Open publication - Free publishing
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Blank Boards
Here's the pitch boards with all the necessary type laid out for them. I did this with Kate over my shoulder making sure that everything that was said was a reflection of the group's views on what the project is. Ross also checked the layout to make sure he approved, which he did. It's nice, simple and clean and I think thats all we needed. Just need to add in all the product shots and the digital mock up now.
Year Book product shots
After mocking up the covers and just polishing the final designs up with Ross (post not up here yet, Ross's blog isn't up to date and I need to grab the PDF of the cover before and how I ammended it with him.) We glued the covers and the spreads into a previous year book. This allowed us to take nice photographs. I was really worried when we first printed the covers off, the gold looked like a disgusting mustard colour. But once round the book, it started to look better, and then photographed, it actually looks gold which is great.
Ross mocked uo this potential website, which was excellent. I felt like I'd done a lot of this brief on my own, all the spreads, ammending the covers and then doing all the type on the design boards. It felt nice when he said 'go away, I've got this.' because I was exhausted.
Ross mocked uo this potential website, which was excellent. I felt like I'd done a lot of this brief on my own, all the spreads, ammending the covers and then doing all the type on the design boards. It felt nice when he said 'go away, I've got this.' because I was exhausted.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Sagmeister
Sagmeister's people got back in touch with me, he's too busy to respond, which is fair enough:
Hi Ben
Thanks for your email. Unfortunately it is just so crazy in here that
Stefan is unable to answer your questions. It's extremely flattering
but sadly he is completely overwhelmed by the amount of e-mails he
receives.
As a student, Stefan was very frustrated with the lack of response he
got from design professionals and promised himself to answer every
question. Indeed he used to do it all the time, and included are a
whole lot of answers previously given to students in the past – many
of which you may find useful. It is just not possible to personally
answer each question now.
all good things from 23rd street,
Jessica Walsh
at Sagmeister Inc.
They were kind enough to send me an FAQ though. Here are some useful sections:
9. Our book: Made You Look
Q. Why did you decide to do a book now, at this point in your career?
A.
1. Ego, ego, ego.
2. We were asked.
3. A good time to look back, see all the stuff we've done, get it out of our
system.
4. In the last couple of years many designers published experimental books.
I felt there was room for a classic show and tell book, designs done for
actual clients with all the stories behind it.
Q. It occurred to me after our interview, that most books devoted to the
work
of one designer tend to focus on people who have had many years of
experience. It struck me that, at the age of 40, you're pretty young to be
honored with a book of this type.
A. I agree. Maybe too young. It was one of the reasons we had to include bad
work, there just was not enough good work to fill a whole book (besides, I
also thought bad work might make good reading).
Q. Why do you feel publishers were interested
in, or thought it would be marketable, to publish a book of your work that
you designed?
A. You would have to ask them, - my feeling is that they liked the work and
they thought it would sell.
Q. Were they initially interested in letting you have most of the
creative control, or was this something you had to stipulate and negotiate?
A. Some publishers were very upfront about wanting to be in control
creatively (we did not go with those) and others told us we would be in
charge. We chose among those.
Q. Other touches, such as the book's title on the edges of the pages, and
the
flip-book animation of the running dog--were these also ideas that were part
of your proposal or comps you sent initially to publishers?
A. Yes, all of them. You could lift a red acetate off the cover to see the
effect.
Q. How did you arrive at Booth-Clibborn as the publisher of the book, when
other publishers also responded with interest?
A. We loved their books. We thought they had good international
distribution. They promised to sell the book at a reasonable price. The
retail price for the consumer was VERY much on my mind, I would have loved
the book to be much more affordable, since my favorite readers, students and
young designers, don't have much money. It now costs $34.96 on Amazon.com
(more elsewhere) which is sadly still high.
I would have loved it to be $19.95. This was also my fault: I was very picky
at the proofing stage, driving cost up. And of course, Booth-Clibborn is a
high quality publisher who does not work with the cheapest printers.
Q. Was Peter Hall your author of choice before you contracted with
Booth-Clibborn?
A. Yes.
Q. When did you determine that you weren't in a position to write the book
and that it should be
authored by somebody else, was it at the comp stage of after?
A. When I tried it. It was extremely difficult, I found many excuses not to
sit down and write. When I finally did, the process was painful and the
results horrible.
Q. On the book's design: How did you feel, in general, about the idea of
designing a book?
A. I expected the worst since so many designers who had done a book about
their studio told me it was the most difficult job of their lives. It turned
out to be the opposite. Fun.
In general I love designing books because they are, together with music
packaging, among the very few pieces of graphic design that don't get thrown
away.
In general, I also love that you have the attention of an audience for a
longer time span, making it easier to communicate something remotely
meaningful.
