FMP (BA): Evaluation

The Overall Process - Research & Design

I tackled this project as a series of smaller projects, each based around the quote I had chosen at random. I had created a timetable which allowed me no more than a week to work on each "project" but I found myself spending just a bit longer in order to allow my design to improve. However, I still managed to keep to my timetable even at this pace as I started to reel out designs a lot quicker nearer to the end of my deadline.

Here's an image of my schedule:

As shown in this timetable, I was aiming to produce around 8 designs and I managed to reach that aim despite having some designs lasting more than a week. This was because I started the project right at the start and wrote a list of exactly what I needed to do. I had learnt that research was as equally important as the sketching because the ones I found easiest to do had the most background information.

This is clearly shown in the way I developed my design for Nelson Mandela. In my first design I had just encircled the type with birds in the paper-cut manner, but this only touched the surface of the quote. After much thought I did more extensive research on his work and what he did to help South Africa and was able to produce a more successful design.

I cannot stress how important the research process for me was; after watching Jon Contino's skillshare class I realised that I needed to look at historical as well as contemporary sources for inspiration in terms of layout, as the layout is one of the most important aspects in hand lettering. Even though I have only brushed past some historical ones I did concentrate a lot on gathering inspiration on my Pinterest board so that I always had some reference when I'm stuck on a design.

Even though I took inspiration from mainly a few designers (Steve Simpson, Mary Kate McDevitt, Jon Contino, and Tobias Saul) I made sure that I produced my own work from them so that it wasn't just duplicates of what already exists. This is because I did all of my research, then spent my time away from them so that I could produce something that was only inspired by them. This technique was adopted from James Victore's video on how to find my "voice".

Looking at existing pieces also gave me an idea of what's already been done so that I could spot any trends and techniques that I could possibly adopt in my design. Although I made sure that my designs were unique and that didn't follow what everyone else was doing.

I made sure that I only carried out relevant research so that I didn't waste time researching on something that I didn't actually use during the design process. I needed to spend that spare time on developing thumbnails and ideas, so I made sure I knew exactly what I needed to research before I started on my new "project". 

This schedule allowed me to pace myself really well and I actually spent an extra week developing my prototypes rather than creating another design. This also enabled me to go back and make any adjustments to my previous designs so that I could improve them.

The Design Process

I faced many difficulties with this project, having only done hand-lettering once before, and yet I learnt so much over this project. I probably learnt a lot more in this project than I had done in the others, as I was starting from scratch and trying to learn as much as possible within the few months that I had.

The main thing I have learnt is that I was able to discover the "voice" behind the quotes and create a piece that echoes it. At first I only touched the surface connotations of the quote, but as I went on and did more quotes I found myself doing deeper research and looking at numerous sources of inspiration. Every piece of research was influenced by my quote; on one quote I looked at calligraphy, another I looked at "fun" lettering, and another I looked back at Victorian typography. There were just so many styles to choose from and I'm glad that I managed to dabble with them all.

Because of this I was able to figure out my "voice". At first I tried to force myself to like something but then found that I enjoyed the process a lot more if I didn't think about discovering it and just gave myself some time to figure it out. A key example of this was with my Dr. Seuss project. At first I tried to force myself to fit in with the current trends of digitised typography but after taking a break I realised that my love lay in traditional media and I produced a much better outcome. It was more "me", and reflected the meaning of the quote.

Another aspect that was very important to me was that I was now able to make my type more accurate. At first I didn't take notice of kerning nor character widths, but later on in this project I found myself getting annoyed when the letters looked inconsistent. This shows that I had developed an eye for even the tiniest details, and this was all because I had noticed that other designers took notice of this in their designs. For example, even though Steve Simpson adopts various type styles it shows that he always considers consistency, and Sean de Burca always measured his type. 

Prototypes & Manufacture

Bookbinding was another area that I was totally unexperienced in, but after spending a while creating my prototypes I managed to get the hang of it. By following my timetable I was able to spend at least a week on developing my prototypes in order to make the manufacture of the final product as smoothly as possible.  

I had more problems when it came to actually printing out my final design; the printer I had been relying on had ran out of black ink, and all of the others at university were either also running out of ink or produced a green hue to my designs. I therefore spent many of the last few weeks before the deadline rushing around trying out every printer in site before submitting to the Staples printers.

Although the printer at Staples had printed my designs very nicely, I wasn't able to use the same textured paper I had been hoping to use. The cartridge paper also allowed the colours to show through more and provided a cream tint which softened most of my black & white designs.

