Type & Print Module File [May 2021] by nathfiction

Type & Print

NA ATHANIEL THANIEL STEVENS STEVENS

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Preparation Project: A Thing You Have Learned In Your Life So Far

Preparation Project: Family Monogram

Project Brief 1: Family Monogram

Workshop: Jamie Clarke

Workshop: Book Binding

Workshop: G.F. Smith

Project Brief 2: Everything About One Thing

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Workshop: Bunker Creative

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Workshop: Swiss Design

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Project Brief 3: Obey The Grid

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Project Brief 4: Sound & Vision

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Additional Brief - Bunker Creative: Gin Brief

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Freelance work - TAPS Craft Beer & Kitchen: Restaurant Menu

144

Final Reflections

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Links

Type & Print

Contents

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Preparation Project:

A Thing You Have Learned In Your Life So Far DEADLINE : 11TH FEBRUARY 20201

BRIEF Produce a typographic response inspired by Stefan Sagmeister’s book ‘Things I have learned in my life so far’. This is about exploring the nature and flexibility of type and experimenting with non-print formats. Your ‘thing’ learned should be a phrase or sentence specific to you. The outcome can be motion based, photographic, illustrative or interactive. It needs to be 3-dimentional and the style/material/typographic approach should (if possible) be appropriate to the phrase/sentence chosen. When photographing your 3D outcome consider art direction such as placement of type in relevant context/location. Example statements from the book: https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/02/06/ things-i-have-learned-in-my-life-so-far-stefansagmeister-updated/ http://lizandleasavetheday.files.wordpress. com/2011/07/sagmeister_things_if_have_l.jpg

WAn example of past student work: https://vimeo.com/118292222 Ensure you have a digital version of your outcome (A3 colour) as well as the weblink of your piece (vimeo/youtube) for the first taught session on the 11th February.

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RESEARCH Before this brief I was unaware of the work of Stefan Sagmeister. After only finding a few examples of his work ‘Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far’ I decided to find a physical copy and was able to by a second hand version of this publication. The publication itself had loads of great ideas and approaches to explore and was really interesting to read the meanings and stories behind each statement.

APPROACH From looking through Sagmeister’s work I really liked his style of photography and thought that it would be something that I might be able to recreate. I also liked that in many of his pieces, each word or small set of words were positioned and set in different landscapes, with different materials and in different typographic styles, I really felt that this gave the sentence a narrative structure and could convey a wider meaning or intention to the message with the content and composition of the image. This approach was something that I was keen to replicate in my own

work. I also liked that many of the photos were either full bleed or at least took up the majority of the page, giving full attention to every part of the sentence or phrase. Finally a lot of the images were almost certainly shot using analogue photography which carries that warm grainy, more humble aesthetic. These examples where the ones that I liked the best, I enjoy photography and wanted to create something physical rather than digital, both in terms of content and outcome.

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DEVELOPMENT My initial idea was to create each scene and then film it to generate a short abstract film that contained extra very picturesque shots to give context to each image and offer more of a narrative, each of these shot would be composed like a photograph. However throughout the planning of this I decided that I could convey everything that I wanted to as a series of photos rather than a film as my original idea was almost “photos coming to life” anyway. Once I knew my approach I set about thinking of all the things I have learned in my life so far, the list is as follows: 1. Time is the only currency that matters. 2. Travelling brings you everything. 3. It is better to go too far than not far enough. 4. Saying yes can open too many doors. 5. You can find beauty in everything (except on ITV2) 6. If it looks fun, try it. 7. Take every opportunity. 8. Don’t be a dick. 9. Never stop learning. 10. Everything is easier when you look after yourself. 11. it takes a lot of hard work to stay creative. 12. I am only as good as what I think you think I am. 13. People respond more to emotion than to logic. 14. The finish line doesn’t exist. 15. Being popular doesn’t matter if you are making what you want. 16. Success rarely looks like what you think it does. 17. It’s OK to not know what your end goal is, it’ll change when you’re 30 anyway. 18. Your job isn’t always what you “do”. 19. Humans as individuals can be great, humans in large groups are always idiots. 20. I am not an expert if I’ve done something once. From this list I whittled it down to my favourites which were 1, 4, 10, 16 and 18. I then thought about what I had learned most recently and for me number 16 seemed the most poignant in my life at this time. I had left my old career that I have been building for over 10 years, to move abroad, travel and re-evaluate where I was in my life, this then culminated in the decision to study graphic design here at U.W.E.

Being a mature student, I felt like I was starting again from scratch but was much older than all my peers, I felt I had not necessarily failed in my previous career but had not gotten as far as I had hoped. At the time I wasn’t sure if I had wasted my time, but after more consideration and reflection of everything that I had done and had achieved, I realised that I had been successful in many other ways and had managed to experience a lot of things that others would not have done, such as teaching, playing and touring Europe in bands, teaching and playing Japanese drums in theatres and working on pioneering arts projects to name a few. More importantly I had managed to sustain a career as a freelancer in an industry that I really cared about and finally have met my wife and we have travelled extensively. These things became more of the measure of my success rather than my Instagram followers or my bank balance. So this statement felt very personal to me and something right up to date. Once I had my statement, I started to plan each photograph (or later abandoned film scene). I wanted each photo and it’s composition to represent different aspects of my life and carry a short narrative. I wanted to convey some of my favourite things and experience that I have had in my life, as well as suggesting that work does not always represent success such as a busy desk, travel photos and souvenirs, music and records, relationships and nature. Next I had to develop how I was going to create the text for each image. For ‘success’ I decided to create a messy desk scene to convey the stresses of work. I displayed the type digitally with the getting blurrier as the letters went on as a way to represent getting tired of being on a screen all the time. On the table there are a couple of Easter

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eggs such as the book ‘100 Ideas That Changed Graphic Design’ is open to the page displaying Stefan Sagmeister’s ‘Things I Have Learned’ work, also on the table are some sketches from some of my freelance work. For ‘rarely’ I was originally going to use travel photos but changed to drum sticks representing my time playing in bands and I also happened to have enough sticks left that I could use one for each letter. I drew on and then carved out each letter using a dremel and set the shot up with the sticks on my stick bag and me reaching for a pair to go and play.

‘Looks’ was made out of sticks and bound with string. I wanted to place this word at one of my favourite places near to where I live and where I frequently go for walk. Lydeard Hill on the Quantocks is one of the highest points in the county and offers amazing views all the way to the north coast. I though this was a good fit for this word and is actually quite similar to one of Sagmiester’s photos.

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For ‘like’ I wanted it to represent my partner and thought a photo of us holding hands with our wedding rings on show would be a nice fit. Being only four letters, ‘like’ sit nicely with one letter on each finger. Because of the placement below my knuckles I decided to go with tattoo style lettering and drew the letters onto my fingers using a brush pen. I then found a nice green spot as the background and took the photo with the help of a tripod and the camera timer. I put ‘what you’ together and wanted to write these letters over photos taken from traveling. I spent time selecting some of my favourite photos from trips to Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, getting about 180 prints made and buying a cork board to place them all on. Once the photos arrived I changed how I wanted to present the text as I already had plans for writing text on others so with this one I decided to cut the letters out instead. Once these were all cut out I laid out the photos and in the end did a tight shot of just the board. For ‘think’ I wanted to reference music and releases that I had been a part of so I put a tape form a band I used to play drums in, into my tape deck. I bought a label maker as I thought this would convey the D.I.Y. punk ethic and would sit well in the image and applied it to the tape. The final words ‘it does’ I wanted to call back to the beginning and have a tidy desk with everything closed, shut down and organised, as a way to show that success can come from anywhere and not just from employment, and actually taking time away from the desk can be a really positive thing. The type itself I practiced in my book before attempting it on the coloured card. I had originally wanted to write it on PostIt notes but these were too small so found the fluorescent card instead and used that. As a way to set up the narrative, I also took two extra pictures of my hands, first of all holding a pen and then positioned as if I was getting out of my chair. This was originally supposed to set up the first image of the desk, but in the end seemed unnecessary so these images were ultimately scrapped.

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Lastly I created a cover image using references from the other images, such as foreign currency, a guitar pick, a travel souvenir, a technical pencil and some small change. I used the label maker to create the titles, I then stuck these to my bed side table and set up a scene to photograph. The addition of ‘Number Sixteen’ was to represent that this was the sixteenth mantra out of twenty and to illustrate that this is only one example. All of the photos were taken on my Canon 550D DSLR in RAW format, this gave me full control of the images in Photoshop, making adjustments before loading the image into the main programme. I worked with each image changing the contrast, curves, and levels then added grain and finally some light gradient overlays to try and recreate the analogue aesthetic as best as I could. I didn’t use my film camera for this project as I needed to take several shots and then selected my favourites after the shoot. If I had been working in full analogue I would have had to take several pictures and then wait until they were developed before moving forward, an expensive and time consuming approach. Finally, I wanted to mimic the double page spread layout of the Sagmeister books so gave myself a large white border and then chopped the images to fit over both pages in this space.

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FINAL OUTCOME: https://issuu.com/nathfiction/docs/tihlimlsf_final

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FINAL OUTCOME: Printed on G.F. Smith Extract Moon paper (made from recycled coffee cups)

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Preparation Project:

Family Monogram DEADLINE : 11TH FEBRUARY 20201

BRIEF In preparation for one of your module projects we want you to collate information about your two oldest living relatives – one male and one female (Ideally grandparents) and produce a publication (physical if at all possible) of your findings for each relative. This project is about looking at how personal information can inform the creation and use of typography to convey history, identity and preserve a legacy. Monograms can be personal but are also used by corporations, sports teams and fashion labels to distinguish themselves and reflect an identity, ideology or ‘brand’. The choice of letterforms, combination, style, colour and composition are informed by the ‘personality’ of the individual or company and these traits have to be unearthed in order for the monogram to work well. The questions you ask your relatives (or those closest to them) should unearth elements of their past to help you make decisions about how to create a monogram when the project begins in week one of the module. Did they have a particular trade? Were they a war hero? Do they have particular associations with a place through

their name (first or last)? Collect as much information about them as you can – name, date and place of birth, nationality, profession, hobbies, key lifetime achievements, significant information that is interesting to you and possibly to others. Collect photographs of your relatives from the past and present, along with any other materials that will be useful to you for this project (examples of their handwriting, personal ‘seals’ they may have used on letters, newspaper clippings, awards/medals – these may need to be photographed). Use your parents to collect information if you need to but ideally speak to your chosen two elder relatives to gather content for the best results. This is a project about connecting with your past as well as looking to the future – so the better informed you are at this stage the more successful your outcome will be. Produce a printed publication (if possible) of your collected materials for each of your relatives (pagination & format are up to you) and have a digital PDF version ready to show online for first taught session on 11th February.

QUESTIONS

For this brief I had one relative in mind that I knew would be great for my research, my grandpa on my mother’s side. Although he is 90 years old he is still very active and has a great memory, for my second person, I found it a bit more difficult, my grandma on my mother’s side has very severe dementia and I didn’t want to overwhelm her with questions as she would find it difficult to understand what it was for and would not be as capable in preparing for the interview that I was hoping to do in order to get the information required. Both of my grandparents on my fathers side have unfortunately passed away but I wanted to find a way of including at least one of them as they are the side of the family where my family name comes from and as I was unsure as to whom I would be designing the monogram for, I wanted to make sure that side of my family were represented in some way. So I decided to do a full interview with my Grandpa and then have certain questions answered by my Grandma, and finally have some stories about my Granddad from my father’s side told by my father himself.

I spoke to my parents about this project to get some advice as to how much my living grandparents would be able cope with and started to write to write some questions, after a few drafts, these became the final questions for my Grandpa: Written Questions (stats) Name: Date Of Birth: Place Of Birth: Places that you’ve lived (towns and cities): Occupations / Trades (including favourite job): Favourite Hobby: Favourite colour: Favourite Song:

I wanted this publication to hot just give me some good research for the project but also be something that my family members would like to read, something that documents our family history and something that we can pass down to new generations of my family for years to come.

Questions for online chat (stories) – Favourite Childhood memory:* Greatest achievement:*

When devising questions for this interview I broke them down into two categories, stats and stories, the kind of cold information, jobs, addresses, age etc and then the warmer information, elaborating on childhood and personal achievements. I wanted to try and keep the questions positive and give them an opportunity to reflect on nice points in their lives. Finally I didn’t want to overwhelm them with questions so I tried to keep them reasonably concise with the caveat that if there was anything that they felt like they wanted to add then they were more than welcome, I framed the approach in a way as to say “is there anything else that you would like future generations of our family to know about you?”.

Favourite place you’ve been:* What’s your fondest memory of your parents?: Time in the Navy • What did it teach you? • How did it shape you? • What’s your most memorable moment? One piece of advice you would give to your 18-year-old self: One piece of advice you would give to the next generations of our family:*

[The starred questions were ones that I though would be good to for my grandma to answer if she was feeling well enough.]

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APPROACH

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THE INTERVIEW Due to COVID-19 I was unable to conduct the interview in person, however my mother would visit them every week to help around the house and with shopping etc, so we decided to set up a Zoom call, with my mother taking her computer to their house and getting set up and then me conducting and recording the interview via Zoom. This worked really well and was the first time that my grandparents had ever done something like this. The interview lasted for a couple of hours and I got some really great content from both my grandpa and my grandma, who was able to recall many stories from her childhood, with a little extra prompting from my grandpa and mother, when she was telling one story in particular about her brother, Tony, falling off of a street light, she said “I can always remember that, Tony falling out of the sky.” I laughed and said that “Tony falling out of the sky” would make a great book title which well joked about, however, I firmly intended for that to be the case!

