design practice: November 2012

Thursday, 29 November 2012

Responsive: Design Process 2 - Ideas Development

Age Groups for the classic books published by Penguin:

0-3

The Snowman

Hungry Caterpillar (5)

Goldilocks and Three Bears (5)

Cinderella (5)

Tale of Peter Rabbit (8)

Georges Marvellous Medicine (8)

Milly Molly Mandy (8)

James and Giant Peach (11)

BFG (11)

Pinocchio (9)

Jungle Book (11)

The Railway Children (11)

Adventures of Robin Hood (12)

Wind in the Willows +

Worst Witch (12)

Matilda (12)

Secret Garden +

Peter Pan +

Borrowers (12)

Anne of Green Gables (12)

Treasure Island (13)

Jungle Book (12)

10+

Alice in Wonderland (15)

Responsive: Design Process 2 - Crit

Childhood Classics I sourced Categorised:

1800's

Alice in Wonderland
Oliver Twist
Jungle Book
Treasure Island

1900-50

Wind in the Willows
Peter Rabbit
Secret Garden
Railway Children
Velveteen Rabbit
Magic Faraway Tree
Winnie the Pooh
Peter Pan
Famous Five
Wizard of Oz
Milly Molly Mandy

50-Present

BFG
Charlottes Web
Mr Men
Hungry Caterpillar
Borrowers
101 Dalmatians
Narnia
George Marvellous Medicine
Matilda
Worst Witch
Cat in the Hat

Ideas:

Modern take on books

type
pattern
imagery
format

Kept in a sleeve or a box as a collection
Interact with now generation of children and parents
Add to collection as grow up - encourage reading
Transferable to digital ebooks
Keep sake limited edition series of childhood classics
Different age ranges of reading
Stimulate there development
Becomes part of childhood

playground games
stickers
collectibles

Boards for crit -

Feedback

Clarity of concept - good

Breadth of ideas - good

Appropriateness of response - very good

Contextual Awareness - very good

Analysis/Understanding of Audience - very good

Level of Innovation/Originality - good

Quality/Clarity of Presentation - good

Areas for Improvement:

Make a decision of what kind of style you are going to adopt for the covers.

Think about combination of type and image - just get some designs going.

Addressed the idea of being digital - keep this in mind throughout.

Revisit the idea of who will be reading it - parents or children?

Clarity of concept - average

Breadth of ideas - good

Appropriateness of response - very good

Contextual Awareness - good/very good

Analysis/Understanding of Audience - very good

Level of Innovation/Originality - average

Quality/Clarity of Presentation - good

Areas for Improvement:

Research more into the history behind the books. You already seem to have an understanding of the history (dates) but think about context, how you could bring context to the book cover in a concise way

A very modern design would fail to bring nostalgia/evoke memories within parents who are buying the books for there children, consider how you can appeal to this older generation as well as young generation

Activities -

Research

History of the story

Where is it based?

Typography

Existing modern - what does and doesn't work when reinvented

Ebooks - colour/different covers?

Global aspect

Development

Draw some visuals

Illustrations?

Screen print foiling

Production

Promo.

Point of Sale

Consider the format

Responsive: Design Process 2 - Initial Thoughts

Penguin

Analysis -

Brief:
bring a classic childhood tale into the new generation - reinvent it
Problem:
books are old fashioned and children aren't read bed time stories anymore
Need to know:
the story/the characters/audience/penguin company
Already exists:
the original versions other child story books
What they want:
cover design - imaginative
stands out - in store and digital
cover copy supplied
design to template
178mm x 129 mm
spine 20.6mm

Research -

Ideas:
whole series of books
campaign for bedtime reading
promotion
interactive installation

What happens if...?
I don't stick to book size
I make a series
Make it interactive
It becomes an installation

Wind in the willows:
Parents past experience
Childhood
Storybook
Mole
Animals
Bed time reading
Fantasy
Fictional
Creatures

Ideas -

- Die cut illustrations

- Keep sake book
Foiled text hardback
Wrapped in a sleeve box with tissue
Precious item

- Use aspect of child development - senses etc.

- Walk through installation of childhood classic stories:
Character connection them
Walk through cut out characters into new story

Things to Research -

- Book shops:
What stands out?
Child books
Other copies of story

- Online presence
- Famous child stories
- Children books now
- What makes a book keepable?
- What do parents like?
- What age group children and parents by classics?

