I've been a bit stuck with my book cover design so I thought that instead of lingering on it, I would move on to producing designs for my DPS so that I could carry on churning some creativity. I am worried that if I don't do any designing or sketching that I would lose inspiration... So here's a way to solve that.
Thoughts
I looked at all of the designs I had so that I could make my decision on which one would be more suitable for my design.
1. My first script typeface looked good but it was too similar to the main illustration. There was nothing to say that it was part of the same design but wasn't part of the quote.
2. This straight, horizontal baseline worked better for my script typeface than my first idea as it also separated this from my main illustration. The writing appears to be a lot neater as it's clear that the cap-height and median line is accurate although I do need to make some adjustments with the kerning.
3. I haven't been able to work with sans serif that much during this project and there are several inaccuracies in the kerning (that could be adjusted in Photoshop). However there isn't any deep connection to this style and the message, whereas my script is more delicate which could reflect the delicacy of the issue between the main characters in the book.
On the other hand there is a small connection to the characters because of the fact that it appears "young" due to the soft curves and lack of serifs. This could then mirror the character's age and that they were actually still quite young despite acting older because of their situation.
I am still a bit unsure but I am leaning more on my second design, so for the time being I might go with that and then try out the sans serif to compare the two.
Now it's time to try out the sans serif; I followed the exact same process as before (scan > edit > insert into DPS) although this took a bit longer to do as there were many adjustments that I had to make in terms of kerning.
Reflective & Critical Thinking
Above are my two versions! I switched the sides of the design as I noticed that whenever I turn the page of a book/magazine, my eyes go to the page on the right first and then the left. This solves the nagging voice at the back of my head as I just couldn't figure out what was bothering me before... And it was all about the placement.
I'm a bit unsure which one to go to because initially I thought that my sans serif wouldn't work as I haven't had much experience drawing it, but it does work really well here. The difference in type style emphasises the importance of the main illustration as it has an unusual type, whereas the sans serif contains less emotions and connotations. I kept both on a straight line so that the illustration would attract more attention as it wasn't in a strict format, and I felt that if the author's name was using the same format then it would just look like an exact copy and there was nothing to differentiate the two designs.
After this I have decided that I would go with the sans serif because of the way it highlights and gives more attention to the 'unusual' script typeface. The script typeface version just looks too similar so it's hard to differentiate the two pages.
I forgot to add little quotation marks for the book title but I think I'll leave it in this manner, as I didn't include any on the actual quote. What I could do to separate the book title and the author's name is to put them in different shades of white. I shall do this for all of my future designs to keep a consistency within my pages.
I am glad that I inverted my designs because it now looks more like the night sky. In reality, the sky is a midnight blue but I wanted to create a high contrast between my type and background as it would bring out the quote a lot more.
-
Dr. Seuss
Photoshop
For my Dr Seuss design my type and the hat icon were already drawn up when I was going through the stages of doing it digitally in Illustrator right near the beginning of this project. This really helped me through this stage because it meant that I didn't have to hand letter it again, scan it in, and make adjustments. I could just carry it onto Photoshop to make some tweaks straight away.
There were only a few changes that needed to be made such as placing the letters on a straight line. However when I opened up my original illustration to use some of their letters I realised that I did have to draw some up after all.
Sketches
I quickly drew out some sketches in the different styles I had done in my original illustration.
Thoughts
1. This one was the minimalist type out of all of my sketches, and I used the same dimensions and aesthetics as I had done on my illustration. This style was used quite a lot for the words that weren't as "important" as the ones that were more decorative, and so it would be good to use this for the author's name and title because then more of an emphasis would be placed on the decorative illustration.
2. This would also be good as the author's name although I am worried that the shading would made the type look cramped when it's at a smaller scale, as the kerning would be very tight.
3. The same applied to this one, although I think the serifs here would make it even harder to see at a smaller scale unless I separate each word on a separate line. I feel that my sketch looks slightly messy because the height of the letters kept changing and not all of them sat on a straight baseline.