Q. The book incorporates many of the interactive aspects and optical
tricks that appear in your CD designs and other projects. Was this an
accident, or was it intentional?
A. Intentional. It makes sense that a book on our work incorporates the same
aspects as the work. This was also why I wanted to utilize that red filter
device for the cover (we had used it before for Mountains of Madness, a CD
packaging that was always one of my favorites among all our projects and not
only worked well for the band but also helped us getting a foot hold in the
music industry).
Q. Of all of the pieces featured in the book (and including the book), which
ones are you most proud of and why?
A. Possibly the book itself. Because we got much more feedback about the
book than we got on all of our other projects combined. Some of that
feedback was from young designers, my favorite line: After I read your book
I had to go and do a lot of work.
That's exactly how I felt as a student after reading a design book I
enjoyed.
We also included a rating system at the end of the book (1-5, 1 being the
best grade), a reader can look our opinion of the projects up there.
Q. In your book, there is a random paragraph that appears to have been taken
from a romance novel (among others). Do you often place hidden jokes in your
work for those who are paying attention? How important do you think humor is
to design, and does it sell?
A. I love to hide surprises in places where it makes sense, like books or CD
covers (which are scrutinized very carefully by a small minority of
readers). Humor in design is as important or unimportant as humor in life.
I haven't really processed this information yet, but I will do and edit this blog post.
Hi Ben
Thanks for your email. Unfortunately it is just so crazy in here that
Stefan is unable to answer your questions. It's extremely flattering
but sadly he is completely overwhelmed by the amount of e-mails he
receives.
As a student, Stefan was very frustrated with the lack of response he
got from design professionals and promised himself to answer every
question. Indeed he used to do it all the time, and included are a
whole lot of answers previously given to students in the past – many
of which you may find useful. It is just not possible to personally
answer each question now.
all good things from 23rd street,
Jessica Walsh
at Sagmeister Inc.
They were kind enough to send me an FAQ though. Here are some useful sections:
9. Our book: Made You Look
Q. Why did you decide to do a book now, at this point in your career?
A.
1. Ego, ego, ego.
2. We were asked.
3. A good time to look back, see all the stuff we've done, get it out of our
system.
4. In the last couple of years many designers published experimental books.
I felt there was room for a classic show and tell book, designs done for
actual clients with all the stories behind it.
Q. It occurred to me after our interview, that most books devoted to the
work
of one designer tend to focus on people who have had many years of
experience. It struck me that, at the age of 40, you're pretty young to be
honored with a book of this type.
A. I agree. Maybe too young. It was one of the reasons we had to include bad
work, there just was not enough good work to fill a whole book (besides, I
also thought bad work might make good reading).
Q. Why do you feel publishers were interested
in, or thought it would be marketable, to publish a book of your work that
you designed?
A. You would have to ask them, - my feeling is that they liked the work and
they thought it would sell.
Q. Were they initially interested in letting you have most of the
creative control, or was this something you had to stipulate and negotiate?
A. Some publishers were very upfront about wanting to be in control
creatively (we did not go with those) and others told us we would be in
charge. We chose among those.
Q. Other touches, such as the book's title on the edges of the pages, and
the
flip-book animation of the running dog--were these also ideas that were part
of your proposal or comps you sent initially to publishers?
A. Yes, all of them. You could lift a red acetate off the cover to see the
effect.
Q. How did you arrive at Booth-Clibborn as the publisher of the book, when
other publishers also responded with interest?
A. We loved their books. We thought they had good international
distribution. They promised to sell the book at a reasonable price. The
retail price for the consumer was VERY much on my mind, I would have loved
the book to be much more affordable, since my favorite readers, students and
young designers, don't have much money. It now costs $34.96 on Amazon.com
(more elsewhere) which is sadly still high.
I would have loved it to be $19.95. This was also my fault: I was very picky
at the proofing stage, driving cost up. And of course, Booth-Clibborn is a
high quality publisher who does not work with the cheapest printers.
Q. Was Peter Hall your author of choice before you contracted with
Booth-Clibborn?
A. Yes.
Q. When did you determine that you weren't in a position to write the book
and that it should be
authored by somebody else, was it at the comp stage of after?
A. When I tried it. It was extremely difficult, I found many excuses not to
sit down and write. When I finally did, the process was painful and the
results horrible.
Q. On the book's design: How did you feel, in general, about the idea of
designing a book?
A. I expected the worst since so many designers who had done a book about
their studio told me it was the most difficult job of their lives. It turned
out to be the opposite. Fun.
In general I love designing books because they are, together with music
packaging, among the very few pieces of graphic design that don't get thrown
away.
In general, I also love that you have the attention of an audience for a
longer time span, making it easier to communicate something remotely
meaningful.
