would love to continue to work with print.
Alternative media
I have designed with a range of media over the first year and it is something that has given me a well rounded appreciation of what media is appropriate to use. At the start of the year I refined how to use the more traditional hand rendered media in a way more appropriate to graphic design than my previous roots within art. I widened my ability to use other medias such as, Paints (acrylic and water colour), fine lining, papercutting and sewing.
Learning how to use these materials before using the adobe suite meant that I felt very comfortable within my natural skills, before I started with anything I was unsure of. It also taught me which I would like to use again in the future, and that although computers are fast and easy to use, well planned design that is hand rendered, can prove to be more successfully effective and be more personal. Although I have learnt to use the Adobe suite, I currently and plan on in the future combining hand drawings with the digital aesthetic.
Almighty Adobe!
Before I had arrived at LCA I had never studied Graphic design before, or any other subjects that had an aspect of digital design. I had a background concerned with art and had skills in drawing, but this had never translated onto screen. One of the most valuable skills I have learnt this year is how to use three programs from the Adobe suite, Indesign, Illustrator and photoshop. I had experimented with a few tools in photoshop and Indesign, but learning these 3 programs thoroughly has really provided me with an education to create great designs.
Illustrator is the program where I have really allowed my skills to strengthen and is the one in which I feel most confident in using, this is most probably due to the fact I have been using illustration within my work more so than other media such as photography. Although I do want to learn how to use photoshop further so I increase my confidence, i have found that I really enjoy creating custom illustrations and want to continue to do so in future practice.
Group work
I like to work in both collaborations and by myself. Although it can be stressful, I have found that working in a studio surrounded by other designers has been entirely useful when working on solo projects. This has helped me to realize what I would prefer for future practice, that I would like to work within a design studio rather than free lancing. Learning to work with others has been a huge beneift and is something I look forward to in the years to come on the course. This aspect of the course has also taught me a crucial life lesson. Don’t be too nice! Compromise is Key when creating design in a group. However when the key doesn’t fit don’t be afraid to voice what is on your mind. I learnt this within the last group collaboration, and everyone opened up to the ideas I wanted to pursue.
Research and concept
I have learnt how to research. To investigate into and select sources in order to retrieve both useful and crucial information. (None of that stuff you think you’ll need but never use) I have also learnt to use a range of sources, we may spend all our days, nights, more days staring into the computer screen, but, that does not meen that it provides the answer for everything! I have learnt first hand that its best to cull research from everywhere, books, experiences, photos and interacting with those who we are actually designing for! What can I say, the course has filled me with a tonne of bright ideas!
Something that I have really enjoyed doing this year and I have refined is concept building. I get really excited when I am first starting a brief and my creative juices start flowing. I like to create clever design, playful design, design that can continue to be uuncovered and discovered.
I like to design in layers. not the type of ones you find in the adobe suite, Althought your work can prove to be disastrous when these are not used, so thats important too.
i like to create design where my audience can constantly unveil aspects of things I am trying to communicate, allowing my audience to draw links, understanding the relationship between the design and the message.
I like to pretend Im an eco warrior.
Creating design that considers the impact on the environment is something that, after looking at design studios such as Zerofee, I would like to incorporate more within my work. I believe that as designers we have a responsibilty to preserve the environment to ensure a more proactive future for the forthcoming generations. I would like to work towards making my designs more ethical in the years to come, by making small changes such as where I source my stock from, choosing a stock that has been recycled or approved by FSC and considering mechanisms such as the production processes of the stock. For this current ppp brief, I tried to source local recycled stock, however could not get a hold of any, this is something I would like to make a priority in the future. Although digital design is the most ethical, if hosted by servers that take energy from renewable sources such as wind farms, I would like to continue to work with print, and keep my products as enviromentally and economicaly friendly as possible.
Design that makes me go woah.
Kate Forrster.
Kate forrester specializes in hand drawn typography and illustration, where she often combines the two to create breathtaking original designs. She creates stunning lines through overwhelming flourishes and lets her pen freely drive her designs which openly impacts the attibutes of her flowing style. Often as I have began to, she takes existing typefaces and edits them to produce her own pioneering typography.
Martina Flor.
