Changing Faces – Day One

Monday 11th February – Project launch + workshop

The launch day started with a recap of all the grid system, paragraphing and lettering styles. This lecture was more in depth, going into specifics about the layouts and minor details within one design. As a graphic designer I will have to look for the details that normal people don’t see to fine tune them. These will include;

• the rag/ kerning – overall paragraph style for visuals
• level of hierarchy – lead the eye they way you want
• scaling of the image – cut offs elements to use the viewers imagination/ shows the whole picture to be factual
• dropping/ cutting off some letters – the viewer has to think about a whole word not just read it
• layering/ mixing  illustrations with contemporary typography –
• type detailing – en/ em dash – the used of the correct length
• indentation/ hanging indention – paragraph styles to separate new lines – used to fit with the chosen time period
• Ligature – 2/3 letters placed together for ease of letterpress/ block printing – old fashioned/ can fit in with a specific target audience

 

To prepare us for the official brief we had a small workshop to create 4 double
page spreads between 4 of us. This simplified brief included black and white only, A5 pages and it needed to be cohesive with a clear pace. Each group had a simple title/ topic and mine was “To drone or not to drone.”

To begin with we looked into articles and quickly chose one that fitted the topic well. Then when reading we decided to utilise photos within the articles as well as use photos from individual research.

http://www.ashireporter.org/HomeInspection/Articles/To-Drone-or-Not-to-Drone/15188

https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/uk-drone-laws-2019-3146402

I took the lead with creating a mock up of a grid system, ready to send across to the rest of my group. Before I sent the attachment we all decided on two font styles; one for the title (Oswald Bold) and the another for the body text.

I knew I wanted a whole image taken up across one page and almost intruding another. Then with the white text placed in the image it would have a more aesthetic balance.

Overall I am happy with my outcome as it has a strong  hierarchy with a good balance of type to image. Looking back I think that over all the designs have a different style with the layouts, due to one not having a full photo page and another having a cut out image. On top of this we should had printed a tester font size as the body text is a little too small to be fully legible across a wide range of people.

When we were in the group the tutor mentioned the fact that of the paragraph styling were different throughout the 4 double page spreads. Some had indention and other had a wider leading where a new paragraph started.

In general I feel this helped in the fact that I now know what details to look at and how to create a visually stimulating design across several number of pages.