Context Of Practice Book

BRIEF

DELIVERABLES

CONCEPT

Create a printed publication based on your context of practice development. The publication can be about any aspect of design production or creative endeavour.

2xPrinted Publication

My concept is to produce a flip book styleguidesque publication full of images that illustrate my tastes in graphic design and interests in a range of other topics like space, nature, landscapes and cities.

The aim is to create something personal, categorising your understanding of creative work and what it means to you. It is important to remember that the publication should focus on your creative and personal interests that form your outlook on design make you the creative that you are.

TONE OF VOICE Personal, reflective, colourful, inspiring.

The aim is to produce something which I can keep by me whilst I work and use as a guide for inspiration and ideas.

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RESEARCH Since most of the content of the book would be sourced from images I had already collected more of the research element of this brief fell to looking at ways in which I could format my publication.

The final product was based on the layout of two books that I found in the library. Firstly ‘The Universe in 365 Days’, which has an very wide format layout. The second ‘Select’ was interesting for its use of images and colour on every page.

Both books used a very unique layout, elements of which I have used on my publication. The most noticeable is the Universe book which uses one image per page, with a block of text to support said image. From ‘Select’ I took their approach to colourcoding each page in relation to its contents.

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IMAGE COLLECTION Collecting the content for this publication was a fairly easy task. Most of it was already easily accessible to me, either as files save onto my computer, scanned in from books or found around my room.

Below are just a few of the images that I had used in the publication. They represent graphic design and inspiration that I find in a range of topics from pure design to politics to space.

One interesting aspect of sourcing and preparing all of these images to print was the realisation of the things that I am interested in most. I haven’t really ever had the chance to evaluated my interests in such a way before so the style and subjects of the images that I was drawn to was a fascinating process.

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PRINTED PUBLICATION COVER The cover of the publication isn’t really based in anything that I am aware of. One interesting design choice I made was to not give the book a title, instead opting for a series of icons which reflect my views on the contents, i.e. things that I love, rate, approve of and am excited by. The arrow marks could reference the direction that the book must be opened in, as big ‘this way up’ marker, or they could represent the three years that I have studied the course, showing three years of development in creativity and interest.

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INSIDE The layout of the publication runs throughout the book, bar the first and last spreads, which contain an introduction/ contents page and notes page respectively.

Every spread in the publication focused on one image, presented on the right or bottom page depending on your orientation of the book. The opposite page contains a title for each image and a short description as to what the image is of or my reason for including it.

The spine of the book runs along the top edge of the page. The reader can decide which way to orient the book and view its contents. This makes reading it a more dynamic event, but also gives each image the maximum amount of space on the page as possible.

The title of each page is coloured based on the image shown opposite adding another element of personalisation to the publication.

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EVALUATION This has been an interesting brief to work on, and a fairly unique one for me. It has been an interesting process to collect images that speak to me on a creative level and dedicate a book to them, and its been interesting to see what I have come up with.

If I had longer to work on this project I could have continued and found much more content.

However I planned to limit the publication to 200 pages so that other tasks were not neglected and only ran slightly over this goal. As a result there are some images that I ended up leaving out, for example I would have liked to have included a chapter on gig posters.

In terms of design and layout I am very happy with the publication. Its a very simple layout which makes the book fun to flip through and easy to navigate. Each images also has a very small amount off text next to it which offers some information or a point of view about the work.

Most importantly the book communicates my outlook on design and creativity, covering actual graphic design and then moving on to films, politics, science, nature, engineering and the exploration of space. These topics may not directly relate to graphic design, however they show my interesting in a range of topics which influence the way that I interact with design and view the world around me.

On a different note I am very pleased with the final product... as a product. The publication feels sturdy and book-like in weight. It features a suitable amount of information and looks interesting enough to pick up. I also like the way that it doesn’t have a real title, just a series of icons. I suppose this reflects on the outlook that design and communication does not have to be type based, these icons reflect on the value, and how I feel about, the books contents.

The layout and format of the book is something I really considered and I do believe that it was a successful decision to place the spine at the top. The goal was to have a book that was comfortable to open in any direction.

It has also given the book a new level of interaction and gives the impression that there is no true way to view it.

In the future I believe that I will be able to view this publication as a source of inspiration, not only from the images it contains, but from seeing it as a viewpoint into how I see myself and the world of design and inspiration right now, as a young graphic designer.