I decided to go with the top style because it's minimalist and this would create more of a focus on the illustration. It would also mean that the design would've be overcrowded with decorative fonts and create that chaotic appearance that we sometimes see in Victorian posters.
Photoshop
I scanned my sketch in and made my usual adjustments, and once done I placed it onto the document I was working on before. I wasn't 100% sure on what colours to use so I put this all to one side to concentrate on my illustration.
I had the idea that if the illustration was on the left-hand page I could create the shape of the hat around the type and make it bleed onto the other side. To do this I created a new document with the right dimensions for the DPS, copied and pasted everything on my original illustration, and on a separate layer I used the pen tool and began to draw the outline of the hat. I used an image of my old design of the hat as reference.
Once I was done drawing the path I went to Paths and right clicked it, then pressed "Make Selection". I inverted it and used the paintbrush to colour in the selection in the right colour. I made the background dark so that I could see clearly where I was drawing.
With this part finished I had the idea of creating a blue outline around the hat as I wanted to make the background white, so I merged all of the layers I needed and filled it in with blue (on a duplicate layer of course). I then put this layer behind my hat, and shifted it slightly before creating a shadow with it.
This didn't produce the effect I wanted so instead I made the background blue and then changed the colour of the type (which I had included at this stage).
Switching Sides
I am still a bit unsure about this layout because even though the main illustration was full of bright colours, my eyes still went straight to the author's name and book title because of where it was placed.
So I switched sides, and when I looked at it I realised that because the illustration wasn't in a shape of the famous Dr Seuss hat anymore I included the hat icon right above the type. I made the background white so that the hat could be in the famous Dr. Seuss blue (as on his other designs that I had looked at during my research stage, he used his blue hat).
Out of curiosity, I tried out doing the hat shape.
Here were my two versions:
Reflective Thinking
I felt that this didn't have as much of an impact as my previous design did, but now my focus is solely on the main illustration which is an improvement. I prefer the version where I just had the illustration in a square with the hat icon on the other page, because the "shape" that the type is in doesn't resemble the hat at all (not like it did with my first version with it on the other side).
Due to my indecision I shall ask for feedback to see what my fellow classmates and lecturers think.
-
Moby Dick
Sketch & Ink
I lay out my two original sketches that I had before I made adjustments to my final one, and I decided that I shall follow the format of the one on the left but use the fonts shown on the right. I thought that the best typeface for the other side of the DPS for this would be the serif font as it's lack of decoration would make it easier to read at a small scale. I want to keep this page as minimal as possible so that the focus would be concentrated on the main illustration.
Using the same dimensions as the font in the Moby Dick design I drew out "Moby Dick", making sure that I was as close as possible to what I had previously produced. I had to make some slight adjustments such as the stroke thickness - which shows that I have improved in terms of noticing little aspects like this. The curvature of my existing design makes it seem that the type had been slightly warped because of it, but if I have the time I might make a few adjustments.
I kept the kerning relatively small to emphasise the elongated typeface as well as having a tall x-height. The serifs were drawn as small and 'pointy' as possible to reflect the harpoon that evidently brought Captain Ahab and his crew down with Moby Dick.
I am still a bit unsure of what I'm going to do for the author's name so I thought it best just to draw the letters out in this style just in case I do use it at a later stage. Instead of writing out his whole name I just drew the characters that I haven't already drawn - later on in Photoshop I'll just copy and paste some of the reoccurring letterforms.
I looked up at some tutorials and at Mary Kate McDevitt's book "Hand Lettering Ledger" to figure out some more ideas on what would be the best style of font to compliment my serif style, and I noticed that they both have mixed serifs with either a basic sans serif or a script font. I am unsure of whether or not to actually do this as I would prefer not to have more than two typeface styles but I tried out some script examples anyway so that I could make my decision when it's placed beside my Moby Dick design.
I made the script as minimalist as possible and without any elaborate ligatures and swashes, before tracing over my chosen ones in different pen thicknesses as I want to see what my serif font would look like with a thick and then thin script. I placed all of my three fonts next to my serif (which at this stage I had already inked).
