Fiona Fraser's Graphics

Week of the 11th March – Independent study 

After having tweaked my designs from tutor feedback I printed the pages and looked through for the finer details. I noticed that some of the bubble were not cut out and overlapped. Although this started as a style choice I decided to remove any overlapping parts of the circles, which as well as looking more refined it added to the metaphor of the memories not fully coming together.

On top of this I was still unconvinced on the last spread as the large red bubble still didn’t fit as much as I wanted it to. After spending slightly too long adjusting each and every bubble I am finally happy with the outcome and overall flow of the piece.

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Overall I feel more confident with InDesign both with the help from the workshop and my own development and experimentation. At the start of this project I could easily say that InDesign was one of my least confident Adobe software due to the lack of previous use. But now I am confident to present my work knowing that I used the program to the best of my ability.

Monday 11th March – Studio Support + My development

At first I wanted to print off my work and check overall the design to see if I was happy with it. The main thing I wanted to look at was the scale of the type, which I feel is just about right.

When talking to the tutor he had many suggestion on the page spreads. Straight away the tutor said that the type needs to start on the line. Also on the first spread there is a single sentence paragraph and he mentioned that this looks plain and as if its not meant to be there. Another type detail he looked at was on the last page spread where a single column is used, he said it didn’t work well with the other paragraphs and doesn’t read easily. To combat the type detailing, I started by rearranging the paragraphs so that they line up at the top and adjusted the last few paragraphs for the two column style used throughout. Then I looked at the single line paragraph and decided to simply make it bold to stand out and have its own presence.

We briefly mentioned the colours of the bubbles and I explained that the colours can represent fire as the memory is burnt away leaving distorted or even nothing behind. We both seemed very happy with this and I just looked over the opacity of some of the circles making each one fill the space with balance.

The next improvement he suggested was to look at the scale of the marginalia. This has been a topic of many of the feed backs I have got from both peers and tutors whether to scale up or down. Through looking back at some of the original designs with the hand written in a larger scale I feel now that the smaller and more subtle things work better. Also looking at the research they also used a lot of smaller styles so that it didn’t over power the design. When changing my design made them all smaller but each one still had a different scale to seem more hand written by more than just two people.

My tutor also mentioned the flow of the piece saying the although each page is good on their own the look very similar so it doesn’t progress enough. When looking through the sheets even I got confused to what one was the 2nd and which one was the 3rd. This meant I had to rethink parts of the design. One simple suggestion was to change the headings on each page as this would not be a repetition of the first title. Another suggestion was to play around more with the scale of the bubbles. This should increase the sense of curiosity of the reader as they flip each page.

To correct the flow I first removed then added new headings to the second and third pages. I found it hard to pull out a quote as I didn’t want to repeat any of the quotes used in the marginalia. Through looking back at my printed, note filled article I found some great snippets. When placing them I wanted to keep them in the same distorted style of the first page, with the breaking up of the words through new lines.

Next I thought about the positioning of the bubbles and with the sketches and ruff ideas the tutor gave I was able to be more experimental. I knew I wanted to keep the first spread very much the same but the progression needed to be big and powerful. So I started on the second design making certain bubbles bigger and changing the opacity of some of the smaller ones. The final spread I found this a lot harder to try do more experimenting with and be creative so to overcome this I took off about half of the circles. When placing them back I made sure they had a greater presence. 

Monday 4th March – One to One with Olwen Moseley + Improvements

The dean was very helpful as she gave very precise feedback on my work so far.

At first I showed her the original blank layout with no add ons. She was happy with the look and liked the font choice as well at the heading placement. Although she did mention the actual words of the title might need changing as its just a repeat.

Next we looked into the next layer with the hand writing. She advised me to look at scale of the words. I thought about this and decided to have one feature quote with the others much smaller. I decided to make all the script different scales so that the eye can flow and it almost seems like a metaphor for each memory size she has and some has lost connection to her so doesn’t remember the feelings behind it. Through Doing this I noticed that I prefer it showing off and highlighting the digital type behind.

Finally we looked at the third layer of see-through bubbles. She decided that I should include the circles and agreed to keep going with the theme of them. Overall she liked the concept but she felt it needed more thought to it because currently they are just placed in a random arrangement. To achieve a deeper meaning and a better look we came up with the idea of blurring and distorting the elements behind, cutting out the circles so that none or only some over lap or another improvement I could try is to make the circles from old photos. 