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Once the interview had been concluded I set about listening through the audio and creating a transcript, I always find there are large differences between the way that we speak, with the order of information and the way that we read, I wanted to get a good balance of keeping the interview authentic but also making sure that it reads well and that everything in there made sense. After I had the transcript for the interview with my grandparents I then conducted a more informal interview with my dad and asked him to recall any stories and give an overview of my granddad’s life, from early years to career and any specific stories that he could remember, I typed this one up as we went along and then made final changes to make sure it all read well after the interview.

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DESIGN Once I had all the text that I needed I asked both my grandparents and my parents to collate any items that they could that either related to a story that they had told, or was a memorable moment or helped to illustrate their childhood and early life. Again I was unable to collect the items in person but I was able to take some photographs of some of the items while visiting my parents. I composed some photos with either one or multiple elements and photographed them using coloured mount board as a background, using certain colours for specific people. The content that I collected in that visit was not quite enough and some of the photos did not clearly illustrated the images that I was trying to capture or had issues with light reflecting and obscuring certain images, no matter how hard I was trying to get the light as even as possible. My grandparents had also found several more images, so these were scanned and sent over to me. The content included old photos, Grandpa’s medals from the Navy, his original drafting document from when he first joined and an old violin that what his fathers.

For layout I wanted something elegant and simple and began by looking through some layout from Home & Garden and World Of Interiors magazines that were at my parents house. I chose to look at these publications for two reasons, first of all I felt that they were quite appropriate in their style and composition for this kind of brief and that the demographic for these magazines would also be those interested in family history, plus I wanted the look to be something that my grandparents would like and I know that they enjoy these types of magazines. Secondly I wanted to use these publications as reference as they are so image heavy and have to accommodate such a variety of images. I really liked the drop caps in Home & Garden that were positioned with much of the letter above the body copy, and I liked that with World Of Interiors, their approach was slightly more modern.

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Outside of these influences I also looked at some other book design, mostly with a focus on Swiss Design, I wanted to incorporate some other design elements and colour blocks to help modernise the design.

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FIRST DRAFT In this initial draft I wanted to stay reasonably close to the magazine style, using only serif typefaces and keeping the layout quite simple. I created a twelve column grid and placed all of the interview text in the outer nine columns, giving me three colums in the inner edge to put information anout the images etc. This margin layout was influenced by Ellen Lupton’s book ‘Thinking with Type’ where there were set margins for all additional information. I introduced the idea of the rectangles and squares as a way of highlighting parts of the photos or compositions and as a way of digitally framing certain elements. The empty rectangles were there as a way to represent all the photos that were missing, or to represent the memories that were lost and to give a sense that it is impossible to truly document a persons life and for them to really remember all the details and every moment that they ever had. For the main colour palette I took influences from the book my Grandpa was given when he first joined the Navy which was navy blue and yellow, I used this as reference and went with more golden colours rather than yellow.

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DEVELOPMENT From this initial draft I was not happy with the font choice for the body copy and I felt I could push the design further, I was also unhappy with the cover for the publication. Finally there were some pieces of information that I needed about certain images, such as dates, locations and others in the photos which would be displayed in the margins. I wanted to use a san-serif typeface as I thought it would help to modernise the piece, the typeface I was using for the main display type was Playfair Display, so I searched online for some type pairings, coming across the website TypeWolf.com, from there it had a suggested pairing however the type it suggested, FF Super Grotesk, was not available without purchasing it so I looked into similar fonts and found Dunbar in Adobe Fonts, this typeface worked really well with Playfair Display and became my new body copy font. I wanted to push the colours and textures more in the design so started to enlarge certain pictures or backgrounds, added half-tone textures and paper textures to certain elements and more solid colour shapes to try and add some more vibrancy and dynamism to the design as I felt it was a little static. I also worked on a few cover variations to see if I could get something that I liked. I find covers incredibly difficult to execute well and I am still not 100% happy with the result but am happier than when I started. Finally I set up another interview with my grandpa to go through the publication and get any additional information that I needed, it also gave him a chance to see the publication in progress so he could make sure he was happy with how it looked.

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TONY FALLING OUT OF THE SKY

& OTHER STORIES: A FAMILY HISTORY

Covers Development

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FINAL OUTCOME: https://issuu.com/nathfiction/docs/tony_falling_from_the_sky_web

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FINAL OUTCOME: Multiple copies of this zine were made and given to family members.

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Project Brief 1

Family Monogram FINAL CRIT : 4TH MARCH 20201

BRIEF You will create a vectorised monogram for your eldest male and eldest female relatives (one for each). One will be selected for an embroidered application.Support through sketchwork and relevant research in module file. This project is about looking at how personal information can inform the creation and use of typography to convey history, identity and preserve a legacy. Monograms can be personal but are also used by corporations, sports teams and fashion labels to distinguish themselves and reflect an identity, ideology or ‘brand’. The choice of letterfroms, combination, style, colour and composition are informed by the ‘personality’ of the individual or company and these traits have to be unearthed in order for the monogram to work well. This is a project about connecting with your past as well as looking to the future – so the better informed you are at this stage the more successful your outcome will be.

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APPROACH From the three grandparents featured in ‘Tony Falling Out Of The Sky’ there are only two that are still alive today, so I chose my grandpa as my primary and my grandma as my secondary choice for the design that will be stitched at the end of the project. Starting with my grandpa, I wanted to create a monogram that had references to his time in the navy but wasn’t perhaps completely about that time as it was not the main occupation that he had in his life. As he worked a lot with engineering with steam and heating systems I wanted something that had a mechanical look to it but also had a flowing feel as well. For my grandma, although her first name is Olive, she has always gone by the name Brenda, so I wanted to include the ‘O’ in some way but make the ‘B’ the more prominent letter, I also wanted to approach hers in a more feminine way, perhaps with a floral element and there being an element of tradition to it. When having a group discussion about the project, we shared five words that we thought would sum up each person based on the research. For this task I was working alongside Sally West, who offered these words for each of my grandparents: Peter • • • • •

Curious Mechanical Strong Multifaceted Creative

Brenda • • • • •

Romantic Creative Confident Family Orientated Traditional

These words gave me a good basis to either explore new ideas or galvanise already existing sketches and ideas that I had.

RESEARCH For design research I already had a mood board of monograms that I put together for a previous branding project so I started with those, I also had recently bought the book ‘Logo Modernism’ by J. Müller which has hundreds of examples of one, two and three letter logo forms which are essentially monograms, the style of these were all very simple geometric shape based logos. For this project I also bought the book ‘4000 Monograms’ which documents an extensive and well catalogued A to Z of 4000 monograms, including alphabetised pairings with other letters, ranging from incredibly intricate and ornate traditional looking monograms up to more art deco simple monograms. Finally I bought a copy of ‘Typography Sketchbooks’ by Heller and Talarico to reference for different styles of type. From looking through all of these books and looking at the letter forms for both PL and BL (Peter Lake and Brenda Lake), it gave me plenty of avenues to explore when making my initial sketches. I wanted to look at a wide breadth of styles and in my initial sketches I wanted to get as many ideas down as possible, even if I knew the style may not match, I still wanted to see if it sparked any other ideas. At the initial stage of sketching I didn’t want to labour any one idea too much, perhaps a couple of itterations and then move on to another ideas rather than focussing on the minutia of a couple ideas.

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EXAMPLES OF PAGES USED IN RESEARCH

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PL AND PGL INITIAL SKETCHES

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OBL INITIAL SKETCHES

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From group sessions discussing these initial sketches, a few options were chosen (indicated by the red squares) to develop further. These designs were seen as having the most personality and conveying the five words most accurately .

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DEVELOPMENT SKETCHES

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DEVELOPMENT When developing the BL monogram I wanted to explore the height and width, with a wider slightly italicised logo it looked more dynamic but felt like it was going into sports team territory, then the more squared off logos looked more formal and not stylised enough. I managed to settle on a compromise between the two which I really liked. Next I wanted to develop the floral element, I knew that the element should be simple due to the restrictions of embroidery, I had a go at developing a flower but couldn’t settle on anything that I liked, so in the end opted for three leaves, these represent my mother and her two brothers.

For the PL monogram, I tidied up the idea that I liked the most and used the grid to make sure that everything was even. I explored a slight alternative to the idea with the P and L connected as well. Next I looked at including a rope motif to one of the more ornate ideas, I looked up nautical knots and found one that I thought could work, I spent a bit of time experimenting with how the knot could look and how to integrate it, however by the end of that exploration I was not happy with that direction, I was not happy with the balance and felt that the knot overshadowed the lettering so that idea was scrapped.

WORKSHOP - JAMIE CLARKE During this brief we had a lecture from visiting typographer and book cover designer, Jamie Clarke. His presentation gave a really great insight into his work and his approach to creating letter forms. I loved the ornate woodblock style letters that he had created and hidden ‘Easter egg’ details in his book design. He talked about the definitions of: Calligraphy • Writing single, unmodified strokes using a tool Lettering • Drawn letters and shapes that can be modified usually for a one off purpose Type Design • Digital type creation that can be reused In terms of his business he said that clients “buy what they can see” so encouraged personal work with in a portfolio. He also spoke about keeping an eye out for potential inspriration and looking at as many sources as possible, banking ideas and inspirations for later use. There were two major things that I took from his presentation, first of all was to always have the anchor points at 90 degrees and then use the handles to create the curves. Second was to have two anchor points at intersecting stokes of a letter creating ‘open corners’, allowing you to change the weight of one section without affecting the other. These were brand new approaches that I had not seen before with the 90 degree technique completely changing how I approached making my monograms in Illustrator. Other points from the lecture were to make sure that I used as few anchor points

as possible to create my shapes, to make sure that any serif fonts are balanced thick and thin parts are equal weights and balanced and to make space were possible when creating letter forms so when they are scaled down, they don’t appear too black or blocky. Main • • • •

tools to use in Illustrator: Direct selection tool Pen Tool (including + / - tools) Anchor Point Tool Using the shift key and arrows to nudge points until they are perfect.

It was good to hear him talking about the amount of time it takes to shape letters and working by eye. It helped demystify the process, showing us what tools he used and making small adjustments to get the letter shapes where he wanted them to be. It made making the monograms and getting them to a hight standard seem more achievable and helped build a process when shaping my letters in Illustrator.

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RENDERING With the new skills picked up from the Jamie Clarke workshop I scanned in my pencil drafts and started to add the anchor points and create the shapes. The PL monogram was simpler to put together as it has less curves. I order to get the waves for the L consistent I used the appearance panel in Illustrator to stack strokes on top of one another to get an even black stroke either side of a white line, I then used the zig zag tool to create the waves and outlined the stoke and removed the middle white space. I used the circle and the rectangle tools to build the rest of the lines for the P and L and then used the shape builder tool to create one shape. Finally I used the stroke tool to test the letters in thicker or thinner weights and used a white block to obscure certain elements of the design to see what it would look like with serifs or if the waves of the L were shorter. At the end of this initial stage, I wasn’t happy with how the design had translated from the sketch to the vectored image, it looked more like a shipping company logo than my grandfathers monogram. The BL took a lot more time as the lines are more intricate. I built the paths using Jamie’s 90 degree technique and also added circles to try and get the curves as even and perfect as possible. This design certainly took a while of trial and error. When I felt that the design was at a point that I liked, I would copy the design and use the offset path tool to create a wider outline and then use the shape builder tool to remove the excess shape and remove sections of the design to give the strokes the appearance of going over and under the lines. I would then review what I had and work away on it again to shape the letters better, it was still looking a little clunky but I was chipping away at it in the same way that Jamie had shown us with his lettering.

DEVELOPMENT From this point we had a crit with the rest of the group and Adam from Bunker Creative, both gave some really constructive feedback and new avenues for me to explore and progress both designs. With the PL design, it was suggested to loose the serifs and join the P and the L together. This also sparked a more art deco approach to the mono which I explored. With the BL monogram it was suggested to change the weights of some of the lines and add the circle to the O at the top. Once these additions were made the final stages was in more shaping and making sure that the letters looked as smooth as I could make them.

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FINAL DESIGNS

With the PL monogram, the final addition of the circle on the left edge represented two separate things, first on all in rankings in the navy, a circle above a certain number of lines would illustrate rank, these would be found on jacket cuffs and so were often vertical. Secondly the hole in the centre of the circle represents a bracket for a screw or nail as an homage to my grandpas engineering and all round DIY approach to his career and personal life.

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Outlines and anchor points of both designs. When using the shape builder tool and the offset stroke tool, it added extra anchor points to the design, so areas that had a lot of intersection came away with many more anchor points than had been there originally. I left these as they were as I didn’t want to compromise the shape that I had already created.

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WORKSHOP

Book Binding Lead by Ben Goodman

In this workshop we looked at the different ways of book binding and created a simple saddle stitch book from paper supplied by G.F. Smith. First we looked at how to create an 8 page and 16 page mini zine from a single sheet of paper, by folding it a certain way and adding cuts to the paper. Although very simple, these mini zines were really great and could be really useful for creating posters that need information on the other side, or just simply producing a low cost, easy production zine.

Next we looked at creating a saddle stitch booklet. Ben talked about the maximum number of sheets that you could use (about 25) and how increases in page numbers affects ‘creep’ and to be aware of this when designing books in this way. He took us through tip ins and fold outs and how those can be stitched into the book. We then had the opportunity to create our own booklet. I made my booklet using 5 sheets of white paper, the coloured card as my cover and used the yellow packaging the paper was supplied in to create a fold out page and another white sheet to create a tip in. It was bound with 9 holes creating 8 stitches down the side. Finally Ben took us through all of the different binding options with their strengths and weaknesses. I really liked the look of the French Stitch and was think about using that for the Everything About One Thing brief.

