Final newsletter & evaluation

The Final fron and back of my newsletter. It is A5 fold out to A2 and uses Helvetica 8pt medium with the headers being Century Gothic bold italic at 18pt. The title on the cover is at approx 30pt to help give the design an immidiate look. I aimed to reflect a broadsheet look with my fold out;

To achieve a broadsheet look I used wide columns making sure i incorporated my images into the grid alongside the type. I made the layout in such a way that as you fold the newsletter out you get a continuous strem of information that culminates in the viewer finding out when the open times are on the back poster.

I did shock myself with how quickly I managed to conceptualise this brief and also turn it around for print successfully. Its definately made me see what is possible in terms of completing something that has a tight deadline and I definately will be doing more mini briefs like this alongside my larger more comprehensive briefs. I looked at the Don't panic website last night to see if there is anything to do, but at the moment there isnt. but as soon as there is Im going to start turning round their competition briefs everytime there is one as well as submitting illustrations to the Juice Magazine and Designer violence.

Design Directions For LCA Newsletter

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This was the first direction i took on, where i broke the grid. I changed this quickly because the amount of type of both sides didnt feel balanced enough and the overall look felt too sporadic. The headers on the article arent working here either, they arent uniform and the design rules arent working well enough on this direction.

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This direction felt much more realised after I had done my development design sheets. After folding this up I realised it didnt work as I said in my previous post.

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 I had amended a few things such as the placement of the sub info type on the cover and changing around the logo in position. At this point the layout still wasnt working comfortably and after a feedback session with Jane I decided I needed to move assets around to make for a totally uniform visual look that runs all the way through the newsletter.

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This was the final layout. I think for the purpose the newsletter needs to serve, my resolve works. An initial worry I had pre crit was that the colourway i chose for my final design direction wasnt appropriate because It was too dark and possibly dingy, but the feedback I got was that it works well and is appropriate, so I'm going to keep it the same. I'm happy with the layout except for the fact that the columns and large headings conflict a little and two colums seem to nearly merge visually.


I will go into more depth about this in the next post.

Short turnaround brief: LCA College Newsletter developments

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 Also See design developments & finals post for more information about this two day turnaround brief.

Crit Session wednesday 20th October

This session was really useful to get some feedback on a zoomed out view of my overall professional practise of this module so far. The feedback I got was really positive and I recived alot of constructive feedback which has in a way blown my pressurised recovery brief wide open and given me a few things to consider in terms of my blog and the newsletter amendments.

Pressurised recovery:

Develop a few more design directions that lend themselves totally to either type, or image.

• Images don't suit the typestyle and form of bookdesign i am using
• The colour of the front cover dosnt lend itsself well to the idea of deep water. Use a darker stock

Newsletter:

Layout and fold method work, but the direction of the unfolding process needs clarifying, possibly some sort of signification to the viewer as to which direction to unfold from.

Blog :

PR, There is alot of research about the context of my book, but I need to document what I have been looking at in terms of design - for example how other designers are handling drawing fish in a contemporary illustrative approach.

This feedback will be tackled over the course of a few posts both my design practise and context blogs.

Conversation with Peter Wilkes @ Quality colours London

I have been looking around on the internet for glow in the dark ink, but the process of ordering online seemed like it would be lengthy and costly. I had a conversation with Gareth in the print room at Blenheim and he pointed me towards a company that the college outsources inks and printing mediums from, called Quality Colours London, I started a Dialogue by leaving Peter a message, and accompanied that with an email.

500g of Minerlux glow Laquer will cost me £24.91 including Post and packaging and to get hold of the ink i Need to send a Check to Quality colours london, and specify where I want mine sending.

Quality Colours Ltd
Mr. Peter Wilkes
Unit 13 Gemini Business Estate Landmann Way  
LONDON SE14 5RL.

I am ordering it to:

Printroom
Leeds College of Art
Blenheim Walk
LS2 9AQ

I will be making an order for two lots of 500g, because Becca L needs to get hold of some too. This will cost me £44.82 including post & packaging on top of VAT (17.5%) We're going to split the cost afterwards. Ideally I would like to get hold of this ink to use on the cover of my pressurised recovery book because I made the decision to abandon outsourcing stock becuase it was too expensive, which gave me a bit more money to play with when it came to the print processes.

Mock up, "Pressurised Recovery"

I thought it necessary at this point to produce a mock up that was as close to final as possible. A few inconsistencies need adressing with the production of this mock up which were:

• Image on page to does not line up with the way i cropped the page, this needs to be adressed.
• theres a few inconsistencies in how i've numbered the pages
• I was a bit inaccurate with the stapler
• I need a bleed on the document
• I need to make sure When i pull the glue on the screenprint, it has to be perfect to avoid the foil looking "rustic" I want it too look clean and crisp.

