Emily's Graphic Design Blog

Now I had finalised my booklet design, I printed the booklet using a Phaser printer. Printing it as a booklet, the printer printed, folded and stapled the booklet at once. Due to the bleed, I needed to print it on A3 with crop marks, cutting it to size with a scalpel and metal rule while folded. To give a neat finish, I also cut the right edge of the pages as once folded, the inner pages stick further out of the book, creating a messy layered effect. Once printing the first booklet, I noticed some issues with the final print that weren't visible beforehand. Firstly, some images printed pixelated and needed to be replaced with larger substitutes. I also noticed the watermark effect I had placed on the history pages of each typeface was missing in the print. I deduced that as I had adjusted the tone of the grey with the opacity tool, the colour was to pale and I darkened the image by bringing up the opacity percentage. To test the theory, I printed a test print and found th...

Throughout my booklet design, I used a bleed for multiple elements to extend blocks of colour to the edge of the page eliminating the white border created by printers. To allow for this I adjusted the marks and bleed options whilst setting up the document in InDesign, to allow for a 5mm bleed around the page. I then stretched each element to the outer red guidelines to ensure the print would be correct and no aspects would be cut off.  I also formed the entire booklet using grids and guides to create an organised and coherent design that would be pleasing to the readers eye. I used a 17 row by 12 column grid aligned to the page to allow for the most layout options for each page. It also helped to keep the grid equal across the entire page, whilst matching the margins. Below are screen shots of the pages as they were ready to print, showing the guidelines and bleed lines I used to create the piece. 

Previously, I completed the poster designs for Baskerville and Gill Sans, experimenting with colour schemes and selecting the final house style for the posters. Following on from this, I began working on the Mistral and American Typewriter Posters, focusing on the letterforms of their initials and creating designs in the same style. For each design, I decided to alter the lower playbill style information bar, alternating between different layouts to create different styles. By doing this, I was able to present their different characters, for example Gill Sans uses a geometric style with justified text and boxy approach, whereas, American Typewriter utilises different orientations of text to appeal to the more decorative slab serif style. The challenge of the posters was to create four separate colour schemes that can be displayed together yet are still powerful apart. I used the 'colour guide' tool in Adobe Illustrator and colour theory to connect the four main back...

To continue my poster development, I decided to research colour schemes to help me choose the design I would like to move forward with and follow for the final two typefaces. I began by looking online at colour palettes, focussing on bold and eye-catching combinations rather than pastel and pale tones. After looking at various collections I selected a green, orange and pale yellow palette, as the combination of colours compliment each other and give a bold and unexpected appeal. Poster Designs 1: For the first design, I decided to use the green as the background as it has a bold colour allowing the text to stand out in white but not as bright as the orange, which would be too alarming on the eyes. By using the four-colour colour palette, I was able to spread the colours throughout the design layering them differently for each location. Also, the use of colour has improved the design without need to change or alter the design. The first designs have taken the colour palette wel...

Using paper modelling as the concept for my posters, I narrowed down the initial ideas and drew thumbnails with more detail. From here, I tested the suitability of the ideas and created paper models of each, to see the final effect and whether I would develop these further. Overall, the designs transferred to models well, however, I found these designs more childish than I expected. Therefore, more development was needed in the overall aesthetic but also in creating a house style, as the images lack continuity and a connection to one another. I think the paper planes are the most successful and visually pleasing design, whereas, the space design is the least impactful and understandable for the audience.

The next step of the project, was to look at current poster designs, evaluating how they communicate and inspirations I can take for my designs. These are a few designs I found as inspiration: These first designs have the same aim as the posters I will design for my project. They use imagery to present design principles, specifically in this cane, emphasis and contrast. Both primarily use colour and shape to send this message, emphasis uses the bright red offset against the greyscale surroundings to bring emphasis to the centre triangle and contrast uses the reversed repetition of the squares to give a line of contrast. http://www.designpanoply.com/blog/creative-inspiration-10-principles-of-design These posters have the purpose of representing characters using only a sheet of paper. They use very simplistic methods but effectively send the message to the public of the character they represent. In this case, Rear Window is represented by the cut white paper ...