LCA Newsletter Reprint - Stock consideration

Got the newsletter reprinted today on several different stock variations, with the black & white design and Pantone blue design range. I found that the previous print outs on newsprint and sugar paper worked quite well but I wanted to move away from the budget looking newspaper feel, but instead approaching it with a more unconventional stock, to deliver a higher end, professional feel while still appealing to the younger target audience. I tested out a 180gsm blue stock, with the black & white design, I didn't think blue on blue would work so had to alter the images and formatting of it to get it printed on this stock effectively.

I think the type and layout specifications work well in this format, the overall size of the newsletter feels a lot more comfortable and more how I wanted it simply from the reduced width of it by 20mm. It definitely feels a bit more refined but I'm still not entirely sure with the direction of the spreads and how this transfers through to the front and back covers. In terms of the blue stock, I think the newsletter works really well with it, pretty amazing how much different the colour of the stock makes to a design, the folds work well and the print quality is a vast improvement from the newsprint and sugar paper. I think this overall outcome would appeal to the target audience more effectively while still carrying the information and tone of a independent art college.

Another print out but on 140gsm matte printed with the Pantone blue as the only colour used throughout. Again I wanted the feel and look of it to move away from the newspaper feel so wanted a proper white stock that would be able to hold the ink well and print the copy out precisely and clearly. The results are surprisingly pleasing; the ink sits well and the images have been printed quite nicely without bleeding through much. Unlike the coloured stock, this however does feel a little corporate for my liking, however this might be something that the college might be looking for.

A final print out, this was a combination of the newsletter printed black & white on the 140gsm matte and the 180gsm coloured stock. An experiment that merges the two tests. I think the coloured stock works well being folded within the corporate looking black & white back/front cover, making it more engaging for the viewer and utilising the stock colour to display the poster side of the design. In comparison to the white, ideally I would like to have a lighter stock, a blue that's less saturated and bit more subtle that would sit comfortably inside.

Personally I prefer the design that's been printed entirely on the coloured stock, however I'm not sure whether I could spend a bit more time developing this or not. I definitely feel that these designs are an improvement from the previous developments, they seem more refined and carry a more design orientated tone to it.

Hopefully this will be it for this brief. Although I did end up taking over a week with the refinements and readjustments with it, I feel that it's a worthy portfolio piece that I have enjoyed working on. I'll be taking these to the tutorials with Joe and hopefully get some feedback from Graham with this, hopefully I won't have to make many adjustments with it!

LCA Newsletter Development

Unfortunately my design for the Leeds College of Art Newsletter only made it to the 2nd round so didn't get picked to be used. Although it wasn't what they were looking for, I quite liked the concept that I had and felt that with a few adjustments it could be a worthy portfolio piece so decided to spend a day developing this and making a few improvements.

One of the issues that was raised during the crit on this was that it resembled my Thought Publication a bit, possibly due to the same stock and exactly the same size, I was aware of this when designing it but wasn't too concerned as it was intended for pitching at the time rather than portfolio. Right now, I'm thinking of changing the size of it, I want to keep the broadsheet format but maybe reducing the width of it to make it seem more academic. I also have a few ideas for the front cover that I'm intending to change now that it's not really a live brief anymore.

From my previous mockups, I had to consider the stock quite carefully due to the design requirements from the marketing team, I wanted it to look quite clinical and professional while still incorporating a tasteful design direction that would appeal to the 16+ target audience. I used newsprint to print the mock up out initially, which worked quite well. However as mentioned from my crit, people did say that it resembled the Thought Publication too much, therefore aswell as making a few adjustments to the size of the newsletter itself, I have decided to get it printed out on a white matte stock instead. I have also developed a black & white version which I intent to get printed onto a coloured stock which I think would improve the overall look and feel of the newsletter as a whole.

Open publication - Free publishing - More development

Test prints printed on standard 80 gsm stock in black & white. Just wanted a final check with the scale and type specifications before taking it to print for the final time.

Making a start

I'm a few days behind schedule with starting this brief, but have finally made some progress on this. In comparison to the catalogue brief, this one's a lot more open in terms of the concept and the design outcomes I could develop. The brief asks for a design direction and campaign that promotes Lego, however after some initial research, I gathered that the majority of the people I questioned were big fans of the product itself, which kind of questioned the purpose of promoting it. Was there a need to promote it or should something else be done around this subject matter?

