A WALK THROUGH MY DAM INVITATION
A Flood of Ideas I decided I wanted to do the dam to dam event because it is something I was personally interested in. That way I would be more enthusiastic about the invite and the ideas would flow more easily. Originally, my concept was to work with the dams as book ends and really focus on the path between them. This led to my first idea of an accordion fold between two dams with
information along the path. My second idea was to have the person seemingly walk through the information by unfolding a series of squares that wind along a path. My third idea was a flip book that travels along the path and finally arrives at the invite at the end.
Mapquesting Before I selected which project I was going to do, I researched information about the Dam to Dam race. This mostly involved going on their website and clicking around to collect information such as times, locations, prices, highlights, and other pieces of information
people might need. I also researched different styles of accordion invites and different styles of illustrations for footprints and paths and such that might inspire me on how I would illustrate my project.
Training Begins I decided to go with the flipbook idea. It was unique and interesting. But right from the beginning I realized I realized this was going to be a technological joy. Do I make each page an artboard? How the heck do I draw gravel? Important questions like these began to emerge. I decided to arrange a bunch of pages on one artboard for ease of printing and arranging it also made it easier to check that everything was placed in the same location.
But I was quickly realizing this was a lot more work intensive that I had expected. I certainly knew it would be hard, but one change on one page meant a change on 63 other cards. This was not looking good. So at the beginning I focused on the invitation part of the invite to make sure the most important pages were well done and didn’t get prioritized behind the illustrations.
A tad out of shape I have not had a whole lot of experience in illustrator so a disproportionate amount of time was spent figuring out what I could do instead of actually doing it. I tried different styles, colors, and strategies. I layered and grouped and nudged and scaled. But nothing
seemed to be getting done because I was continually scrapping one idea for another. My vision began to blur and my fingers cramped. My computer and I were both crashing and slowly processing information. My poorly illustrated gravel was mocking me.
Judge the book By its Cover When I got back to school, I changed gears and started work on the envelope. I decided that the envelope would be a dam and once it is opened it releases the water and “floods� the recipient. The envelope actually came together pretty quickly after I came up with the concept.
I was getting better at the illustrating thing. The hardest part was more arranging it properly so the image matched up once it was folded and that it duplex printed correctly. But even that worked itself out fairly quickly after a couple test prints.
Tips from my trainer My professor critiqued the material I had and gave me a lot to improve on. The cup was demoted to the blooper reel and he suggested I add in landmarks that runners would pass. He also suggested that I revise the distance
the feet travel and the invite care was also tweaked. Though the changes were daunting, my enthusiasm for the project had been revived over Thanksgiving and I was ready to go.
The marathon Now that I was in the illustrating mode, I I printed it out and then tweaked how just decided to commit the next two days to quickly the landmarks moved through the cranking out the invite. I created the land- book. By the time I was done, I had 110 pages marks, changed up the footprints, and revised of a project I didn’t think I could pull off. the invite card.
Reflection This project was an emotional rollercoaster. It really challenged me and I certainly grew from it as a designer and person. At the beginning I wanted to make my project focused on the path between the dams which I feel was adequately done by the end. I knew it was going to be work intensive when I began the project, but I don’t think I realized how intensive. I was also a little uncertain on how I would illustrate the scenes since I don’t do much illustrating- most of my experience has been design in InDesign. I did a lot of experimenting during the project. I tried a couple different ways of laying out the pages and layering the images. I messed with scatter brushes and symbol sprayers. I found out delete, copy, and paste was my friend. When I had to edit something on one card, instead of trying to edit it the exact same way on all the other cards, it was easier to just delete all the backgrounds and copy paste the edited version all back on. I applied strong typography techniques to the first and last pages of the flipbook. I paired two fonts and kept white space, hierar-
chy, and alignment in mind when designing it. If I had more time I would probably want to continue practicing with Illustrator to get the best illustration for the flip book. I might also try and figure out how to make the path move. It was difficult to do because of the way my pages were assembled and the layering that would have been in the way if the path slid down. I liked how this project challenged me and forced me to be creative in a new way. This project was very conceptual. Probably one of my favorite parts of a project is creating the concept which made this one exceptionally fun. On the other hand, this project could be tedious at times and sometimes tested by patience. It was also very time consuming which was a problem on busy weeks. Sometimes I would get frustrated while editing 110 pages and matching them together, but the reward came when the book actually worked and fit into the envelope. In the end, I did really like the project and I learned a lot about what I could do.