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): Lettering Exercise - "You are You"

After gathering all of the necessary research for this little 'project' I started to draw up some sketches that was inspired from this research and from the list of connotations I had written down. This time I aimed more for the style of lettering I had stumbled upon in my last university project (APP Words) because I really enjoyed doing it, and it would match the 'fun' aspect of the quote. 

I wasn't too sure where to begin at first so I just wrote out the quote and put a circle around the words that really stood out before moving on to drafting my first layout. It was a bit all over the place at first as I tried out different layouts, working with one section at a time. I kept looking back at my inspirations before deciding that I should integrate my words with illustration to see if the process would be any easier. 

It was at this point that I wasn't too sure if my quote would be appropriate for the book, but then I realised... What if children were looking at it? After all, there would be children at the book festival, so I could try and create a product that appealed to the general audience. Thus I carried on sketching and drawing up ideas. 

Once I decided that I wanted the design to be more illustrative I tried out drawing up some crazy type styles with lots of decoration, much like the type shown in the pieces I gathered as inspiration [examples]. It was at this point where I wanted the type to be placed within the striped red-and-white hat that the cat wears in Dr. Seuss' books.
This type of placement was inspired by weareyawn where I analysed one of their pieces where it had the type within the shape of the Direwolf. [click here to see my analysis] 

FMP (BA): Lettering Exercise - "Tsunami Tides"

I needed to take a break from my previous calligraphy exercise "Afterall, tomorrow is a new day", so I was flicking through my online portfolio @ Behance I looked at a typographic piece I did a year ago that featured some lyrics from "U.N.I" by Ed Sheeran and decided that I would redo it, but this time with my own hand writing. I just feel that it's a bit of a shame that I didn't do it myself and used an existing font!

Here's the original piece:

I based my layout of the original copy, and started drawing out guidelines for all of the words. It's going to be harder to make sure that the leading and kerning it accurate as I wouldn't be able to adjust it as easily as I did on the computer for the original, so this took quite some time! Putting in the words took just as long, but I finally managed it.
When I was done I used a thick micron and wrote over what I had. I did this because I am going to do the final on a separate piece of paper because this paper was getting a bit messy.

FMP (BA): Calligraphy Exercise - "Afterall, Tomorrow Is Another Day"

After seeing how successful my last experiment was I decided to have another stab at hand-lettering, but this time try and focus on the "illustration & type" style that I had looked at in the previous post. I really liked Tobias Saul's work, and wanted to try something similar.

I just picked a random quote off of my list to play about with. I initially wanted to experiment with my dip pens a little further but got distracted by Saul's work and started to create some layouts. 

At this point I got a little bit stuck in terms of layout, and read up on an article where the hand-letterer normally draws up a list of words associated with the quote they're writing. I decided to try this out for myself in a mindmap.

FMP (BA): Dip Pens - Quick Exercise

I managed to get my hands on two sets of dip pens - one roundhand, the other copperplate & shadow - so today I had a little play with them. I've never really used such pens before so didn't know what I was doing but I just wanted to see what each set looked like in my own handwriting.

Calligraphy would be the first type style that I want to try out as I haven't explored with it that much in my last APP project (Words). Plus I think it'll suit some of the quotes I had gathered earlier.

Conclusion: 

As I've mentioned at the top of this post, I've never used such pens before so it was a little difficult for me to differentiate between the two sets. My next step is to take a look at some tutorials and see how other people use them as well as figuring out how to clean them properly.

Learning Outcomes:
[3] Developed written and oral skills of critical self-evaluation in relation to their design practice.

[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.

APP Words: Analysing Typefaces - Hand Lettering Exercise

[4] [5] [7] [9]

After watching some YouTube videos and looking at Sean Wes’ work I realized that I need to go back to basics with typography and start analysing different type styles, mainly focusing on how each letter sits on the baseline as well as the other lines (mean line and cap height). This will make it easier for me to draw letterforms accurately even though I want that ‘personal’ appearance to show that it has been hand drawn.  This means that I wouldn’t stress over tiny details and shall allow for mistakes to show.

I printed out three styles: serif, sans serif and brush script. I want to be able to work with all of these types because I’m not too sure what kind of styles I’m headed for right now. I then drew the lines across them and made a lot of annotations to make it easier for me to remember their characteristics. 

I started to run out of ink! Whoops!