Studio Brief One - Design for Print. OUGD504

Studio Brief 1
To create an information pack of things to know about print, using successful design for print based media and a selection of formats.
Consider the importance of form and function the info pack will take, and consider the stock or font.

• Design for print is all about the detail
• good design will communicate to almost anyone

The content should be ordered and informative, a style that you can call your own and derived from a study of designers and studios.

Think about how much control each design process gives.

• How much more can I find out?
• What do i need to know about print production and what else do i need to know

Design for Purpose

• What is the purpose? To educate and inform someone about print and everything there is to know about it, showing examples and techniques that would be helpful to understand design for print.

• Who is the audience? New art and design students that are interested about print and want to know more detail about design for print. Also this could be useful for anyone who is interested in print and would seek out this kind of information.

• What is the aim? The aim is to inform and educate students in design for print and all of the details you need to know when using print processes. Also the aim to to be interactive and engaging to the viewer so that the information is enjoyable to read and understand.

• Is there and educational point  or a point of view? There is an educational point to this info pack as the aim of ti is to inform students about design for print.

For this brief I want to create something that is much more tactile and interactive than just a book or leaflet about print, and so I want to look into different ways of showing information in a package that is more interesting.
I began by looking at many different way of displaying information in print, from books to leaflets and posters.

Matrix/Berkeley: A Changing Exhibition of Contemporary Art
This book contains a lot of information and imagery which works really well in this format. I really like the scrapbook like layout of the book and how a lot of the type is hand written. I think his kind of scrap book type layout would work well for a print book, although i'd be worried that the information would get lost in the messiness of the layout.

Amazing Junk - Solene LeBlanc

What I like most about this publication is how there are multiple books within one package so that the information and imagery inside is separated somehow. I think that this would work well for the different sections and bits of information that would be included within my info pack. I also really like the use of bright colours which also separate and differentiate between sections of information.

For What its Worth - Solene LeBlanc In this project, I really like the use of multiple publications of different sizes, and the use of pages within the books to use as dividers between information, and also as a way of displaying headings or imagery for the information.

Mac Trend Book AW10 - Jason Naylor
The use of a ring binder for displaying information that can easily be taken out and used as and when needed. I think that this would work well for my design for print information as it would be easy for the reader to take out the information that they need, rather than taking the whole information pack with them. 

1:1:1 Gabriel Lester - Niessen & De Vries
In this publication I really like the use of a transparent stock so that the imagery from either side of the page can be seen. Although this may not be suitable for my info pack as the information could get lost and confused in the transparency.

Phantom Limbs - Surplus Wonder

I find the way in which this publication is put together really interesting and it is very engaging and interactive, which is just what I want from my info pack. 

BAFD WW/11 - Ghazaal Vojdani
This publication uses multiple stocks, colours and formats to display the information in. The main booklet uses a ring bound book that is interesting to look at because of the multiple stock sizes and colours. This would be good for my info pack as it would give me the versatility to use different sizes and stocks to differentiate between sections, although I would like to make it more interactive for the viewer so that the info pack wouldn't be simply a book.

Logo Dissecting. OUGD504

For this session we were asked in groups to look at multiple logos and talk about why they were made to be like that, and the concepts behind them.
Firstly we looked at the Nasa logo that was used before they rebranded after an accident had occurred.

The red in the logo represents a kind of danger and warning of space travel and how the astronauts are embarking on a dangerous adventure when going up into space. The red and white also represent patriotism and America, being the colours of the American flag. 

The black logo was also used as it is easily transferrable onto multiple coloured backgrounds and stands out well against most colours. It is also a very strong colour which suggests the strong and powerful company and astronauts. The type itself is very rounded and path like, suggesting a journey or adventure, and the two As look almost like arrows, pointing towards the sky showing the forward movement and futuristic aspects of space travel. 

After looking at the Nasa logo as a group, we were then asked to talk about the 5 logos that we looked at, and see what we could understand about the messages, concepts and other things about the logos, and the companies.

Lack is a fashion and style magazine, and the logo really stood out to me in its simplicity. The type is very stripped down, with some parts missing, showing the simplicity of good style. The name also suggests the theme that less is more, and so the logo is very appropriate to this. The black colour of the type is very bold, making a statement, but is also very practical as it can be used on many backgrounds and stocks and still have the same impact.

Milk is an interior design studio, and I was drawn to this logo design by Confetti Studio because of the clever use of type and illustration to give the logo multiple outcomes whilst still being recognisable. The endless opportunities in design are shown through the changes in the logo, and the path of the L shows the path of the design. 