Q. The book incorporates many of the interactive aspects and optical
tricks that appear in your CD designs and other projects. Was this an
accident, or was it intentional?
A. Intentional. It makes sense that a book on our work incorporates the same
aspects as the work. This was also why I wanted to utilize that red filter
device for the cover (we had used it before for Mountains of Madness, a CD
packaging that was always one of my favorites among all our projects and not
only worked well for the band but also helped us getting a foot hold in the
music industry).
Q. Of all of the pieces featured in the book (and including the book), which
ones are you most proud of and why?
A. Possibly the book itself. Because we got much more feedback about the
book than we got on all of our other projects combined. Some of that
feedback was from young designers, my favorite line: After I read your book
I had to go and do a lot of work.
That's exactly how I felt as a student after reading a design book I
enjoyed.
We also included a rating system at the end of the book (1-5, 1 being the
best grade), a reader can look our opinion of the projects up there.
Q. In your book, there is a random paragraph that appears to have been taken
from a romance novel (among others). Do you often place hidden jokes in your
work for those who are paying attention? How important do you think humor is
to design, and does it sell?
A. I love to hide surprises in places where it makes sense, like books or CD
covers (which are scrutinized very carefully by a small minority of
readers). Humor in design is as important or unimportant as humor in life.
I haven't really processed this information yet, but I will do and edit this blog post.
Second Example spread.
In year books past there are always quotes form the tutors, so I decided to mock up a layout that does this, but targets the idea of legacy. I played around with a few different ways of laying out, and the one that both me and ross agreed on, mixed gold for the legacy quote, a colour we've been thinking about since the cover, and white for Fred's details, which makes a bit of a contrast, that makes the page feel a little more considered. Apologies that it starts on the old spreads, but I had to include that page so the pages would line up properly once they were put into issue.
Open publication - Free publishing
Layout Development continued
Open publication - Free publishing
Here's some layout development since the photoshoot. Myself and Ross came into a small amount of conflict between serif vs. sans serif typefaces for this book. I really wanted to use a serif typeface, but Ross was finding it unwieldy for whatever reason. In a way I guess the typeface is insignificant because you can make it mean whatever you want. For instance, he persuaded me to use helvetica std, along with a found face called 'cherrygin' which makes the distinctive 3, and I relented. I relented because actually, I think that the first 3 books using a similar typeface might be a good thing, a sort of legacy in it's self. I wasn't keen at first but he won me over.
Anyway, after deciding that text a long the top and photographs a long the bottom or vise versa wasn't working. I tried a profile section down the left hand. I decided that this division between person and work allowed us to divide the information in a way that had clarity to it. So it became just about trying to tweak that as much as possible, untill the entire group were staisfied with the example spread.
Photoshoot
Here are some of the photos we took as part of the photo shoot today. It was a lot of fun and we all really enjoyed the chance to do something practical tgether, I think it was a nice group bonding exercise, as well as useful for getting example work for our spreads.
The session was divided into two sections, shooting the work and then messing around with photographing the people. Here are some pictures of us trying out both:
Standard, if not hideous profile shot. I don't know if we'll go for something this simple by it's self. We really want to push the idea of legacy conceptually, so maybe if there was a quote over my head-shot about the legacy I leave or something, then that could be useful.
Now this photo of Ross is interesting, we projected a made-up quote about legacy onto his chest and it kind of hid his face, in a way that focuses the head shot on the idea of legacy rather than the person themselves. In terms of lighting, I think the contrast between light and dark is something to be admired. Kate pointed out something significant, that I hadn't thought about that punches a bit of a hole in it, though; Pointing a quote onto a girl's chest might not be the most sensitive thing to do. She has a strong point, and I guess we'd have to think of another way of making the same point.
I like this one because it's plain and stripped down. The person is still viewable, but they're blank, and the quote about legacy takes on a bit more significance.
Then we started messing around with silhouettes, which could be quite fun, but I'm worried that the novelty will distract from the theme of legacy. But it was fun to shoot and we got some interesting photographs out of it.
With the work, we just collected a bit of everyone's and took a few different photographs just so we have options, it wasn't really important what they were of specifically, just so long as they were work and they wouldn't look out of place on a year book page.
What are we going to do now? Well Ross is going to continue with the covers. I'm going to try and apply this content to some spreads and see what happens. Kate is going to work on the additional promotional materials and what format they could take. Jonny has to take a step back in order to finish his Graphic Novel duties. It's a shame but we can cover him and he really needs to focus his time in that direction for the short term.
The session was divided into two sections, shooting the work and then messing around with photographing the people. Here are some pictures of us trying out both:
Standard, if not hideous profile shot. I don't know if we'll go for something this simple by it's self. We really want to push the idea of legacy conceptually, so maybe if there was a quote over my head-shot about the legacy I leave or something, then that could be useful.