I have some questions to take with the book for the crit next week which are:

• Is the text on the back neccessary?
• Is the squid on the Front in gloss a good idea?
• Does the square format of the book itsself bother you?
• IS the visual approach mimmmicking an encyclopedia in terms of book design? Why?/Whynot?
• Do the stock variations work?
• Any ammendments you can see with the type?

The next one ready for print run should be perfect :) Im confident that these will actually sell.

Crafting and printing decisions - Final Mock up 1

I decided that I would duplex print on cheaply sourced paper to cut down my printing costs (this costed me a total of £2.60 to do including paper and the cost to print 12 A4 sides in the print room, because this was so cheap, I decided that I could splash out on a speciality print process like foiling for the cover. Stock and print of the cover costed me a further £1.20 to source and produce. The pound spent on the screen is a one off payment and the foil is costing me nothing, because I'm using off- cuts. This means my total spending for the production 10 books (not including this one) will come to £28.00. If i sell all ten at £5.00 each, Ive made a proft of £23.00. Which suits me fine. There will have been a cheaper way to do this, but I think I ended up working pretty smart here. I'm very glad I didnt order in any paper or inks because for the two it would have cost me £130.00. which would have been ridiculous because i would have had to price my books about £10.00 more to make my money back.

I can rest easy knowing I have all the screens prepared and my indesign file packaged and ready to go. I will be amending the file one more final time before my large print run next week, but as it stands - apart from a few typos, the book is ready to be printed. 1 Mock up is done, (which took me about 3 hours to produce form print to binding and cropping, but Ill document that in more detail in another post.

Tutorial with Joe, and ne layout.

Had a tutorial with Joe today, and after seeing his work - more specifially the brief he had to produce a book using traditional book design, I thought I'd ask him for a few pointers. He gave me a few research sources and helped me to rethink some of the layout issues I was having just in terms of if things needed to be there or not. Joe also suggested that I establish some rules that all my pages can comform to, to give my overall layout the uniformity it needs.

I've changed the layout of the headers so that the title is only on the left page and the chapter number is only on the right, with the icon removed completely to help clarify and declutter the page. Here is the new layout spec for the type:

• Large headings are 30pt, Baskerville Oldface Cyrillic, inclined with a 28pt leading (when applicable)
• Body copy is all 8pt, sub headings are in italics, headings in bold and in small caps, with copy in baskerville upright.
• All paragraphs have been justified and indents have been done manually. All paragraphs are also dehyphenated.
• All layout conforms to a 4 column equilateral.

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Cropping all my stocks down.

I bought some a2 mint green card, and some a2 china white, which is slightly off and some a2 diamond white. because my book is only a5, i can get a whole book's worth of content out of one page of a2. Which is really cost effective The stocks for all ten books wont cost me over £20, and they're all pretty nice stocks. Despite this being a contingency plan, I think that it was a better plan than my original one.

I also got hold of a few a4 sheets of irridescant paper which will make a really nice speciality endpaper for my mock up. I'm going to print onto this stuff and mess about with a front cover so I have a Mock up ready for the crit next week. The layout for the book is pretty much done apart from any amendment suggestions I get given in the crit. Cant wait to get a book printed and bound. I'm also toying with the idea of foil blocking.

(Trying to) order paper stocks.

Me and ben endured an epic day on tuesday, Ben had brought in some paper sample books, So we flicked through and picked one we both liked, and that was suitable for our project. That stock was:

Conqueror 25% recycled fresh white CX22 at 160gsm.

We found the details for the supplier (which is Antalis McNaughton), and I gave them a ring, this was a bit of a lengthy process because we wanted to know if we could get a quote for a 150 page pack of B1 (to suit our print needs) and also if they did the exact same stock at a lighter weight of 120gsm. Turns out, they were out of stock of the paper and that it was also actually discontinued. I was confused by that, so we decided I should ring the supplier to this Company, a chap called rob at the mill.

Rob enquired on his system to see if he had it in stock for me, which he did and said that Antalis should have said that they would order it in anyway if I requested, and also should have given me a price. Rob then rang them and left us a message.

I then rang Antalis back, and was eventually told that 150 sheets of B1 would cost over £100. I politely said i would ring back If me and Ben were interested at a later date. But for the stock we wanted, that is too pricey. We ended up going to Gadsbys and found some nice stocks!

I bought enough stock for two books incluing inlays, covers and Ben's paper too. How much did that cost me?

SEVEN QUID.

