Week 6

Tuesday 31/3

Final presentation!

In a group we went around and decoded another class members book, and talked about what we learnt over the course of this studio. It was really pleasing to hear positive comments about my booklet and that it was being relatively easily decoded.

Here are screenshots of my final booklet:

RATIONALE:

When deciding on what to do for my topic, I wanted to do something unique and different, but I found it quite a challenge to think of something that hadn’t been done before. I tried to think of what I liked about Wellington and activities I was interested in currently. Being in a new relationship meant I felt the “warm-fuzzies” of romance and it spurred the idea of looking at activities for couples in Wellington. I initiallly had a lot of  ideas of romantic activities in the capital but everyone’s idea of romance is different so Fay suggested I play on cliches. After brainstorming romantic cliches I decided to to use a colour scheme of reds/pinks/whites – soft colours, and use hearts and soft, fluid imagery to try and generate that feeling of “love” and “romance”. It took me a while to get back into the swing of things, and it wasn’t until I had the idea of creating some hand-generated imagery – drawings, watercolours – that I got inspired, and it was after creating this imagery that my compositions started coming together successfully. The typography in my booklet is structured and provides grounding for my flowing imagery. I love working with image and type and always find it an interesting and exciting process. The initial ideas I generate always transform so much and it’s really cool looking back on that process and seeing how far and idea has come. There were two ideas that struck a chord with me and I will take forward into future projects; it really is the little changes that can make a big difference and good type shouldn’t be noticed.

Week 6

Monday 30/3, session 10

This morning I wanted to print off my booklet and get my last pieces of advice before taking it off to the printer.
I went through all the processes to print booklet but my booklet came out on a4 paper and so was very small - funnily enough many people thought my booklet actually looked much better at this mini size - it was cute a pocketable.
I managed (after some help from Skye) to get it to print on a3 and so made up the booklet to show Fay.
When I got my turn, I was really pleased to hear that there were only a few very minor changes for me to make to my booklet - a bit of kerning, capital letter here, a comma there, and a widow fix. So I made those edits and then went through the process of making sure all my linked files were tiffs before exporting it into a pdf.

When I was about to head to Fullstop printers I got a call from Skye who was there already and she was letting me know that they had been told they were the last group whose booklets would be ready for pickup today. I was guttered and now had to think about a back up printer. We went to The Big Picture but they suggested our booklets may not be ready until tomorrow afternoon. So I rang Ink Digital and asked them what their turn-around time was. They said an hour so we headed there to do our printing.
I chose to print mine on gloss paper as I thought it appropriate to the romance of the booklet.
I used 210gsm gloss for my cover and 128gsm gloss for my inside pages.
Cost: $22.50

When I got my booklet, I got it out to check over and was disappointed to find that on my map page the colour had gone a bit peachy. I asked the staff why it had done that and they blamed my file and that "the machine just prints the file as it is given" which I don't agree with as I had been very careful to use CMYK files, tiff files, and it definitely didn't match but they didn't seem interested in solving my problem, so I took my booklet - and my business - I won't be using them again. Interestingly enough, Katie's colours in general hadn't come out as she had expected so next time I think it would be worth doing colour testing at the bureau.
It was definitely and eye-opening experience getting my booklet professionally printed. Next time I will try to be much more organised so I'm not under time pressure.

Week 5

I then needed to get to work on my map.

I liked the idea that had been generated during the peer review of drawing it in the palm of hands.

I scanned this into Photoshop and began to work on it.

I created little icons to represent each location. At first I put these little icons on the map in their locations but I had to make them too small and they weren't identifiable. So I thought of using little "cupid's arrow's" as the pointers on the map. I then numbered each location but I didn't feel like the numbers were obvious enough so I replaced them with a little string of hearts. But it all started to get too much and didn't feel connected to the style I had applies to the rest of my booklet.

I decided the number on their own were much simpler and neater but I wondered if it wasn't mappish enough.

So I created a map piece to lay in the hand.

I placed these into my spread but didn't really like them so I considered the plain numbers version again, and how I could make it work on my introduction spread.

So I added in a watercolour element and changed the colour of the arrows to my specific CMYK pink.

