OUGD504 - Existing Guide Books

Existing Guide Books:

The Complete Guide: Gin and Tonic uses an illustrative style to display the information. It uses simple line drawings which represent each gin allowing the reader to be able to differentiate the different gins from the different shapes of the bottles. The book is aimed at older adults who are interested in gin. It is a factual book full of what any gin and tonic enthusiast needs to know. 

The Everything Bartender's Book is targeted at bartenders in order to help them with their drink making. It includes lots of photographic examples of how the drinks are supposed to look and large bodies of text that explain in detail what is being seen. 

From looking at books that already exist in the market it is clear that the book needs to be informative but aesthetically pleasing. It should present the information in a way that the reader understands but also be creative and interesting to look through. 

OUGD504 - Designer Speed Dating

Designer Speed Dating:

As a way of making sure that we fully understood each others content we did an exercise in class called designer speed dating. We were given a sheet containing different questions to help us to start generating design ideas. These can be seen in the photograph below.

As you can see from the sheet which I used, my partner and I found this to be quite a difficult task. This is because at this stage we hadn't really had enough time to think about our designs so felt that it was hard to answer most of the questions. However from doing this task I did manage to come up with a couple of things that I could think about going into the designing stage of the brief. 

I was told to avoid using a typical menu shape as the book is not supposed to be a menu so it should steer clear of using this type of design to avoid confusion. It was also suggested that I could look at using a questionnaire in the design to find out what the reader might be interested in flavour wise. This would allow the book to steer them in the direction of what they might like to drink. 

OUGD504 - Research for Gin and Tonic Publication/Understanding the Content

Understanding the content:
The customers choice - Gin and Tonic
- For use of staff behind the bar to help explain to customers the different gins and the combinations.
- For use of the customers when picking gin and tonic drinks.
- Key facts
- No large bodies of text
- Illustration based/simple recognisable imagery
- Easy to navigate through and understand

The Pub:
The Pack Horse - Leeds City Centre

The Pack Horse is placed on site where there originally a pub called The Nag's Head which opened in 1615. In 1780 the pub changed its name to The Slip Inn before it was renovated in 1982 following the discovery of fifteenth-century element of the original building and became The Pack Horse we know today. 

The menu design:

The menus that already exist in the pub are paper and are attached to a wooden stand. The publication which I am designing is not a replacement for the menu as it is a suggestion book but I have been able to take considerations from the menus that the pub has. As they are made of a thin paper they are constantly being replaced by the bar staff due to them getting wrecked. This is something that I need to consider for my publication design when looking at paper stock as I wouldn't want it to continuously get ruined. It therefore would need to be more hardwearing due to the amount of people that will be manhandling the publication. 

History of Pubs Design:

The Templar cross is seen at the front of the pub from when the pub was originally owned by the Order of St John of Jerusalem, successors to the Knights Templar.

The Templar Cross

*Design idea: I could use the Templar Cross on the book cover which would link the publication specifically to The Pack Horse.

Gin:
Originally a Dutch drink.
Evolved from use in herbal medicine.
Became popular in Britain when William of Orange (Leader of the Dutch Republic) and his wife Mary occupied the English, Scottish and Irish thrones.

Gins available:

• Hendricks
• Gordons
• Bombay Sapphire
• Tanqueray
• Opihr
• Whitley Neill
• Monkey 47
• Langleys
• Bulldog
• Portobello Road
• Sipsmith
• Belgravia

Photographs of a Gin and Tonic in The Pack Horse:

Tonic available:
Fever Tree -

• Regular
• Slim Line 
• Elderflower 
• Aromatic
• Mediterranean 
• Lemon
• Spiced Orange Ginger Ale

Content:

Gins and Information:

• Hendricks – Consists of flowers, roots, fruits and seeds. A smooth gin with the right balance of subtle flavours.
• Gordons – distinctively refreshing taste comes from the finest juniper berries and a selection of other botanicals. 
• Bombay Sapphire – created through vapour infusion process which creates a more complexed aromatic liquid for a broader, more balanced flavour. 
• Tanqueray – has a blend of the pure four-times-distilled spirit and a selection of four botanicals (juniper, coriander, angelica root and liquorice). 
• Opihr - crafted with a selection of exotic hand picked botanicals including spicy cubeb berries from Indonesia, black pepper from India and coriander from Morocco. 
• Whitley Neill – an award winning gin that skilfully blends and balances rare African botanicals and unusual aromatics.  
• Monkey 47 – has an audacious combination of native black forest herbs and berries and exotic Asian botanicals.
• Langleys – has a secret blend of 8 botanicals, harvested at their freshest. Hand crafted and distillded in a small English - produced pot. 
• Bulldog – hand crafted at an English distillery. The exotic botanicals and high quality ingredients combined with the quadruple distillation process. 
• Portobello Road – an old style London dry Gin. Containing traditional botanical and spices.
• Sipsmith – hand crafted exclusively for the house of commons. Serving a London dry style that boasts deep juniper notes and a citrus finish.
• Belgravia – a traditional London dry gin that is easy to drink and bursting with original gin flavours. 