Ben's words from his presentation really rang true: Always have a contingency plan. Never a truer word spoken. I think I learnt that quite a bit of planning (and a bigger than expected budget) is needed when ordering speciality stocks.

Layouts and final book

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Thats all the illustrations done and a look into the layout of the publication in more depth with the informal feedback I recieved in my late night crit at the end of last week. The type in this one is still messy with widows, hyphenation and bad spelling all over the place. There is also inconsitencies in the page numbering, and I think I can also minimalize the amount of information on each spread - for example do i need to chapter number on both pages of the spread? Im thinking about getting rid of the word page too. Im happy with the way this is looking at the moment, the illustration works well against the type - which is 9pt at the moment. I will drop this to 8 point. I also need to think about what else im adding so this pagenates well.

Will had a look over a print out of this PDF, and some very useful feedback from him was that i Should justify the paragraphs of copy, to make them less awkward to read. Will also told me about the De- hyphenation tool in indesign which would solve a few of my problems. Below are a few pictures to prove that not considering the amount of pages you have in your booklet ends up in a bad duplex job.

This actually was ordered correctly, but it shows that Im definately going to need signatures in multiples of 4, not including inlays and the cover, as these will be done seperately. I know this because I was showing sarah in the printroom at Vernon street who said a saddle stitch would be ideal for this publication. Obviously I would need my cover to have a spine in order to compensate for the size of the bind.

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Ive also looked into a cover here, But I'm going to resolve the cover in much more detail in a later post. At the moment, the idea is that I will be using a coloured stock  with a speciality print process like foil or glow gloss , so I want to cover to appear simple and clear in message so the print can make it something beautiful.

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I've simplified my cover idea further here which will be helpful when I resolve the cover properly. Ive also added more content in here to make the up the numbers. The pagenation is working better now but in preview its still adding blank pages so I'm missing something. I need to refer back to my initial brainstorming session To help finalise my content. I think it would be wise to exclude cover pages in this layout. I'm not printing any more proofs now until everything is pretty much resolved, this will mean I will have something that is almost finished for the crit and I will get the feedback I need on tweaks to help with a professional look to my publication.

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Final content for my book. As far as I'm concerned, the layout is almost resolved; everything is uniform from point size to hierarchies of information and layout on the same grid for all pages. I have tweaked this one more too, and I feel that it is working as a high end publication that has an encyclopedic feel. After doing all the layout, I am unsure if the images are working - but a crit would help me with this.

Some feedback I got from Jane in a tutorial is that the illustrations would work well in colour, and help to add interest to my publication. Jane suggested using muted colour to reflect a hand drawn lithogram feel, which was the commonplace process for illustration in 18th century Encyclopedias, like Darwin's theory of evolution.

Ive ticked alot of personal boxes by completing this section of my brief so early on, it also now allows me to start on my next brief and spend a good few weeks on print and stocks before deadline. I want to chase up this glow in the dark ink ordering idea I had. I till havnt managed to get in touch with the supplier at quality colours UK, but I have had a little more success looking into stocks, Which I'll talk about in my next post.

The files I generated today & starting to think about using colour, is it necessary for the content?

To be honest I think the colour detracts from the overall composition and starts to make the overall image look a bit too jazzy. I think colour will be great for promo stuff, but for the inside I am liking Greyscale I think, Fits nicely with my victorian botany book as well.

I also just wanted to mention that the actual body copy's content is temporary, and is from Wikipedia. I just did it to see what the pages would look like with relevant type on them.

Mini Crit with Ross, Ian, Tim, Ben and Emma

I got my pages printed and we all congregated round a table. It was a really helpful and constructive little session which helped me get some clearer ideas about my layout from a more type driven mindset, which was really useful.

Pre crit; A5 side, 6pt baskerville oldface italic and regular, with i think its 32pt bold for the header. No consideration for gutters or leading at this point.

My new considerations after the mini crit are;

• Gutter should be no more than about  5 point
• All layout can be moved to the right of the page to allow for a spine
• I need to check for widows!
• The centrally aligned header works alot better than the left align because of the tone of voice, looks less like a journal and more of a novel which is good.
• I dont really want to be exceeding 10 words per line
• Can I condense my content?
• Move up the typeface size by about a half.
• Develop a modular Grid for layout because this will help me attain an even distribution of objects on a page and allow for imagery.
• My columns need to be wider, or leave less of a gutter.

Realy good quick fire crit, as I say I'm pretty clear on layout when it comes to it now. I do still need to produce about 12 illustrations by the end of the week before I can really think about layout. But the rate at which im doing the illustrations at the moment is pretty good, I'm getting two done a day, and I think I could get that up to three because some of the illustrations will be more straight forward than others.