From this I took on board the element of cutting out the bubbles but leaving some to overlap like a memory would. I feel that because the circles are over the body text to distort the view to behind even if its only some of them the design would not look crisp or some what refined. Although I did take on board the element of using old photos. So I searched through my holiday photos and made a few testers then placed them on the design. Looking at both designs I prefer the sty;e without the photos. Through having no photos the design will collaborate the fact that the main woman doesn’t like photos and she has to force herself to remember certain elements of her life such as her wedding day. 

Weekend leading up to 4th March – Independent Study

My base has been created, I just need all the extra parts with the layers. To start with I wrote out a list of words/ quotes that I wanted within the design as I didn’t want any of my own words used to seem un-bias.

I started writing out my words trying to get the handwriting up to a high standard. I wanted an old fashioned script style to have the most contrast to everything. Unfortunately my writing is anything but. I had plans to meet up with my dad so kindly asked him to note some things down. After him being very confused and slightly weirded out, I had some good quotes to use.

From this I used illustrator to create line images and neaten up some of the non-straight lines.

I then placed selected phrases within the design, adjusting the angle and size of the script. At first I didn’t add many handwritten elements in as I wanted the digital type to be the main elements but as I looked I decided to make the script the main image so added more and made it bigger.

Through looking back at the research and my initial ideas I wanted to go a step forward and create another layer. This would be created through circles that have a lower opacity. The meaning of having these are to visualise the different memories and some are faded more than others and some are bigger than others.

Week leading up to the 4th March – Independent Study

To develop and achieve my layering ideas I knew I needed to get the base down so that’s where I started.

I recreated the designs opening up a new document to start a fresh and to just make sure every detail was thought out and precise. As I feel the grid system so far has worked I kept it the same throughout, with 5 columns. I wanted to keep the font style the same with the heading as well as the body text.

With the heading already decided as Lust Regular I needed to focus on the styling of the text. The type face has been decided with Cardea OTCE so I looked at the sizing, leading and the overall paragraph layouts. Through printing and adjusting I decided on size of 10 and leading of 12.5. The styling of the paragraphs I felt were more tricky as I was unsure whether to go with indentations or spacing between each paragraph. After looking into the meanings and origins of both I realised that having an indentation is faster for the reader and has been used more commonly as its been around a lot longer. where as the white space between the paragraph that I now know to call blocking is more modern and used regularly online. http://bbebooksthailand.com/blog/block-first-line-indent-paragraphs.html Through this I decided that blocking will fit my design better due to the modern style. It also helps to break up the paragraphs so that they look miss jointed much like her memory.

Week leading up to the 4th March – Independent Study 

From the conversation with my tutor I wanted to start with the least favourite just so that I know it is not the route that I wanted to go down. I chose Azo Sans in black so that the cut out elements could be seen though a very strong bold typeface.  When looking at the design I truly realised that this was not the style I wanted to create, thus decided not to go any further with the other page styles.

Moving forward to my other designs I felt more confident with the research done on marginalia and some artists who like to use layering. From using my typefaces chosen I started with the Bodoni URW in medium, placing the text in a simple layout and then did the same with the Lust in regular. Looking at both fonts Lust stood out to me as more attention grabbing as it has more of a greater depth. The font has an extremely varied weight which I feel gives the design a kinder look.

Moving forward I waned to cut up the word as I discussed earlier for the metaphor of the memory loss. On top of that I wanted to play around with the scale, placement and angle of the heading. Through using a 5 column with 5 mm gutter and a 15 mm margin I was able to use the space for balance of the positive and negative areas.

When creating the other sides I adapted them slightly through adding pull out quotations. I wanted to keep them in the same style with a main heading and then the type. I knew I didn’t want any extra little illustrations as that could ruin the simplicity of the elements.

Week of 25th February – Independent Study

To begin with I wanted to find some type that I have not used before to prove to myself that I am developing my skills and learning new ways to do things. Through using my research I wanted to find a feminine serif typeface that can go with another very different font for the heading and the body text.

Through looking at Adobe Font packages I found several that looked like the style that I wanted to go for. My favourites are Bodoni URW in medium and Lust in regular. When it came to choosing the body text typeface this was harder. Through experimenting and discarding the bad fonts I decided on Cardea OTCE.