To ink the serif I used both a 02 micron and a 08 micron. I used the same for the script fonts.
Photoshop
I left my word to dry for a bit before scanning them into Photoshop. I have gotten used to working with ink so I immediately knew what to do; I first adjusted the brightness and contrast, then the threshold, and then deleted the surrounding white areas. However for this one I made the mistake of deleting the white areas first, but I used the other technique (the brightness coming first) for all of the other fonts.
Due to the way I worked on this, it made it a lot harder to neaten up the linework and I often had to zoom in and use the eraser tool to clean it up.
Luckily I didn't repeat this process on my next design, having learnt what happened from my first, and once both fonts were ready I created a new document and combined the two. I used the same colour scheme as my existing design with the serif white and the script green. I haven't placed in my other serif for the author as I was curious to see how well the script would work.
I decided to go with the thickest and thinnest script font I had produced earlier, and put these on separate layers. I then went back to my Moby Dick later, right-clicked it and selected Colour Overlay to create the same effect that I had on my design. I made this colour dark, but when I repeated the process I made that colour white.
The two script fonts worked really well with this but I still had doubts that it would work with my other design, so I included my serif font for the author's name. With all of my letters on different layers I rearranged and made slight adjustments to them. At this point I realised I had forgotten to draw out R so at first I left a blank space until I had inked in my R.
This really worked well as well, especially because it doesn't have any effects added to it so the main focus is on Moby Dick (which was what I was aiming for). I felt more comfortable with this than my script fonts, but that might be because this was drawn more accurately.
Another advantage to using this was that the design had already been used, and therefore I would technically only have two typefaces over the whole DPS and it wouldn't be crammed in with many styles. This would just make the design confusing, so using the same serif style would be more comfortable on the page.
With my mind set on the serif style I created a new document and placed in my illustration of the whale, putting it beneath the type. I had initially wanted to include the boat as well but I thought that it would make the overall DPS too busy as there would be quite a few illustrations in total.
I then created another document and placed my two designs side by side. I thought that the font size was too large for the author's name and book title so I reduced it, before reducing it even further. My reason for this was because the font was close in size to the one on the main illustration so there isn't really a hierarchy on which one was more important. Of course, my main illustration is more important, so I reduced the font size of the other page.
I felt that this page looks a bit plain in comparison so I copied over the textures I had used in my Moby Dick design, and then put it into the document again to compare.
It's strange because even though the two are exactly the same, the other page was a lot lighter, so I went back to my page and made the page much darker so that people wouldn't think it was a printing malfunction. I changed the gradient and instead just highlighted the area around the title so that it looked like a soft spotlight where the light hits off the sea and onto the boat.
This emphasised the importance of the main design due to the contrast between them, and the darkness on the other page really brought out the lighter parts of the main one.
Reflective and Critical Thinking
This exercise went a lot smoother than expected, and that's mainly due to the fact that I had a clear image on what I wanted the DPS to look like. During the early stages of producing the main illustration I highlighted the notion of using the serif again for the other page, and as I am aware that multiple typefaces are only good if used in a certain way otherwise it would look crowded (such as in old circus posters like Astley's Circus during the era where typography was adapting into a more decorative style) I wasn't very keen on using anything other than what I had previously produced.
I used the old design that is shown right on the first picture on the left to my advantage for this design, following it's format but switching it slightly so that the larger font was at the top and the smaller at the bottom. I really liked that design but I thought that the one I went for in the end was stronger, so it was nice to actually be able use it.
I did adapt it slightly so that it didn't look as if two different designs were placed side-by-side, hence my reason of taking out the boat. I felt that if I did include the boat and the harpoon flourishes it would just make the design look too crowded and, as previously mentioned, like separate designs.
I am quite pleased with the outcome of this DPS although I would like to try switching sides as the first thing that I look at is actually the book title rather than the illustration. I shall do the same to all of the other previous DPS designs as well, as my friend pointed out the same thing when I showed my designs to her.