Type & Print

WORKSHOP

G.F. Smith Lead by Mark Jesset

In this workshop Mark took us through the history of G.F. Smith, the paper making company first set up in 1885. He talked a lot about the physical process of making paper and showed images of the machines where the pulp and other materials were added to large vats, had dye added and then mixed together, then this material at 95% water would then be put on a 100 meter roller and moved from side to side to relieve the mixture of the water leaving mostly the pulp behind which is then dried further and put onto giant rolls of the paper stock ready for cutting. He talked about the ‘World’s Favourite Colour’ campaign and the resulting colour of Marr’s Green, which was actually the colour card that was supplied for the book binding workshop. Finally he talked about new technologies in paper, the cutting edge products that they produced and the campaigns that they have run to promote sustainability within the industry. We talked about the importance of printed material. In ‘Thinking With Type’ by Ellen Lupton there is a section on the average reading time for printed material versus online material. The study suggested that people are much more likely to engage better and spend more time reading printed material over online. Mark backed this claim up saying that printed advertising and physical leaflets etc are more effective per unit than sending out emails to potential customers. Mark talked about the G.F. Smith paper catalogue that are sent out to professionals and signposted us to where we could buy it. I mentioned that I also work as a freelancer and so after the workshop was over, Mark contacted me to arrange sending me a free sample book. The book itself is amazing, I have looked through all the stock several times and in the end placed an order through Mark to buy stock for printing my book ‘A Is For’ as part of the Everything About One Thing brief and my photography outcome for Things You Have Learned In Your Life So Far.

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Project Brief 2

Everything About One Thing FINAL CRIT : 5TH MAY 2021

BRIEF You will gather complete knowledge about one single thing and make that accessible for the public in the form of a book supported by a type specimen. Choose one thing, object, word, idea. The more specific, the more you can zoom in, go into details, the better. Observe it, analyze it, take it to pieces, deconstruct it. Include and mention every detail that, in your opinion, makes it complete. Look at it from perspectives you haven’t looked from before, discover it in different ways. Work very specifically, accurately and to the point. Have the reader in mind – so what will interest and engage an audience about a potentially ordinary objct/subject? How can you make the ordinary extraordinary? Transform those results into a final outcome that contains both text and image. Compile the material in an order (not necessarily alphabetical) that underlines your system of describing the thing. Develop a strategy/language for treating

your material, how to visualize and clarify/ explain to the user your way of looking at the thing. Consider the relationship between text and image, the composition, grid use, use of colour, typographic treatments and hierarchy of information. Find appropriate methods/ techniques/“treatments” to adapt to all of the imagery/text that provides a consistent look and feel to your final publication. Strive for excellence both with your typographic applications and production techniques. The form of your final outcome (size, binding, stock etc.) should be appropriate to the content and intention of your work, be fully resolved and show attention to detail in all aspects of its content, design and production. The workshops and short projects in the first half of the module enable you to develop your technical skills and explore ways of working that contribute to the development and resolution of this brief.

When coming up with ideas for what I could write a book about I first made a list of things that I care about or have an interest in, my initial list consisted of: • Drums • Politics • Music • The Bristol punk scene • Veganism • Design • Education • Travel • Beer • A specific musician • Someone responsible for social change • Hardcore punk I then started to think about subjects or items that were common place and mundane and thought about how I could make them more relatable, interesting or look at them from a different perspective. I wanted to create a book that was more universal, that anyone could pick up and hopefully find interesting and learn something from. I felt my own interests might be considered a little esoteric and didn’t want to invest this time in something only I (or a small number of people) would be really interested in. From this I came up with two ideas, a book about British birds, most notably the pigeon, or a book about the apple. The apple idea stood out as I felt it had the most variety in terms of avenues of research and its connections to so many things outside of the fruit itself. Initial ideas of interest were its use and representations in technology, religion, Newton and science and stories such as the apple on someone’s head. I started to categorise potential subjects and headings: •

Innocence • A is for • Childish

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Goodness • An apple a day • Apple pie • Fruit • Nutritional • Recipes

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Love • The apple of my eye

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Urban / Tech • The Big Apple • Apple Computers

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Original Sin • Adam & Eve

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Gravity • Newton

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Literature • William Tell

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Poison / Death • Seeds contain cyanide • Snow White • Alan Turing • Rotten Core • William Boroughs and his wife

Type & Print

APPROACH

From this initial list I began to research these areas in preparation for my Pecha Kucha presentation. I collected and book marked a lot of web pages that gave a lot of different insights into the apple. This initial research gave me a good idea of what avenues to pursue and which to not. My initial idea was to treat the structure of the book almost like a life cycle, starting with childhood, myths, love, technology, sin and finally death. I thought about including images of an apple slowly rotting or having bites taken out of it as the book went on, however my research was not as evenly weighted in each section as I had originally hoped, so some sections would be much larger than others. I reorganised my research topics and began to collate what I had learned for my presentation. I then wrote a script for each slide outlining what I had learned and what I wanted to include in the book. I started to lean into the idea of the children’s book idea and the apple being the common item used for A, and so ‘A Is For Apple’ became the working title which was then shortened to just ‘A Is For’ as I felt the connotations to the apple would be quite strong and also because the apple represented a much wider variety of topics, and so the headers for each slide began to illustrate this.

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PECHA KUCHA SCRIPT:

Slide 5 – A is for immortality:

Slide 1 – A is for Apple:

Apples play quite a pivotal role in folklore and mythology. In Norse mythology the apple was the “food of the gods” and granted them youth and immortality. In Greek mythology Gaia grew golden apples that she gave as wedding gifts to the gods, anyone that ate one would gain immortality and never again experience hunger, thirst, suffering or illness. These apples were guarded by her daughters and Ladon, the hundred-headed dragon that never slept. Hercules also had to try and retrieve one of these apples as part of his 12 labours, granting him immortality.

My publication for Everything On One Thing is on the Apple, a common fruit that is eaten or drunk everyday but has also been the basis for many folklores, traditions and stories as well as representing one of the biggest tech companies in history. Slide 2 – A is for Food: Although you’ll never have seen them all on the shelves, there are 7500 different varieties of apples found all over the world, with 2000 varieties being grown in the UK from the Victorian period. They are said to have been eaten as early as 3000 BCE and have been growing wild in the UK since the Neolithic period. They are high in fiber, vitamin C, potassium, they are good for controlling blood sugar levels and help to prevent type 2 diabetes and heart disease, hence the saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”. The Apple consists of the skin, flesh, core, seeds, stem and calyx.

Slide 6 – A is for love

Coming from Somerset it would be heresy if I did not mention cider. The early histories of drinking cider in the UK come from the Romans and this grew when the Normans brought continental apples to England. The name itself probably derives from the Hebrew shekar or Greek sikera meaning ‘strong drink’. An English tradition associated with cider is Wassailing which has it’s roots in Pagan traditions and involves singing to the trees for good harvest or yelling at the trees to scare the cider demons away, all done of course with buckets of warm cider in tow.

The apple as a symbol of love is prevalent in many cultures; it was Paris who gave Aphrodite the golden apple in exchange for a bride, which ended up sparking the Trojan War. If an apple was thrown to a maiden it was a confession of love and if she caught it, she loved them too. In Celtic tradition as single woman or man would sleep with an apple under their pillow so that they would dream and see the face of their future partner. In paganism the apple is referred to as “The All”, this is due to the seeds and their layout inside the apple, sliced one way reveals the 5 pointed star, a symbol of humanity, the extremities of the human body, and also the 4 elements plus the fifth element – the alchemist or the Chinese Ki or Chi. This symbolises the spiritual realm, whereas if you cut an apple from top to bottom it reveals the seeds and what is referred to as “the Seeded Vulva” this is in reference to the shape of the apple core being the feminine and the seeds inside being the masculine. This representation of physical reproduction coupled with the spiritual make the apple a symbol of sexual wakening and spiritual wholeness.

Slide 4 – A is for all Fruit:

Slide 7 – A is for gravity:

European languages including Greek, Latin, English and French used to use the word apple to describe all fruit and even nuts. The banana used to be referred to as the Apple of Paradise. The apple may not describe all fruit now but is mentioned a lot in our language and sayings, such as the Apple of my eye, which first appeared in the 9th century and also made it’s way into Shakespeare’s A midsummer Nights Dream. Other sayings include, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, American as apple pie and down with the apple cart.

Although the story of the apple falling directly onto the head of Sir Isaac Newton may not be true, it has been documented that he would spend time contemplating the universe from the shade of an apple tree. While watching the apple fall he wondered why the apple fell perpendicularly to the ground, not sideways or upwards. He realised that the apple wasn’t falling to the ground but was being dragged to the ground by the Earth. This became the basis of his theory of gravity, the Moon’s relationship to the Earth and the Earth’s relationship to the sun.

Slide 3 – A is for another round:

Type & Print

Slide 8 – A is for resisting tyranny: The story of William Tell is a Swiss folklore where he resisted the tyrannical reign of Gessler. Tell refused to bow to Gessler and so he was forced to shoot an apple off of the head of his child, or Gessler’s men would kill his son in front of him. Tell, a master hunter, shot the apple off of his head. This act was the spark for an uprising that saw the people overthrow their ruler. William Tell now stands as a symbol for political freedom. Slide 9 – A is for technology: For many people including myself, when I hear the word “apple” I no longer think of fruit but of computers. The brand has become as ubiquitous to the word apple as the fruit and although the name comes from Steve Jobs’ time in an orchard commune as a fruitarian, many have speculated with much grander suggestions as to why Apple is called Apple, either way with a net worth of around $1.3 trillion, Apple is one of the largest and most popular corporations on the planet. Slide 10 – A is for the fall of man: It was never mentioned in the bible that Eve gave Adam an apple from the tree of knowledge, however the apple has become the symbol for original sin. This may be through it’s connections to sexual awakening and fertility given in paganism but may also be down to the translations from Latin to English where the Latin for evil, malum, is so close to the Latin for apple, malus. Whatever prompted the apple to become the symbol, it is firmly established in Christian art where depictions of the apple can be seen in paintings of Adam and Eve, it is also used as a symbol of overcoming original sin with paintings of the apple inside the snakes mouth or being held by the virgin Mary, who was considered to be the new Eve.

Slide 11 – A is for death: Depictions of the apple as a vessel for death can be found in fiction with the bite of the poisoned apple in the Disney / brothers grimm tale of snow white where she falls into a sleeping death. However the poisoned apple made it’s way into the real world when Alan Turing, a man widely regarded as the founder of computers and coding, injected an apple with cyanide and took one fatal bite. Apple seeds themselves also contain small amounts of cyanide although these are not as deadly. Finally the golden apple was the starting point of the Trojan War which claimed Paris, Achilles and Hector as well as the lives of thousands of Trojan warriors.

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Type & Print

From the Pecha Kucha I then expanded my research and started to flesh out a structure for the book and begin to build content for it. At this stage I still didn’t know how long each chapter was going to be as the research for each story and each section was ongoing.

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DESIGN Due to the references to children’s education from the title ‘A Is For Apple’, I wanted to approach the production of the book as if it were a children’s board book. However, rather than have all the pages printed on board (which would have made a pretty substantial publication) I thought that I could use the boards for the front and back covers and then have board chapter dividers with tabs on the sides which would take you to certain sections of the book, for example a tab that would open to the section on myths. As I was developing content, certain sections that I thought would be quite prominent actually had less information than I’d hoped, while other sections turned out to be bigger than expected. Because of the inconsistency of the length of each chapters, I decided to use board only for the front and back covers and scrap the tabs idea. I knew that I wanted to develop some illustrations for this book to accompany the chapters. I wanted to do this because I felt it would give a more stylistic and cohesive approach to the whole publication, it also meant that I didn’t have to rely too heavily on images from the internet that would be bad resolution. The content itself was also hard to photograph, apart from the apples themselves, it is not the right season to be photographing apples in orchards and much of the content is about myths and folklore which is also impossible to photograph. Through researching designs associated with the apple, I found some fake apple stickers that were all in reference to the bible, most notably the story of Adam and Eve. The simple design aesthetic with the rough edges and some bad registration looked really effective and contained content that was incredibly similar to the stories that were going to be in my publication. I took this idea of the stickers and started to make my own that were appropriate to the stories in my chapters. I wanted to uses these designs in chapter headings or punctuation points across the publication.

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Type & Print

Continuing with my research on apple related illustration, I came across a great set of illustrations by ITWAZCOOL Studio based in Russia. The simple but fun looking pieces really looked they would fit with the type of content I was researching. The simple style also meant I hoped I could create a series of illustrations similar to these that, by virtue of being simple, shouldn’t take me too long to complete.

I also really liked this alphabet set by Vanilla Chi, again it had simple illustrations that seemed more mature than it’s intended purpose of being an alphabet book. This fit nicely with the idea of ‘A is for apple’ that I was working with. It used limited but bright colours for each illustration and was finished with paper texture even though the illustrations and especially the font, looked digital.

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Other influences for illustration included work by Karan Singh (top left), Elisabetta Calabritto (top right) and Maša Muzhevskaya (left)

Type & Print

LAYOUT For layout I was really inspired by a publication by GD BOR2021 and Beatriz Patarata for Life Science Library called ‘The Mind’. I really liked the use of type, with its large type for chapters or questions, and then how extra type was inserted along with images into the gaps of the large type. I liked the use of black and white pages and the way the illustrations worked with the type. This publication became the basis of how I was going to approach my layout and design.

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Other layout ideas came from publications such as the Royal Botanic Gardens Annual Report by Jordan Taylor and a layout design by Arabo Sargsyan. Most of these books worked on either a two column grid or used that width when only one column was present. I liked the page number placement on the Botanic Gardens publication and the simple illustrations used in the book by Sargsyan.