However I am very pleased with the Staples print because the smooth texture of the paper really emphasised the deep colours of my designs, particularly my monotone pieces. They managed to print exactly how my design looked like on screen so even though it lacked that texture, it did print really well. This therefore presents a better outcome than the cartridge paper as both the colours come out really well and didn't show any visible signs of the ink going wrong.

The Final Designs

I was able to include both contemporary and "classic" quotes (from The Fault in Our Stars to Moby Dick) so that I could cover a wider target audience. I did this so that I could make sure that I fit to my brief as it wasn't clear what kind of books that people would read, although as it's a literary festival I assume that they would be all kinds of books.

Illustration and typography were the main aspects of my book which answers the design brief. Everything was done by hand as I felt that hand-drawn designs were more personal and "authentic" as they were created specifically for the festival. It isn't easy to draw everything from scratch again nor to simply copy-and-paste things as they're not computer generated.

I felt that my pieces clearly demonstrates a link to their relevant quote due to the amount of research I undertook to find out the meaning behind them. All of the research affected my design greatly and I was continuously kept inspired when doing my designs. There is a stronger connection between my designs and my research, and it's clearly shown by the following aspects:

• The Raven - Lenore; most existing designs miss out the fact that Lenore, the narrator's lost wife, was an important part of the poem and his anger was a reaction to the Raven telling him that he'll no longer see her in heaven
• Moby Dick - The whale, and the typography which were inspired by bones and the harpoon that brought Captain Ahab and his crew to their end. 
• Nelsom Mandela - his handshake with President De Klerk was an important part of uniting South Africa 
• Wander - The Tree of Gondor is a symbol of the ruler of Middle Earth and to Aragorn who becomes king at the end of the trilogy. I created my map in a likeness to the ones shown in the books and films
• The Fault in Our Stars - I used delicate handwriting to reflect the nature of the story
• Dr. Seuss - I used the signature colours displayed in his books as well as a various styles of type to reflect his "wacky" nature and funny little characters

A detailed account is shown on a this post. 

I made sure that my book was pocket-sized so that it's easier to distribute and carry at the Oxford Literary Festival. It also uses less materials which therefore reduces costs. I kept within the requirements of my brief and made sure that my dimensions were less than 200x200mm, and my dimensions ended up being 133 x 154mm. This was due to the research I carried out where I found a book of fairytales that had the perfect size.

However, I feel that my designs showed up better on the cartridge paper that I used for my prototypes than my staples print. The colours were deeper where the ink sunk into the surface, although this meant that the ink often smudged or had white dots where the ink didn't sit properly on the surface. There were so many problems with this, but if I didn't have these problems... Then it would've been a lot better.
I think that this taught me that although the designs look good on that paper it doesn't necessarily mean that it works, as there are other aspects such as the paper cracking when folded that I need to take into account.

Conclusion

Overall, this project has been a huge learning curve for me because of the fact that I did my best to try out everything that I could think of in order to produce a successful book. It wasn't just the designing process that was part of this learning curve, but the actual manufacturing of my book. I have now learnt how to bind books in at least three ways (Japanese stab binding, four-hole binding, and saddle stitch) which is something that I thought I was never going to be able to do. 

FMP (BA): Comparing Designs

Following my most recent post where I listed a detailed explanation of my printing problems and solutions, I decided to bind both books - the cartridge paper version and Staples version - so that I can compare the two and highlight the advantages and disadvantages. It will also help me  explain why I chose to go with the Staples version in the end.

Front Covers

left: cartridge paper
right: Staples print

The colours for the front cover came out a lot better in the Staples version as it had picked up on the gold hue and easily showed all of the different shades of it within the swirls. The black type is very rich and dark, and this heavily contrasts with the light background.

For the cartridge paper however the front cover seems to have a slightly green hue, and is very far off what it's supposed to be, although the type is still quite bold and clear.


Back Covers

left: cartridge
right: Staples

The main disadvantage to the cartridge paper version was that there was a typo on the back - having spelt "literary" as "literarary". Aside from that, the colours seem to be fine and there isn't much of a green hue.

The type is a lot cleaner on the Staples version and it's also a lighter shade of grey, which is what it's supposed to look like. There aren't any typos in this version.