After bashing out some quick initial thoughts and ideas, I have come to a conclusion that instead of promoting Lego I will produce design materials towards a fictional exhibition that 'Celebrates Lego as a platform for creativity'. At the current state, this will be a fictional exhibition, but I thoughts are on making this into a small internal exhibition that would just be for Leeds College of Arts students. This would allow me to produce the promotional and signage materials aswell as gathering exhibition materials and hosting a Lego session that invites people to build whatever they wanted with Lego. The concept of this would mean that I'd be able to generate more information that would become the content of a publication that concludes the event.

Catalogue Promotional

Development of promotional materials for the Leeds College of Art shop catalogue. I felt that the catalogue itself wasn't really enough for raising awareness of the library's stock and what was available. Now and then, I still notice 1st years struggling to find out where they could buy their materials, so decided to expand the brief a little bit by adding some additional promotional materials.

These will include promotional designs for print and digital.

Open publication - Free publishing - More graphic design

Post Crit

Just out from the crit where I received some good constructive feedback and suggestions on my current progress with the Catalogue brief and Leeds College of Art Newsletter. In terms of the Catalogue I've had mixed reviews so far with the layout and design direction of it, personally I had gone in thinking that I should almost completely scrap the vectored images and have the spreads completely type driven. But after a few mixed suggestions, I'm now having to give things a serious rethink! 

Dave and Liam commented that the newsletter seemed to reflect my rationale and what I like to do more than the catalogue, which is true to some extent. I seemed to have developed the newsletter so much quicker and was a lot more enjoyable than what the catalogue has been so far, maybe I should reconsider or revise the catalogue brief and should start thinking about taking on a few more short briefs. 

Right now I'm going to make a start on the research for my 3rd brief, I have a few alternative ideas for the catalogue as I'm not at all happy with the current state of it, therefore going to give it a break and go back to it in a couple of months. In the meantime, I'm looking forwards to starting the Lego brief, it's not research driven so I can get straight into ideas and the creative side of things. 

Pre Crit

A few initial questions that I'll be going into the crit with;

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Opinions on the current mockup of the catalogue and alternative direction for it. How does it look, feel, is it going the right direction in terms of being clinical, technical and informative? I'm not sure about this so far and have since given a break on it, my main concern is with the use of the images and the hierarchy between type and image. I thinking smaller images and more emphasis on the type.

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Initial thoughts on my very early ideas for the Lego Brief.

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How does my briefs look in terms of responding to my rationale/statement of intent, and do they provide enough scope for me to develop a wide range of printed outcomes that explore print processes and type?

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Do my design outcomes so far fulfill the requirements of the brief?

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How could my current work be improved, conceptually and design wise?

Final Catalogue

Final catalogue printed and photographed ready for the design boards.
I did end up taking a bit more time than expected to refine and get everything completed for the catalogue, there are a still spreads inside that have not been completed but I feel that what I have completed here demonstrate the design direction quite well already.

Brief 03 - Promoting LEGO

Development 04 - Final Mockup

Final mockup of the catalogue printed on 80gsm white stock using a black & white laser printer - to scale. The specification for this is 175mm x 245mm compiled out of 20 spreads including front and back covers.

I think the general design direction is there already, I do like how bare certain pages are, which reflect the idea that it is a functional piece stripped off of all it's aesthetics. What does make the design is the considered layout, uniform spreads and the consistency throughout, which I hope is reflected well in the mock up. I'm glad that I ended up using the stapled stitch instead of the sew as it fits more effectively as a catalogue.

Open publication - Free publishing - More typography

There are a few really minor adjustments I wanted to make, especially after getting some feedback from other people around the studio aswell as with Joe and Graham. These adjustments include minor alignments of text, spacing between the boxes and type for the front cover etc, which I am now aware of and will be making the amendments on for the final print.

LCA Newsletter mock up

Mockup print out of the Leeds College of Art newsletter; the idea was to actually make it in the format of a newsletter, therefore printed on newsprint with a size of just under A3, therefore when folded again it's at a decent size to post off and distribute.