Martina Flor is a Berlin based designer that works hand in hand with Typography and illustration. Although her talents may put her under the same umbrella as Kate, she combines this skill with other processes I am learning to love such as traditional print. Her designs also go beyond the fluidity that is Kate’s signature as she experiments with a range of audience, approach and tools in order to create something entirely personal for each project.
Work that soothed the soul. (Also known as work I enjoyed doing this year)
Another project that really got my creative juices flowing this year was the Speaking from experience brief. Due to having 6 weeks to complete the brief, and it being a lot more independant I could really have creative control. Product/ Commercial orientated design is a place which I have began to call home this year, amd is something i would like to focus on in the future.
One of the most enjoyable projects I did this year was for the context of practice module, in which I produced a childrens rythmic story book that told the story of modernism post Bauhaus era. I really enjoyed the process of translating everything that I had learnt and researched into a language that a younger age group could understand. The design process was challenging but so rewarding when it was completed. Illustration is something I have enjoyed across the course, and I particularly like building a complete set for this project, designing for books and illustrating is something I would definitely like to do again in my future practice.
Although it was like a rollercoaster I am proud of the end product for the Communication as a virus. I feel that working in a group for this project really bettered the end product in which we produced. The peroject took everybodies best ideas and streamlined them into a range of consistent products. I liked how the end product turned out which was a lot different to the initial ideas I had produced for the project.
In the Futura. (To do)
Continue to work with print and keep working with screenprint aswell as trying new traditional processes such as a lino print and embossing.
Although I have enjoyed book making this year and would happily do it again, I would like to try other aspects of Graphic design next year such as Identity/Branding and packaging.
Continue to work on my hand rendered skills, manipulating and constructing my own type as well as illustrations, as I feel this is what is special about my designs.
Learn how to design more ethically and discover how I can make less of an impact on the environment and the economic world.
Make further discoveries towards who I am, and what direction I would like to go into for future practice. move forward in understanding a more specific approach to my designs and identity.
Design Descisions
Knowing that all my pages were going to have a different aesthetic outcome, I wanted to use a few tools to make sure that there was still a sense of consistency and a feel that they belonged in the same book. In order to do this I have decided to:
- Use the same typeface for bodycopy on each page. The typeface I have chosen is courier.
- Put all body copy on right hand side pages and leave the left for title pages.
- In order to make the publication appear like a traditional book, put a traditional frame around each page.
SECTION 1
For the first double page spread ' Time is key' I decided to hand draw some custom type inspired by one of my favourite designers Kate forester, I wanted the type to portray a hint of black letter but seem quite modern in a sense to portray the changing of time.
I drew the type up on graph paper and then Image traced it into illustrator to trace round afterwards.
Above is the typeface created for a recent book cover, designed by Kate Forrester.
in illustrator to aid drawing up the typeface, I used circles to ensure the swashes that I was creating were proportional in size.
Although I was only using the circles as a guide, I enjoy how they bring a contemporary sense to the piece, and so I have decided to incorporate these into my design.
I wanted to incorporate some colour into the background, I liked the ethereal sense that the use of flourishes and swashes created, and so I wanted to continue this flow into the back ground and decided to go with a gradient effect, in a dark blue and purple.
To create the right hand body copy page I used a simple illustration to represent the headline and the body copy. I was going to use the Image of the clock I had illustrated above, However, the flourishes take a long time to draw on illustrator, and with designing each page in a different style I needed to keep to a certain time limit, and so I decided to go with a different type of illustration, that I felt matched the aura of the font more (A sand timer).
I placed the illustration and body copy in a format that echoed the layout of a fictional book you would read, to echo my love for book making this year. I did however divide the body copy into two columns as it is easier to read this way.
SECTION 2
For section 2 (New print processes) I decided to keep it simple. I took and easy to read font (BEBAS) In white for the headline and pasted it underneath in black giving the effect it would have been screen printed. I did this on a blue background, as it would be light enough to see the black drop shadow, but would also emphasise the white.
I wanted to give the effect of a screen print on this page and so I transferred the file into photoshop. I'm not particularly confident with photoshop and so to get the end product was more of an experiment than an exact route. I pasted some textures into photoshop, that appeared to look like the grainy appearance of screen print as well as using a few grainy brushes I could find.