All of the Designs Together
After seeing how well "The Fault in Our Stars" worked with the type on the left and the illustration on the right, I decided to change all of my spreads so that they had the same format. The only design to possibly have less of an impact in this style was my Dr Seuss one as I couldn't do it in the shape of the hat, so instead I just included the icon of the hat above the type.
The Fault in Our Stars
Dr. Seuss - You are You
Moby Dick - Call Me Ishmael
Reflective Thinking - Summary
Each design took around a day to do and I wish that I had spent more time on them but it isn't possible with the small timeframe that I had left. I had underestimated just how long this overall process would take and I fear that I might rush at the very end.
I am, however, quite satisfied with what I have produced and there are clear reasons of why I did things the way I did. Whether it was to emphasise the main illustration or be merged with it, I think each of these designs do work and look much better with the illustration on the right and the text on the left.
There's one DPS that I missed from this list and that is The Raven, with the reason being is that I'm in a bit of a panicked state with it and it's quite confusing to explain my process. Therefore I have decided to do it in a separate post so that I could take my time to explain what I had done.
My next step is to finish off writing up my DPS for The Raven and then ask my fellow classmates and lecturers on what they think of the designs that I have so far.
Learning Outcomes:
[3] Developed written and oral skills of critical self-evaluation in relation to their design practice.
The first one I worked with was for "The Fault in Our Stars" by John Green, with the quote "My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations". I had a couple of solid idea of what I wanted it to look like which I quickly jotted down alongside my ideas for all of the other spreads:
-
The Fault in Our Stars
Sketch
My first idea was to write the author's name and book title in the exact same format as I had done on the other page, so I lay a piece of paper over my design and lightly traced it's baseline. I then drew my cap-height and median lines in before writing out the title and name. For this I wanted to keep to the same typestyle as I had previously used.
My second idea was to use the same typestyle but on a straight line, and my third to just do it in sans serif on a straight line.
Thoughts
I looked at all of the designs I had so that I could make my decision on which one would be more suitable for my design.
1. My first script typeface looked good but it was too similar to the main illustration. There was nothing to say that it was part of the same design but wasn't part of the quote.
2. This straight, horizontal baseline worked better for my script typeface than my first idea as it also separated this from my main illustration. The writing appears to be a lot neater as it's clear that the cap-height and median line is accurate although I do need to make some adjustments with the kerning.
3. I haven't been able to work with sans serif that much during this project and there are several inaccuracies in the kerning (that could be adjusted in Photoshop). However there isn't any deep connection to this style and the message, whereas my script is more delicate which could reflect the delicacy of the issue between the main characters in the book.
On the other hand there is a small connection to the characters because of the fact that it appears "young" due to the soft curves and lack of serifs. This could then mirror the character's age and that they were actually still quite young despite acting older because of their situation.
I am still a bit unsure but I am leaning more on my second design, so for the time being I might go with that and then try out the sans serif to compare the two.
Photoshop
With my three versions done I then scanned them into Photoshop and tweaked them a little bit, neatening up the edges and making all of the adjustments needed such as the brightness and contrast, and the kerning.
I put my type to one side so that I could work on the stars that would go in the background. I opened up my old document and just hid the original type layer, shifted the stars so that there was more of a gap in the centre and then placed my new type in it.
I put my type to one side so that I could work on the stars that would go in the background. I opened up my old document and just hid the original type layer, shifted the stars so that there was more of a gap in the centre and then placed my new type in it.
Once done I placed it side-by-side my original design and adjusted the type so that the main focus was on my illustration. I made some tweaks to my illustration as I realised that the kerning on the bottom two lines were very close together.
And I was done!
Now it's time to try out the sans serif; I followed the exact same process as before (scan > edit > insert into DPS) although this took a bit longer to do as there were many adjustments that I had to make in terms of kerning.
