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.