Finished book!!

Fiiiiinally! :D It's all done! Yaaaaaaaay!!

End of module self-evaluation

BA (Hons.) GRAPHIC DESIGN LEVEL 01

Module Code OUGD101 

Module Title DESIGN PRINCIPLES

END OF MODULE SELF-EVALUATION

NAME Lindsey Marshall BLOG. ADDRESS Lindseymarshallbagd.blogspot.com

1. What practical skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?

I strongly feel as though my practical skills have developed a lot after completing this module. I personally feel as though my independence has grown to a standard where I’m able to do whatever I need to do, no matter what it is.

2. What approaches to/methods of problem solving have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?

I genuinely believe my research includes a wide variety of ideas and development. I’ve tried to research as many ways as I can to investigate into a problem, so as to make sure my ideas are fresh and original. 

3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?

Even though this module was research based, I feel as though this was my strongest point. As said above, I’ve tried to investigate problems as broadly as possible to get the most interesting information. 

4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these more fully?

As much as I try not to, I tend to write quite a lot in my sketchbooks instead of just drawing an idea. Even though it may not be as visually engaging as images, I find it helps me a great deal. 

Another reason for my writing, is I’ve never been a great drawer. As rough as the images can be, I really dislike them. I do like drawing, to an extent, but I’d rather be pleased with what I produce rather than dislike it and get embarrassed. 

I sometimes find myself putting off work, just because it doesn’t interest me. When this happens, I find myself rushing not long before a deadline, and when a final outcome is requested, it often shows how rushed it’s been.

5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?

1. I need to organise my time, to make sure I have plenty for various areas of work.

2. I need to be more positive about my work, and learn to use what skills I have.

3. Use my time more efficiently, making sure I spend the right amount of time needed for a brief.

4. I need to stop moaning and stressing over work and just do it.

5. Look at books to do with drawing to help me improve my skills.

Are there any things we could have done differently that would have benefitted your progress?

6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas: 

(please indicate using an ‘x’) 

5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor

Attendance 5 

Punctuality 5 

Motivation 4 

Commitment 4 

Quantity of work produced 4 

Quality of work produced 3 

Contribution to the group 4 

The evaluation of your work is an important part of the assessment criteria and represents a percentage of the overall grade. It is essential that you give yourself enough time to complete your written evaluation fully and with appropriate depth and level of self-reflection. If you have any questions relating to the self-evaluation process speak to a member of staff as soon as possible.

A book design idea! :O

So I've been putting some serious thought into this whole book design malarky. Just after starting to design the contents of my book, I stumbled over a mahoosive problem. There aren't 100 SIMPLE parts of a car. I'm only gonna be doing the visual pieces of cars, so it'll have nothing to do with any engines and stuff. That'll just confuse me. Anyways, yeah, I got upto around 50 components inside, outside and the accessories of a car. There was no chance in making it up to 100!! So the question was.... 'How do I get around this!?' After a mini chat with a certain Sophie person, as wonderful as she is, reminded me we could just have 100 pages. Why I hadn't thought of that I don't know! Well, ok, I did, but right at the beginning of this thing which takes the name of a 'project'!

I've got a few doodles in my sketchbook of potential ideas. One in particular though, has taken my fancy. So, I made it!

(There would be 3 of these.. 1 for each category)
After making it and seeing what it looks, I'm not overlykeen. It didn't turn out how I expected it to which was quite dissapointing. :( As you can see from above, the pages aren't in line with eachother which is what I wanted! It just didn't occur to me that the gaps between each page would get bigger. Gr. So I did a little more brainstorming, and decided to go back to my initial idea.. a concertina! ...

Each concertina would consist of 10 pages, so the person looking at the whole thing would have to put each book next to eachother for it to make sense. I would have to make 10 books in total for each category, which means, if my maths serves me correctly, I'd have to make 30 books in total!!
After making these, I found the paper (which holds them together) isn't very strong, and often wripped. So I'm going to have to play with other ways to attatch the pages together. I'm gonna try using string and wire, and see what that does. :)

I'm quite happy with this idea. Although I'm not warming to the whole 30 book thing. Something else I'm gonna have to think about, is the presentation. I can't just hand in 30 loose books! Can I? Hm. Well, I might have a look at boxes etc.. and see what simple ways I can present them.

