OUGD405 | Studio Brief 03 - Final Indesign Layout, Development and Evaluation

Above is my final design for my indesign booklet.

From my research I had decided to try out the two favourite typefaces American typewriter and Futura. I decided to keep the preliminary colour palette for my layout as this had received positive feedback. I placed the palette as an image on the side of my layout and used the eyedropper tool to select the colours as I worked. 

I also decided to keep to a simple circle and vector based theme as this is what appealed to me in my layout research and I felt it represented the SLBs well. 

I then began the design stage. I set up a 6 column (per page) grid as I had decided from my research that many columns would be best for my content.  I started out using American typewriter as my chosen typeface. However, this did not work well on every page. Specifically on pages where I wanted the text to be more spaced out(like I had seem in some of my research), the type looked unusual and out of place. The front cover didn’t appear to have much of an impact. 

I then tried my second favourite typeface, Futura.  This typeface looked far better in the rest of my booklet and it gave me far more flexibility as the typeface worked with the layout in all its forms. The only issue I had with this was that from my research lowercase futura had been voted as the best. However, this was difficult to fit well onto the front page, where I had planned the text to fit snugly together and obtain most of the space of the page. So therefore I decided to use uppercase Futura. I made sure to keep getting feedback as to whether the typeface was appropraite or not. It was agreed that the typeface looked good in practice in uppercase so I kept to this design. 

My type testing

American typewriter front cover

Lowercase Futura front cover

My final designs consisted of a blue & yellow vector based theme. I used the same vector silhouette of a superlambanana across the booklet for consistency and to bring the pages together.  I also used the circles filled with colour and photos like I had decided from my research. I brought in the landmarks of liverpool into the background of some pages to give the spreads a bit of character and to represent the culture of Liverpool. 

I mainly followed my final sketches for the page spreads, however some layouts did require some minor tweeking as the layout did not appear balanced. 

I have chosen to use an acetate stock for the front cover - an idea I came up with while sketching my final thumbnails. I have wanted to be more adventourous with my approach so I felt that this was a good way to go.  As the front cover is acetate, this allows you to see through to the contrasting pattern underneath. I felt that this touch would intrigue others and encourage them to pick the booklet up. As for the pages, I have planned to use a stock similar (but less dense) to matt as I saw throughout my booklet research. This stock is also easy to draw on for my colour in page. However, as my booklet is not yet printed I will need to see what papers are in stock for my booklet. If no papers are suitable, I have planned to use a cartridge paper. I felt that lightweight paper is more suitable as this would be cheaper to mass produce and the booklet is only a light read. 

I did encounter an issue with including my photographs in my booklet. As we had learn in an InDesign lesson, for best print quality the images need to be 300dpi. Unfortunately, none of my own photographs, or others that I could find were high enough quality. To resolve this issue I live traced the images that I did have, using a lot of colours so the detail wasn’t lost. Although I felt photos would have looked better, the live traced photos matched the vector based theme and also tied in with the style of my studio brief 04.

As I had the time, I did create the full booklet using American typewriter above. You can see particularly on the GO SUPERLAMBANANAS page the effect of the type isn't as bold as Futura. I also prefer the symmetry and similarity in shape of the letterforms in furtua as this leads to a neater layout.  

Above, I was screen shotting the spreads to compare the typefaces. 

As you can see Futura looks far more clean and organised on my first page. The strokes are also much bolder, which is required for it to be readable against the strong blue pattern seen behind the acetate. 

I felt that a positive quote of the SLBs would set a good introduction as it would give the reader a good idea of the impact SLBs have had. This also breaks down the book into cover and content. I used larger speech marks as this is a technique I often see in magazines, it just looks a bit more interesting! I used american typewriter for these so it was brought into my layout somewhere. 

I found this spread quite difficult to create as there are so many SLBs, and I needed to make sure that the reader understood what they were. Because of my lack of images, I used a photograph showing multiple SLBs to show that there is more than one, and then a close up to express their unique designs. I then placed the same SLB vector I had been using multiple times as if they are walking across the page to further communicate that there is more than one. I had difficulty positioning the statistics "30,000 mosaic tiles...etc" as I did not want to make the layout too busy. This was subtle enough in a white type over the Landmark vector. This also filled an empty space and balanced the layout. 