Type & Print

TYPOGRAPHY For this publication I knew that I needed two main typefaces, one display and one for body copy. The display type used in ‘The Mind’ book was a serif typeface that was nicely stylised, so that it was interesting but not to the point where it was overpowering the rest of the design. I wanted to find something similar for my publication. I looked through my own font library, on Behance and also on CreativeMarket.com (which is where I buy most of my design resources) for fonts that I thought might fit. Possible Typefaces: BOSCH

A IS FOR ORIGINAL SIN MAGNA

A IS FOR ORIGINAL SIN

CULTURE

A IS FOR ORIGINAL SIN ELGOC

A IS FOR ORIGINAL SIN

FRUNCHY

A IS FOR ORIGINAL SIN RALKULA

A IS FOR ORIGINAL SIN

From all of my research, these were the six strongest contenders. I tested each of them with different headings to check all the characters, I also tested them against different colour backgrounds. I found Bosch and Elgoc to be too thin and although Magna was a great weight and had nice ornamentation, certain letters did not look great, the M for example [M] didn’t work for me. Frunchy and Ralkula were perhaps too stylised. In the end I chose Culture, a typeface I bought from Creative Market specifically for this project, I really liked the thickness and the shaping of the letters, it looked stylised but not too much, has an element of maturity to it and letters such as the A with its curved cross line added a nice point of difference.

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After deciding the display font I then started to look at typefaces for the body copy. As I was using a serif display type I wanted to use a sans serif body copy font as I felt these would be different enough and hopefully complement each other. I also feel that sans serif typefaces look more modern and as I was hoping to use some bright colours and bold illustrations so I thought this would be the best fit. Potential typefaces: NEUE HAAS GROTESK 55 ROMAN

HOMEPAGE BAUKASTEN

Once when Odin, Loki and Hoenir were on a journey far from Asgard, while trekking through the mountains they became too hungry to continue and so stopped to set up camp. Loki managed to kill an Ox and Odin and Hoenir built a fire. No matter how long they kept the ox on the fire, the meat would not cook and remained raw, the gods were perplexed until they heard an eagle in the sky tell them that he had put a curse on the feast and the ox would not cook unless they agreed to allow the eagle to take a share of the meat. The gods reluctantly agreed and the eagle swooped down and took a hefty share of the bounty. Loki was outraged at the audacity of the eagle and felt that it had broken their agreement, so he took a branch and swiped at the eagle.

LEXEND DECA Once when Odin, Loki and Hoenir were on a journey far from Asgard, while trekking through the mountains they became too hungry to continue and so stopped to set up camp. Loki managed to kill an Ox and Odin and Hoenir built a fire. No matter how long they kept the ox on the fire, the meat would not cook and remained raw, the gods were perplexed until they heard an eagle in the sky tell them that he had put a curse on the feast and the ox would not cook unless they agreed to allow the eagle to take a share of the meat. The gods reluctantly agreed and the eagle swooped down and took a hefty share of the bounty. Loki was outraged at the audacity of the eagle and felt that it had broken their agreement, so he took a branch and swiped at the eagle. DUNBAR Once when Odin, Loki and Hoenir were on a journey far from Asgard, while trekking through the mountains they became too hungry to continue and so stopped to set up camp. Loki managed to kill an Ox and Odin and Hoenir built a fire. No matter how long they kept the ox on the fire, the meat would not cook and remained raw, the gods were perplexed until they heard an eagle in the sky tell them that he had put a curse on the feast and the ox would not cook unless they agreed to allow the eagle to take a share of the meat. The gods reluctantly agreed and the eagle swooped down and took a hefty share of the bounty. Loki was outraged at the audacity of the eagle and felt that it had broken their agreement,

AVENIR NEXT REGULAR Once when Odin, Loki and Hoenir were on a journey far from Asgard, while trekking through the mountains they became too hungry to continue and so stopped to set up camp. Loki managed to kill an Ox and Odin and Hoenir built a fire. No matter how long they kept the ox on the fire, the meat would not cook and remained raw, the gods were perplexed until they heard an eagle in the sky tell them that he had put a curse on the feast and the ox would not cook unless they agreed to allow the eagle to take a share of the meat. The gods reluctantly agreed and the eagle swooped down and took a hefty share of the bounty. Loki was outraged at the audacity of the eagle and felt that it had broken their agreement, so he took a branch and swiped at the eagle. From these examples I chose Avenir Next Regular as I really liked the lower X height, I felt it gave the type more space, especially with large blocks of text and it matched really nicely with the display font. With the Neue Hass Grotesk and Homepage Baukasten (the font used in this publication) I felt they sat too close to the Swiss Design style which didn’t match with the display font as well and started to push the design too far in that direction. The final two, Lexend Deca and Dunbar were too thick and so large blocks of text looked too black.

Type & Print

Finally I wanted to have a serif font that I could use for use with quotes inside the body copy as the difference in line thickness from my display serif tyeface, Culture, were too severe and got lost on the page when the font was too small. So I tested a few different fonts for these sections. Potential typefaces: REGATTIA

CENTURY 751 ITALIC

SOURCE SERIF VARIABLE Once when Odin, Loki and Hoenir were on a journey far from Asgard, while trekking through the mountains they became too hungry to continue and so stopped to set up camp. Loki managed to kill an Ox and Odin and Hoenir built a fire. No matter how long they kept the ox on the fire, the meat would not cook and remained raw, the gods were perplexed until they heard an eagle in the sky tell them that he had put a curse on the feast and the ox would not cook unless they agreed to allow the eagle to take a share of the meat. The gods reluctantly agreed and the eagle swooped down and took a hefty share of the bounty. Loki was outraged at the audacity of the eagle and felt that it had broken their agreement, so he took a branch and swiped at the eagle.

BELDA Once when Odin, Loki and Hoenir were on a journey far from Asgard, while trekking through the mountains they became too hungry to continue and so stopped to set up camp. Loki managed to kill an Ox and Odin and Hoenir built a fire. No matter how long they kept the ox on the fire, the meat would not cook and remained raw, the gods were perplexed until they heard an eagle in the sky tell them that he had put a curse on the feast and the ox would not cook unless they agreed to allow the eagle to take a share of the meat. The gods reluctantly agreed and the eagle swooped down and took a hefty share of the bounty. Loki was outraged at the audacity of the eagle and felt that it had broken their agreement, so he took a branch and swiped at the eagle. From these examples I found that Regattia too thick and did not have a set of italic characters. Source Serif looked a little too tight compared next to Avenir Next. I really liked the characters in Belda but it didn’t have italic characters. Century 751 had really nice spacing, characters that looked slightly different to standard serif fonts and worked really nicely next to Avenir Next. I then did a series of type setting tests, exploring size and leading, looking at ratios between them such as 1/1.2 (the InDesign default) 1/1.41 and 1/1.618 (the Golden Ratio) plus some other chosen values to test spacing and size on the page. I printed these out and from them chose 9 point height with 12.7 point leading which uses the 1/1.41 ratio as I felt it wasn’t too large and the spacing was wide enough to allow it to read really nicely.

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TYPE SETTING TEST Once when Odin, Loki and Hoenir were on a journey far from Asgard, while trekking through the mountains they became too hungry to continue and so stopped to set up camp. Loki managed to kill an Ox and Odin and Hoenir built a fire. No matter how long they kept the ox on the fire, the meat would not cook and remained raw, the gods were perplexed until they heard an eagle in the sky tell them that he had put a curse on the feast and the ox would not cook unless they agreed to allow the eagle to take a share of the meat. The gods reluctantly agreed and the eagle swooped down and took a hefty share of the bounty. Loki was outraged at the audacity of the eagle and felt that it had broken their agreement, so he took a branch and swiped at the eagle.

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9.8/11.7 Once when Odin, Loki and Hoenir were on a journey far from Asgard, while trekking through the mountains they became too hungry to continue and so stopped to set up camp. Loki managed to kill an Ox and Odin and Hoenir built a fire. No matter how long they kept the ox on the fire, the meat would not cook and remained raw, the gods were perplexed until they heard an eagle in the sky tell them that he had put a curse on the feast and the ox would not cook unless they agreed to allow the eagle to take a share of the meat. The gods reluctantly agreed and the eagle swooped down and took a hefty share of the bounty. Loki was outraged at the audacity of the eagle and felt that it had broken their agreement, so he took a branch and swiped at the eagle.

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9.8/13 Once when Odin, Loki and Hoenir were on a journey far from Asgard, while trekking through the mountains they became too hungry to continue and so stopped to set up camp. Loki managed to kill an Ox and Odin and Hoenir built a fire. No matter how long they kept the ox on the fire, the meat would not cook and remained raw, the gods were perplexed until they heard an eagle in the sky tell them that he had put a curse on the feast and the ox would not cook unless they agreed to allow the eagle to take a share of the meat. The gods reluctantly agreed and the eagle swooped down and took a hefty share of the bounty. Loki was outraged at the audacity of the eagle and felt that it had broken their agreement, so he took a branch and swiped at the eagle.

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Asgard, while trekking through the mountains they became too hungry to continue and so stopped to set up camp. Loki managed to kill an Ox and Odin and Hoenir built a fire. No matter how long they kept the ox on the fire, the meat would not cook and remained raw, the gods were perplexed until they heard an eagle in the sky tell them that he had put a curse on the feast and the ox would not cook unless they agreed to allow the eagle to take a share of the meat. The gods reluctantly agreed and the eagle swooped down and took a hefty share of the bounty. Loki was outraged at the audacity of the eagle and felt that it had broken their agreement, so he took a branch and swiped at the eagle.

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at the eagle.

9/14.6 Once when Odin, Loki and Hoenir were on a journey far from Asgard, while trekking through the mountains they became too hungry to continue and so stopped to set up camp. Loki managed to kill an Ox and Odin and Hoenir built a fire. No matter how long they kept the ox on the fire, the meat would not cook and remained raw, the gods were perplexed until they heard an eagle in the sky tell them that he had put a curse on the feast and the ox would not cook unless they agreed to allow the eagle to take a share of the meat. The gods reluctantly agreed and the eagle swooped down and took a hefty share of the bounty. Loki was outraged at the audacity of the eagle and felt that it had broken their agreement, so he took a branch and swiped at the eagle.

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10/16.2 Once when Odin, Loki and Hoenir were on a journey far from Asgard, while trekking through the mountains they became too hungry to continue and so stopped to set up camp. Loki managed to kill an Ox and Odin and Hoenir built a fire. No matter how long they kept the ox on the fire, the meat would not cook and remained raw, the gods were perplexed until they heard an eagle in the sky tell them that he had put a curse on the feast and the ox would not cook unless they agreed to allow the eagle to take a share of the meat. The gods reluctantly agreed and the eagle swooped down and took a hefty share of the bounty. Loki was outraged at the audacity of the eagle and felt that it had broken their agreement, so he took a branch and swiped at the eagle.

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Once when Odin, Loki and Hoenir were on a journey far from

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CONTENT RESEARCH AND COPY WRITING BOOKMARKED WEBSITES READ AND CONTENT USED DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY IN RESEARCHING TOPICS AND CONTENT FOR THE BOOK. https://www.alimentarium.org/en/knowledge/apple-discord-and-beauty https://shirleytwofeathers.com/The_Blog/sigils-symbols-signs/apple-symbolism-and-lore/ http://www.aseekersthoughts.com/2013/02/the-apple-as-symbol-secret-vessel-of.html https://www.newscientist.com/article/2170052-newtons-apple-the-real-story/ https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/core-truth-behind-sir-isaac-newton-s-apple-1870915.html https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/the-apple-of-my-eye.html https://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/6/messages/445.html https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Poisoned_Apple https://www.morethanred.com/true-meaning-red-apple-snow-white/ https://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/why-is-apple-called-apple-3783504/ https://discover.hubpages.com/religion-philosophy/The-Apple-A-Symbol-of-Love https://worldfolklore.net/index.php/2020/05/20/william-tell-and-the-apple/ https://history.howstuffworks.com/history-vs-myth/william-tell-shoot-apple-off-sons-head.htm https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-world-s-most-common-types-of-apples.html https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44259/after-apple-picking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_%28symbolism%29 https://www.phrases.com/psearch/apple https://www.greatbritishchefs.com/features/cider-history-origins https://www.countryfile.com/how-to/food-recipes/british-apple-guide-traditional-apple-varieties-andrecipe-ideas-plus-how-to-grow-your-own-tree/ https://www.infovisual.info/en/biology-vegetal/apple https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/ritual-and-revelry-the-story-of-wassailing https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods/apples?c=353431508893#weight-loss https://www.markmitchellpaintings.com/blog/the-connotations-of-fruit-in-art-and-still-life-paintings/ https://aleteia.org/2017/07/20/5-fruits-in-art-and-their-spiritual-symbolism/ https://www.straightdope.com/21343798/was-the-forbidden-fruit-in-the-garden-of-eden-an-apple http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Herakles/apples.html https://www.dw.com/en/forbidden-fruit-the-curious-early-history-of-apples/a-48967024-0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avalon https://www.shh.mpg.de/1321592/origins-of-the-apple https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/oct/09/forget-granny-smiths-here-are-10-great-apples-youneed-to-try http://greatbritishapples.co.uk/ https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/58993/18-apple-varieties-badass-names https://www.tasteatlas.com/most-popular-apples-in-united-kingdom https://www.ranker.com/list/cool-apple-names/ranker-food https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/project-result-content/273d0f04-3c91-49da-a490736b006c209c/CYPRUS_Symbolism_of_the_Apple.pdf https://norse-mythology.org/tales/the-kidnapping-of-idun/ https://mythology.net/others/concepts/avalon/ https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/avalon-real-island-obscured-legend-or-just-legendaryisland-007685 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_apple_production https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/how-to-make-cider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Appleseed https://bestapples.com/resources-teachers-corner/johnny-appleseed/ https://www.britannica.com/story/was-johnny-appleseed-a-real-person https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/31841/why-new-york-city-called-big-apple http://ttp.royalsociety.org/ttp/ttp.html?id=1807da00-909a-4abf-b9c1-0279a08e4bf2&type=book https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Wassailing/ https://cideruk.com/making-cider/ https://www.orangepippintrees.com/articles/gardening/traditional-english-cider-apple-varieties

