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Brief Concept Initial Ideas 01 One of the finished solutions; the first issue of Though Publication, a monthly free publication that will be distributed free in major cities destinations around the UK to promote, inform and inspire readers abouts the 12 things they should know.
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Concept
Idea
Target Audience
Tone
To produce a set of publications that would promote, inform and inspire readers about 12 selected subject matters that they should know about.
To tackle the problem of young working professionals who are dedicating most of their time to work related things and hardly spending much time doing other activities. The 12 publications is aimed to offer an alternative read based on trivial subject matters that would hopefully connect, promote and inspire the readers to do and think about something that they probably haven’t considered before.
To target young working professionals and commuters to major cities. Generally people who’s weeks are often taken over by work responsibilities.
The tone needs to be professional, informative and approachable. As it will be distributed free, it needs to have consistent interesting content while still carrying a strong appropriate design direction as it needs to appeal to the taret audience.
The decision on what ‘12 things people should know’ is only determined by who I’ll be targetting it towards and what I intend to achieve from it. I decided to identify 12 trivial subject matters that people don’t often think about in today’s society as I feel that our media today is often dominated by popular culture.
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Concept Development Primary / Secondary Research Content Development 01 Primary research ; I carried out case studies on 6 individuals who are current collectors of something interesting and inspiring. Each individual answered the same set of questions regarding their collection.
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Primary Research
Primary Research
Secondary Research
I wanted the content of the publication to be driven by well informed and interesting research gathered information. So as a starting point to determining the content, I decided on gathering some primary research around the subject of ‘collecting things’.
After getting my surveys filled by over 60 people around Leeds, I selected a handful of people who had interesting collections that would inspire and promote the idea of it in different meanings. Case studies were carried out for these individuals which included a series of questions regarding their collections. The results were then reviewed and became part of the content for the first issue.
Secondary research was another essential part of my design practice, aswell as gathering first hand resource, I needed to have a wider scope of ideas and views. Having access to the internet, opened up an array of different resources around the subject of ‘collecting things’ ranging from videos to songs etc. This ultimately influenced the type of questions raised for the case studys and vice versa.
My first step was to gather a general idea of what people’s views were on the subject of ‘collecting things’ in general, whether people still collect now and if so why do they collect. For the ones who don’t collect, why not? The aim of my publication was to promote, inform and inspire, so I needed to have a clear understanding of the essential ideas and opinions, that I could build some ideas from.
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Practical Development Design Direction Mock ups 01 Spreads mockup print outs Print out spreads in full scale to check point sizes and test out whether the layout is suitable on a printed format. Alterations are made on this and reviewed for further development.
02 Initial ideas development Drawn visuals and initial ideas on paper.
03 Layout development Went through many sheets of layouts, testing different grid specifications and general layout with text and image.
04 Mockup front/back covers 1:2 scale printed front/back covers on standard 150gsm stock.
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Design Direction The content of the publications would be type heavy with a good balance of images relating to the text, therefore I wanted the design of the publications to be quite minimal, focusing more on the content itself.
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In terms of the layouts, my main priority was on the legibility, hierarchy of the text and images and also designing it so that it can be picked up and read from any page.
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Product: 16 page publication on ‘Collecting Things’ Final Product Thought Publication Issue 01 ‘Collecting Things’ Size Pages Stock Colours Fonts
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570mm x 400mm 22 + Front & Back covers Bulky Newsprint Pantone Black U Pantone Warm Red U Helvetica Neue Helvetica Neue Bold Baskerville SemiBold Italic
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Product Range
The subjects and colours chosen for the set of 12 publications that was intended to be distributed every month for a whole year. The designs all follow a solid grid specification and colour system throughout to deliver a consistent design, which would also help establish the publication’s profile.
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Product Range & Distribution
01 Proposed poster. This will be used to promote and raise awareness of the project’s profile. It will be placed in busy city areas such as bus stops, train stations and airports, providing information about Thought Publication and where to get hold of a copy.
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02 Proposed website; to raise brand awareness and expand on content. I created a clear design direction for the website, that combines an easy to navigate interface with a design approach that fits well with the publication’s design direction.