Reflective & Critical Thinking
Above are my two versions! I switched the sides of the design as I noticed that whenever I turn the page of a book/magazine, my eyes go to the page on the right first and then the left. This solves the nagging voice at the back of my head as I just couldn't figure out what was bothering me before... And it was all about the placement.
I'm a bit unsure which one to go to because initially I thought that my sans serif wouldn't work as I haven't had much experience drawing it, but it does work really well here. The difference in type style emphasises the importance of the main illustration as it has an unusual type, whereas the sans serif contains less emotions and connotations. I kept both on a straight line so that the illustration would attract more attention as it wasn't in a strict format, and I felt that if the author's name was using the same format then it would just look like an exact copy and there was nothing to differentiate the two designs.
After this I have decided that I would go with the sans serif because of the way it highlights and gives more attention to the 'unusual' script typeface. The script typeface version just looks too similar so it's hard to differentiate the two pages.
I forgot to add little quotation marks for the book title but I think I'll leave it in this manner, as I didn't include any on the actual quote. What I could do to separate the book title and the author's name is to put them in different shades of white. I shall do this for all of my future designs to keep a consistency within my pages.
I am glad that I inverted my designs because it now looks more like the night sky. In reality, the sky is a midnight blue but I wanted to create a high contrast between my type and background as it would bring out the quote a lot more.
Dr. Seuss
Photoshop
For my Dr Seuss design my type and the hat icon were already drawn up when I was going through the stages of doing it digitally in Illustrator right near the beginning of this project. This really helped me through this stage because it meant that I didn't have to hand letter it again, scan it in, and make adjustments. I could just carry it onto Photoshop to make some tweaks straight away.
There were only a few changes that needed to be made such as placing the letters on a straight line. However when I opened up my original illustration to use some of their letters I realised that I did have to draw some up after all.
Sketches
I quickly drew out some sketches in the different styles I had done in my original illustration.
Thoughts
1. This one was the minimalist type out of all of my sketches, and I used the same dimensions and aesthetics as I had done on my illustration. This style was used quite a lot for the words that weren't as "important" as the ones that were more decorative, and so it would be good to use this for the author's name and title because then more of an emphasis would be placed on the decorative illustration.
2. This would also be good as the author's name although I am worried that the shading would made the type look cramped when it's at a smaller scale, as the kerning would be very tight.
3. The same applied to this one, although I think the serifs here would make it even harder to see at a smaller scale unless I separate each word on a separate line. I feel that my sketch looks slightly messy because the height of the letters kept changing and not all of them sat on a straight baseline.
I decided to go with the top style because it's minimalist and this would create more of a focus on the illustration. It would also mean that the design would've be overcrowded with decorative fonts and create that chaotic appearance that we sometimes see in Victorian posters.
Photoshop
I scanned my sketch in and made my usual adjustments, and once done I placed it onto the document I was working on before. I wasn't 100% sure on what colours to use so I put this all to one side to concentrate on my illustration.
I had the idea that if the illustration was on the left-hand page I could create the shape of the hat around the type and make it bleed onto the other side. To do this I created a new document with the right dimensions for the DPS, copied and pasted everything on my original illustration, and on a separate layer I used the pen tool and began to draw the outline of the hat. I used an image of my old design of the hat as reference.
Once I was done drawing the path I went to Paths and right clicked it, then pressed "Make Selection". I inverted it and used the paintbrush to colour in the selection in the right colour. I made the background dark so that I could see clearly where I was drawing.
With this part finished I had the idea of creating a blue outline around the hat as I wanted to make the background white, so I merged all of the layers I needed and filled it in with blue (on a duplicate layer of course). I then put this layer behind my hat, and shifted it slightly before creating a shadow with it.
This didn't produce the effect I wanted so instead I made the background blue and then changed the colour of the type (which I had included at this stage).
Switching Sides
I am still a bit unsure about this layout because even though the main illustration was full of bright colours, my eyes still went straight to the author's name and book title because of where it was placed.