I felt that the names page was my least successful. This is because of the unusual content on the page. One of the names is twice as long as the others too, so the names did not fit nicely into a shape. I originally tried spreading the names right across the page in two sections, one with a lower opacity. This design became a bit too crowded, and the names were difficult to read against the silhouette. I would have removed the silhouette but the spread felt empty and too text heavy without it. This did not fit in with the scheme of the booklet. I decided to place the title names, in that way because I wanted to keep the layout varied as this was a tip I found in my research. The body copy then fit nicely into a column with the title. I used a line to separate the two for easy reading. 

One of my most sucessful pages I felt was ‘The best Superlambanana’ page. I had originally planned to place the SLBs on a stand to represent their win. However, as I placed the SLB vectors on to the sheet, one came out as the size of the spread. This had a really good effect and I felt it filled the page with something relevent. Their size represents their victory.  I had taken these images from the vectors I had created for studio brief 04.  I liked that this brought the two projects together.  I had seen the use of strip of colour across a spread in my research and I wanted to use this somewhere in my own work. However, the same strip did not fit happily into any of my pages as it was distracting from the other information on the page. So I experimented with the place ment of this strip and found it looked best as a strip along the bottom half of the page. This was great because it resembled the River Mersey.

For the Auction layout I decided to use images of Mandy as she was sold for the most. I would have placed the statistics in larger text across the spread, similar to "The Original" page. However, I did not have much body copy for this page. So I decided to keep it in one short paragraph.

I was really pleased with the design of my final page ‘Design your own’. Although this was very simple, the page spoke for itself and the colours really complimented each other. I liked how the yellow strip framed the outline and the pencil was a good key to the reader. 

My final page contrasts the first, as a yellow SLB pattern rather than blue. This is seen through a blue pattern on the acetate cover. I am yet to see the effect of this but I think the two patterns overlayed will have an interesting effect

STUDIO BRIEF 03 EVALUATION 

As I am interested in magazine design, this was an exciting brief for me. I was grateful to learn how to use InDesign properly. Up to now I had been very self taught and this had caused many problems. For example, I did not know that InDesign used links for images. This was very useful to learn as well as how frames work and overflowing text into other text boxes. 

I was happy with how I approached this brief in terms of type testing. I feel that this definitely improved my outcome and was a form of critique. Often I would not receive enough critique for one element so this allowed me to receive plenty of feedback. I am happy with how my illustrator skills are developing and how I can now use adobe programs simultaneously for effective design. I am excited to be using new materials and learning how to make booklets. This has inspired me to try making my own notebooks and experiment with binding methods. 

The main issues I encountered were Adobe illustrator vector problems. A lot of the time, the way I had created a vector meant that I did not have the same flexibility than if I had done it correctly. For example, sometimes I would use the pen and paint tool to create one shape, which meant when resizing the lines were different thicknesses. I think the unusual shape of the SLB did not help with this, but it has helped me understand how to tackle complicated shapes in illustrator. I feel that I could have refined my content to a higher standard as this was basically my research written out very quickly into a short paragraph - not much thought was put into this. I also feel that I should have spent more time in the sketching stage as this way I can document my ideas more clearly. 

If I was to do the project again, I would have created more than just the one booklet but experimented with other binding methods. I also would have tried to get paper samples from the printer room and find out more printer restrictions - the reason I didn't do this was because I understand that the staff are very busy and thought I would not be able to 'stop for a chat'.  With both studio brief 03/04 I have had many issues with losing documents and files because of an issue with my account. I was continually saving my work to ensure I did not lose too many files. Thankfully, the technicians were able to resolve this issue but it did slow my whole process down. Perhaps I would have created more and put more thought into the design had this not been an issue. 

I was pleased with how I displayed my final resolution in an Issuu format. Although we were advised to do this, it is a tool that I have found very useful for my other projects and good presentation of work makes the design look better.