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https://www.lovebrewing.co.uk/guides/cider-making-made-easy/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupid_complaining_to_Venus https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/areopagitica-by-john-milton-1644# https://text.npr.org/526069512 http://grimmiconography.blogspot.com/2005/12/apples.html https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Don_t_Shoot_the_Albatross/ cwNTDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18561092 http://www.unit-conversion.info/texttools/convert-text-to-binary/ https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cheat-sheet-apple-variety_n_1000281 https://bestapples.com/varieties-information/varieties/ https://englishbyday.com/apple-idioms/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple#Etymology https://www.investopedia.com/news/apple-now-bigger-these-5-things/

Here are the bookmarked sites that contained information that I planned to use in the book (many other websites were also visited but their content many not have been used). From these sites I would either write the content from scratch referencing different elements from various sources and bringing them together, cut and paste sections from multiple websites and then edit to create one coherent article or copy and paste the whole article, for example the health benefits, history of cider and the story of “The Big Apple”. I would then proof read and edit all content to make sure that the language and spelling etc would be more consistent throughout the publication. Because there was a lot of factual information and historical information I felt it was best to keep these as close to the original article as possible as I did not want to distort facts or bulldoze over articles that have clearly been well researched and are well written. When I wrote my own copy, mostly in the Myths, Love, Folklore and Death sections amongst others, I was pulling together maybe two or three different sites worth of information and using them to fill in the gaps of each other’s articles to create a wider narrative. All of the content was created in a Word document, ready to copy and paste into the InDesign file. The final word count of the Word document, before final proof reading was done in InDesign, was 11,803 words.

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DESIGNING THE PUBLICATION In reference to the children’s board books I decided to make the publication square. While thinking about binding I was hoping that I would be able to French stitch the book together. This would mean that the book would be printed in print formatted spreads rather than individual pages. With that in mind I opted for 210mm x 2100mm as a full spread would then be 420mm which I could print on SRA3 format paper. This would be the largest I could make my spreads without going into a bigger paper size and so making the book much more expensive to print. In setting up the document, first I set the margins to 21mm which would give a 10% border around the outside of the text area where I could add page numbers and any other elements such as bylines and folios. I made a 6 column grid with a gutter of 5 mm. I felt that this would mean I could easily format a two text column layout (3x3 columns) similar to the publications that I had been researching. It would also give me some more flexibility and guides for other elements such as images. For my horizontal guides, I experimented with type and headers to create a six row title within the margins. The text fit really nicely at 100/81 using the Culture typeface, I then placed guides at the baseline and cap height and transferred them over to the Master Pages so that they would appear on all subsequent pages. I set my baseline grid to be 12.7pt based on my type test and started it from the top of my

margin. Finally gave the publication 3mm bleed around the outside in preparation for print. Once I had the pages set up I started with the content from the Myths and Original Sin sections of the book. This is where I began to look at layout and illustration together, starting with creating the title pages in the same style as ‘The Mind’ book that I was referencing, which included hyphenated titles and text and images inserted within them. I laid out my body copy as two columns which would contain an average of about 50 - 55 words per line. I felt this was a nice length that kept the reading speed reasonably quick and was more engaging for me than a longer line length or wider column. In my reference publication, ‘The Mind’ used some varied layout techniques, splitting text and changing size and position. I did think about adopting this style but I could not justify any reason for laying out my text this way other than I liked the aesthetic. So in the end I kept my type layout simple and concise and tried to add interest in the positioning of my introductory paragraphs, using italics and using bold at the beginning of chapters to highlight its focus.

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EARLY ILLUSTRATIONS

I found that these first illustrations were not stylised enough and did not match my reference material very well. The images also didn’t match well enough to the type and the more modern looking layout. From here I tried to create some illustrations that were simpler and closer to the reference material.

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Even with these new simpler designs, I wasn’t 100% convinced that they worked with the rest of the content or that the artwork was consistent throughout. I found it really hard to develop a consistent and cohesive style based on my research and it was fast becoming apparent that what I wanted to produce and what I was able to produce were two very different things. As the publication as a whole was still very much in development, I kept an open mind as to where I could go next to develop the illustrations further.

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To continue with the childish theme of this book, I thought about having a worm character that would pop up in illustrations or replace elements of them throughout the publication, almost as a mascot of the book. I tested this idea in two illustrations before I decided to scrap the idea as I felt it was again not fitting with the rest of the design and was perhaps one idea too many.

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As well as the illustrations I began to make some apple stickers based on sections of the publication. These were going to be used in chapter headings as little punctuation points throughout the book. These were the first 3 the I designed. I created them in Illustrator using references from the apple stickers I found in my research and content was based on elements from the stories I had been writing about. The catalogue numbers and bar codes across all of the stickers also have reference to the content, for example the barcode in Gaia’s Golden Apples is a numerical representation of the word ‘immortal’ and the numbers #0502 on The All Star sticker refer to the five pointed star when the apple is cut one way and the two seeds exposed when cut the other way. I then roughened them to make them look printed and also copied certain layers and dragged them over and used the blend tool to make them look like they have slightly miss registered in print. I then put these into Photoshop where I added noise, a speckled texture to make it look as though the ink is coming off and added a paper texture so they would not look as flat. These were then exported as png files to use in InDesign.

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ORDER OF CONTENT As I started to create my pages I made notes of how I wanted to structure each section. As the book progressed I wasn’t sure how large each chapter would be until I had done the research, which I was doing in parallel to the layout design. In retrospect I think I should have created all of my written content before tackling the layout design, however I was eager to start working out how the publication was going to look and starting to build a style for it.

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I also created a couple of basic wire frames to help visualise the layout and plan for any pages that I hadn’t done yet. I didn’t create the whole publication as a wire frame in this way because I was still researching content and so could not accurately guess how many pages I would need for every section until I had finished creating the content for it. The ‘Still To Do’ wire frame was made later when I was looking at what was left and where the gaps were in my content.

Fold-out page containing 7500 apples. This is the only fold out-planned for the publication.

Examples of some of the initial spreads for the 24 page crit.

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FIRST SET OF SPREADS WITH FEEDBACK AND DEVELOPMENT

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My feedback from Axel was positive and he said that my publication was at a more advanced stage than they were expecting however there were some points to work on. Main positives: • Apple sticker idea - Axel said I was using the vernacular of the content to create visuals which was working really well. • The type setting of the body copy was looking good and was nice and consistent. • The level of content was good so far. Things to work on going forward: • I shouldn’t hyphenate titles, which I had been doing on purpose in reference to my research on ‘The Mind’ book plus it meant that my title text could be quite large. However these stylistic choices were seen more as typographic mistakes so ultimately don’t work. • The illustrations were inconsistent in style and either needed to all be really simple such as the design on ‘The Kidnapping of Idun’ page or sit better with the earlier illustrations. The heavy stroke widths were also quite jarring against pages that contained more delicate photographs. I felt that these comments were fair, certain stylistic choices I had made were not working or were looking inconsistent and the whole thing needed to be brought together more. I completely agreed with this sentiment and had to think of ways to tie everything together. My first major change was to drop the sizes of the titles so that the longer words could fit on the lines and didn’t end up getting hyphenated. As I was using a ratio of 1/1.41 for my body copy, I used this same ratio to scale from 9 point (the size of the body copy text) up to 70.7 point which worked well as a size for the titles settling on 70.7/60.2. By changing the title sizes, it did mean that I was no longer able to fit other type in amongst the titles and changed the layout of those pages completely. The second major change was to expand the range of apple stickers and to make them the thematic through line for the whole publication. This meant re working existing illustrations into their own stickers and creating new ones for new sections, chapters and articles. This really started to bring the whole publication together and gave a much better consistency in both the framing of the artwork into sticker form and the way that the stickers were presented along side the text. Once this had been established the next job was finishing off all the research and creating the rest

of the content including the type, illustrations and images used. I took photos of apple varieties for the most popular varieties rather than using internet found images, as well as photgraphing sliced apples for the Anatomy section and in the chapter on love. I also used my own analogue phatography in the chapter on New York. Once this was all finalised I was able to start going through and re arranging areas that were not working as well, changing page layouts to give more space or to condense chapters to free up other pages and to check consistencies across the whole publication. In my individual book crit with Marco, I sent him where I had gotten to so far and he was able to offer some more specific things to look at and develop on a page by page basis. These more detailed suggestions and constructive criticisms really helped me start looking at final finessing and pushing the book as far as I could take it. I made all the changes suggested and then sent Marco another revision where he offered some final suggestions, some of which were on layout of titles which I looked into and others were more subjective ideas which after consideration I chose not to act on. In the final stages of getting the book ready for print I went through all of the body copy and adjusted the justification paragraph settings which gave the type a bit more flexibility and made sure that it looked consistent without any ‘rivers’ of space or uneven lines. After this was a final look through to catch any orphans and widows that may have occurred.

Finally, myself and two others proof read the whole document, picking up on any spelling mistakes, bad grammar, poor syntax or any missing information that I felt was needed to allow the story to read better and make more sense.

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SOME SPREADS FROM THE FINAL PUBLICATION

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This apple sticker says ‘the apple that took the life of one of the greatest minds of the 20th century’ in binary code.

My plan for producing the book was to have thick board for the front and back covers similar to the children’s board books and then have the inside pages printed as spreads in groups of 12 pages (3 sheets of paper) which I would then make 9 booklets that would be bound by a French Stitch. I really enjoyed the book binding workshop and though that not only would the French Stitch be stronger than perfect bound, it would give the book a beautiful spine. Because I had this printing method in mind, I made sure that my publication was in multiples of 12 pages with the final page count of 108 pages, giving me 9 12 page booklets to sew together. I also wanted to produce a book jacket that would be covered in all of the stickers that are featured throughout the book. After the G.F. Smith paper presentation I was able to get a catalogue from Mark which I used to select the paper stock that I wanted. After looking through all the varieties I settled on Neenah Environment PC100 Natural at 118 gsm. I really liked this paper for several reasons, first of all it was uncoated so it had a really nice quality to the touch. Secondly it was made from recycled paper which was appealing from an environmental standpoint but in terms of the paper itself, meant there were little flecks and imperfections in the paper, not too many but enough to partially mimic the flesh of an apple. It was also not white, with a slightly yellow hue which again strengthened its look of the flesh on an apple. There were papers that had more speckles, the paper ‘Birch’ for example, but I didn’t want to make this paper choice a gimmick and as there is a lot of white space in my design, so I didn’t want these speckles to detract from the illustrations or the type. As I was looking to print with spreads and have a fold out, I had to order two paper sizes, SRA3 for the spreads and a sheet at 700mm x 1000mm for the fold-out. Before ordering the paper, I spoke to Mark at G.F. Smith and Becky from the UWE Digital Print department to make sure that I bought the correct format of paper for this book and for the printers at Bower Ashton. Before printing the final book, I had a consultation with Digital Print to go through the design and make sure that all the pages, most notably the fold-out were formatted correctly. In order to ensure that it printed without issue for the final book, we printed and made a test copy, creating a perfect bound version using 140 gsm silk paper. Because it was going to be perfect bound, we

shrank the pages down to fit on A4 and printed as pages and not spreads. We then printed the fold-out page on A3 and it soon became clear that fold-out pages are a very difficult thing to get right. After a few attempts at different sizing and formats we were able to create a successful fold-out and then finally had this tester bound and cropped. This was an invaluable exercise as it really allowed me to see how the pages interacted properly, what worked and what didn’t. From this tester I was able to pick up on a few layout issues and catch a couple of mistakes which I probably would not have picked up on even if I printed individual spreads to check the pages. From this tester, two major issues with my intention of French Stitch arose. First of all, impostioning the pages correctly for the nine booklets would have been fine, but with addition of the fold-out, which had to be printed separately, it would have made getting the pages right really difficult. Secondly, in my mind the French Stitch would have been done with waxed red thread to match the colour of the covers. However this would mean that in the centre of each booklet, there would be red thread running though it. This is something that I had not designed for and had no idea which pages it would affect and if the thread would go with or get in the way of the colours and layout of those spreads. Finally I was creating a jacket to cover the book which would also cover the spine anyway, so all of the above did not seem worth it. When I returned to the Digital Print department with my paper stock I decided that I would rather do a full hardback perfect bound book, with jacket, which was a much more straight forward if not time consuming endeavour. We printed the inside of the book first on the intended paper stock and managed to get the fold-out to work reasonably quickly. Once we had that we knew the with of the spine and so I made the covers with the spine to match the specifications that Becky had given me . We printed the covers on G.F. Smith Extract Moon which is made from recycled coffee cups, mounted that on board and stuck that around the inside pages with extra sheets of thick paper that also had flecks of colour in it. Finally we printed the jacket which I had made much larger than I was expecting it to be to as it was a semi repeating pattern with no text so was easy to trim to size,

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PRINTING

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TEST PRINT

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FINAL OUTCOME: https://issuu.com/nathfiction/docs/a_is_for_web