100 words, statement of intent.

Well we had a little presentation sesh on Tuesday...fun times!
Because I'd seen a few people using stop animation, I thought I'd take it within myself to have a pop at it! They're quite rubbish, but still, I'm proud of them for my first attempt! The group of people I was presenting too gave me some helpful feedback as to where I could take my research. The majority of them liked my animations, and said they'd like to see me do more. I must say, I was rather chuffed when they said that! :D It's something I'm quite interested in. It amazes me! And it's soooo simple! Anyways, they said I could use lines within buildings; looking at the shapes and structures. Also, colour and mixed media; such as sewing, paints, drawings etc.. was mentioed, as well as lines within type. I was told that drawing from photographs would be quite interesting, so I might play around with that idea and see what I can get from it.
Other than stop animation, it was suggested that I look at the environment. I've already taken a fair few photographs which people liked, so that would also be an interesting path to go further down. This would include urban landscapes and architecture, so this could very well be intercepted with the stop animations.
I think, from the presentation, and getting the feedback, it's quite clear that stop animation was a popular choice. So this is the path I'm most likey going to focus on.

Sam Winston

One dark, damp evening, a spontanious side of Lindsey took place! :O I decided to take a trip to Waterstones to hunt down a book which was suggested to me; 'Mmm skyscraper I love you'. So, I got there, searched for it on their little computer type things, and assumed it learked on a lonely shelf somewhere in the arty area. Could I find it? Nooooo! So I used my initiative, and asked the young chap at the desk. He had look and gave me that look where you know something poo's gonna be said. Then, he said it. 'I'm sorry, we don't seem to have it in stock. But we can order it for you?' I think you can imagine the look on my face. Utter digust! Soo, I took it within myself to plonk my cute ass infront of the typey area, and take pictures of the pretty insides on books! :) I found quite a few interesting things...

It's safe to say, these are pretty good! I stuck a few in my sketch book too. Well, some other pieces of Winstons work anyways.
I thought his way of working was quite similar to how I want my work looking. His writing has literal structure and is eye catching.

Finally, a book design idea!

So here's an update of my car project.
I have this book type thing at home. It's full of loooooads of different kinds of paper; colours, texture etc.




I don't know why I never thought of it before, but seeing the papers being categorised made me think, why don't I categorise my work?
So far, my categories are as follows:

Interior
Exterior
Accessories

That's it! :s Should I be worried? Hm.
I've got a decent sized list for each, so I guess it's not so bad.
After this idea, the dreaded question popped into my head:
'Where does 100 come into this!?'
Gay. :(
My aim is to use both type and image, so I guess I could have 100 of them altogether? Or.. simply have 100 words altogether from the categories? Ooh, I can't write what I think! I'm not a writer! Please just understand what I'm trying to say! Kay?
Well yeah, that's it in a nutshell at the mo.

Another book..

I made another book! :) Out of college. Had fun, didn't we Kate!? I'm gonna have to get a nice shot of hers. (For proof that she's actually doing some work out of college!) XD

Book of 100..

Ok, so here it is. My finished, not so good, book of 100.

The photos makes it look a lot better than it actually is! So, I picked a few of my favourite pages in the book, and put them up here for your visual pleasure.

Type in image

Ok, so I kinda know the concept for my final book;

I know it's definitely gonna have type in it - so

mething I'm really int

erested in. I'm aiming to create image with type.

I'll be usi

ng the words/phrases I used in my '100' book. I thought they were rea

lly appropriate, so yeah, I'm gonna stick with them. I've nearly got one image with type done. I'm still debating about it though. I think I just need to play around with the stuff I have and see what I get out of it.

I had a look online at other people's work, and found some pretty interesting images....