Sides

left: cartridge
right: Staples

There are visible cracks in the French fold when I folded the cartridge paper, and this also affected the overall design of it. The cracks made it look as if the book was made of a poor-quality paper, and this also affected the inside pages as some white dots appeared near to the edges where I lightly rubbed a ruler against it to make the fold neater.

The folds on the Staples version are neater and there and the cracking doesn't seem to affect the inside pages. The amount of the cracking is smaller here than on the cartridge paper version.


Inside Pages

White dots on the cartridge paper

left: cartridge
right: Staples

The colours between the two version are quite different due to the paper stock. The cartridge paper has a slightly cream hue although the colours are deeper. This is clearly shown in the Dr. Seuss piece where the blue background is darker than the Staples version.

However, there are quite a few white dots scattered around on the coloured pages of the cartridge paper where the ink didn't sit right on the textured surface. This was also caused by when the papers rub against each other, although luckily none of the ink has been transferred to the other side. Most of these dots form around the edges where the paper folds.

The inside pages of the Staples version are very smooth and clear, and the ink sits really well on the surface. The black ink is deeper and this worked really well for my "Nelson Mandela" and "The Raven" pieces. There is a higher contrast between the black and the paper stock, and the whiteness of the paper stock really brings it out. The cartridge paper softens this contrast slightly.


Conclusion:

To conclude, I think that the ideal option is to submit the Staples version as even though the colours on some design (such as Dr. Seuss) aren't as vibrant, they are closer to what they look like on screen. There aren't any problems with the paper cracking nor the ink rubbing onto the other pages, and the colours on the front cover is more vibrant. There also isn't a typo on the blurb!

What I might do is present the cartridge paper version to the examiner as well to show what I would've liked to submit but wasn't able to due to the numerous printing problems I faced. However, my final product would be the Staples version.

Learning Outcomes:
[1] Developed their awareness of the needs and requirements of professional practice, manifested in the ability to produce practical graphic design work of high technical quality. 
[3] Developed written and oral skills of critical self-evaluation in relation to their design practice.

[5] Developed skills of independent study, resource utilisation, problem-solving and decision-taking.

[6] Developed skills of critical thinking, analysis and evaluation.
[9] Developed their ability to work with complex material, analyse problems and identify appropriate solutions.

FMP (BA): Printing Problems & Solutions

When I sat down to bind all of my designs together I noticed that my front cover was looking a bit strange; the colours were completely off and had a greenish hue, of which I hadn’t noticed before, and I had a typo in the blurb.

(On camera it doesn't look so bad.. It's much darker in person.)

As the printers at university have ran out I had no choice but to print off at home… Luckily, the colours came out exactly how I wanted it to look like.

left: home print
right: uni print

I was about to start again when I noticed that my design that I had just printed off at home was quite large in comparison to my pages. I was beginning to run out of options because I didn’t have much cartridge paper left so for now I just roughly trimmed the edges so that it would match my inside pages. I wasn’t too worried about this as it would’ve been a lot worse if my cover were smaller.

home print (cropped) against a test print

home print (cropped) verses none cropped version

FMP(BA): Production Planning

With my prototypes out of the way I can now jot down an approximate value of how much it'll cost to produce the final product.

Mass Produced

Paper Costs

I found that the ink shows up really well on cartridge paper, which came as a surprise to me as I expected to spend a lot more money on the professionally-produced papers that I had purchased from GFSmith. I had even gone to Staples to see how my designs printed on their matt papers, but it seems that the cartridge worked best.

This heavily reduces the costs to obtain the paper stock as I could just buy it as a sketchpad as that uses the same paper. 

I looked up at Ken Bromley Art Supplies to see how much cartridge paper would cost. If I get the "Snowdon Cartridge Paper" it would cost £6.95 for 20 sheets size of 15" x 11". I probably only need half of that amount, so I could probably cut each sheet in half so in reality it'll be 40 A4 sheets. Each book would need 9 sheets of A4, and so I could get around 4 books. 

However, if I get a sketchpad such as the "Daler Rowney 130gsm Smooth Cartridge Paper" it costs £7.23 for 30 sheets of A3, and therefore if halved then it'll be 60 sheets of A4. Then I could produce around 6 books with that.

I will estimate that there will be around 200 or more people, and so I would need 33 sketchpads which will cost 33 x £7.23 = £238.59. This may sound like quite a lot but it's actually quite cheap for paper.

Printing

To print on cartridge paper through an inkjet print would cost around £0.04 per page, so if I am producing 200 books then I would need to print around 1,800 sheets of paper so printing would cost £72 which is, once again, extremely cheap.