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WORKSHOP

Bunker Creative Lead by Lawrence Hansford In this lecture Lawrence took us through the process that Bunker Creative go though when working with a client on branding and identity. Prior to having the scheduled lecture, I had already spoken to Lawrence in a 1:1 tutorial on creating brand guidelines and what they would typically put in them. I had this tutorial because I was in the middle of creating brand guidelines for BlackFlag Brewing based on the Sunshine Coast, QLD. Lawrence took me through all of the different sections that they normally cover, right the way down to how staff portraits should be photographed. For the purposes of what I needed to be looking at for BlackFlag, we looked at: Brand Values - what does that look like? • What it is • What it isn’t Brand Assets • Logo lock ups • Clearance zone (using an element from the logo as a reference) Colour Palette Colour Hierarchy Typefaces Using the Elements • Rationale Creating templates for core designs Creating Icons Categorising photographs and making sure that these all remain on brand Showing the brand in use The tone of voice Look at the differenced between product branding and company branding Lawrence also went through the brand sliding scale system that they had developed. Because of this invaluable session I had with him, much of what he talked about in the main workshop were things that I had already gone through with him. I did learn more about the differences between the expectations of different sized clients with: Small Clients • Small budgets • Quicker time frames • More involvement in the whole process

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Less exposure for the agency or individual responsible for the work

Larger Clients • Large budgets • Longer time frames • You work in a more specific role as part of a larger team • There is more exposure for the agency involved in working on the campaign They then talked about the that they take on each project: • Immersion - getting to know the client • Insights - learning about the market and where the client can stand out • Strategy - building an idea of how the branding will work and what the client wants to achieve • Imagination - designing all of the assets required by the client • Implementation - the roll out of the brand They talked in detail about the sliding scale system that they use with clients as a way of generating how they want their brand to look after they were asked by a client to create a brand that was “fun and serious”. It gives the client a chance to choose how far in a certain direction they would like to go and then the team can create mock ups that represent those decisions, giving the client an easy way to connect their language and ideas to tangible, quick visuals to make sure that both the client and the design team are on the same page. I really like this idea, from my own experience working with clients, there can be a real and very troublesome gap between what they say and what they mean. These sliding scales used by Bunker Creative are a simple and really effective solution to this problem and something that I would like to adopt in my own work moving forward. I find their work really interesting and it is definitely in the field of graphic design that I want to explore further.

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WORKSHOP

Swiss Design Lead by Marco Ugolini

In this workshop we looked at the history of Swiss Design, who the main people to push this movement were and what the main characteristics on the design are.

Europe fled to Switzerland as it was neutral during the war. This became a melting pot for all the design theories and approaches to merge and develop into what became know as Swiss Design.

My Notes: “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to remove.”- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry The above quote is becoming my new mantra. As someone that goes over the top with ideas, I always find myself having to remove elements. The work ethic of distilling things down to their simplest or most efficient form is art form in itself. Something to strive towards for sure. The Arts and Crafts movement and industrialisation in the UK changed the design industry because of mass production and what impact art can have on industry.

One of the most common names attached to Swiss Design is Joseph Müller-Brockman. Common Themes: • Symmetry and Asymmetry • Sanserif typefaces • Negative space • Mathematical precision • Photographs and geometric shapes in favour over hand drawn illustrations • Use of the diagonal • Radical shifts in scale and contrast (size, type and colour) • Stark symbolism “Rules can be broken but never ignored” - David Dury

Design movements: Futurism - Ignored traditions in design. Dada - Looked to liberate the written word. De Stijl - Distilled the abstract form to it’s most basic, using geometric shapes, primary colours and monochromes. Constructivism - Make art socially useful so art would disappear and merge it with science. Bauhaus - A school in Germany and a movement that stripped ornamentation and worked a lot with geometry. They were the creators of the mantra “Form Follows Function”. From here came the Neue Typographie (New Typography) movement lead by: • Jan Tschichold • Moholy-Nagy • Van Doesburg • El Lissitzky

I had read a little about Swiss Design before in books such as ‘Thinking With Type’ by Ellen Lupton and ‘Layout Essentials’ by Beth Tondreau, it was also a design style that I have admired for quite some time. This lecture gave me a much better understanding of its origins and more importantly, what exactly makes Swiss Design look that way it does. Many of the examples shown from both the original pioneers and the more modern studios working in that style all look reasonably interchangeable, a sign that this style is timeless. From a crit with Axel many weeks later, he talked about Swiss Design being so functional and universal that it can be utilised in almost any environment and brief, so it is a great foundation to start to design from but sometimes needs a bit of a push to make the outcome more unique or more specific and appropriate to the content.

Design as functional and objective. Swiss Design started in 1943 after many of the design intellectuals from Germany and around

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Project Brief 3

Obey The Grid: Earth Day Poster 2021 FINAL CRIT : 29TH APRIL 2021

BRIEF You will produce a screenprinted A3, 2 colour (spot colour) typographic poster to celebrate Earth Day 2021. The style of these posters will reference the Swiss Style pioneered in mid-20th Century. Our global community has been shocked by the largest global crisis in a generation. COVID-19 has shown us the necessity of thinking ahead, but the next crises are already on their way. Climate change, species loss, pandemics and massive natural disasters might define the future — unless we do something now. We have the solutions, both natural and technological... we just need the will. Climate change and other environmental degradations have broken our natural systems, leading to new and fatal diseases as well as a breakdown of the global economy. But just as climate change and coronavirus painfully remind us of the harm we’ve caused, ‘Restore Our Earth’

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- the theme of this year’s Earth Day, celebrated on April 22nd– reminds us of the opportunities that lay ahead. We must Restore Our Earth not just because we care about the natural world, but because we live on it. Every one of us needs a healthy Earth to support our jobs, livelihoods, health & survival, and happiness. A healthy planet is not an option — it is a necessity. As designers you are in a position to bring awareness to important global events that impact on all of us, and - on occasion - create work that galvanises the public into action. Design can after all - change the world. You are asked to use your poster to promote awareness of Earth Day Apr 22nd 2021. The Theme this year is: Restore Our Earth. The following phrase is your starting point for generating ideas: ‘When life around the globe returns to normal, our world cannot return to business-as-usual.’

• https://www.earthday.org/ Consider the website above about and what needs to be done once the earth returns to some kind of normaility post Covid. How can the text and imagery on your poster convey these ideas of a necessary change in attitude and behaviour? What is ‘business-as-usual’ and to who? Think about ways in which Covid has highlighted changes in behaviour that may be ‘good practice’ top continue? Less air travel for instance or supporting local producers and the rise of veganism with its impact on food production?

Prepare for your workshop by sketching out ideas ahead of time - considering the themes and how you will use design elements to pair alongside a predominantly typographic approach.Your point of reference for these designs will be the International Typographic Style pioneered by the Swiss designers of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. These designers adhered strongly to formal, structural compositions that utilised a range of grid structures and simple colour schemes. Emphasis was placed on dynamic composition and hierarchy of information using san serif typefaces, letterforms and shapes rooted in architectural structure. You will be given a grid template along with set text that must be used on your final poster. Your task is to use the limitations of the grid, typefaces, colour and text to create original, engaging and impactful posters.

Text content for this project will be supplied to you at your Indesign workshop (online) and your final design must be completed prior to attending your screenprinting workshop (Sessions TBC due to Covid restrictions). You will have a limited amount of time to produce your final outcome, which will push you to make rapid but considered decisions about composition, hierarchy and colour use.

Workshops begin on Friday 5th March. Details of these are available in the module brief and calendar. Your workshop will aid you in completing your final outcome and output the folex plates necessary to produce a screenprinted poster.

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RESEARCH AND APPROACH

The workshop took us through the brief and what had to be included in poster. It then mainly focussed on how to set up your project and loading in the pre made grid that we had to use for layout (which is the grid I am also using for this module file). First of all switching to the Printing and Proofing workspace and going through the settings so we are able to start designing with the right set up for the intended outcome, screen printing. We looked at changing the Trap Presets which are set for digital print and so very narrow, to 0.353 (equivalent to 1 point) as the mesh for screen printing is not as fine as digital print. We then looked at how to set up our own two spot colours, how to combine the colours in varying percentages to create different tones and how to make gradients using the two colours.

I had already looked on the Earth Day website to see what issues they were focussing on and what actions they were taking. Plastic clean up came up as one of the big topics that they were working with, encouraging those around the world to reduce plastic waste and to clean up beaches etc as so much plastic waste ends up in the ocean. I then started thinking about the most common symbols of climate change, global warming and destruction of habitat and the polar bear stood out as one of the most used symbols to represent this. So my idea was to combine plastic in the ocean with the polar bear as the symbol of climate change.

We looked how to set overprinting for overlapping elements and how the separations work. We were warned about using gradients as there can be issues when overprinting if they are not set correctly. Finally we looked at the Separations Preview panel to make sure that the colour and overprints were all correct.

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Visit the Earth Day 2021 website as a starting point to find out about the event, its history and what work is currently being done:

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For design influences, I knew from the lecture on Swiss Design that they tend to not use illustration however I tried to simplify what I was hoping to achieve into simple shapes that would be repeated thoughout the design. I looked at Saul Bass and his shape work and took that as my influence for creating my design. For my colours, I first chose two different shades of blue / teal but changed to dark blue and grey with gradients and mixtures set up as well. My idea was to create a cascade of common single use plastic objects found in the ocean (plastic bags, drinks bottles, bottle tops and straws) and create a design that went from white on top to blue on the bottom to show both the arctic and the ocean. I created shapes in Illustrator and then copied them into InDesign to lay them out. Once I had my shapes roughly in place I created the polar bear with shadow and placed it in. Finally I looked at overpriting certain shapes to add depth and introduce new, darker colours and created a gradient on the bottom to show the depth of the ocean.

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When life around the globe returns to normal, our world cannot return to business-as-usual.

DEVELOPMENT - After spending the rest of the day working on the poster, this was my final design and what I had intended on printing. However after doing a test print I really did not like the poster at all. Seeing it printed, it was easy to see that there was no real hierarchy to the design, the eye was not being pulled anywhere except to a messy and chaotic centre. So I decided to redesign the layout of the poster and make the title and polar bear the main focus and have the plastic as a texture lower down that you might need to look twice at before you really see what it all is.

When life around the globe returns to normal, our world cannot return to business-as-usual.

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First Draft - completed in the first allocated time slot of around 1.5 hours before the first review.

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RESTORE OUR EARTH: Earth Day 2021 22.04.2021

When life around the globe returns to normal, our world cannot return to business-as-usual. 110

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FINAL DESIGN (left) and SOCIAL MEDIA POST (below)

From this point I was able to attend the output workshop before my allotted time and get the transparencies ready for print. I played with the lpi

values to get a half tone effect in the gradient for the ocean. I wanted it to be quite large and severe so opted for 20 lpi on the grey colour separation.

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I learned a lot from the screen printing workshop, how to prime and set up screens, using the transparencies, mixing inks, setting everything up to print and finally pushing the ink through the mesh to create the print. From this design I have learned two major points moving forward if I was going to design for screen print again. First of all I wouldn’t design with a halftone layer around small text as this became very difficult to line up each time, even with a printed transparency as a guide. Secondly, when creating the artwork in InDesign I was using the overprint function as a way to mix my two spot colours to make a third colour, which in preview was much darker than the individual colours. However when it came to printing the second colour, it did not mix with the colour below as proofed, so for example, where the blue was supposed to be a gradient getting darker as the halftone dots increased, it actually got lighter as the grey ink was much stronger than I had anticipated. In the end I think that the poster came out fine but I don’t think the end result is quite right. Having said this, I really enjoyed learning this process and would definitely want to look at screen printing in the future, making this poster very worthwhile to print.

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Project Brief 4

Sound & Vision FINAL CRIT : 25TH MARCH 2021

BRIEF Music has always had power. From a personal, perspective songs are memorable for different reasons. When we first heard them, where and with who - we look to music to help us heal, inspire us, deal with loss and, songs can sometimes change our life. Music can be political and socially galvanizing – it has the power to move and the power to provoke. Music can be used as a weapon or as a form of rebellion against political, racial and social oppression or the wealthy elite. One of the most powerful songs of the 20th century – ‘Strange Fruit’ is the haunting meditation on lynching made famous by Billie Holiday. The Cure’s song ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ is a tribute to teenage angst but also looks at issues of masculinity and men’s occasional inability to express emotions. Some bands like Pussy Riot - who are essentially a collective - focus on lyrical themes that include feminism, LGBT rights, and opposition to Russian

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President Vladimir Putin which landed two of their members in prison for 21 months in 2012. In short music can smuggle powerful messages and emotions through a medium, whether it is considered a form of art or mere ‘entertainment’. Inherently songs are about stories and the words are as important – if not more so – then the music itself. This project affords you the opportunity to listen to words more intently and attempt to provide meaning through the use of predominantly typographic interpretation. Use the Radio 4 ‘Soul Music’ archive as a good starting point for listening to stories behind the songs that have shaped the 20th and 21st Centuries: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b008mj7p 1. You will form a design team of three members with consideration to the skillsets necessary to produce a range of creative outcomes.

2. Choose an existing piece of music (with lyrics) and produce a set of 3 creative assets to celebrate and engage a defined audience with the song. While we give you freedom to choose, aim for your song to ideally have had power or impact culturally, socially or politically. You may want to start by considering the sort of band you are and your genre/type of music (Indy, electronic, classical, rock, jazz) which will help determine your audience and therefore visual communication. While the emphasis for this project is on typographic interpretation – to communicate the song’s ideas, narrative or themes (consider the lyrics closely and ways in which the information can be ‘visualized’) – you are free to use imagery, live action or even live performance as part of your solution!

