Paper Haven

Hey, I’m going to try to revive this blog, so just in case anyone is still aware of it, or following it, I’ll be live streaming some drawing every Sunday, 2:00 - 5:00 pm, pst!

Well this is it, the last official blog post for this project.

What was my intention with this project:

To get better at typography and layout.  Pairing typefaces, creating hierarchy in layout.  Making type respond to my illustration style.

What was the problem?  What were unexpected challenges:

Lots of writing and proof reading.  I don’t like those tasks so it was difficult to force myself to do them.  Often I found myself staring at my screen while making very little progress.  Other times I just avoided working on it all together.  I have to hold myself more accountable.  I scheduled lots of tasks related to this project, and going forward to I need to actually stick to my schedule and work on things that I’ve set the time aside for.

What changed about this project in the process:

We all love the word “pivot” now, but I don’t think the word accurately describes anything I did on this project. I grew to have a deeper understanding of type and received a taste of what it may be like to freelance and have to manage myself as worker.  I learned how to be appreciative of feedback when I received it, but also that I have to be confident in my own decisions as a designer.  Sometimes you just gotta print everything and mark it up in red pen.  Looking is an active process, so is design.  Even process that require lots of production and systems, require the designer to actively use their brain and critical thinking through out the process. 

Where is the project now:

I have more than a strong foundation, I have a layout and a system that works, I have a system for illustrations.  I have a lot of copy editing and proofing done.  I have a lot of illustration done.

What’s next:

Process: After researching layouts and typefaces, I revisited my mood board. I realized that a lot typefaces used in food packaging, advertisements, and features wide type in heavy weights.  The cookbooks I was most excited about used a sanserif typeface.  I decided on Jubilat Black for titles, headlines, and large chunks of information.  I think the slab serif makes it look warm, casual, and fun.  Body type is Trade Gothic.  I like how lean the characters are and find it a nice balance to Jubilat.

Solution: As part of portfolio prep this quarter, we met with alumni to discuss work and get feedback.  I showed my progress for this recipe book and got lots of specific feedback about layouts and hierarchy.  I agree with what most of the feedback was, which was that I need to use color/size weight of type to distinguish different kinds of information.  Now that text is flowed in I will be working more with tweaking that.  Another thing I’ve been told a lot, and something that has been an ongoing theme throughout my two years in this program is that I need to make type respond to my illustration style.  

Statement of Purpose:  For Spring Quarter 2019, I’ll be continuing my Cookbook Project from Winter Quarter 2019.  I intend to focus on typography, layout and achieving a final deliverable of a complete, professionally printed and produced book.

Tools Used in this Project:  InDesign, Blurb InDesign Extension, Photoshop 

Skills Used in this Project:  Typography, Layout, Illustration, Direction

Project Goal:  Refine Typography, Complete Cookbook to Print Professionally for Portshowlio.

Potential Problem: Time Management and Balance of Total Workload

Research Set Up:  Continued research of type, and typographic exercises.  

Intended Audience. SCCA Community. Hiring Managers related to Publishing, Layout, and Product/Package Design, General Attendees of Portshowlio interested in recipes.

Process: Regular Typography work, working large to small details.  Illustration on the back burner. 

Schedule: Available Here

I decided to continue my recipe book project in Spring Quarter.  I didn’t get anywhere near where I wanted with typography.  

Today I did a lot of work on illustrations but I also wanted to see what things would look like printed out.  You may recognize some of the drawings from previous weeks.  I imported the line art to photoshop and painted digitally. Going back to my moodboard, you’ll see I selected three colors at the begining of the quarter.  The Blue and Red were selected because of their use on the Schools website, and I selected the Yellow because I thought it would be a more appetizing color for illustrations of food, haha.  I have been a painter for 15 years, and have taken color theory, but I was not thinking about this is a primary color pallet. But it’s really great, because even though it wasn’t my initial intention, I think it makes the illustration very warm and vibrant.  

Here you can see the pallete two ways, one with a lighter touch, and the other with the color built a up a little heavier.  It’s not unlike CMYK colors!

More illustrations!