So the total so far to mass-produce this book would be £72 + £238.59 = £310.59. This doesn't include the costs of obtaining thread and the bookbinding cloth.

One-off Production

To have it printed on it's own didn't cost as much as expected because, as I have mentioned before, I didn't have to purchase anymore professionally-produced paper by GFSmith. The printing would cost £0.04 x 9 = £0.36 and then I didn't have to purchase new paper because of the fact I had just used the paper from my sketchpad.

If I did have to purchase a sketchpad then it would be a bit more expensive but not too much. If I use Ken Bromley Art Supplies' estimate, I would spend £7.23 for 30 sheets of A3 and then I could divide that amount as I will be using no more than 5 sheets of A3. £7.23 divided by 30 is £0.241 per sheet, so £0.241 x 5 is £1.205 for the paper. 

Therefore, the printing and paper stock would cost me £0.36 + £1.21 = £1.57

To get all of the other materials:

Awl - £2.98

Bookbinding cloth - £4.24 per metre

Thread - £1.45

Wax - £2.25

Binder clips - £1.00

Black card - £3.60

Paint marker pen - £3.60

However, this is how much it costs for everything e.g. for a whole pack of binder clips and 3 metres of bookbinding cloth, so I can't really use these values to say how much it was using only part of it. On the other hand I did have to buy the whole pack just so that I could use one so in total the materials above cost £19.12

So overall I have spent £20.69 to produce this book, and it's mainly because of the materials.


UPDATE - 16.05.14

Unfortunately I might be unable to print on cartridge due to the reason that all of the printers I had access to had either ran out of ink or was unable to process my document. I have written a previous post on my reasons and why I had to change plans.
I had managed to get all of my pages printed in the end, but my other option was to print via Staples which produced a higher quality and didn't have all of the problems I faced with the cartridge paper.

The cost of the materials are the same as above (£19.12) but the printing and paper stock had been changed. I haven't been able to separate the two and just based my calculations from what I have learnt when I phoned up the store.

There is a flat rate of £3 to use their printers, and then an additional for each page so in total it's £3 + (£0.70 x 9) = £9.30

Therefore to make this book using a better printer and paper stock would be £28.42

However like I have mentioned above, this isn't really an accurate amount because of the way I had calculated my materials. To make a more accurate account I only calculate the materials I actually used.

Awl - £2.98
Bookbinding cloth - £4.25 divided by 5 (as I only used under 20cm) = £0.85
Thread - approx. £0.45
Wax - approx £0.25
Black card - £0.72
Paint marker pen - £3.60

A more accurate total would thus be £9.30 + (£2.98 + £0.85 + £0.45 + £0.25 + £0.72 + £3.60) = £15.15

This isn't actually a bad price because there is a possibility that it might've cost a bit less to use the wax and thread as I only use a small portion of them, although prices for the awl and card would be fixed.

All in all, if this book were to sell, I would have to sell it for more than £15.00 in order to gain profit from what I made. This will also include the labour fees as well so it's more likely that I would sell it for around £20. This is actually quite expensive for a book but as it's hand done it's quite acceptable.

To conclude, even though this book would be expensive to sell if the binding was done by hand it would be a lot cheaper when mass-produced as it's more likely that I would use Blurb for this. 

FMP (BA): Quick Experimentation - Gold Pen & Bookbinding Cloth

I'm still in the process of creating my final product so I decided to take the time to try some little experiments in the meantime. 

Gold Pen

I recently purchased a gold pen as recommended from my friend as it had a very fluid flow, and resembled gold foil. I took one of my test prints of my front cover to practice on so that I could get a general idea of how it would look on my book.

Thoughts

I used the gold pen to cover the darker areas as I knew that it would be a shade darker than the one printed, so it would look weird to use it for the lighter areas if it was darker than the shaded parts. I felt that this worked quite well but it might be a bit too dark... This might be because the printer had run out of ink so the lighter areas could be a bit more visible than what's shown here, so it could work.

FMP (BA): Poster Designs

I wasn't too sure where to start exactly but after writing down my thoughts in the last blog post I thought that I should start by drawing some compositions that involved my illustration for my book cover.

Due to the lack of information displayed on the Ftweekend “poster” that I saw in the newspaper I decided to add some additional details such as the date and location as well as a little heading. I'm still a bit unsure of whether or not that poster was actually for the festival but as FT weekend is sponsoring the event, I assume it was.

