Defining Content

Obviously it was about time I actually defined what kind of content would be in the publication, as this would naturally affect how I would continue designing it. I spent a short while doing a mind-map of all the most obvious things that might appear in a magazine such as this one:

This ranged from everything that could be directly linked back to my original 'good' (Golden Ratio) towards items that stem from this theme in various ways, for example simply using 'Divine Proportions' as an identity for a collection of items that look remarkably 'good' as such (eg, music, art, cultural stuff).

I also considered maybe giving the complete opposite a go (in terms of design); which would be to go against the whole Golden Ratio in some way, or maybe make some large contrasts to it. As in, disregarding anything to do with grids or 'normal' design rules as such. I don't know yet. 

I narrowed this down into a more manageable list of words and phrases which will hopefully give me a much clearer direction form now on when I research and design for the publication;

These words sort of give quite a vague idea of what I am aiming for. Sort of a cross between Grafik, Creative Review, New Scientist and that one-time-special Jam magazine that was floating around college for a while, which was a brilliant magazine, but as of yet I haven't seen a second issue. 

mock up 1

Did a quick mock-up of a magazine/journal cover, just to give me a starting point, as well as to give me some kind of vague idea as to what needs to be included or generally where the whole thing could be headed.

I wouldn't say it was anywhere near good or finished or anything, I simply did it because I was beginning to get stuck with the whole direction thing.

Now I've done this, I've got a clearer idea of where this whole thing could go. At the moment it doesn't even look like you could pinpoint who the target audience might be, which is a major issue. If I want to aim it towards a slightly younger sort of audience (20-30) then I'll need to freshen it up a bit; at the moment it looks like a history textbook or something, which is not ideal. Then again, I would hope that it is going to be a fairly inclusive publication, there's no real point in trying to narrow it down too much.

Moving on

Erm, so after re-defining concepts, a fair amount of research and some group crits, it's about time I sat down and thought about where to go from here, as for a while I have been a bit stuck. 

The group crits reinforced the idea that I should begin heading down the publication design route, which was useful. However, I'm not sure whether I should design a publication that is a solely a product of research in terms of the Golden Ratio, as this may only appeal to a very small number of people, not that this is any reason not to do it. 

Essentially, I get the feeling it would undoubtedly be more effective to leave it slightly open for the time being; i.e. begin thinking about what I could potentially include in the publication, before going ahead and sealing its fate right this minute by narrowing it down too much.

By collecting ideas about what could potentially be included in the publication (which could be almost anything) I will hopefully find it easier to define my target audience, which in turn will allow me to refine the content once more. 

I've been investigating the Seven Stages of Design. I feel I have been collecting a fairly thorough amount of research, have nearly re-defined my Concept properly, and have already ideated some potential solutions - therefore, from this point forward (once I have a concept/rationale set in stone), I will begin using some of my idea generations to begin some proper design work.

Print Manual

Made a quick start to the 'Top 10' Print manual. I should really have done some proper sketches beforehand, but instead I drew up a list of tips and useful information to put in the book and then just ploughed straight into it. It kind of works in the same way as rough sketches though, I imagine when I've finished mocking it up like this then I'll massively reconfigure it til I'm happy. 

I'm going for a fairly minimalistic approach with this one, to ensure maximum ease of use. I also tried to make little puns and jokes that are bible related but I thought they were pretty weak so I'm gona deal with that at some point. 

Made using InDesign.

So yeah, I'm aiming for the layout to look a little like these....standard combination of type and image.

Crit session 20/10

Feedback sheets from crit session. It seems that I need to be far more specific and informed about my traget audience, and also that I should figure out how to explain the Golden Ratio more accurately as such, as I do have a bit of trouble trying to explain it as a concept.

My group seemed to agree with me on the idea of going down the publishing/editorial route, which was nice.

Concept Boards

Refined concept boards displaying concept, visual references and a set of initial ideas. These are to be presented at the crit session for feedback. I tried to make it fairly clear that editorial/publication design is the kind of area I am aiming for, whilst relating this to my original Rule of Thirds idea.

Logo re-thought

A combination of advice and critiquing and sudden ideas and generally a weekend of solid resting and I've kind of ended up re-doing my logo completely. Not so much ignoring everything that's been told to me before, but just sort of applying it differently. 

Starting off with one of the symbols for the Golden Ratio/Rule of Thirds, and putting it in a circle, to give it some sort of structure and space to sit in. And obviously there needs to be some sort of reference to the idea of the number three and thirds, so I moved it on to look like it does below:

And then a friend advised me that I should space the surrounding circles according to the Golden Ratio (1:1.618) and use that to calculate the distances between them, like so:

I haven't done it exactly just yet, but it would look pretty much like this. I might alter the size of the internal symbol to match up to this ratio as well. 

Vectoring logos

Vectoring up some ideas to get a good idea of how they will look when they are 'proper' as such.