I took a bit of the watercolour out so it wouldn't interrupt the text on the spread. But I actually liked the cross over between the text and the watercolours.

I then added my key suburbs to the map; Wellington CBD, Lower Hutt, Eastbourne. This definitely made it feel more like a map. I put it into my spread but the watercolour on the right was interfering with the information and when I tried to scale it up the hands were a bit too dark.

So I went back to my photoshop file and lightened the hands and removed the watercolour that was spreading out the right side.

And I put it into my spread:

When I scaled it up I was really happy.

I am happy with my whole booklet now and am ready to see and adjust it with Fay's advice.

Week 5

Today I did some research into bureau's.
I have definitely left this a little late - but don't they say "better late than never?"

I am looking at printing with either:
The Big Picture - 226 Victoria St
Fullstop. - 154 Victoria St
Ink Digital - 20 Marion St

My preference is Fullstop. They offer a 30% student discount and have a 3 hour turn-around time.
I have been in contact with both Fullstop and The Big Picture and prices seem to be around $25 for a printed, trimmed, and bound booklet. Fullstop provided me with their student price template:

Then I worked on my cover.
I painted a watercolour last night to use:

I put this across the length of the front and back cover.

Because of the texts sizes I am using I tried centring everything but I didn't really like this as I haven't used central alignment anywhere else in my booklet.

So then I went back to the left alignment which I like much better.
Then I remembered Fay's previous suggestion of putting an underline beneath the word "love".

I really liked this and so then moved to the back cover and aligned the bottom line and added my name and the year as instructed.

I'm really happy with the cover.

Week 5

After Fay's suggestion to make a thicker underline and reverse the text I had a play.

I didn't really like the thick underline with reversed text. It felt like it was competing with the heading and felt too heavy.

So I went back to where I had started - trying the thin and thick text options.
After seeing the thick underline, this now felt too weak.

So then I tried all caps to see if this would make it stronger. But I didn't really like that either.

So I tried the thick line again but with the text in lower case. It was still too dominating.

So I tried playing with the thickness not going the full way. For the first one I kept the text aligned to the right column edge. And then tried aligning the text to the left column edge. I wasn't sold but thought I'd try it with the lower case text with the same alignings.

This was feeling too bitsy and over-thought.

I decided to go back to basics and make the line slightly thicker and make the text bold. This was definitely the most successful.

So I applied the change to all of my spreads and it definitely improved them.

Week 5

Tuesday 24/3, session 9

When I arrived this morning Fay asked me if I had worked on my cover - and the answer? No - I hadn't :/ I told her I was waiting to do a watercolour to use in the background but she suggested I start thinking about the type now anyway.
So I started putting together some ideas on just a plain pink background:

I like the idea of using a soft, linking, romantic typeface and have picked Cochin - I think it is all of these things but is also quite readable and not over the top. In terms of the above concept - I like the "romantic" but I feel like the text underneath is too big.

I thought about my title, and thought at the moment it's pretty 'stock-standard'. What is something more interesting I could do? And with shorter words so that I can have the type larger.
I came up with using the word "love". and came up with this idea:

I like this composition much more!
Fay suggested adding line in - maybe under the word "love" - so I will look to do this once I have done my watercolour background.

Then I went back to working on my spreads. I was feeling unconvinced about my picnic spread and then as I was looking at it considered swapping which side the text/image were on so that the watercolour could bleed across the centre line and look more deliberate than it was currently looking.

I really like this swapped around. It feels much more deliberate.
I am wondering if my booklet doesn't have good rhythm with the swapping of text/image, but at the same time I almost want it to not follow the standard swip swap rhythm. Fay doesn't seem concerned so I am going to leave it as is.
This did make me consider the order of my spreads though. I definitely want the movies spread to be my final spread as it is rated the most romantic and I like the rhythm of swapping between indoor and outdoor activities, so I think I'm going to stick with the order of; Sunset, Cocktails, Picnic, Movies.

Now that my location spreads are coming together I need to work on my introduction spread. I spent a large chunk of our studio time writing up my text for my introduction page. And then I started working on the spread.

I used the same heading/subheading styles to keep it consistent with my other spreads. I also used the same "pull out quote" style. I highlighted my 4 activities in the text by changing them to my pink colour.