I sketched out a few ideas, trying not to simply repeat what I had done in the illustration and aimed to just show a segment of it. After I had run out of ideas I looked back at my previous post to have a think about what to do next.

I decided that I would just create a template for the poster where each of the designs I had done for my book would be dropped in. This is because when I looked at other exhibition posters such as Pick Me Up and the ones in Somerset House, they normally displayed someone's artwork which will be showed at the event. In this case, I will be displaying the designs of the book which features literary quotes and other subjects that will be included in the event (such as politics).
I thus quickly sketched out some ideas having been inspired by Somerset House's designs.

Today's Thoughts - Poster Design

I have just over a week left until my deadline so I would like to produce a quick poster to promote the even. I had a look at a few poster campaigns/branding online just so I could get a general idea of what my poster should include:

image sources: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10)

As you can see, the design of the main product had been carried across to all of the other items within the campaign. This means that I should somehow incorporate my front book cover design onto my poster to create a connection between the two products. However, this is an advertisement for the Oxford Literary Festival and therefore I should be careful as it could look like I'm advertising the book instead.

To overcome this I could always just include a segment of the cover illustration such as just including the swirls that are featured on there and the book, because their sole existing poster that I managed to find in my local newspaper had included books within their design. 

This is the easiest option to go by; I could either just use what I already have or simply adapt it slightly to fit on the poster. 

I flicked through my existing designs to see if I could get some sort of inspiration from them as I had originally thought to incorporate their designs on a series of posters. This has it's advantages and disadvantages.

FMP (BA): French Fold Prototype 3

My next idea was to have some sort of book fold (cloth?) to cover the spine and gold thread, and even though I am quite satisfied with the thread showing, I want to explore into as many options as possible so that I have more to choose from to take across to my final design. Besides, there is always a possibility that the method I didn't try could've been better than the others, so it was in my best interest to try it out.

This means that I have to go back to my InDesign files and adjust the white gap and make it smaller as I only want the fold to cover 1cm of the front and back design, so the gap would have to be smaller than that (but only slightly).

With that done I could now print it out and then start making my prototype. I used the exact same method as before but this time I stuck my covers separately on a piece of black card. As I haven't got the exact materials to produce this book-cloth-fold I'm just using a scrap piece of paper for now.

Prototype Production

I printed all of my designs off onto cartridge paper which is the paper that I'm hoping to use for my book. This will help give me an idea of how thick the spine would be as well as pointing out any adjustments I need to make to the design.

I first cut them all out with a scalpel before folding and arranging them into place. Then it was just a case of repeating what I had learnt from before.
My book/cloth fold hadn't yet arrived so I made do with a spare piece of black card to give me a general idea of what it would look like. The spine was actually only 0.5cm wide so I didn't have to use much of it.

FMP (BA): French Fold Prototypes 2

Design Process - Creating the Prototype

I first wanted to concentrate on my front cover because I would have to adjust it slightly by making it a centimetre wider. This was easily done as all I had to do was use the 'transform' too an made it larger to fit into the wider gap.

Then it was time to get my other pages done. Unlike my saddle stitch design I hadn't created a digital document for this so I created a new one in InDesign, making sure that I added an extra centimetre to the width of it to allow space for the "fold".

I then put this document to the side and created a new one with the old dimensions. The reason for this was because once everything is arranged in it's place I could simply copy and paste it to the new document... This will help me a lot, especially if I chose the "paste in place" option, as it should leave 1cm space on the edge more accurately than it would be if I were placing them onto it firsthand.

This arrangement was very different to what I had done for the double-sided design. Each design was technically "together" here, and it's very confusing to explain but they were basically next to each other. More so than the previous design anyway.

FMP (BA): Saddle Stitch Prototype 2

I went back to Staples to get some more of my work printed out as they had the highest level of accuracy when it came to printing out double-sided even though there was still a minor white gap due to the off-centre mark. I was hoping that these "prototypes" could serve as final pieces if they went correctly, so I made sure that all of the adjustments I had made previously were included in my designs.

I printed off two versions; one for the saddle stitch, and another for my French fold design. I decided to first focus on my saddle stitch one.

I used the exact same method I did when I was doing my first prototypes [here]. However I used a few new materials such as wax so that I could wax my thread to make it smoother, and I also bought some new needles that were a bit sharper.

Process

Final