So I switched sides, and when I looked at it I realised that because the illustration wasn't in a shape of the famous Dr Seuss hat anymore I included the hat icon right above the type. I made the background white so that the hat could be in the famous Dr. Seuss blue (as on his other designs that I had looked at during my research stage, he used his blue hat).
Out of curiosity, I tried out doing the hat shape.
Here were my two versions:
Reflective Thinking
I felt that this didn't have as much of an impact as my previous design did, but now my focus is solely on the main illustration which is an improvement. I prefer the version where I just had the illustration in a square with the hat icon on the other page, because the "shape" that the type is in doesn't resemble the hat at all (not like it did with my first version with it on the other side).
Due to my indecision I shall ask for feedback to see what my fellow classmates and lecturers think.
-
Moby Dick
Sketch & Ink
I lay out my two original sketches that I had before I made adjustments to my final one, and I decided that I shall follow the format of the one on the left but use the fonts shown on the right. I thought that the best typeface for the other side of the DPS for this would be the serif font as it's lack of decoration would make it easier to read at a small scale. I want to keep this page as minimal as possible so that the focus would be concentrated on the main illustration.
Using the same dimensions as the font in the Moby Dick design I drew out "Moby Dick", making sure that I was as close as possible to what I had previously produced. I had to make some slight adjustments such as the stroke thickness - which shows that I have improved in terms of noticing little aspects like this. The curvature of my existing design makes it seem that the type had been slightly warped because of it, but if I have the time I might make a few adjustments.
I kept the kerning relatively small to emphasise the elongated typeface as well as having a tall x-height. The serifs were drawn as small and 'pointy' as possible to reflect the harpoon that evidently brought Captain Ahab and his crew down with Moby Dick.
I am still a bit unsure of what I'm going to do for the author's name so I thought it best just to draw the letters out in this style just in case I do use it at a later stage. Instead of writing out his whole name I just drew the characters that I haven't already drawn - later on in Photoshop I'll just copy and paste some of the reoccurring letterforms.
I looked up at some tutorials and at Mary Kate McDevitt's book "Hand Lettering Ledger" to figure out some more ideas on what would be the best style of font to compliment my serif style, and I noticed that they both have mixed serifs with either a basic sans serif or a script font. I am unsure of whether or not to actually do this as I would prefer not to have more than two typeface styles but I tried out some script examples anyway so that I could make my decision when it's placed beside my Moby Dick design.
I made the script as minimalist as possible and without any elaborate ligatures and swashes, before tracing over my chosen ones in different pen thicknesses as I want to see what my serif font would look like with a thick and then thin script. I placed all of my three fonts next to my serif (which at this stage I had already inked).
To ink the serif I used both a 02 micron and a 08 micron. I used the same for the script fonts.
Photoshop
I left my word to dry for a bit before scanning them into Photoshop. I have gotten used to working with ink so I immediately knew what to do; I first adjusted the brightness and contrast, then the threshold, and then deleted the surrounding white areas. However for this one I made the mistake of deleting the white areas first, but I used the other technique (the brightness coming first) for all of the other fonts.
Due to the way I worked on this, it made it a lot harder to neaten up the linework and I often had to zoom in and use the eraser tool to clean it up.
Luckily I didn't repeat this process on my next design, having learnt what happened from my first, and once both fonts were ready I created a new document and combined the two. I used the same colour scheme as my existing design with the serif white and the script green. I haven't placed in my other serif for the author as I was curious to see how well the script would work.
I decided to go with the thickest and thinnest script font I had produced earlier, and put these on separate layers. I then went back to my Moby Dick later, right-clicked it and selected Colour Overlay to create the same effect that I had on my design. I made this colour dark, but when I repeated the process I made that colour white.
The two script fonts worked really well with this but I still had doubts that it would work with my other design, so I included my serif font for the author's name. With all of my letters on different layers I rearranged and made slight adjustments to them. At this point I realised I had forgotten to draw out R so at first I left a blank space until I had inked in my R.
This really worked well as well, especially because it doesn't have any effects added to it so the main focus is on Moby Dick (which was what I was aiming for). I felt more comfortable with this than my script fonts, but that might be because this was drawn more accurately.