Think about the way musicians and bands promote themselves in the media landscape. Gorillaz use lots of interactive strategies and build a ‘world’ for their characters / Radiohead work with the artist Stanley Donwood to create unconventional campaigns. Aim for visual consistency throughout all your work. Your promotional material could be a set of stickers, a t-shirt, an album cover (for the single), a poster to celebrate the theme of the song as relevant to a contemporary cultural topic, a set of promotional gifs, etc. Please look at the list on the right column. You will need to work fast but the aim is to experiment, collaborate and have fun. Document your work professionally and with consideration for a digital delivery alongside a physical hand-in, so create mock-ups by using templates available freely online. *You will present your final outcomes in a suitable format for the crit on Thursday, March 25th

FORMING THE ‘BAND’ The groups were formed based on what music genre they wanted to work with and choose their song from. Choices included rock, dance, jazz, classical and punk. I chose punk as I have been playing in punk bands of different kinds for about 20 years and have gained a pretty good knowledge of the inner workings of the genre and it’s aesthetics beyond The Sex Pistols, studded jackets and mohawks (although I did have one when I was 18). After throwing some bands around in the Punk group chat, Fin Ross was also suggesting similar bands to the ones I liked so we teamed up. Sam Giles then joined our group as he hadn’t formed one yet and although he was not really in to punk, his dad had been quite a prolific punk in his formative years. We all connected via Instagram messenger and would talk via Zoom. Our original first choice was to do the 1984 song ‘Guilty of Being White’ by Minor Threat, a hardcore punk band from Washington D.C. formed in 1980. However after a closer look at the lyrics, it was a message that we did not want to promote and didn’t have the standpoint that we had originally thought. So I started to look through songs, bands and lyrics from a long list of bands that I thought would fit both the brief and

be bands that the others would be happy to use. Bands researched: Minor Threat Black Flag Crass Dead Kennedys Bikini Kill The Slits Bad Brains Sonic Youth Bad Religion Suicidal Tendencies Stiff Little Fingers Conflict Circle Jerks The Dammed The Stooges The Cramps F-Minus Discharge X-Ray Spex Songs for consideration: Minor Threat – In My Eyes Conflict – The Ungovernable Farce Bad Religion – Progress Black Flag – Police Story

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Now imagine the 3 of you are a band. Choose a name for your Band and create a logo or brandmark that reflects the values and your visual ‘personality’.

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From my research of all of these bands and multiple songs per band, it became apparent how difficult it was to find songs that had lyrics that would stand up to scrutiny today. Many songs were either racist or used derogatory slurs, either to highlight racism or be racist them selves. Some songs were just aggressive without any substance, while others were clearly trying to be offensive and confrontational but without any message, or were purposefully taking the stance of the thing they may have been opposed to, such as Suicidal Tendencies ‘Fascist Pig’ where the chorus reads “I want to be a fascist pig”. A lot of other songs were not that political and lyrically were quite mundane. This research really highlighted how different contemporary approaches to social issues are, how we talk about social change and how different the language we use now is. Some bands like Dead Kennedys would subvert ideas so that lyrically they might seem offensive but actually they are highlighting important social issues, but taken out of context that connection would be lost. Also, punk as a genre, especially in the late 70’s and 80’s was there to be offensive. The whole point of a lot of the movement was intended to be a big “fuck you” to society, however in 2021, that kind of approach and language would not be accepted in social movements. There are many more contemporary punk bands that have more up to date messages and lyrics that would work well or are well written, however from a visual and historical stand point, they are less interesting than the older punk bands whose style at the time was pushing the boundaries. In the end, the four songs put forward were still punk, had a message and lyrically would be something that taken out of context would still work. We then chose our favourite two songs before making the final decision. These two were: 1. Conflict - The Ungovernable Farce 2. Black Flag - Police Story While researching bands we also made a Pinterest board where we could all contribute images and ideas. We looked at logos, poster desingns, photographs and anything with a ‘cut and paste feel’ to start building a visual library that we could draw from. On top of this Sam’s dad was photographing a bunch of his old punk clothes, badges and zines to send over as reference. Skateboarding in the 80’s was also a large part of the American punk scene so we included some of these images in case we chose Black Flag.

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These top left images of clothes, zines and badges were taken by Sam’s dad.

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CHOOSING THE NAME AND OUR OUTCOMES The next task was choosing a band name, we looked on some band name generators and I also looked through some of the lyrics from the short listed songs to see if anything stood out, our list of names to choose from were: Sam’s Suggestions: Hell bent resistance Fucked system System slammed Destroyed system My suggestions: Systemic Pains No More Resistance is Fertile Fool The Poor Not Now. Not Ever. Our favourite two were ‘Hell Bent Resistance’ and ‘Fool The Poor’, which was taken from a lyric from the Conflict song. In the end we chose ‘Fool The Poor’ as we thought that visually the ‘o’s could make chains or handcuffs and be an interesting graphic element. We then started doing individual sketches for the logo design.

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For our outcomes we decided that we wanted to make some merchandise that fit the genre so we were looking at making badges, patches, t shirts, tote bags etc. We also wanted to make a poster and we were hoping to make a zine as our main project. We also thought of designing type that would fit on a skate deck if we went down the American band route and finally thought of making a gif or some short motion piece using the lyrics as well so that we had all bases covered. We thought anything too technology based, such as a website would not be appropriate, neither would stage design etc as most punk bands would play in small clubs and dive bars. After final discussions on Zoom we decided to choose Conflict’s ‘The Ungovernable Farce’ as our song. We chose this song because it had good varied lyrics, was on a topic that was still relevant today, was by a British anarcho-punk band which fit better with Sam’s research and would give us a concise look moving forward.

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LOGO DEVELOPMENT Sam and I spent some time developing the logo and would send each other the Illustrator file to work on further, adding and changing elements until we had a collaborative logo that we were all happy with.

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CREATING EACH OUTCOME Once we had our logo I started to make some designs for us to use for merchandise. As the band were anarcho-punk there is a strong connection to the ACAB acronym (All Cops Are Bastards). The song itself also references the police as the “boot boys” so I decided to make something that was about the police and state oppression (the theme of the whole song). A lot of punk t-shirts are white print on black clothing so I used that colour pallet. When creating the artwork I used the halftone and torn edges effect in Photoshop to affect the photo of the police then used live trace in Illustrator to create a vector. I then added a spray paint face that I created from two separate images and added text around the sides with the addition of ACAB in the corners.

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DEFACE STATE

OPPRESSIOn

OPPRESSIOn a DEFACE STATE c

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Next I wanted to create something that had more of a focus on type. I thought it would be good to try and find as many words as possible that are in the lyrics from news paper clippings and then use these as part of a poster or gif. The lyrics I was focussing on were First, that means deception lets be clever “we can fool the poor” Secondly, attempts are made to cover up mistakes they make When all else fails the boot boys, jump, get kitted out in blue The rest is left to the imagination, you get the point, or it will get you Some people said “No more of this” I scoured for hours seven or so papers to find the words but found the language used for headlines and subheadings to all be very similar so was not able to find that many in the end. Once I had some words I asked Sam if he could spray paint me “No More Of This” in a centre justified column. Once he sent me the photo I used live trace in illustrator once again to give me a vector image that I could colour as I wanted. Using the same layout as the previous artwork, I started to lay out the text around the outside of the poster design. For any words I didn’t have I used the Stencil font AS IT LOOKS THE SAME AS THE CONFLICT LOGO. I then cut out each of the scanned words and layered them on top of the lyrics. For the centre image I wanted to do something more contemporary to show how valid the lyrics are today so decided to use a large picture of Boris Johnson as the focus of the poster. To give it a more punk look I ripped and scanned some paper to put around the edges of the digital image. I then used the halftone tool in Photoshop to give it even more of a DIY photocopied feel. We intended to Riso print this design so I selected two colours to use, pink and blue. The main text in the middle I made pink and then used a blue gradient overlay to colour the rest of the design. Sam and I then went to the Arnolfifi and printed the separate masters to print each colour individually. We first printed the pink text and then ran the posters through again to print the blue. The posters came out really well however I had forgotten to place the band logo on the masters do it was missing from the final printed poster.

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“

fool the poor . secondly, attempts are made to cover up mistakes they make.

in blue the rest is left to the imagination you get the point or it will get you

first, that means deception, lets be clever,“ "we can

when all else fails the boot boys, jump, get kitted out

Above - The risograph masters Below - Final printed poster

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The next area to focus on was the zine. We wanted to make something that had a political message but also talked about punk rock and the music scene. Something that you would find on the merch stand of a political punk band that would help to ‘educate’ their fans about political issues as well as have some section on the punk lifestyle. Sam set up an interview with his dad to answer questions about what it was like to be a punk in it’s heyday and what he was like as a young punk. As the song talked a lot about the governments involvement in war, Fin looked at the UK involvement in the arms trade with countries like Saudi Arabia as well as some other facts and figures surround the UK involvement in war. He also was responsible for doing a lyric sheet of the song and he had been putting together come collages of punk images of old punk bands, fans and fashion. I looked at writing something more political, taking inspiration from the ACAB idea and setting it against modern policing. This worked out due to an uproar in a change in policy brought in by the government to give more powers to the police during protests and to be able to use fore more readily and shut down and control protests with more authority. There had also been some recent stories of heavy handed policing at a peaceful vigil in London. I read a few news articles from various well known online newspapers and used this as the basis for my article, taking quotes and facts from the articles and writing my own narrative with them in a piece of anti government, anti police political propaganda. I used images of past and present protests including the Brixton riots, the poll tax riots and the current protests about the new policing bill. Some of the photos were scanned in from recent newspaper articles about the protests regarding the new policing bill. When I had finished writing the article in Microsoft Word, I set the font to Arial as it is a common word processing font and set different point sizes for different paragraphs. I then printed

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the article and wrote on it with pen. I also printed the edited photos from previous protests. I tore the edges of the images and of the blocks of text to give them a rough punk look. I then scanned in all of these elements plus some black and yellow card to use as a background for the layout. I arranged each page in Photoshop and adjusted colour and contrast. On some of the accompanying pages I once again asked Sam if he could spray paint me some slogans to go with the article such as “The threat of violence is still violence” which was in regards to the attack and murder of a young woman, Sarah Everard, by an off duty police officer and the police response was that women should be more careful and not walk alone. I found that advice hard to stomach that it is still up to women to bear the burden of what is essentially a problem with men, and the threat that they can pose. I feel that if women feel that men pose a violent threat to them, that can be just as damaging as violence itself and that threat needs to be taken as seriously as violence. The image used behind that text was a scan from the newspaper of the vigil where everyone had their phone torches on and in the air. I also asked Sam to paint me “Bastards Now” “Bastards Then” in reference to the idea that policing and police brutality has not changed. I used a photo of a black man being arrested in the Brixton riots in 1981 and a woman being arrested at the Sarah Everard vigil in 2021. These images were also printed, screwed up and scanned back in before I did some final colour work to them in Photoshop. Once we had all the content, Sam was responsible for laying the whole document out. FINAL OUTCOME: https://issuu.com/nathfiction/ docs/ftp_web_zine

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The final outcome that we wanted to make was a moving image piece. Both Sam and Fin were not comfortable in the moving image world and although I cannot create animations with any great success, I can just about use Final Cut Pro. After a tutorial with Adam about the moving image outcome, he had the idea of filming videos from the internet on your phone and then using that footage in the background, as a modern approach to the cut and paste ethos and aesthetic. We all really liked this idea and so I filmed on my phone footage from the recent riot in Bristol that took place after the peaceful protest against the new policing bill, footage from the Brixton race riots, the Poll Tax Riots and finally the Tesco Riot that happened on Stokes Croft in Bristol that I actually witnessed. This footage would be the backdrop to the piece. For the type element of this video I wanted to put the lyrics over the top of the footage with each word or short set of words coming up on screen as they are sung. The song is very fast with 168 words happening in about 45 seconds. I decided to use Stencil as my main font but as the video progressed I started to add different typefaces into the mix. My selections were based on basic system fonts or typefaces that I thought looked either common, from the time period of the song (mid 1980’s) or just not very good. Some fonts were chosen to mimic the words being sung. As this idea developed I asked Sam and Fin to hand render me some type, I asked them to chose certain words form the lyrics and either write them with pen or spray paint them. I also used the “no more of this” type used in the poster design and some of the newspaper cutting that I had taken. I then cut those words out and saved them as a png file so I could include them in the video. I had originally only thought that I would do a short gif or passage from the song but once I had gotten started I decided to do the whole video as the song is only 1 minute 28 seconds long and the lyrics finish after about a minute so I would be able to fade the track out after that. Putting each word or short set of words in to Final Cut Pro and making sure that they went along with the vocals in the song took a really long time, and was actually a lot more time consuming that I was expecting. The final set of lyrics are so fast I decided to have the words come up on screen individually to create a paragraph. To do this I had to make the full text block and then layer each word on as it was said and then finally remove the guide text. In order to give the whole video a conistent look, to create cohesion between the old and new

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protest footage and to place it more in the old DIY punk video tapes, I applied a set of filters and effects such as ‘Bad TV’ and ‘Prism’ to give it a wobbly VHS video look. These effects were copied and pasted onto each word and footage individually and then I made changes to each one if it needed it. When getting the project ready for export I chose an NTSC format with dimensions of 720 x 480 pixels. This gave the video an aspect ratio that is closer to an old TV and also is not HD quality, as a nod to the lack of care of technical quality which is part of the aesthetic of the punk scene. LINK TO VIDEO - https://vimeo.com/544655492

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MERCHANDISE With all of the design work done we were able to make some extra merchandise pieces and mock ups. Using the design that Sam created for the front cover of the zine, we were able to create badges using a friends badge maker. The badges are 65mm in diameter with a film coating and a plastic and pin backing

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Sam had also been in contact with the embroidery team as a result of the monogram brief and he had the logo mocked up as a embroidered patch.

