Thursday 16 April 2009
More Book Covers
I found another site with some great book covers on, The Book Cover Archive. You can even browse the archive by font! Here are some of my favourites:
Tuesday 14 April 2009
Book Covers
I'm off to Whole Foods for lunch in a bit but first I thought I would post some book covers. I'm thinking about doing the Faber Finds brief next term so these will be good inspiration. Images from FaceOut Books:
Design Practice 2: Part 2
For part 2 of this module we have to choose a minimum of 3 briefs from past award options. The ones that appeal to me the most are Faber Finds from D&AD 2009, Wagamama from YCN 07/08 and 78rpm - MP3, Three Minutes & 10 Things You Should Know About... from ISTD 2009. I might do all 5 actually and have 3 of them as 1 day projects. This is just a quick plan but I'm thinking:
Week 1:
- Faber Finds (1 day)
- MP3 (1 day)
- Three Minutes (2 days)
- Wagamama (Half day)
- 10 Things You Should Know About... (Half day)
Week 2:
- Wagamama
- 10 Things You Should Know About...
Week 3:
- 10 Things You Should Know About...
Week 1:
- Faber Finds (1 day)
- MP3 (1 day)
- Three Minutes (2 days)
- Wagamama (Half day)
- 10 Things You Should Know About... (Half day)
Week 2:
- Wagamama
- 10 Things You Should Know About...
Week 3:
- 10 Things You Should Know About...
Thursday 2 April 2009
End Of Project Self-Evaluation: Design Practice Collaborative Brief
1. What skills have you developed through this project and how effectively do you think you have applied them?
I feel that working with a partner for such an extended period of time has helped me a lot. Me and Emma negotiated everything and both put a lot of work into this project. I now feel more comfortable working collaboratively and know how to work effectively with another person. The construction of our device was very process driven. I further developed my skills in screen printing and leaned how to set up artwork to be laser cut as well.
My abilities in InDesign have also improved from doing the type module and I applied these effectively to the design of our leaflet, boards etc. Emma generated most of the illustrative work and doing this project together allowed me to see what I could do using someone else's artwork which is an important skill to learn for the future. It was important to converge our styles and produce something that would be appropriate to the visual language already established by O2. Doing this project meant that we had to stick to O2's branding guidelines and I feel that we managed this well.
I think that I applied everything I learned during the duration of this project very effectively and I have learned a lot during the process.
2. What approaches to generating work and solutions to problems have you developed and how have they helped?
When we began the project we spent the first week brainstorming all of our ideas in full to make sure that our final idea was developed fully before embarking upon it. This was very helpful as normally I would just come up with an idea and leave it, whereas this time we fully explored the possibilities and tried to come up with as many ideas as possible to see what actually worked.
Looking at the work of others played a very important part in the creation of our work. It is impossible to design within a vacuum and our ideas improved greatly after looking at contemporary work. Crit sessions were also very helpful and showing what we had done to other people only pushed us to generate more. We were going to literally create jigsaws at first but having crit sessions meant that we considered them as visual metaphors. This improved our work and added interest to our devices.
When we had issues with the laser cutting machine we were worried that our project would no longer work correctly but luckily because we had done more prints than necessary, we could salvage it. I now know to always do more than you need. We did a great deal of experimentation and making test pieces was really useful to check our idea would work before just jumping in and screenprinting/laser cutting our jigsaws.
3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?
I think all of the type and layout work I did for this project was very strong, helped by doing the type module. I also worked hard to make our work fit in with the branding guidelines of O2, experimenting with layout, the gradients and using the Fruitger typeface. After doing all of our idea generation, I feel that our project was conceptually sound and portrays the idea that we're better connected very effectively. We made good use of the imagery we generated and our illustrations were excellent. I will capitalise on these things in the future. I am still chiefly concerned with type and layout and can keep on improving in this area. I feel that I will able to work with other people's artwork well and can collaborate more effectively and efficiently from now on.
4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how could you exploit these more fully?
I would say that a weakness in our work was the finish of our final devices. From doing our test piece we decided not to hand finish our real ones because it is hard to cut out a circle accurately from thick card. But because our laser cutting messed up it meant that we had to cut out parts from our print outs which hindered how they looked a little bit. The laser cutter also cut the discs at slightly different sizes meaning that the edges are a little bit off. We know now that we should do the laser cutting first and then print the design onto things. Otherwise the registration will be slightly off.
Although our concept was strong it was very difficult to come up with imagery for things that are better connected. Perhaps we should have spent more time on this to make sure everything fits together correctly. For example we had some really good ideas like a cupcake without a cherry and a dog without a tail but then there are some like playing football without a ball which makes a bit less sense. This is why we produced 6 instead of just the set of 4 so we could choose which ones work best. There is also a lack of research in the project. Although we did a lot of research on the O2 brand I'm sure there must have been something else we may have needed to research into and we didn't. Still not sure what that actually is, but you can never have too much research.