Wednesday, 28 November 2012

Design Production: Website Design 4

Have to buy
Domain name - name for the website

http://www.123-reg.co.uk

Go for cheapest one
Based in the UK - available if anything goes wrong in your

Have to buy hosting
- the space you store your website on for people to access

http://www.one.com/en/

Manage site:

Click on site then pencil too;

Go to menu option servers and press the + sign

This is were you fill in the details of your hosting.
eg. ftp.apple.com
Username and password you get emailed when you get your hosting
Click test and that will tell you if it works

This symbol above the list of your site folder is your connection - goes green when your connected

Drag files from your root folder into the hosting folder - if you make a change to drag page over

Content manage system - so people can alter the website themselves

http://www.cushycms.com/en

editable regions option in dreamweaver - access to those areas eg. content so they don't mess up whole website

Tuesday, 27 November 2012

Design Production: Design for Web - Website Prodcution

I generated my columns from my wireframe using the measurements I had calculated. I placed 4 separate sections within the navigation to place the different part such as the navigation tags, date and logo.

When creating my website I tried to add a countdown timer to the date. I found a code on here :http://www.htmlhelpcentral.com/messageboard/showthread.php?7526-HTML-For-A-Countdown-Clock

It originally looked like this:

But I altered the coding to make it as close as I could get it to what I wanted

I realised however that it would have to use a server to get the countdown and therefore it wouldn't work without hosting it. I will have to substitute this with just text.

I also realised that my images that I saved for web from illustrator were appearing low quality and pixalated. I altered this by saving them as PNG from photoshop which also allowed them to be transparent.

This enhanced the quality of my images.

I realised I had been making an index page and forgot to make a template to go across my other pages. This meant I went back a few steps and created a template and made a new index and other pages using the template.

New index from template:

I added a video with a similar idea to what the website is about this. This is substituted for the video that would be in place there with design similar to the website and promoting material.

I changed the colours to the my theme now that I have everything in it's right place.

I decided to change the countdown substitute to make it more atheistically pleasing but also to emphasise the focus on the numbers

I also noticed the logo was cut off slightly and might be ineligible to read so I twiddled the pt size and leading in order for it to be readable and retransferred the image.

Design Production: Design for Web - Crit Feedback

Strengths:

Red and white is very war like
We like how you have made charitable websites more aesthetically pleasing
Good colour scheme
Planning is key and your on your way
Good effective market to target because of the all the poo'er peace websites
Relevant colour scheme red - awareness, danger etc.

Areas for Improvement:

Annual Peace Day should be much more clear (think of 5 second rule)
When talking about the count down we think it should be a direct count down
(4months, 13 days, 9 hours)
This would make the count down more understandable to the viewer
Should of put most the figures in bold as they're lost against the boldness of the date

Considerations:

Are you going to make a Facebook/twitter page?
Very good idea would be great with Facebook page!
How would the chapters be displayed? In the same layout?

Response:

I think it would be good if on the contact page it linked to the different social networks that were own pages for the charity event as well as on the bottom of the pages in the footer. Also this made me think of creating an app feature where people had the template instructions to create a crane. Making it a viral campaign - eg. adverts on facebook page, around youtube videos etc.

Monday, 26 November 2012

Design Production: Design for Web - Mock up

Wire frame for my final scamp:

Mock up on illustrator of the website homepage:

I decided to add some space to the top of the layout which I hadn't left initially just to balance it out better.

I also changed the picture to black and white to make it look more professional and less tacky.

Design Boards:

Wednesday, 21 November 2012

Design Production: Print Samples

Paper samples from Fedrigoni -

Paper samples from St Cuthberts Mill

Sample of Laminate paper - durable quality

Paper samples from Letterworks

Design Production: Final Crit

Mock up for Crit:

I sourced some gloss black vinyl as I couldn't get matte in time and stuck out the shape on the machine. I decided to leave the middle bit outs as it didn't look very good with just the thin line.

I printed out mock ups of the page which had the tracing paper layered over content so I could get some feedback on them.

I also printed out an example of the tracing paper chapter page over the following page to get feedback on those and so people understood how it would appear visually as well as the white on black to check if it was legible as body copy.

Group 1

Strengths:

Aesthetically pleasing, looks professional
Unique, good use of images, eye catching
Tracing paper - really creative approaches good use of stocks and shows different effects with stock
Really innovative approach
Good text layout
Good experimenting with stock
Like the tips
Printed really nicely
Design boards clear
Informative without being too much information

Areas of Improvement:

How will it be bound?
Font size for issu?

Response:

My bounding information is on my design boards and in notebooks - Saddle stitched with staples

Group 2:

Strengths:

Art work is clever with red 'corrections'
The print idea is really clever even for the actual title of the publication
Cost effective book - most of it is B&W

Considerations:

Colour coded sections are really good but odd the colours to the following pages too? So on every every page you know where you are in the book?

I was really pleased with my crit feedback it was all positive and they didn't have anything bad to say. I didn't realise how thought through my idea was that it didn't need to be questioned at this point. I think it helped having printed out examples of pages in my book and the cover so people could see and understand what I was talking about on my design sheets and blog.