Another advantage to using this was that the design had already been used, and therefore I would technically only have two typefaces over the whole DPS and it wouldn't be crammed in with many styles. This would just make the design confusing, so using the same serif style would be more comfortable on the page.
With my mind set on the serif style I created a new document and placed in my illustration of the whale, putting it beneath the type. I had initially wanted to include the boat as well but I thought that it would make the overall DPS too busy as there would be quite a few illustrations in total.
I then created another document and placed my two designs side by side. I thought that the font size was too large for the author's name and book title so I reduced it, before reducing it even further. My reason for this was because the font was close in size to the one on the main illustration so there isn't really a hierarchy on which one was more important. Of course, my main illustration is more important, so I reduced the font size of the other page.
I felt that this page looks a bit plain in comparison so I copied over the textures I had used in my Moby Dick design, and then put it into the document again to compare.
It's strange because even though the two are exactly the same, the other page was a lot lighter, so I went back to my page and made the page much darker so that people wouldn't think it was a printing malfunction. I changed the gradient and instead just highlighted the area around the title so that it looked like a soft spotlight where the light hits off the sea and onto the boat.
This emphasised the importance of the main design due to the contrast between them, and the darkness on the other page really brought out the lighter parts of the main one.
Reflective and Critical Thinking
This exercise went a lot smoother than expected, and that's mainly due to the fact that I had a clear image on what I wanted the DPS to look like. During the early stages of producing the main illustration I highlighted the notion of using the serif again for the other page, and as I am aware that multiple typefaces are only good if used in a certain way otherwise it would look crowded (such as in old circus posters like Astley's Circus during the era where typography was adapting into a more decorative style) I wasn't very keen on using anything other than what I had previously produced.
I used the old design that is shown right on the first picture on the left to my advantage for this design, following it's format but switching it slightly so that the larger font was at the top and the smaller at the bottom. I really liked that design but I thought that the one I went for in the end was stronger, so it was nice to actually be able use it.
I did adapt it slightly so that it didn't look as if two different designs were placed side-by-side, hence my reason of taking out the boat. I felt that if I did include the boat and the harpoon flourishes it would just make the design look too crowded and, as previously mentioned, like separate designs.
I am quite pleased with the outcome of this DPS although I would like to try switching sides as the first thing that I look at is actually the book title rather than the illustration. I shall do the same to all of the other previous DPS designs as well, as my friend pointed out the same thing when I showed my designs to her.
All of the Designs Together
After seeing how well "The Fault in Our Stars" worked with the type on the left and the illustration on the right, I decided to change all of my spreads so that they had the same format. The only design to possibly have less of an impact in this style was my Dr Seuss one as I couldn't do it in the shape of the hat, so instead I just included the icon of the hat above the type.
The Fault in Our Stars
Dr. Seuss - You are You
Moby Dick - Call Me Ishmael
Reflective Thinking - Summary
Each design took around a day to do and I wish that I had spent more time on them but it isn't possible with the small timeframe that I had left. I had underestimated just how long this overall process would take and I fear that I might rush at the very end.
I am, however, quite satisfied with what I have produced and there are clear reasons of why I did things the way I did. Whether it was to emphasise the main illustration or be merged with it, I think each of these designs do work and look much better with the illustration on the right and the text on the left.
There's one DPS that I missed from this list and that is The Raven, with the reason being is that I'm in a bit of a panicked state with it and it's quite confusing to explain my process. Therefore I have decided to do it in a separate post so that I could take my time to explain what I had done.
My next step is to finish off writing up my DPS for The Raven and then ask my fellow classmates and lecturers on what they think of the designs that I have so far.
Learning Outcomes:
[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.
[7] Developed their ability to learn through reflection on practice and experience.
[9] Developed their ability to work with complex material, analyse problems and identify appropriate solutions.
[9] Developed their ability to work with complex material, analyse problems and identify appropriate solutions.
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