Mi & Mall is a clothing line that is mainly online, and the logo stood out to me because if is a good balance of type and imagery. The type is very simplistic and easy to read and recognise, and the ampersand, as well as being used as symbol for 'and' in the name, can also be seen as just a logo, and is still very recognisable without the type surrounding it. The colours and very neutral and minimal which reflects the type of clothes that they sell, very classy and sophisticated, which is the type of people they wish to sell to.

Stebuklai is a restaurant in Lithuania serving modern Baltic food, and the simplicity of the logo and variety of branding really impressed me. Baltic cuisine consists of a lot of fish, and the Facebook page for Stebuklai describes the restaurants food as 'live and raw food', which is perhaps why the logo is very fluid and organic. The type itself is very simplistic and very readable which means it stands out well on many different colours or stocks. The colours used int he branding are a lot like the colours of coral, giving the suggesting of the sea and undisturbed, live and organic food. The imagery used in the branding is very plant based which also suggests the idea of raw food, that is very organic and ethically sourced.

Zuka is a Japanese restaurant and the simple concepts of the logo really stood out to me. I love how the type os made from shapes, that almost look like folds in paper representing the japanese tradition of origami, showing the origin of the restaurants food and its traditional history being brought into the modern restaurant. The textured stock used for printing upon also represents the origami paper used traditionally. 

There is always a concept behind good design, for example, the logo for The Union of Moscow Architects:

This logo symbolises the move away from 'mother russia', and moving forward into the modern age. The choice of the colour red symbolises power and strength, and the star represents the move forward into the future, guiding a new path for a new journey.

In this session we also looked at more famous logos quite briefly, but I was really interested to find out about how some long lasting logos seem to look timeless, and this is mainly down to the use of geometry. The use of shapes and mathematics means that logos tend not to date very quickly, and can look modern from when they are first made until now. For example, the twitter logo and the Apple logo use shapes and mathematics, meaning that these logos, although have changed slightly over the years, are still the same and still look just as relevant as they did when they were first made.

One thing I was really interested to learn about was how we perceive colour, especially in our subconscious. For example, Fast food restaurants will often use yellows, reds, oranges or golds in their logo design as this in our subconscious relates to hunger and appetite. 

As well as this I was interested to look up what different colours can mean in different cultures across the world, and for later reference this may come in useful depending on what kind of clients or audience I would be working towards.

Speaking From Experience - Newspaper Development OUGD406

 First of all I decided on the title of "It's who you know", thinking about the idea that knowing designers and blogs will get you ahead in your work during your time on the course. I was thinking about how i wanted the newspaper to look and how it could stand out amongst other newspapers, and the idea of foiling the front cover could make it look and feel more desirable and less throw away than you standard newspaper. For this, I wanted the font to be interesting and i needed to make sure it would look good foiled, and would still be readable. This is also down the the colours I pick for the front of the newspapers.

I want to keep the front quite plain and simple to let the foiling stand out as the main part. I decided on a font called Wednesday Matinee which is a shadow font that i think will work really well with the foiling.

So from here i wanted to experiment with which colours would look best with the foiling. I decided on using a bronze foil as I think it would look best on the newsprint.

 Out of these, I think that the purple colour would work best, but I don't like the layout of the type like this so I want to try and use the grid method to create a more interesting layout for the front cover of my newspaper.

Once i was happy with that I created my final document so that I could layout the inside pages of the newspaper. The newspaper will be 20 pages, including 4 blogs and 4 designers, with 3 pictures on each page and a short couple of sentences with some information about the blogs/designers. I had to keep it to 20 pages otherwise the cost became too much, but as this is also going to be a PDF document that could be accessed online, i could easily add more to it in the future if needed.

 I wanted to keep the design fairly simple and easy to understand and so I used my research into layout design in magazines to influence the way that I placed images and text onto the page. For each page I wanted to keep the text in the same place and the same format, but change where I place the images on each page so that they weren't all the same and they were all still interesting to look at. The small amount of information on each page is meant to encourage the reader to do further research into each designer or blog, giving them a little start to research during their first year on this course.

Final newspaper pdf

The only problem with the final pdf is that it doesn't have the title of the publication on it.

Overall I am quite happy with my final newspaper. During the printing process and trying to foil the front page, it didn't work as well as I had hoped and i think this might be because of the stock i'm using, but other than that they look really good and i think they're very informative for new students.