Then I worked on adding my infographic information. My peers didn't like the empty space that was being created at the moment. It felt very spread and it didn't feel like the decisions I had made were considered and deliberate.

I re-jigged the information and compacted it into one block of text and displayed the icon just the once. This felt much more resolved.
But looking at the spread, it felt a little clunky with the Univer type heading. And then I thought about my cover and decided to try Cochin as a feature heading font.

This really feels like a more resolved spread and I am going to apply this heading change to all of them

I am wondering whether the white space in my spreads is boring - maybe I should try an off white/soft pink?
Peers are saying that the crisp white is nice - maybe I'm just overthinking it.

I came back in the afternoon to talk to Fay and show her my booklet with the new introduction page and heading changes.
She liked the title fonts and what I was doing with the cover text.
Looking at my introduction spread, she suggested a minor change of adding "the city of love" to my type. She wanted me to bolden the coloured text in the icon section like I had done in the introduction blurb to make it easier to read.
She also suggested trying a fatter line under the heading and reversing the text out like I had done for my "tips" and "icons".

Week 5

Monday 23/3, session 8

This morning's lectorial was on MAPS, MAPPING, MAP MAKING.

So it follows when we returned to our studio we began a mapping exercise.
We were given an a4 page (the size of our double page spread) and asked to roughly with just a pencil, create a map that locates all of our destinations in relation to each other.
I found this quite difficult as my four locations are spread across the wider Wellington region and I didn't really have much of an idea of what a map of Wellington looks like. We then had a feedback session on our maps in which it was clear that a lot of us were in the same predicament of looking at a birdseye view and marking our spots. I am thinking for mine I might do a watercolour shape of Wellington and then mark each location with a heart shape that is filled with a photograph of the location/activity.
From there we moved onto doing peer reviews of our brochures.
I paired with Hannah, Alfred, and Finn. We had some really good discussions!
Here are my notes from the discussions about my work:
On my picnic spread it was suggested that I raise everything so that it's not so base heavy. And soften the edge cuts to eliminate the prison vibe that they saw.
In terms of my map - Finn came up with a really epic suggestion of doing a drawing of the map as the creases in a palm - I am going to attempt this but I still have my watercolour back up.
The group read the title of my brochure and didn't feel like it fitted with my imagery/style. Finn said that as a guy, on his own, he would never pick up a brochure like mine - especially with all the pink. But if he was out with his girlfriend and they saw it, together - they would pick it up as it definitely successfully portrays a coupley vibe. So I am not going to be gender specific about who the brochure is for.
They said I needed wider margins to allow users to grip the brochure.
They said my most successful spread was the movies one. Reasons being; the image was framing and interacting with the text which gave a holistic feel and the crossing of the centre line felt very deliberate.
The points they gave me to improve on were; margins, an interesting font for headings, using less text sizes, make the image and type work together.

Fay and Matt were then calling each of us up individually to see our brochures/where we were at/ and give us some feedback/advice.

The first thing I took away from this was aligning all the spreads.
The second thing was less is more with the different type sizes.
Third I need a few things that were more eye-catching/bold.

From there I redesigned the spreads to all look like this:

I made the change in heading font as during my peer review my peers didn't like the mix of a Univer heading and Garamond body text. I added the lines under the main heading and under the Tips heading.

In passing, Fay said she didn't like the main heading font change and that for now I should go back to Univer. She liked the improvement of the underlined heading and right alignment of the sub heading. She wanted my Tips heading more dramatic and wanted me to try the thick black line with the text reversed out and so I came up with redesigned spreads that looked like this:

I agreed with Fay that the Tips heading now has a lot more impact and looks WAY better.
Her next step for me was to inject some colour somewhere in the type.

I tried it in 2 different ways:

I decided I liked the first one better - having the underline and subheading pink.

Later, I decided to sort out my infographics.
I wanted to use a scale system as when I'd gone to my locations I had a used a scale of 1-5 to rate it.
I also liked the idea of it being simple, pink, and maybe using the heart symbol again.
This is what I came up with:

I was really happy with this idea as I think it quite clearly illustrates what I'm trying to tell them. So I have added it into each spread.