For the fruits my client stamped them and put the photographs into Illustrator.
The fruits that are available in the pub to go with the drinks are:

• Orange
• Lemon
• Lime
• Grapefruit

To differentiate the fruits from each other I have decided that I will need to edit them slightly in order to make it more clear which fruit is which without having to include labels. To do this I plan on accenting the colours.

For the tonics I was sent the fever tree logo in the different colours of the different tonics that the pub has to offer. 

• Regular (yellow)
• Slim Line (silver)
• Elderflower (mint green)
• Soda Water (pink)
• Mediterranean (blue)
• Lemon (lime green)
• Spiced Orange Ginger Ale (Orange)

OUGD504 - Handover and Gin and Tonic Guide Brief

As a alteration to the brief which we had been given for the guide book the tutors decided to give us all numbers. The person who had the same number as you would be the person whose book you would be designing rather than your own. You would hand over all of your content and play the role of the author for the other person and would take their content playing the role of their designer. I got the same number as Megan Wilson so therefore will be designing her guide. 

Brief:

This is the brief which Megan wrote for her gin and tonic guide. I have looked at this as a guideline for what she wants from my designs and further discussed the idea with her to make sure that I fully understand the content. 

Village - Ben Holmes

About Village:

• Started in the Corn exchange at the end of 2012
• Aim - create a space where creative/independent publications can been seen in the centre of town. 
• To bring stuff from outside the city into the city and also provide a space for people working and studying in Leeds can show their work.
• Second floor - Gallery Space, not for profit, opportunity for collaboration and to showcase work of people from Leeds and outside Leeds.

Why Self-Publish?

• In the age of the internet where its so easy to get your work seen by people everywhere there is the issue that everyone is able to do this. By creating a zine it slows the process down and means the only work that is being seen is from that particular person. This also involves the use of more senses such as touch and smell. 

What we look for?

• Mainly focus on photography books.
• All elements come together and say a lot about the content inside.
• People need to be able to understand it immediately.

Concept:

• Is it obvious from picking up the book.
• Should be more than collected images and text, it needs to have a meaning. 

Format:

• Has the potential to communicate a lot about a book.
• Can drive the idea.

Design:

• Influences how the work is perceived.
• Should you be able to see the hand of the designer?
• Matthew Connors - Fire in Cairo, good example of the designer/photographer relationship.

Print:

• How you print something can drastically change how the book looks.

OUGD504 - Concept Idea

After the Presentation Feedback it was decided that the best idea to run with for the concept of the book would be to focus on the illustrative stereotypes that are seen in the gym.

The list of stereotypes that are looking at being illustrated are:

• The Sauna Suit
• The testosterone fumed male
• The one that doesn't train legs
• The aqua ladies
• The class fanatic
• The serious swimmers
• The one who does nothing
• The one that videos their workout
• The one needs more clothing
• The PTs
• The one that knows it all
• The naked moisturiser
• Th one who forgot a towel
• The talker/chatterbox
• The full face of makeup
• The boxer
• The coach
• The gear enthusiast
• The gymnast
• The soloist
• The texter
• The grunter
• The poser
• The sweaty-betty

For the illustrations I decided to work with an illustration student as drawing is not my strongest media. As the book is now going to purely illustration based they need to be well drawn and have a certain style which runs through the whole of the book. I am working with Jack Symonds on second year illustration.

I went through with Jack exactly what I was thinking for the illustrations and told him that if he had any style ideas I would be interested to see what they were. I quickly drew a few very rough examples of what sort of features I was talking about for some of the characters for him to look at to get a better idea of what I meant. These can be seen below:

The one who doesn't train legs

The full face of makeup

The sauna suit

The testosterone fumed male

The aqua lady

The class fanatic

The serious swimmer

The one who does nothing

The one who videos their workout

The one who needs more clothing

The PT

The one who knows it all

The naked moisturiser

The one who forgot a towel

The talker

The talker

The boxer

OUGD504 - Typesetting: Rules, Theories and Practical Uses

Introduction to Typesetting

• Composition of text by means of arranging physical types or digital equivalents. Stored letters and other symbols (sorts in mechanical systems and glyphs in digital systems) retrieved and ordered.