I started off with the ideas that stemmed from the 150 logos task, using the logo that was selected for me by my classmates, very similar to the ones below. I do quite like it (and they must have a little bit aswell) but I thought it would be good to play around with a few other ideas as well. 

I quite like the simplicity of the white on black three corner idea like the first one below; it does in some ways convey the idea of the number three and perhaps even the rule of thirds, but at the moment it's kind of annoyingly simple...I messed around with the white rectangle that falls on top of the black one, which created some fairly cool abstract shapes, but its a shame because the ideas of thirds is kind of getting lost. Or is it....I'm not really sure, but I like it, I'll probably return to it at some point.

I also had a go at doubling up the triangles and creating images like the ones shown below:

Of course that's no longer thirds, it's become sixth's, which isn't too bad but is still diverging away from the main idea a bit much. Then again, I've got a lot of time for this one I made below:

I'm quite enjoying minimalist abstraction and stuff like that at the moment, probably through looking at aisleone.net far too much. I doesn't appear to mean much at the moment, but as far as it goes, to me it seems like quite a nice arrangement of lines...

To take things further I also introduced the actual symbols for the Golden Ratio, as shown below:

And kind of returned to the original idea of three rectangles, split up by this symbol in a circle. I'm quite enjoying it but it would take quite a lot of tweaking to get perfect, the longer parts of the lines start to appear much fatter than the part with the line running down it.

Doesn't quite feel balanced yet..

I quite like this one below:

Yet once again the ideas are kind of diverging a bit far away from the main concept. 

I stripped it back down to this logo shown below, which simply has the Golden Ratio symbol placed in a position that follows the Rule of Thirds in some ways, it's basic and not overly clever, but it does signify the Golden Ratio to some extent.

I'll have to tweak this logo a bit further, or maybe return to work on some other ideas, I'm not too sure yet.

Software Workshop 11/10 - InDesign.

InDesign workshop session. A reminder of how to set up and make use of the programme, plus some more advanced features useful for getting printing correct.

Open up a new document, standard. Even if it is a book we are creating it is still worth just creating a new document unless it is a massive book.

Standard features, only check 'facing pages' if it is a book that is being made.

Woohoo, a new page. fresh.

So we add a textbox, like so:

And a coloured rectangle.

The two tiny boxes, one behind the other, in the swatches panel, allow you to mess with the fill or stroke, as you can see. Similarly with the text box, it is possible to alter the background or the text colour:

Do this by selecting the 'T' button:

Et voila.

We can also create new swatches, much like the other Adobe programmes.

And mess around with the percentages until we have a nice colour:

And there we have it, a fresh new swatch.

The grey box to the right of this signifies a GLOBAL COLOUR which means if the CMYK percentages are changed, this will affect EVERYTHING that has that colour swatch applied to it. Very useful. This is demonstrated below:

If we change the swatch...

Both the text and the rectangle change to the different colour.

We can also create tints of swatches:

Like so:

And, magically, if we change the original swatch percentage, this also changes the tints accordingly!

And we also have colour books which are very useful for printing referencing:

If we are happy with our swatches then we can save them for another project. 

DEALING WITH IMAGES:

ALWAYS PLACE THE IMAGE rather than copy and paste. It is important to ensure the image is the correct size before placing. This will avoid any errors later on.

By using a photoshopped image, the swatches will be carried over and placed into the swatches panel.

Like so:

Vectored images can also be placed, with proper transparency

In the links panel we find a link back to the original image. double clicking this will open the original file, in whatever programme it was created in.

We can edit the image in its original programme, and upon saving it, the InDesign copy will update itself.

Placing a monochrome image into InDesign means we can edit it at a very basic level, which of course avoids all the hassle of going into other programmes.

PRINTING:

Say we want to print this image below. As you can see we have CMYK and the SPOT colour. Therefore we would need FIVE printing plates to print this image, no more, no less.

By going to the print box, and selecting 'output', we can see the plates needed. CMYK and Pantone Orange 021U. If there are any more, there will be a waste of ink and money. If there are any less, the image will not print properly.

Before printing, we can go to 'output' in the 'window' drop-down menu to view the separations.

This will bring up a new window, where we can view where the individual inks will be dropped. Below we can see where Magenta, Black and Spot Orange will be dropped.

Another important thing to note is 'knockout', which, on the image below, involves removing part of the yellow rectangle to make space for the blue rectangle. Doing this means that the inks won't combine and produce another colour. This is done automatically but can operated manually to achieve other effects.

By selecting only the Yellow channel on the Separations Preview box, the area where yellow will be printed will appear black, demonstrating this 'knockout' effect.

By switching off this knockout, the following effect happens:

Which of course means if you are using a limited number of printing plates you can achieve new colours like so:

It is also worth checking the Ink Limitations. The stock to be printed on to will determine the amount of ink that should be applied to it. For example, on a thin stock, too much ink will cause a bad quality print. By setting an ink limit, the red area indicates where too much ink will be dropped. And henceforth the ink limitation will have to be reduced until the red area dissapears, ensuring a top quality print.