Matthew Hill – Studio VI

Above are some of my favourite images from the photoshoot of my publication. I believe these are the most refined and most successful pages in the book. There are a few pages in the book which let down the rest of the publication but it would have taken a bit too much time to create further iterations of those pages.

I am pretty happy with the output although there are a lot of lessons I have learnt in designing a publication.

I spent three to four critical weeks at the beginning of this project researching and designing a lectern binding folding book. 

I knew at the time it didn’t really fit with the subject matter of my project but I was really determined to figure it out and prove that I could design something that didn’t have much information online on how to produce it. It was a very rare and unique way to present a book but I think this was a factor which led me off track away from designing the main content of a book. 

Type and image is an area of making I personally really struggle with. 

The project I hated the most in first year was creating a concertina of a New Zealand poem through type as image and also designing the POP publication in second year was a struggle for me. 

I could have played to my strengths this semester (branding, packaging, campaign, video & motion design) but I decided I would rather work to prove to myself and have a piece of work in my portfolio which was in an area of personal weakness where I could uplift my skillset as a designer. This was lowkey a bold move but I am grateful for what I have learnt about my own capabilities.

Here is some feedback which had a big impact on my process:

The biggest lessons were weaknesses I struggled to perceive and understand myself during semester two.

You can do something really basic really well and it will look great. 

Or you can do something really complex with a lot of components badly and it will look terrible despite the complexity of the idea.

George 

You’re using all of these extra components such as packaging to hide the fact that you aren't a good designer / your design is not good. 

You are scared to work on fixing what isn’t working and instead you’re covering it up with fancy decorations. 

George

You’re not designing a book from what I can see here. You are designing posters in a book format and the content is unreadable and looks bad.

George 

You’re moving from idea to idea and not sticking with anything. Don’t keep changing approaches you have to move forward with only one idea. 

Meighan 

Everytime I have spoken to you, you have switched ideas and decided to do something new.

This is the shooting setup I used to photograph my book. I wanted to create some studio style lighting from home. I used a white sheet to diffuse the natural light coming from outside I then weighted my tripod and extended it from above and covered a cardboard box with a black sheet as a background.

I used a piece of white card to try and bounce some of the light at the base of the book and fill in the shadows so there was more of an even and balanced lighting tone.

The camera settings used to photograph my book. In retrospect I made the scene a bit too underexposed resulting a bit of grain but this worked ok and I fixed most of the issues in post.

Test prints on different paper types from the printers.

I decided to go with 118gsm eggshell which is slightly warmer than the other paper types but it has a textured feel to the paper making it more rough to touch and engage with.

150gsm sovereign was far too thick for that size of book and I wanted the pages to bend in the hand.

These iterations were made in week nine.

Reflecting on them they were really just text slammed on a page and there as no system or cohesion between elements.

Some visual inspiration I used to inform my design work in the fourth section of Self Reflection.

The printers left some of the bleed attached to the final copies so I trimmed them down by a few mm in the bindery with the electric guilotine.

Before sending the file to print I made a few test copies and used clips to hold it together. This meant I could test and predict how much space might be lost in the inner margins and to ensure text that ran across pages would be readable and not lost (or to distanced apart) in the final print version as I would have no control over this once I handed it over to the printers.

Iterations and testing on my artboard in illustrator.

These were directions to extend the project.

I ended up not having too much extra time to design them. But I also recognised that adding collateral may take away from the main output which is the book itself.

As this book is intended to be distributed in high schools I was thinking about designing stationery such as pens with the vector patterns used in the publication so students could be reminded of their influences.

I also thought about a t-shirt design to raise awareness through an awareness campaign as this is a piece of collateral whcih is really trending for young men in this age group.

Here are sketches of my unused concepts.

As you can see there I could imagine so many ways this project could take in terms of artistic direction. I really wanted to emphasise interactivity which I was going to do through cardboard disks which spin and a case which would hide and reveal certain information.

In my intitial prototype for the critique session in week 11 I made the design of the outer cover laser cut far too close to the edges of the book making it look flimsy and also it ripped apart after being handled by a few people.

This outer pink cover represents the dispersion of sound waves and also wifi and the spreading of information to a widespread audience. The idea behind it being laser cut is that it hides some information underneath but also reveals some information. It encourages the audience to be inquisitive and look deeper to uncover the hidden messages in lyrics which they may often not hear or only interpret subconciously. It is about looking beneath the surface level and creating intrigue by having a dark grungy image covered by a bright pink outer cover. This reflects the darkness hidden within the messages we may often encounter when listening to trending lyrics which are upbeat and fun songs with twisted and distrubing messages which are being pushed upon young men to embody.

The cover falling apart was a major flaw which I needed to fix for my final output.

Here I resized the text underneath and used opacity to check what would be revealed and what would be hidden. I created an equal padding around the edges to ensure there was some strength and rigidity.

When I was at the printers I asked for the outer cover to be printed on 300gsm and the inner cover to be 200gsm. Shown below:

I also had a few copies laminated in matte although this made the pink colour a lot more dull and less vibrant so I decided not to use these for the final output and to leave the paper stock to be coated but unlaminated.

Some typographic and shape inspiration from music album covers on Spotify.

For this decorative spread at the beginning of the publication George said it was far too dark for an introductory page. I test printed a few different options using different greys.

George also said "Do you want me to read that?" meaning he thought it was unreadable because the text path was too dynamic.

These shapes represent sound waves and the different messages which are spread through music culture.

It was difficult to get the text evenly spread across both pages and split it in the centre while also creating symmetrical patterns on each page. I tested different wave heights, styles and having multiple waves at once (although this was too much).

Finding balance across these spreads was also difficult. I had to figure out a way to lift the text from the background pattern enough for it to not get lost but to also ensure it did not dominate the page.

I did a few different explorations to fix this issue and decided that a line going across the page above the patterns was best.