'Cars' stage 2

Now the ''100'' book's finished, I need to make another one! Only this time, there are no rules! :)

We had a crit yesterday, which was really helpful. I was at that stage where I didn't have a clue where to go next! I was given a lot of handy feedback which

involved loads of ideas and various pathways to investigate into;

1. I was told to get out of my sketchbook and start experimenting 3D. ( Which of course, is a very fair comment)

2. Play around with various book binding techniques (still working 3D) and experiment with possible outcomes.

3. Look more at the components of a car, i.e. the door, steering wheel, gear stick etc.

3. Look at car adverts; Mini adventure, Peugeot 107.

4. (As I want to use type) look at various typefaces on roads, signs etc. Take them into consideration.

So it's safe to say, I've got plenty to be getting on with!

In the above image, I've tried seeing the ways in which I can make my book interesting and interactive. I although the inside information could be enough to interest the reader, I want the book to be part of it. It needs to be as original as possible to be as interesting as possible.

So, my idea now, is below.

I will use type to create image. For example.. 'Speed and style' is generally associated with the look and feel of a car. So, above, I've used the words to create a car. (and yes, I'm aware I put a 'b' instead of a 'd'!) I also added the wheels to make it more obvious to the reader what the image is supposed to be.

I reckon this works quite well, and it quite visually engaging.

Depending on the way in which I'd like the outcome to look, I could use a few different techniques to make it work.

I could use Illustrator to create a type path inside a shape. I simply create the shape I want, and type within it.

OR

I could just draw it by hand.

'Cars' stage 1

I thought it's about time I got some of my research up! I'll start from the beginning...

Along time ago, in a far away town called Eastbourne, a young girl called Lind

sey did some research. She thought it'd be interesting to look into cars. As easy as it seemed, she found it rather challenging. Ok, that's enough! ..

I chose 'cars' as my subject because I was sooo excited to go home and drive!! I thought I'd be in my car all the time, so I gathered it would be perfect!

Here's a few early bits taken from my sketchbook -

My first train of thought was to get the definitions of the word 'cars'. I got quite a few, so I circled the words I thought were most appropriate.

Also, I attacked the thesaurus, and nicked the other words for 'cars' to form, well what do you know, a car! Effective, no?

I've always been a fan of finding words in people's number plates, so I thought it'd be interesting to gather 100 random ones. So I walked round a car park for aaaages, photographing all these number plates. It's safe to say, I did get a few dirty looks! :s

After another long while, I gathered 100 secondary images from the internet, just to fill out my book a bit.

I had some spare time on my hands, so I sat in a bus stop and tallied every car which passed in 100 minutes (1 hour 40 minutes for all yo' unmathed people!) And then, I thought, I've got a Renault.. so let's narrow it down to them! :D So during my 100 tallying minutes, I counted how many Renaults went passed too. The results were..

'Number of cars' = 1616

'Number of Renaults' = 105

I stayed with the Renault idea, and gathered information. I visited a Renault Garage and took photographs and drawings as well as stealing one of each leaflet available!

As well as others cars, I decided to document the inside of my car. I took 100 photographs of details and parts of the interior. Some turned out well, whilst others didn't.

After a chat with my class mates, an idea was brought up of using French in my ''100'' book. So I read through the magazines and leaflets I'd collected from the garage, and circled 100 words which were most appealing and translated them all into French. I knew I wanted to use type in my book, so having this idea seemed pretty straight forward. I'll admit I did want to make a manual, but that idea fell through, so I was pretty damn chuffed when I got this one! :D

Now on to the designing of the book.

Here are the initial stages of the book design. As you can see, I started with what was asked of us.. the folding of the A1 sheet, and it started to change slowly. I wasn't a fan of folding a huge piece of paper. I found it creased a lot, so I didn't really wanna bother with it. However, I did use the crap version of it as a template. I trimmed it down so it looked more like a book, and numbered the pages. I then used Illustrator to create pages and numbered them the same as my template book. Then I started designing my pages! Here's another photo taken from my sketchbook in the early designing stages.

Here I'm playing around with the words and phrases I gathered from the leaflets. Trying out different layouts and compositions.

And this...

is my final ''100'' book!

(COMING SOON ON BLOG NEAR YOU!)

Book binding with the Roger!

