Research Task: Different Project Book Layouts

I gained access to text from An Essential Guide for Understanding and Applying Page Design Principles (2012) Quarto Publishing Group by Amy Graver and Ben Jura, Best Practices for Graphic Designers, Grids and Page Layouts. It was a really helpful document, it helped me to understand grids and page structure and how to organise content and images. It showed me how to be consistent with layouts and how to create focal points.

Having read this publication and referring to the text, I made notes in my notebook to help me with a starting point in creating my design layout. I also referred to a website that was in one of my earlier exercises, ISSUU.com, a very helpful site where anyone can upload their work and it gets transformed into a digital publication. I uploaded my final assignment and can see how it looks as a booklet, you can turn the pages, digitally and gauge how it looks with regards to borders and margins. It gives you a much better understanding of how the reader will see your work. There are areas I need to brush up on, which I will do before assessment.

My project book will be A3 landscape format, it will include a title page, a contents page and conclude with a comprehensive communication of the finished final design of my piece of fitted furniture. Within this book I will include my research of design precedents, my inspiration behind the design, the site analysis, the design development through sketches and drawings, photographs and my emotional 3D model. I must also try and use several different media to communicate my design, this way I am demonstrating my design development over the course of this particular unit.

I used Indesign to create my project book, but not before researching other designers project books. I was initially looking for similar colours and shapes that I have within my own design i.e. brickwork wall and organic shapes. I needed to consider page layout, typography, colour and how I would create a flawless page of images taken on my camera? I set to researching that very question. I then remembered we had research other students project books and portfolios a few exercises back. I referred back to this link and set about searching for pages with flawless images on, I wanted to create a page where images from another piece of software were placed without seeing a frame or box around them. It took me some time to find out how to achieve this look, but eventually I did!

This example below shows how the edges almost sit on the page without too much of a colour difference. I worked on changing the images within my iPhone via the Notes App, within this app you can scan your work in your notebook and then adjust the image by changing the contrast, brightness and saturation, producing translucent images, that look much more professional.

I found a template that I liked the colour combination of and set about adding my work to the relevant pages. I played about with different fonts and eventually found one I loved, there are so many to choose from! I was also keeping in mind hierarchy, something my tutor has noted was missing in a few areas of my work. I changed some of the pages to a brick colour and decided to alternate the pages, to add some interest, I didn’t want every page to have the same theme of colour, but I knew that I wanted the text the same size, to give it some consistency. By creating this look hopefully my booklet will look coherent. My book contains 8 pages that are made up as follows;

A title page

A table of contents

1. The Brief
2. Site survey
3. Precedent research
4. Pattern sketches
5. Emotional connection in 3D form
6. Construction sketches
7. Technical drawings
8. My vision

Throughout this process I was conscious of trying different mediums to present my work. I sketched with pencil on paper. I took photographs. I used Autocad to create technical drawings. I also used Autocad for my finished design, which I was not happy with. I attempted drawing my design using Procreate on the iPad, I’m just not comfortable with this way of drawing. I then decided to sketch with a pencil on paper and use black fine liner to make it stand out before adding colour using pencils.

After adjusting each image that I sketched on paper, to remove the edges, I added them to the relevant page and gave them a title. My tutor noted that I should present the images in a way that the reader can understand, show the journey and improvement of ideas. When adding photographs of my 3D model I felt the need to add a poem, I’ve never done this before but for some reason it felt right to do so. The poem confirms my thoughts and ideas behind the 3D design.