I created another illustration that was relevant to the body copy (a wave) referring to the new wave of processes that have swept me up this year and added the same effect in photoshop.
SECTION 3
For this section (Alternate media) I wanted to play around with simple illustrations of different media (Pens, pencils, paint, photography).
First I created the image shown below:
I created a simple line drawing of a camera in illustrator, and took the line drawings of the pencil and paintbrush from another project I had previously done, I copy and pasted the same illustration in orange the create a drop shadow.
However I did not like the combination of illustration and text, and so for this piece I decided to keep the left hand page illustration based and leave the right hand body copy page to Declare that the spread was about alternate media.
Instead I created a pattern using the above illustrations of the paintbrush and pencil and adding a pen. I used the same double effect to make the pattern seem as if it had a orange drop shadow. I also changed the colour of the background so that there wasn't such a stark difference.
I placed the title onto the right hand side page, and used the same effect of creating an orange drop shadow.
I then used two simple illustrations again, from a previous project to keep consistency within the format of the book.
SECTION 4
For the Almighty adobe section my design stemmed from the title and the comic like typeface I had chosen to use.
After I had used this typeface I had the idea of comic book illustrations on the brain, and this has totally influenced the illustration that I have created. From the title I visioned the adobe suite flying through the air wearing a cape, as would super man in a comic book.
In order to make sure the illustrations adapted to the style I wanted I had to design in layers to create the idea of cartoon shading.
I added in the skyline and clouds afterwards in order to make the text part of the overall illustration.
On the right hand page I have placed the body copy into two columns in order to keep consistency with the rest of the book.
I wanted to create a section often seen in creative resumes, about what adobe program I felt the strongest and weakest in. As I was n't making a creative resume, I decided to include this on this page. The joining illustration was inspired by the overall theme of this spread.
SECTION 5
Section 5 about group work, spoke about how much I enjoyed working within a group and so I wanted to create a spread that reflected the positive experience that I gained from group work. I had thought about rendering my own typeface for this piece and had drawn something out on paper:
However I found that the basic shape of the typeface was similar to one I found online and so I chose to use this one, and edit it to include the lines like the above style.
For the illustration, I wanted to create something fun and positive, Since I have enjoyed done illustration this year, and particular character building, I decided to experiment with creating some whacky fictional characters, which I sketched up on graph paper first.
I decided that the two bottom illustrations were my favourite in representing a photo and so I created physical copies in illustrator and added a lt of bright colours and gradients.
The image and text put together to create the title page:
I arranged my body copy in the same two columns that have been recurring throughout the project and placed these beneath a quote which I wrote to describe my view of group work:
For the facing page illustration I decided to carry across the illustration of the lightbulb I had made to the opposite page, as when working in a group our ideas can be much bigger and brighter when more than one person has given their input.
In place with bodycopy:
Design that makes me go woah!
This section of the book referred to the designers, or more so my favourite two designers who have influenced me most over the years, and whose work constantly surprises me and reminds me that I must always strive for more. I had found a typeface that I liked for the lettering online and so I downloaded it:
However after writing out the title page, I found that I wanted to edit the typeface slightly and adhere it to the message that I was trying to portray on the page.
On the opposing side I kept the page consistent and added two works from my favourite designers that I have found this year on the course.
Work that soothes the soul is another definition of the saying 'work that floats your boat', and basically refers to the work that I have enjoyed doing this year. When thinking about 'soothing the soul' I wanted to choose some type that had a soulful but subtle 70's appearence. I found a really great typeface online called funkydori which matched my exact requirements for the typeface I was looking for.
It was from the typeface sample image and my love for swashes that inspired the format of the typography for this page. I used the same circle shape, and added my own swashes like the ones I had made for the time is key spread.
I kept this spread simple and added some body copy to the title page, This was because I had a lot of information to put on this spread and so I wanted to utilise the space.
In the futura Is the last of the informative spreads and talks about what I was to carry on doing or try in the future. For the aesthetic of this spread I wanted to create a futurist appeal, and I wanted to avoid using the actual font future as it is not one that I like to work with. Instead I chose a type, a heavy sat sans serif, that I could edit, to make it appear more futuristic.