This was a good lesson. :)
I've done book binding before, at college, so I kinda knew what to expect. Some bits were different, but it was all good!
Here's the book I made! I'm quite chuffed with it. Go me! Go meeee!

For Monday..

Ok, I'm trying to do some quick research before I start making any books. Today's crit I found, quite helpful. Making a manual type book was an idea of mine, so it was cool hearing someone else mention it! It make my mind up for me to do it! :)

I'm just looking at images of manuals on google to see what kind of binding is used more.
I've found out perfect binding's fairly popular. :/ I fancied doing a perfect bound book myself! Hmpf. I think I'll still make one, just for the hell of it! I haven't made a book in aaaages!!

I found this really interesting. It looks really neat and tidy. I don't think a folder will be accepted though! The only poo thing about it. Mind you, without the folder it's more or less velo bound minus the plastic bit holding the leaves together.
Oooh I don't know! I think I'm just gonna make a whole load, and choose which one's best at the end! Plan? PLAN!

Book of 100.... cars

1. State the title and focus of your work in response to the brief.

Title: Cars

Focus: I will research more into my chosen subject. Using my research, I will produce an original and engaging book.

2. Identify specific areas of research that you intend to investigate and methods that you will use.

I already have primary and secondary photographs, magazines, newspapers, definitions, type, tallies, lists, leaflets and drawings. I intend to ask 100 people questions, do some more drawings, and collect relevant objects.

3. Identify specific practical methods and technical processes that you intend to use in order to visually develop your ideas.

I intend on collaging both primary and secondary photographs, type, drawings etc, and editing on photoshop. I feel as though using this method is appropriate, as it'll make the collaging neat and tidy. I intend to experiment using photoshop and illustrator.

4. What methods will you use to evaluate the progress and success of your work?

I will write small evaluations which will be ongoing throughout this project. I'll take note of any input during crits, and use them to improve/inspire my work.

The anatomy of a book

Some basic units in book design are:

Leaves - individual sheets within a bound book

Pages - leaves have a front and back side, each is referred to as a page

Page Spreads - when bound together, the right (recto) and left (verso) pages are centered on a gutter where they are bound together at a spine

1 - Belly band

2 - Flap

3 - Endpaper

4 - Book cover

5 - Top edge

6 - Fore edge

7 - Tail edge

8 - Right page, recto

9 - Left page,verso

10 - Gutter

IMPOSITION

Precise arrangement of multiple pages on a large sheet of paper or press sheet. The layout and sequence is such that when the print is folded, bound and guillotined each element of the document is correctly positioned in the correct page sequence or order.

PAGINATION

Pagination is the process of dividing and numbering documents into pages. Pagination can include other attribute such as columns, margins, headers and footers. Paginated documents can be viewed on the web or on hardcopy.

There are many different ways to bind books; perfect binding, coil binding, plastic binding, multibinding, velo binding and thesis binding.

Here's an example of each method...

Perfect binding:

Plastic binding:

Multibinding:

Velo binding:

What is a book?

A book is a SET or COLLECTION of WRITTEN, PRINTED, ILLUSTRATED, or BLANK SHEETS, made of PAPER, PARCHMENT, or other material, usually fastened together to HINGE at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a LEAF, and each side of a leaf is called a PAGE. A book produced in electronic format is known as an E-BOOK.

Books may also refer to a literature work, or a main division of such work. In a library and information science, a book is called a MONOGRAPH, to distinguish it from serial periodicals such as MAGAZINES, JOURNALS or NEWSPAPERS. The body of all written works including books is LITERATURE.

In NOVELS, a book may be divided into several large sections, also called BOOKS (Book 1, Book 2, Book 3, etc)

A lover of books is usually referred to as a BIBLIOPHILE, a BIBLIOPHILIST, or a PHILOBIBLIST, or, more informally, a BOOKWORM.

A store where books are bought and sold is a bookstore or bookshop. Books can also be borrowed from libraries or obtained for reading through the practice of Book Crossing.

Photoshop session!