I took some photos of myself in a plain black t-shirt and then placed the first design I made on the back and put the logo on the front as a pocket print. I also mocked up a tote bag as many bands and record labels make tote bags in the modern punk scene.

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Additional Brief: Bunker Creative

Gin Brief FINAL CRIT : 25TH MARCH 2021

BRIEF To create the new packaging for Black Penguin Gin and consider how you would launch the campaign in the channels. You can explore illustration, typography, logo execution, photography and colour. As we change these elements every year, you have complete creative licence in the BVI. We are looking for something different, something unique which not only looks good, but is considered in it’s execution. Key requirements • • • • •

The name must remain as Black Penguin Your label must fit on to one of the three bottles options provided Include the line: ‘Mates for Life’ Include the line: ‘Designed by (your name) for Bunker Creative’ The flavour must be on the bottle

Prizes 1st £250, 3 bottles of gin and a PAID internship 2nd £100 and 1 bottle of gin 3rd £25 and 1 bottle of gin

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My approach for this brief was quite different from how I would normally approach a client brief. Usually I would interrogate the brief with the client to get information on branding, what they want to project to their customers and who their intended clientele would be. From that I would then look at researching the market and build a user persona for the product which would inform design decisions and direction. However I did not do that for this brief for two reasons. First of all I was not able to talk extensively to the client to get an exact idea of what they were after because the brief was open to our interpretation and how we wanted to represent the brand rather than sticking to brand guidelines etc. Secondly the product was not for sale, it was to be a gift to their client base so would not sit in the market with other products, already had it’s set intended audience and so did not need to compete against other gin products.

not be to the taste of everyone and looks a little childish for an alcoholic drink. However as said earlier, it is a style I love, it has been used for beer cans and I wanted to push my illustration skills.

With this in mind I wanted to use this brief as an opportunity to really push some design styles that I really like, to look into illustration designs that inspire me and to make a set of options for Bunker Creative to look through during the mid way crit and choose which direction(s) that they wanted me to continue with.

To represent the flavour I created characters for the lemons and blueberries and added in penguin characters as well. The early sketches were of these characters holding hands to form a ring around the whole bottle. As the design developed I added a second line of characters and then finally added a third less regimented line of characters doing things like dancing or holding a banner with ‘Mates For Life’ on it.

For my first design, I really like the beer can designs from Garage Project based in Wellington NZ. They often treat the can as a canvas and have designs that wrap around the whole product. I wanted to create a design that would be printed on clear labels that wrapped the whole bottle but you could still see the liquid inside. The concept of this bottle was an informal celebration, I wanted it to be a design that made people smile and really represented coming together and having a nice time. My buzz words used as reference for this design were: • CELEBRATION • TOGETHERNESS • INFORMAL • FUN • A GIFT • ENGAGING

When I came to illustrate this in Photoshop I set my layers up so that each individual character that I drew based on my iPad sketches from Procreate would be separate. I drew my favourite characters and laid them out into a small scene. I then looked into some type options to create the logo and description of the drink.

I really liked the illustrations used in Garage Project’s ‘Weird Flex’ can design, illustrated by Dan Village. I also like the illustration style of Dave Arcade so these became my two main influeces for the style of the illustration which also has influences from old cartoons that I would watch such as Ren & Stimpy, Real Monsters, Roco’s Modern Life and Dexter’s Laboratory. I knew that this style might be a bit of a gamble as it may

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APPROACH AND INITIAL DESIGN

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For my second design I wanted to explore a completely different route. I wanted something that looked nice and summery, would carry a bit sophistication but again looked inviting and refreshing. I looked at some more traditional gin bottle designs for this one and looked at some fruit illustrations, selecting my favourites as inspiration. My buzz words for this design were: • BRIGHT • FRESH CITRUS • SOPHISTICATED • HOLIDAY / BREAK • COMING TOGETHER I wanted to create a logo for this bottle and was put on to an old Disney cartoon where two penguins created a heart. With the slogan of ‘Mates For Life’ I thought that the penguin heart would be a fitting logo idea and created a heart from two penguins facing each other. I then created the fruit as a cascade that would sit to the left and right of the centre label design.

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DEVELOPMENT From the mid way crit, Lawrence and Adam were impressed with how developed each idea was and they were further along then they had expected. They were not keen on options three and four and were more interested in my first and second concepts. They wanted to see those two worked up further. Their comments for the first one was that they liked that it made them smile and they could see the personalities in each character. They thought it would be better if the characters were placed in a scene rather than purely on a clear sticker.

Finally my fourth option was a continuation of the second, with different type and the main theme was putting the names of those that would be receiving the bottle in the centre of the label with Black Penguin on the edges as a way of representing that Bunker Creative put their clients right at the centre of everything they do and the bottle would mean more to them if their name was on it. Both options three and four were not developed too far, certainly not as much as one and two.

The second option they liked the colour work and the texturing of the elements and liked the typography however they thought there was room to add another dimension to the design, perhaps creating a penguin out of the fruit and leaf elements to give more depth to the design. They also didn’t like the ‘Mates For Life’ element as a separate box and wanted to see it integrated into the design more. With this feedback in mind I expanded the character range and placed them in a winter scene, I added more activities such as sledding, building a snow penguin, a snowball fight and a snow angel. In what would be the front of the bottle I drew a penguin offering a drink directly out to the person holding the bottle as a way of creating more engagement with the client and to show that this product, this drink was for them. For the type I created a penguin out of the letter ‘a’ in ‘Black’ so that the bottle had a custom wordmark logo for the product. For the product description I created the ampersand based on a different font but reworked it to fit better with the typeface used for the ‘Blueberry’ and ‘Lemon’ lettering. All other required type, such ‘Mates For Life’ and ‘Designed by Nathaniel Stevens for Bunker Creative’ were drawn by hand into the main illustration. The finishing touch for this design was creating a paper wrap that would cover the bottle. I kept the paper white to represent snow and drew a single penguin skiing down the side. At the bottom of the design were the tops of some of the fruit characters heads sticking out as a portent of what was to come on the bottle inside.

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For my third design it was really just a chance to try out some custom lettering with a nod to old jazz records and festival posters.

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For my second option I reworked the sides to create two penguin shapes that although were facing away when the design was laid flat, they would be facing each other when the label was wrapped around the bottle, mimicking the logo design on the front. I reworked the leaves and changed the colour of them. On the main label on the front, I pushed that design further we more detail, extra lines, more lemon segments and added ‘Mates For Life’ to the front rather than having the extra box on the side. I added a wavy line texture that went beyond the label and would be over a clear section of the printed label, giving the recipient a chance to see how much was inside the bottle. I sent my design to Adam and Lawrence prior to the final presentation to ask for any feedback and suggested changes, they had positive comments but there were a few details to look at such as working a bit more on type placement and treatment and adding more depth by arranging my layers slightly differently and adding some shadow. Before my final presentation, I used a gin bottle mock up set to show how the design would look in 3D. I highlighted areas that I wanted them to focus on and tried to give as best a representation as I could. Finally I created a social media banner for each design with its own strap line as suggestions for marketing the bottle.

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FEEDBACK AND RESULTS The feedback in my final presentation was really great, Lawrence said that I had “smashed the brief out of the park” and that he couldn’t believe the amount of work that I had done while also working on uni briefs full time. He remarked that the Black Penguin logo on my first option with the ‘a’ as a penguin was at a standard that he would expect from a senior designer and that I was creating work above his expectations from a university student. I was quite obviously really pleased with the feedback and glad that they could see the level of work that I had put into both options. I felt that my first option was a bit of a gamble as stylistically it sits in quite a specific place. I wondered if although they could see how much work I had done, the design just wouldn’t be for them. This wasn’t the case when I received an email from Lawrence detailing that I had in fact won the competition. He wrote:

Hi Nath, Hope you are well. Are you still working hard? Well, it’s with great pleasure that I can tell you, you’ve won the Black Penguin Gin brief. Both your submissions were awesome and specifically the character illustration route. You clearly worked very hard and were hungry to win - which is the single most important thing you need in our industry. We loved your bottle design of the fruit characters and think this will be a great addition to the winning bottle design family. So what we need to do is start to plan when you are available to work with us and can you send me your bank details and I will transfer you your winnings! Again, you were the standout applicant on this brief and Adam and myself were very impressed and pleased with your work - you’ve set the bar high, so keep it up. Many thanks, Lawrence and Adam

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Freelance Work: TAPS Craft Beer & Kitchen

Restaurant Menu As part of my ongoing freelance work for TAPS Craft Beer & Kitchen, a venue based in the Sunshine Coast in Australia, I was asked to create a new menu for their winter season. I was given the text, a template (A3 DL) and an example of the kind of look they were going for the rest of the design was up to me. I have designed menus before but not ones that had this many items on there and cam with descriptions of each dish, there were also lots of extra bits of information to go into the menu and had to include all the different foods, cocktails and house specialities. With so much content, I wanted the menu to be as clear and easy to navigate as possible, making sure there was easy differentiation between the dishes title and it’s description and most importantly, making sure that each section was clearly defined and the sets of dishes would fit neatly into each one and not need to spill over onto other panels of the menu. It took some time to organise the content in a way that fulfilled all of the above. I used the typeface Hansief, which I have used in other marketing materials to keep some kind of consistency and paired it with Roxers, a hand rendered looking typeface for all the descriptions. I also created the ‘V’ and ‘GF’ symbols and finally created some illustrations to feature on the front and back. Once I had finished the layout and was happy with everything, the venue decided to add a couple of extra dishes and change the cocktail menu which meant I had to find extra space in an already full layout.

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I found creating this menu not the most creative endeavour but a really good exercise in structuring type and trying to keep everything as consistent as possible. Making sure everything is legible and not overwhelming to the customer but also give the information that the venue want to convey. There is a large element of problem solving required and it sometimes felt like trying to complete a type based jigsaw puzzle. It is easy to over look simple items such as menus etc however I really benefited from working on something so type heavy that had to be ultimately functional while also carrying the aesthetic of the venue and its values.

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FINAL REFLECTION I feel that I have learned a lot of practical and technical knowledge this term which is exactly what I was hoping for. I did my best to print as many outcomes as I could so I could get a much better understanding of the process and a real appreciation of how different designs and products can look once they are printed. The biggest challenge this term was of course the Everything About One Thing brief. It took a lot of research to generate the content and took me quite a while to settle into the style of it all and then create the illustrations. In the end I am beyond happy with how it all came out and feel proud of the work that I produced. I learned the value of type setting test prints and how important it is to see the type on the page physically as it is so different to how it looks on screen. This is also true of the value of white space and how effective simple layouts can be on printed goods, on screen it can look unfinished or dull but in the context of physical printing, it really comes to life. There has been a lot of research in general this term, from the monogram family brief, things I have learned and the Sound and Vision brief as well as the book and I think my research skills have greatly improved because of it. I think that most of my work this term has been more considered and backed up by references and my approach is far less about aesthetics first and content later and much more focussed on the content then working from there. I’ve done my best to not add superfluous ideas or design elements just because I like the way they look and been much more focussed on the ‘why’. Because of this approach I think my work is more focussed. The group work task was quite challenging as I felt that certain members of the group weren’t pulling their weight while others were. I felt that I ending up having to be more proactive in generating ideas, researching songs and creating content. I ended up leading the project, which wasn’t a problem but it meant I felt I had more responsibility to get everything finished. I am absolutely ecstatic to have won the Bunker Creative Gin Brief Competition. I am really excited to be working with them, more so than I am to see my design as a physical product. It is certainly going to be a great opportunity to learn and get a better idea of how design agencies work. I’m looking forward to building a good relationship with them over the coming months.

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In general I have really enjoyed the work this term, although full on at times, I feel I have really pushed myself and the quality of my finished work. I am really pleased to have had the opportunity to screen print my poster and learn more about getting spot colour files ready for print. I enjoyed my time in the Digital Print studio learning the process of how to bind a hardback book and the headaches involved with adding fold outs to publications. I learned how to use the Riso printer for the first time this term and will definitely be using it again in the future. Built a better understanding of creating type from scratch and picked up some really useful tips like Jamie Clarke’s 90 degree technique and Spike Spondike’s advice on what letters to start with when designing type and also the optical affect that happens when light text is laid over a darker background and that it looks thicker. All of these things I feel are now in the tool kit and I am looking forward to improving my skills in all of the practical elements as well as building on the technical side of layout and type design.

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LINKS Preparation Project: A Thing You Have Learned In Your Life So Far https://issuu.com/nathfiction/docs/tihlimlsf_final Preparation Project: Family Monogram https://issuu.com/nathfiction/docs/tony_falling_from_the_sky_web Project Brief 2: Everything About One Thing https://issuu.com/nathfiction/docs/a_is_for_web Project Brief 4: Sound & Vision Zine - https://issuu.com/nathfiction/docs/ftp_web_zine Video - https://vimeo.com/544655492

https://issuu.com/nathfiction https://nathanielstevens.pb.design

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Type & Print Module File [May 2021]

Articles inside

Freelance work - TAPS Craft Beer & Kitchen: Restaurant Menu

Final Reflections

Additional Brief - Bunker Creative: Gin Brief

Project Brief 4: Sound & Vision

Project Brief 3: Obey The Grid

Workshop: Swiss Design

Project Brief 2: Everything About One Thing

Workshop: Bunker Creative

Workshop: Book Binding

Project Brief 1: Family Monogram

Workshop: G.F. Smith

Workshop: Jamie Clarke

Preparation Project: Family Monogram

Preparation Project: A Thing You Have Learned In Your Life So Far