I decided for this brief that I wanted to produce something which would be helpful but also something that people would want to read. I wanted it to be relevant to first year students across the country not just LCA Graphic Design students. I wanted to produce a publication that had an interesting production feature. I wrote a brief including all of this.
Design and produce a publication that will engage new first year students and attempt to give them a taste of the type of things to expect in their first year at university. The size of the publication should be B5 and it should incorporate an experimental production feature.
The publication should have a light, friendly tone of voice that communicates clearly with first years. There should not be any large bodies of text within the publication to ensure it will capture the attention of the students and should be humorous for the same reason.
I started mind mapping some ideas for the project and very quickly came up with a few that I was happy with. I started coming up with design ideas for the how to write about you work idea. I think I wanted to do this more because I liked the name that I had come up with for it, 'Bullshitting for Beginners.'
I decided to go with the 'First year Regrets' idea. The publication would allow first years to learn from the mistakes of people who have done first year. Shown above are some of my ideas for the publication.
I gathered content from classmates and friends who have completed first year. I used a survey to do this
initially but got few replies. I decided that asking people face to face would be the best way to do this.
I spent some time doing research, looking at the design of existing publications. Some of these are shown on my design context blog.
I used a 7 column grid for the pages. I used a 40mm margin as I wanted a large border.
I experimented with a few different typefaces. I wanted a simple sans serif typeface but because I wanted to use different weights within the quotes the typeface had to have a large choice of weights. I chose Supria Sans because it had lots of weights and because I like the way the italics are somewhere between a serif and a sans serif.
I used a fairly heavy off white stock for the pages as there aren’t loads of pages and I wanted to book to feel substantial. The off white colour looked good against the green colours.
I decided to use the two colour blend, both for aesthetics and also to signify the changes you go through throughout first year. I was really happy with the quality of the print. I was originally planning on using orange and yellow colours for the publication but decided against this as I wanted to use the same colour blend for the type inside the pages as I did for the cover.
I used silver ink for the type on the cover to give the book a high end look and also because it stands out against the green.
I used two binds on either side as I wanted to separate the 'I regret not...' quotes and the 'I regret...' quotes. I justified the type according to the way I justified the content. I used the same font size and style for consistency but the justification showed the difference between the two.
I went and chose out a colour of thread that would compliment the colour of the cover. Despite this being a small detail I think it makes a difference to the overall look of
I had some trouble with the making of the book. I made a bit of a mess of the binding and had to use glue to fix a couple of rips in the paper. Luckily it wasn't too noticeable. I also had problems with the size of the book. I got the measurements wrong for the cover so I had to trim the book down by about a centimetre on the long edge. This made the margins uneven which I wasn't happy about. Despite these problems I am still happy with the outcome of the book. I feel it is a strong publication aesthetically and performs it intended function very well.