I picked the bluey greens as this colour had connotations of a futurist feel. I then edited the type to make it appear more mechanical, with a sense of futurism.
I carried the theme onto the next page by using the same typefaces and extra effects I had created, making a to do list for the future, and what I would aspire to do next year. This seemed like the most logical way to present the information.
The last spread is something I created in order to create a place for the business card I wanted to make. I wanted to create something light hearted for a future employer to see, and create a general upbeat feeling, and staying memorable.
The slogan I chose to put across the spread is... 'One more thing, I worked my butt of this year'
Where the left hand page would be 'One more thing' written in some hand rendered type, 'I worked my butt off this year' would be written in stick fonts, on the back pocket of some jeans, in which the business card would be placed inside. This concept was fun to create as it makes a play on words.'
The last font was inspired by one that I found online, but couldn't get hold of a full version.
The illustration of the back of the jean is shown below:
The pocket design I created with the text:
And the design in place, with a card inserted until the business cards are produced.
For the font cover I was inspired by one of the pieces I had found in my previous research.
I decided to create my own typographic piece for the front cover, I wanted it to be quite witty and light hearted. The purpose of the type would be to quickly summarise the year, and show people that I work hard yet still try to keep a sense of humour.
I began to work with ryhme, as this worked well with the COP children's rhythmic modernism book I made, It also felt natural to me to create a rhyming piece.
Below is the rhyme I came up with:
I've learned the lingo
Earned my pride
Made some mistakes
turned up on time
tried new things
stayed up and cried
all in the name of
Graphic design.
I decided to use different fonts that I already had in my stock for each sentence, However I decided to make them more suited for my book, and my practice, by adding in subtle illustrations.
below is the combination that I have made.
I was happy with my design and I began to thing how I could make the back cover consistent with the font. I decided that I wanted to create some kind of identity/logo symbol, to recognise myself as a designer, this could also feature in the book.
I had seen an identity that I liked online which had inspired me to begin thinking about my own.
I liked this logo, however I like the idea of wrapping my initial, an S also, around a pencil, as I like to hand draw and my strength is creating illustrations. I also wanted to include a feminist appeal with flowing flourishes which I very much like the style of right now.
I drew an idea up on paper.
I decided I liked the logo with fewer swashes. I drew this into illustrator and placed it onto the back page.
To include it in the book, possibly as the first page when It is opened, I wanted to include more colour, and so I started to play around with the illustration and gradients in illustrator.
Once I had create the front and back cover, I decided that I wanted to hard back bind the book, having loved making books so much this year, I wanted to resemble that in the piece. Having fallen in love with print so much this year and becoming more confident with stepping out of my comfort zone, I decided I wanted to screen print the front cover. I loved the way the other designers piece looked great using metallic foil block on blue. and so I decided to screen print copper into black.
I took my printed inside pages down to vernon street and began to create a perfect bind for my book, then giving it a hard back case.
Placing the spreads into the wooden press, then glueing and meshing the spine into place.
Below is the spine once the glue and mesh had dried and the excess had been cut away, leaving a need bind behind.
I then moved on to cutting the soft bound casing to fold and glue around the spine.
I cut the board and binded it with black bookram to create the hard case bind and headed down to screenprint.
I had come to vernon street earlier in the week and prepared my screen so it was ready to go downstairs.
Below are the results of the book after screen printing.
Overall I was very happy with how the screen print and binding went! Seemingly too well for me! However I moved on to creating the last piece of the pack which was my business card.
I decided to keep the business card similar to the rest of the book as I wanted to try, even though I felt as if I didn't have an identity yet, create some kind of symbolism for myself.
In order to do this I took the logo which I had already designed for myself and placed this in different sizes on the front of the card, and presented the information on the back in the same way I had on the front of my book.
For the business card I tried to pin point who exactly I am at this point in time as a designer.
The practice I came up with was:
Sarah Goldthorpe.
Custom lettering.
Illustration.
Specialises in print.
I created the business card with an emphasis on white and an emphasis on black, however I preferred the black and chose this in the end.