Daily Blog Posts right???  The One time I make a blog post last week it’s not even about Special Topics.  :p

I checked in with my instructor this morning.  I’m definitely behind on where I wanted to be with this project, but I told him where I was at and what I’m planning.  I think this isn’t going to be a final printed book, which is really frustrating, but I will try to print some spreads or sections and put together a presentation for the end of the quarter that shows my work in progress.

We’ve got a week over spring break so I hope I can keep working on stuff then! 

Anyway, Here’s what I worked on this weekend.  Planning out my daily assignments and homework to finish the last three weeks of the quarter!

The post it notes are my daily homework plan, and they get fewer towards the end because I’m not sure how those weeks will go so far so I want to be able to move things around.  I should be relatively on track for getting this week’s tasks done though! (this is my uh... personal white board at home.  I got it at the beginning of the year when I foolishly thought I’d be working on a lot of UX design this year.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

To get everything done this week, I decided to use my small whiteboard at school to make an hourly schedule for myself:

It’s actually helping pretty well!

So today I have mostly ended up focusing on setting up paragraph styles for the document in InDesign.  I’m through the first two sections so far!

I think there’s a lot more that has to happen before this is really reflective of my mood board, but honestly I think today’s work so far has been moving at a pretty good pace.  I just have to keep the energy up!

I typically hate making moodboards but this moodboard for my Ghost gig poster turned out pretty good!

Ok, let’s get frank on this blog.

I’ve probably started... a dozen.. or so?  blogs in my life.  Usually pretty much diaries with varying degrees of anonymity to spill my guts into the void that is the internet.  But that’s not really important

But, in setting out to create a blog for class, for a semi-professional project, I’ve suspended a lot of that frank honestly that compels me to blog at all.

And so, clearly I just haven’t blogged at all.

I also got sick/snowed in and just haven’t been working on this project!  I haven’t been talking to my teachers!  I’m in well over my head now!

So I made a rather depressing midterm presentation to send to my instructor last week.  I outlined what I plan to do the rest of this quarter.  Mostly

Work on this project daily

Communicate to my instructors

Blog daily

so far I failed at that too!  But let’s get it back on track.  I can’t see the future, I don’t know how this project is going to end.  All I can do is take things one step at a time from here on out.  So this is my intention to shift the focus of this blog into less of a sterile project report and more into a living and breathing project notebook.  I am going to just post everything, and you’ll see some run off from my other classes because I’m in over my head with them too.  This is where the rest of my SCCA life is going to play out, and honestly I’m tired of not-telling everyone every thought that enters my head, so if you follow this blog, you’re going to see it.  

This has been a weird week.  We didn’t have class monday due to the holiday, so I did my best to work from home.  

My flat plan turned from something that looks like this:

to this:

This also gives me a much better idea of what/how many illustrations I need to work on.  It’s small, but the yellow section will feature illustration, with sections being marked by full bleed illustrations.  The blue is body text, and it’s difficult to see, but green will denote headlines and titles.

I began working on illustrations but I’m concerned my style is too rigid and sterile at this point.  I’m hoping going back in with pen or with digital ink will liven them up a bit.  

this is an example of a poster illustration I was doing for another class, but I feel like it was a lot more successful than these, though I don’t think I’ll know for sure till I get more pieces laid in and really create a pattern with them.  

So here’s what’s up with this blog:

Who: Erin Billings, A Graphic Design Student

What: A blog for Special Topics, a self directed project.  This one is a cookbook.  

When: Winter Quarter 2019

Where: Seattle

Why: Because it’s a class requirement. Because it will help me document my process, progress, and practice communicating my ideas.  

So my intention was to create a youtube series where I talk about this project with the intention of simultaneously improving my presentation skills, but that idea hasn’t been so compatible with my schedule this week.

But here’s what I have for my Cook Book:

I’ve established a moodboard and visual direction, narrowed down my font selection, decided on book size and printer, created a rough flat plan denoting sections, set up my document, and started flowing text in.

I lot of my influence is from Bon Apetit; Alice Pattullo and Lucy Engelman especially!  I am also influenced by other illustrators.