Here's what I produced in the photoshop session, Thursday.
Usually I'd get quite bored and end up facebooking it. This session though, nooooo way!! It was AWESOME!!! I'm so chuffed with this!! So ok, it's not the best thing in the world, but I've always wanted to make something like that! And now I have! :D
I thank my mum.. dad... everyone who's suppoted me.. and of course.. the guy who taught me how to do it!

Lindsey, Boysie, Charlotte and Craig ARE THE BEST!

Following on from the 100 photos.. we had to write a list of ideas and concepts which we could focus on to move on from the photos. After a bit of confusion, mine ended up being order and chaos... (although I concentrated more on the chaos side!)
We then had a couple of days to research more.. having a minimum of 10 primary and 10 secondary pieces of research.
After clearing the desks and neatening up our work, we moved from desk to desk to write comments and ideas on other people's work. From them, we chose 4 main ones and stuck them on the wall.. as you can see!! -v
Finally, we narrowed it down to one each, and a small number of people grouped up the sentences according to the subject. I was put with.. Boysie Sands, Charlotte Hitchens and Craig Fawell... quite obviously, the best people!
Once in our groups, we were set yet another research task to carry out; 'What If?' Based on our common interests, research and knowledge, we had to establish a 'problem' that affected some sector of the general public in Leeds.
Going back to the sentences each one of us had...

-What happens if you break restrictions? (Boysie)
-Vandalism is destruction (Craig)
-Hedonism looka like too much effort (Charlotte)
-Chaos and order go hand in hand (Me)
We chose to focus on diets. We thought diets can get rather chaotic at times. So, we went to the shop and bought two bags of dairy milk buttons! Each bag containing 513 calories. We went round asking random people their age, to give us a rough guess as to how many calories they consume daily, and to have a guess as to how many calories the two bags on buttons had.
The information we got after asking 30 people, was that some didn't know what a calorie was, and hardly anyone guessed the right amount of calories in the buttons!
After long hours of pondering, we finally came up with a 'problem'.
'People don't know their daily calorie intake.'
We decided we needed to create a questionnaire for further proof of our problem. Again, we randomly handed them out, and waited for all to be returned!
Looking at the results brought us bad news. The final question was: 'How many calories do you consume a day?' :( Even though some people may have guessed or copied from someone else.. most people put 2000. This, annoyingly, was more or less right. So, our problem was no longer a problem anymore!!
Another question was, 'Do you go to the gym?' Out of the 30 we asked, about 2 people put 'yes'. So, we gathered, although people knew how many calories they consume, they don't do anything about it to loose them. We decided this would be our problem. The questionnaires nicely proved it, even before we knew the actual problem! Handy!!!
We managed to get quite a lot of research; primary, secondary, qualitative and quantitative. Although we didn't have any A1 design sheets/mood boards, we had full-up A4 folders!! Compensates nicely instead of the massive sheets!
For an entire day, we sat in the canteen, doodling and discussing ideas. We drew loooooads, and came up with some awesome ideas!! This was what we produced on illustrator as a final resolution....

(It wouldn't upload an illustrator file so I had to save it as a JPEG in photoshop. For some reason it's turned out blue- it's not meant to be!!!! But you get the general gist of it?)
Basically, it's aimed at students who don't work off the extra calories they consume. So, our idea was, to make clothes which represent various sports, i.e. shorts (for jogging) etc.. and they only fit the thin person. The larger man can't fit into the clothes until he looses the weight. So, he has to stand around in his pants. :)
I think the whole idea was for the clothes and the men to be perferated. Also, to have little tags around them, so the clothes can be fixed on.These are the clothes and props we made to fit the thinner man. Again, the colours seen here aren't correct.

Overall, I enjoyed this research task. I found it quite challenging though. I really thought it'd be simple and relatively easy. I've always been fond of the research part of a brief. I guess I was only skimming the edges though!! Doing this, has made me realise just how in depth you must be when researching something you know little about.
Although our group did a fair amount of research, I believe we could have gone that extra mile. We only did two ''questionnaires', so quite possibly, if we had done more, maybe we would have come to another problem?
Also, I think managing our time would have benifitted us. Although we managed to come up with a good final resolution, we were a little rushed for time in the end. We could have produced more props and clothes.