5. Identify five things that you will do different next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?
1. Try out a style different to that already established by the O2 brand to create something completely and utterly new.
2. Spend more time developing the imagery to make sure every design fits in with the overarching concept.
3. Do the laser cutting before the screen printing in order to make everything line up properly.
4. Plan a timetable from the very beginning to make sure I use my time in the most efficient way.
5. Do more test pieces of other ideas to make sure I have chosen the best one.
6. How would you grade yourself on the following areas:
Attendance - 5
Punctuality - 5
Motivation - 5
Commitment - 4
Quantity Of Work Produced - 4
Quality Of Work Produced - 4
Contribution To The Group - 4
I feel that working with a partner for such an extended period of time has helped me a lot. Me and Emma negotiated everything and both put a lot of work into this project. I now feel more comfortable working collaboratively and know how to work effectively with another person. The construction of our device was very process driven. I further developed my skills in screen printing and leaned how to set up artwork to be laser cut as well.
My abilities in InDesign have also improved from doing the type module and I applied these effectively to the design of our leaflet, boards etc. Emma generated most of the illustrative work and doing this project together allowed me to see what I could do using someone else's artwork which is an important skill to learn for the future. It was important to converge our styles and produce something that would be appropriate to the visual language already established by O2. Doing this project meant that we had to stick to O2's branding guidelines and I feel that we managed this well.
I think that I applied everything I learned during the duration of this project very effectively and I have learned a lot during the process.
2. What approaches to generating work and solutions to problems have you developed and how have they helped?
When we began the project we spent the first week brainstorming all of our ideas in full to make sure that our final idea was developed fully before embarking upon it. This was very helpful as normally I would just come up with an idea and leave it, whereas this time we fully explored the possibilities and tried to come up with as many ideas as possible to see what actually worked.
Looking at the work of others played a very important part in the creation of our work. It is impossible to design within a vacuum and our ideas improved greatly after looking at contemporary work. Crit sessions were also very helpful and showing what we had done to other people only pushed us to generate more. We were going to literally create jigsaws at first but having crit sessions meant that we considered them as visual metaphors. This improved our work and added interest to our devices.
When we had issues with the laser cutting machine we were worried that our project would no longer work correctly but luckily because we had done more prints than necessary, we could salvage it. I now know to always do more than you need. We did a great deal of experimentation and making test pieces was really useful to check our idea would work before just jumping in and screenprinting/laser cutting our jigsaws.
3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?
I think all of the type and layout work I did for this project was very strong, helped by doing the type module. I also worked hard to make our work fit in with the branding guidelines of O2, experimenting with layout, the gradients and using the Fruitger typeface. After doing all of our idea generation, I feel that our project was conceptually sound and portrays the idea that we're better connected very effectively. We made good use of the imagery we generated and our illustrations were excellent. I will capitalise on these things in the future. I am still chiefly concerned with type and layout and can keep on improving in this area. I feel that I will able to work with other people's artwork well and can collaborate more effectively and efficiently from now on.
4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how could you exploit these more fully?
I would say that a weakness in our work was the finish of our final devices. From doing our test piece we decided not to hand finish our real ones because it is hard to cut out a circle accurately from thick card. But because our laser cutting messed up it meant that we had to cut out parts from our print outs which hindered how they looked a little bit. The laser cutter also cut the discs at slightly different sizes meaning that the edges are a little bit off. We know now that we should do the laser cutting first and then print the design onto things. Otherwise the registration will be slightly off.
Although our concept was strong it was very difficult to come up with imagery for things that are better connected. Perhaps we should have spent more time on this to make sure everything fits together correctly. For example we had some really good ideas like a cupcake without a cherry and a dog without a tail but then there are some like playing football without a ball which makes a bit less sense. This is why we produced 6 instead of just the set of 4 so we could choose which ones work best. There is also a lack of research in the project. Although we did a lot of research on the O2 brand I'm sure there must have been something else we may have needed to research into and we didn't. Still not sure what that actually is, but you can never have too much research.
5. Identify five things that you will do different next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?
1. Try out a style different to that already established by the O2 brand to create something completely and utterly new.
2. Spend more time developing the imagery to make sure every design fits in with the overarching concept.
3. Do the laser cutting before the screen printing in order to make everything line up properly.
4. Plan a timetable from the very beginning to make sure I use my time in the most efficient way.
5. Do more test pieces of other ideas to make sure I have chosen the best one.
6. How would you grade yourself on the following areas:
Attendance - 5
Punctuality - 5
Motivation - 5
Commitment - 4
Quantity Of Work Produced - 4
Quality Of Work Produced - 4
Contribution To The Group - 4
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