Although the design's no where near completed, I just wanted to get what I had done already printed out to see what it's like in it's full scale and stock. I wasn't entirely sure with the direction so just wanted to check and get a feel of the direction it's heading so far. On a whole, the print out turned out ok, I would have preferred it if the stock worked better as this one seemed too thin for the ink to sit on properly, making some of the text difficult to read. I'm not sure on the tone of the paper either so will be testing other options soon. Also the crit's coming up so wanted to hear some feedback off people before I refine it in time for presenting it for real. From the mock up, I feel a lot more confident with the scale and format of it, the design was initially going to be an A2 folded in half to resemble a conventional newsletter format, but also printed an extra page that would slot in to illustrate how it can easily adapt to more information by adding additional pages. The design direction was quite simple; I wanted to make the logo quite prominent in the newsletter so made it the main focus with the diamond shape surrounding it to resemble an emblem shape. I used this shape as the central design direction, cropping images into diamond shapes and using diagonal lines to crop and separate text throughout. I chose to use a Pantone blue throughout, duotoning the images to keep it quite bold and also to resemble a blue print, which suggests an ongoing/ developing / unfinished copy. ( Whether or not this is good remains undecided! )

In terms of the technical specifications, I've kept it quite simple again, with the headers being Times New Roman Italic the the copy was Helvetica as required by the brief.  I am unsure about the diamond shaped images but overall layout seems feasible as it gives an ordered format yet it's relatively flexible with the potential content. Overall apart from the stock, I'm pretty pleased with the outcome of this, for something that I wanted to spend half a day working on, it has almost developed into a whole brief in itself as I want to spend more time on it revising several areas and developing a further range of materials and outcomes.

Brief 03 - LCA Newsletter redesign

I decided to take on the newsletter brief of redesigning the Leeds College of Art newsletter as my 2nd brief. It was timed rather well as part of my design practice as I was at a low point from working on my 1st brief, and wanted a break from it. I was after a brief that I could literally turn around in a couple of days and would be a potential porfolio piece, and this brief seemed perfect for it. The content was well defined and the guidelines/ restrictions were clear to work with. All I had to come up with was a decent concept for a newsletter format and produce a mock up for it in less than 2 days.

LCA Newsletter ideas / development

I aimed to spend no more than 2 days on this brief as it was relatively straight forward, so went straight into developing some initial ideas. The only requirement for the format was that it needed to be engaging and that it had to eventually fold down to no bigger than A4 if it was to be bigger than A4 in the 1st place. We were limited to 2 colours and the target audience were prospective students and art & design lecturers.

My idea for the newsletter was to make it like an actual newsletter, this would allow me to experiment with more layouts and to test my type skills on a live brief. Therefore I decided that the format was to have a slightly smaller than A2 sheet of paper folded in half to produce a front & back cover and a full spread inside for the content. This idea would mean that I can make the outcome quite professional, I experimented with different grid systems and design directions to come up with a well considered structure and format that could run across a range of different applications.

In terms of the design direction of the newsletter, I chose to use a Pantone Blue for the main colour, I wanted the newsletter to resemble a blue print to imply that it's more personal and open for alterations and additional content, which hopefully connotes that the college is constantly developing with new talent and new work. One of the other requirements of the brief was that we were to make the logo quite prominent in the design, I noticed quite a few people had arranged it to the side or on the corner of a page, which would have been my initial plan aswell, but I decided that it would probably be best to make it the main focal point of the front cover, therefore played around with different alterations to develop it into an emblem like logo, which introduces the 45 degrees lines that run across the overall layout.

Open publication - Free publishing - More newsletter

Printed mockup

Printed a few key spreads out to scale just to check with the layout specifications gain being I start applying it for the rest of the catalogue. The direction that I've chosen is pretty simple, quite technical in terms of the information but applied in quite a minimal format, this is reflected through the use of very thin stroke weights throughout, a uniform typeface throughout, only using black & white and utilising plenty of white space and large margins. 

I wanted the catalogue to be focused on the content as I feel that this is the most appropriate for the context and functional aspect of it. The only thing I struggled with deciding on was the more minor details such as the gutter and margin widths. I was still unsure about the number of columns and rows that I should use to format the catalogue so decided to print out a few and mark out issues that I need to change to help inform the final decision.