In lesson 2, I have learnt that it is very important to learn about the skeletons before dressing the letters in designing any of the typefaces. I thought designing typefaces was easy and we could just draw it out without experiencing these process. But drawing skeletons and dressing the letters makes the whole set of letters looking more decent and nice. Same skill as how we draw a human, first we draw its skeleton and then we draw its body shapes out, and last we put garments on.
For my 2 selected typefaces, I have chosen Bodoni and Avenir to work on. As they both have obvious difference of their serifs, forms, thickness of strokes.
Bodoni: More extravagant and variety. It has less rounded stress compared to Avenir. Moreover, it has more serifs for its arms, legs, foots etc.
Avenir: Same thickness of strokes constantly, simple and no serifs, arms, legs and foots at all time.
For the final 3 letters I have chosen from one of 2 these styles of letter are A, Q, R from Bodoni, the reason I choose Bodoni is because it has more varieties and serifs compared to Avenir. It Aesthetically looks more gorgeous and traditional as well. In advertising, Bodoni has been used in many logos as of its classic style like the classic of “CK” Calvin Klein. Nowadays, variations on the Bodoni font have appeared in many places in the entertainment media. I like now Bodoni is a modern typeface that so many people would use it for branding and industrial design.
On week one, we first tried to investigate the anatomy of different fonts with or without serifs, in these 2 kinds of fonts, we tried to make as many comparisons as we can and picked 3 favorite ones to present in class, they are letters O, J, and C. The most obvious contrast we could see between these 2 kinds of letters are about their serifs, thickness of the strokes, legs and the stresses.
Throughout the whole project, I have had a very precious time and experience interviewing a person who works for the community and I am not familiar with, lessons learning to take good images, use suitable grids for my publication, types of layouts, bindings, and having deeper understanding of using Indesign to design my entire publication.
My ideas of making this publication with interviewing John was to use images of him working at Xtreme entertainment to tell people how a person/ employee working at a public space contributes and interact with the stakeholders, as well as I have had a unforgettable and heart warming experience with him before therefore I could remember him so well.
Other than telling stories of him working there, I have also talked about his personal ideal career, and to let the reader understand more about John from another perspective instead of just telling how he works with his customers and colleagues.
I have made quite a few changes on my grids and layout as I have decided to use ring binding for my publication. The problem of ring binding is that it will create a gap across the pages, therefore I have only decided to put two images across two pages. I have used 170gsm paper for my inside pages and 1000gsm black cardboard for its cover. The size of my publication is in A4 which is 210mm x 297mm.
The colour of my entire publication is in black colour and neon colour because I wanted to show the colour tone and lightings from Xtreme entertainment to my publication.
Through designing this publication, I have learnt to take uo my courages to communicate with the people I am not familiar with, have deeper understanding of using Indesign, deciding a suitable binding for my publication, making good layouts, telling my clear understanding from my mind to a publication through images and words.
Phewww I have finally done my public intervention, the most embarrassing experience I have ever had… I have tried to record the public intervention inside Xtreme entertainment but the manager ended up just told me off by saying no photographs even though I have asked for the access from John. Therefore I moved to record outside the McDonalds which is just locating beside Xtreme, it was super duper awkward as my camera was also recording the man sitting inside, he stared at me with a questioning face or maybe thinking that I am weird.. For the time lapse video, there were some people looking at the poster while they walked pass the front door, but most people focus on me and my camera more than the poster as I have set up the tripod to support my camera. However I am glad that there was a couple stopped for the poster and they actually spent time on looking at the poster, they could recognize John easily because they always bring their son there to play.
I cannot explain how happy and touching I am when I see my babe (publication covers) are done, I kept recording and taking pictures when the laser printer was printing it out. This time I have also have the tape on to avoid burning the cover, however, the process of peeling the tapes off was such a pain, the cover did not get burn but my finger did :'(, it worths though, I don’t care about this pain as long as the result of my cover is looking good hahaha. I have also printed on A3 170 gsm coated papers then crop them into A4 sizes after a while of doing printing tests on the normal A3 papers. And now I just need to bind the publication then I am done!
I used a series of photos to make a poster for my public intervention and I did not put a big front image of John on it because I want to know how many people can recognise John with just looking at his side face, bowling lanes and the bowling balls, as these are the main elements he would get in touch to when he works. I am going to display this A1 huge poster outside Xtreme entertainment and make a one hour time lapse video as well. Wow, another and hopefully the last embarrassing experience in my year one learning journey, might be fun though!
My second laser cut experience- It is always fun and satisfying looking at the laser printer to print my final design out. Ken has suggested me to put the tape on the cardboard to avoid burning it.
Paper used: A4, 120gsm coated papers
Printing & Mockups: Failed badly as the printing set up was not correct, therefore the order of the pages are not right, papers wasted and money wasted.
Money spent: over $30 nzd 😢
Overall outcome: need to be super aware of the printing set up and going to use 170gsm papers instead of 120gsm. Moreover, I am going to print on A3 papers because my publication size is A4, printing on A4 papers do not give enough rooms for printing the whole page out.
This is my publication cover and back design, for the white areas I am going to laser cut them away and for the text “E-XTREME” and the patterns, I am going to just engrave them to make some textures on the cover.
Sharon's daily