The Line - Reading Process

• Your eyes spring forward and jumps back known as saccades, they alternate with fixed periods lasting 0.2-0.4 seconds.

Typography

• 3 x Elements
• The letter - design of the individual characters/glyphs and anatomy
• The word - how these glyphs fit together.
• The line - combination and arrangement of word in body or sequence.

Hierarchy

• In every communication some messages will be more vital than others. Type size, style, colour, wright, treatment.

Alignment

• Left Aligned - Ranged left with ragged right edges
• Justified Text - Can look clean and classic
• Centred and right aligned - not commonly used and is harder to read
• In typography - "rag" refers to the irregular or uneven virtual margin. 

Paragraphs

• Consistent paragraph style cement the look and feel of type
• Indented - small indentation at start of paragraphs. first paragraph does not have indentation.
• Full line break - full line in-between paragraphs

Letter spacing/leading

• Refers to distance between the baseline of successive lines of type. Originates from hand typesetting, strips of lead were used to increase the vertical distance between lines.
• Text is set with bad leading appears cramped with ascenders and descenders can clash and touch this is confusing to the eye due to lack of white space
• Leading needs to be slightly higher than point size. 12pt text, 12pt leading. 

Tracking 

• Same as leading but horizontally.
• Amount of space between groups of letters to affect the density in a line or block of copy. Readability decreases when negative tracking is applied.
• Don't go below -40 or about 40 tracking.

Kerning and Pairs

• Kerning is the process of adjusting spaces in-between individual characters/letterforms in proportional font, achieve a visually pleasing result.
• Some letter pairings often letter with overhang, may need particular kerning

Hidden Characters

• Invisible characters such as returns, spaces, tabs, etc. only appear when have "show hidden characters" turned on.
• Show how the text is constructed. Useful for finding double spaces and unintentional line breaking.

Line Length

• Go from anything between 8 words and 12 words per line.
• Anything more than 12 words becomes to long and hard to read.
• Overly extremely short line length causes ugly rag in a body of text.

Widows and Orphans

• Words left alone at the end of a paragraph, hanging or separated from a complete block of text.
• Look awkward and should be avoided.
• Use tracking and line spacing to remove any widows and orphans.

Dashes and Spaces

• Never use a hyphen (-) in places of an en dash (–) or and em dash (—).
• Hyphens - used at the end of a line to connect a word. Also used for two words that have a new meaning or concept. 
• En Dash - used to show the range of things (e.g. London – Leeds) Needs spacing in-between to show they are separate.
• Em Dash - longer than an en dash. used in speech to show if someone is being interrupted. Can also be used to show a pause. Needs spacing like the en dash to show they are still separate words.

Reading:
www.punctuationguide.com

Grids

• Raster Systeme: Josef Mulle-Brockmann
• Considered by some to be the most important part of type setting and graphic design.
• Should always be using a grid when designing for publication and experimenting with the different grid layouts.
• Type is set to grids to keep it clean and organised.

Rivers 

• Gaps in typesetting which appear to run through the paragraph of text due to coincidental alignment of spaces.
• Can test for rivers by turning a proof sheet upside down to examine the text.

Baseline grid

• All text has to fit on a baseline grid - meaning that everything is horizontally aligned keeping everything systematic and organised.
• Just like writing on a piece of lined paper.

OUGD504 - Design for Print

Terminologies:

Colour management:
Good colour management ensues the accuracy of colour reproduction between different equipment and processes in print production.

• Gamut - RGB, CMYK and hexachrome are examples. Gamuts describe how accurately particular systems can reproduce certain colours.
• Colour profiles - pre-defined in relation to specific printing equipment and stock. Differ on photoshop, illustrator and indesign as they assume different print requirements for each package. 
• Coated/Uncoated - paper coating provides a certain surface quality but can affect how ink is absorbed - how sharp the image will appear. 
• Process colour - CMYK, in offset lithography colours are applied using the CMYK gamut using half-tone dots.
• Spot colours - must be defined if a colour to be printed lies outside the working gamut system. Must be defined within the image file (swatches) and in any conversations with the printer. Can be defined using the Pantone colour system as a reference - the Pantone codes will not look the same on screen as they do in print so use printed reference. 