Now this photo of Ross is interesting, we projected a made-up quote about legacy onto his chest and it kind of hid his face, in a way that focuses the head shot on the idea of legacy rather than the person themselves. In terms of lighting, I think the contrast between light and dark is something to be admired. Kate pointed out something significant, that I hadn't thought about that punches a bit of a hole in it, though; Pointing a quote onto a girl's chest might not be the most sensitive thing to do. She has a strong point, and I guess we'd have to think of another way of making the same point.
I like this one because it's plain and stripped down. The person is still viewable, but they're blank, and the quote about legacy takes on a bit more significance.
Then we started messing around with silhouettes, which could be quite fun, but I'm worried that the novelty will distract from the theme of legacy. But it was fun to shoot and we got some interesting photographs out of it.
With the work, we just collected a bit of everyone's and took a few different photographs just so we have options, it wasn't really important what they were of specifically, just so long as they were work and they wouldn't look out of place on a year book page.
What are we going to do now? Well Ross is going to continue with the covers. I'm going to try and apply this content to some spreads and see what happens. Kate is going to work on the additional promotional materials and what format they could take. Jonny has to take a step back in order to finish his Graphic Novel duties. It's a shame but we can cover him and he really needs to focus his time in that direction for the short term.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Initial layout designs
Here are some initial sketches of how the layouts on the inside of the yearbook could work. I worked on this, whilst Ross worked on the cover designs. Here is some of his work (I'm fairly sure he did more). I decided to start with a six column grid because I wanted to echo the idea of us being the third year with that.
I quickly found that an 8 column gird is far more durable though and it allowed me to be able to apply more content without struggling to fit things in. In these layouts, it's worth mentioning that the system I want to put in place is a profile photograph that suits the idea of legacy (we're doing a photoshoot tomorrow, banging a load of different things out.) then 2 larger photos, 1 of all the work a person has produced, showing the breadth and depth of work and then one that focuses on one particular project and it's details. Another significant feature would be the idea of putting a quote about legacy from the person who the spread belongs to into the photograph. We're discussing doing this either by light projection or adding it in afterwards. Jonny is organising things for the photo shoot tomorrow, so credit to him.
^Playing around with potential ideas for using borders to create a very traditional feel.
I quickly found that an 8 column gird is far more durable though and it allowed me to be able to apply more content without struggling to fit things in. In these layouts, it's worth mentioning that the system I want to put in place is a profile photograph that suits the idea of legacy (we're doing a photoshoot tomorrow, banging a load of different things out.) then 2 larger photos, 1 of all the work a person has produced, showing the breadth and depth of work and then one that focuses on one particular project and it's details. Another significant feature would be the idea of putting a quote about legacy from the person who the spread belongs to into the photograph. We're discussing doing this either by light projection or adding it in afterwards. Jonny is organising things for the photo shoot tomorrow, so credit to him.
^Playing around with potential ideas for using borders to create a very traditional feel.
Open publication - Free publishing
These are the layouts I started working with based on the principle that we were dealing with legacy, so I've used a serif font here. I tried to keep the layout very simple and based it on the 8 column grid I'd worked on earlier with my initial sketches (above). I'm quite happy with the way it looks, it's quite formal and traditional and definitely says legacy to me, but myself and Ross who seem to be the layout experts will have a discussion about it tomorrow. Obviously Kate and Jonny will have a lot of input, still.
The fonts I've been playing around with are Georgia and Baskerville, with a bit of Caslon. I think I like Georgia the most, even though it's designed for screen. It works particularly well as bold italics. The weighting and shape of the 'w' are just really satisfying to my eye. Also, I've tried some reversed out pages against various colours because that's something both yearbooks have done that I find satisfying. Anyway, yes, we will go do some photo shoots, I will apply this to my designs, Ross will do covers and we'll get together as a group and vito whatever isn't working.
These are the layouts I started working with based on the principle that we were dealing with legacy, so I've used a serif font here. I tried to keep the layout very simple and based it on the 8 column grid I'd worked on earlier with my initial sketches (above). I'm quite happy with the way it looks, it's quite formal and traditional and definitely says legacy to me, but myself and Ross who seem to be the layout experts will have a discussion about it tomorrow. Obviously Kate and Jonny will have a lot of input, still.
The fonts I've been playing around with are Georgia and Baskerville, with a bit of Caslon. I think I like Georgia the most, even though it's designed for screen. It works particularly well as bold italics. The weighting and shape of the 'w' are just really satisfying to my eye. Also, I've tried some reversed out pages against various colours because that's something both yearbooks have done that I find satisfying. Anyway, yes, we will go do some photo shoots, I will apply this to my designs, Ross will do covers and we'll get together as a group and vito whatever isn't working.
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