Printing and Alignment:

• Lithography - This printing process uses plates (one for each colour) and ink is applied on the basis that oil and water repel each other. Ink from players are 'offset' onto a rubber printing surface before being applied to the paper.
• Web - Ultra-high volume printing (think newspapers) often onto huge rolls of paper. Often uses flexography (relief) or rotogravure (intaglio).
• Black or 'registration' black - In offset lithography black is one plate in the printing process, registration is a black achieved by printing all four process colours in the same space.
• Bleed - "full bleed" images must be printed beyond the margin limits to ensure that white edges don't appear after trimming. 
• Crop marks - communicate the trim regions. 

Finishes and Specialist Techniques:

• Tipped-in page - a page that is printed separately but bound along with the other pages, Tip-ins can use different formats or different stock to the rest or the pages.
• Tip-on - Added content glued to a page or cover.
• Duplexing - bonding two different stocks together to act as one page with different textures or colours on each side.
• Foil blocking - Coloured foil is pressed into the stick using foil stamp.
• Embossing/debossing - embossed refers to a raided surface and debossing refers to an indented surface.
• Die cutting - a design cut out of the surface using a metal die
• Laminate - a plastic coating heat-sealed onto a stock to provide a crisp finish and a liquid resistant surface.
• Varnish - A colourless coating which can be applied similarly to spot colours. Varnish layers are often identified to the printer on a separate file. 

Visiting Professional - Type Design

Type Design: A Process - Dalton Maag

Custom typeface project:

• Choose a steering group of people who have a kick-off workshop - what the client wants and how to get there/Information grabbing. 
• Talk about the clients existing brand.
• Look at core values of the organisation brand by association pictures.
• Typographic association.
• Font grid:

• Then start to look at shared design features.

Revisit the Brief:

• Choose a team (about 10 designers).
• Then discuss the brief and what the client wants.
• Then take into consideration the type features and whats needed.
• Draw in: PostScript Outline
• Deliver in: True Type Outline
• Normally work on 7 or 8 ideas at a time.
• Once some ideas a present they are then narrowed down to looking at just the core characters: aehinoptv - These ones are used because they are the ones that contain all the features that need to be looked at. 
• Then introduce capitols.

When designing:

• Start with normal weight - when these are complete introduce the extreme weights - light and extra bold.
• Normally have to explore the details (make things smaller, lighter, smoother, etc)
• When the client is happy: ASCII set - Upper case, lower case.
• Interpolation - symbols, change in weight.
• Once the design work is sorted - move onto kerning.
• 50% of the job is the engineering of the font - add opentype features (stylistic alternatives, proportional figures)

Finally add hinting - controlling the way the characters will look using pixels.

Develop: Desktop fonts, Web fonts, App fonts.

Optical principles of drawing letters:

Contrast - imitating the hand written. Application of contrast is extremely important to get correct.

• Weight need to be taken out of horizontals.
• Round elements need to have an overshoot to prevent them looking too small.
• Crossbar need to be slightly higher than the centre.

OUGD504 - Writing a Brief

Author

Sophie Rose, Illustrations – Jack Symonds

Brief title / working title

How to Survive a Trip to the Gym – for Beginners

Short description of publication (purpose)

The publication is going to be a fun and interesting guide full of illustrations of gym stereotypes for new members of the gym to look out for. Its aim will be to encourage beginners to feel confident in the gym and be less intimidated by members who appear to be more experienced.

Target reader / audience (include reasons)

Health and Fitness industry Beginners to the gym Anyone who finds the gym intimidating Any gym goers

Genre

Humour

Competition (3 titles)

Ladybird books for adults Dummies guides F in English – F in Exams – Richard Benson

Positioning (USP, bookshop section, other points of sale)

Humour section in a bookshop ‘Stocking Fillers’

Price point

Cheap, cheeky and cheerful

Mandatory requirements

Small book so that it is quite inconspicuous and fits the style of a 'stocking filler'. Hard back - if people choose to take it to the gym it would need to be sturdy. Also as the gym is all about weights and getting fit a harder cover would be more representative than a soft and flimsy one. All of the illustrations included on the inside in a clear and appropriate layout that makes it easy to read and understand quickly for the reader who most likely will not take too much time reading it. Strong and bold text and design to represent the strength within the gym.