Tuesday 26 February 2013

OUGD404: Design Principles - Construction of Grids

Before you can apply a grid, you must understand the requirements of the grid for the work produced.

Typeface, text and illustrations, print method and paper quality, must be confirmed beforehand (ideally).

Always start with small sketches.
  • Thumbnail sketches will make your job of final layouts easier and productive
  • Thumbnail sizes should be proportionate to the final format.
  • Which will make your final layouts easier and productive. 
Before drawing your sketches, consider the number of columns needed.

For example
  • 1 Column only for text and illustrations give little freedom of layout
    • Restrictions of making illustrations small, medium or large.
  • 2 Columns logically, gives you more scope
    • 1 column for text 
    • 1 column fore illustration
    • they can be mixed together
  • 2 column division can be split into more columns.
Three columns
  • Opportunities for arranging and accommodating text and illustrations in numerous sizes. 
Disadvantages of 6 column systems are:
  • Lines of text will be narrow
  • Small typeface will have to be used
  • However, this all depends of the function which you wish to perform.
For statistics, figures, graphs & trend line publications
  • Use 4 columns per page.
  • 4 Columns can be subdivides into 8, 16+
The widget of a column dictates the size of typeface used.

The rule:
  • The narrower the column is the smaller typeface.
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Thumbnails and development

In a nut shell
  • Make a variety of thumbnails of layouts/design
  • Do not just rely on one set of thumbnails.
  • Enlarge a small selection of appropriate thumbnails by 1:1.
  • Compare them and select and replete process until you feel confident with the design.


Apply Type to Columns
  • First time must fit flush to the top limit of the clump grid.
  • The last line must stand of the bottom limit.
  • Keep calm, it is difficult to find the final solution the first time around
  • It could mean that your grid field is too high, or too low.
  • Divide into two columns
  • Split into 3 further fields
  • Decided what point size you wish to use, and there should be an even number of lines in each field. 
  • 10 point type - 15 point leading
  • Column lenth 15cm
  • Loosely means use 15 point leading
  • And this length there must be 10 lines per field
  • Meaning 30 lines every 15 cm
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Font Heights

  • 4 point type - 6 point leading: Caption Text (What's your smallest text on the page going to be)
    • Select lines, draw a line at the highest point of the Ascender, and the lowest point of the descenders
    • Fit two lines within this, and you get
  • 7 point type - 10 point leading: Header and footer text
  • 10 Point type - 13 point leading: Body text
  • 20 Point type: Subheading
  • 40 Point type: Headline
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Type and Picture (8 Field Grid)

  • A4+ Format
  • 8x20 Field grids
  • 8 field grids are used frequently fort advertising material and brochures
  • If using 8 field grids, you can subdivide into 16 field grids.
  • 8 to 16 field grids give you a range of possibilities. 
  • 8 grid fields allow various sizes of illustrations to be portrayed
  • You can use with or without text
  • You need to have a good perception of composition. 
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Following this, in the session, we opened inDesign and learnt some new methods to construct various formats of grids within InDesign. We also learnt multiple ways do perform the same task, so we can find one to use which we find easiest or most efficient. I recorded the process, which you can see in the video I made, below.


Tuesday 19 February 2013

OUGD404: Design Principles - Cannons


Cannons and Grids, week 2.

Van De Graaf
  • A grid is like scaffolding,
  • Organised structure,
  • Helps continuity
  • Flows the information
Layouts are athletic quality, it's not a quick solution. 
  • The construction on the cannon works for any page ratio.
INSERT DIAGRAMS FROM SLIDESHOW

Single Page Cannon

Asymmetrical Layout

Gutenberg's Layout

Leading - A very brief overview

  • Column width is more than just design or format.
  • It's also based on legibility
  • Printed collateral text is read by the eye of a distance of 30-35cm
  • According to empirical rule there should be 7 words per line for a text of any length.
  • Overlong text line store the eye. As do overshot lines
  • Readers find overlong lines strenuous to read.
  • This is because too much energy is spent keeping the eye horizontal tracking along the line.
  • The Key is the ease of reading
  • Text must not impair the rhythm of reading
  • This can not apply to titles and subtitles. Or advertising.


Margins 
  • Margins can have a influence on the overall feel of a page of print.
    • Too small looks over full
    • Too large looks exaggerated
    • Well balanced margins on the sides, head and tail can create an agreeable impression
  • Badly proportioned
    • 1x1x2x1
    • Side margins are the same width , looks wishy-washy.
    • Same sized margins can never generate an interesting page design. 
    • They generates the impression of indecision and dullness
  • Well proportioned
    • 3x3x7x4
    • Intended to be the right hand page due to the larger left margin
    • More applicable for literature rather than advertising etc…
    • The margins are luxurious but this would increase print coats.
Well, is it all just about aesthetics?

Monday 18 February 2013

OUGD406: Design Practice 1 - Design Presentation


Peter Seville 
  • Album cover design
  • Infographics
Paul Arden
  • It's not how good you are, it's how good you want to be
  • Whatever you Think, Think the Opposite
Look out the window and whatever catches your eye, a bird, television ariel, an old man on crutch or whatever, make that the solution to your problem.
  • Take a break, and look on something with a fresh perspective.
Do not seek praise, seek criticism 
  • Rather than asking if something is good, ask what isn't good.
  • Things you can resolve and build upon.
Ask questions like "Can you find fault with this?"

Don't give a speech, put on a show.
  • When you're presenting work; rather than talking, put on a show. Think about how you're presenting 
With your work, Astonish people. That's what is going to make you achieve what you want to achieve. 

"If you can't solve a problem, it's because you're playing by the rules".
  • 99% of the time, you should follow the rules
  • but sometimes you need to think outside the box. 
When presenting work, put the idea in a situation where i could be used, and how it would look if produced.

Mock things up, practice your craft skills, clients prefer to have something physical.

Make links with other people with specific skill sets, and utilise them, when creating your work. 

Show the colour codes (Hex, CMYK, RGB) and the fonts which would be used in the work.

Scan things in, put them together on design boards, put things together. And submit them. 

Monday 11 February 2013

OUGD406: Design Practice 1 - Design is About Doing



This study task is in response to a live brief, hosted by Tallent House, the contest specifics are below.

INSERT PROJECT BRIEF SLIDESHOW HERE, BECAUSE IPHOTO IS A TWAT
Contest: Secret 7''Work: Submit artwork inspired by Public Enemy's track, Harder Than You Think.Prizes:Host Choice and Additional Winners:Between 30-50 designs will be selected and printed on a Secret 7’’ vinyl sleeve which will be exhibited and sold at the gallery. In addition, each winner will also receive:
  • An A3 print on which will be their design and a certificate of their involvement in the project
  • Exposure for their artwork both online and in the exhibition space at the UK’s largest independent creative agency, Mother
  • One design will be picked by Clash magazine and featured in their June edition
Highest Voted Winner:
  • One highest voted artist will receive the incentive as offered to the 30-50 winners selected by Secret 7’’.
Entry Period: January 7 2013 to February 18 2013Voting Period: February 19 2013 to February 26 2013Winner contaced by: March 12 2013
All seven of the songs featured are embedded in my Design Context Post.



Listening to the songs, I think would like use Harder Than You Think - Public Enemy.

From my research, as you can also see on my design context post, I quickly mocked up some thumbnail sketches for possible designs for the vinyl covers.

INSERT DESIGN SHEETS

INSERT DEVELOPMENT OF 5 CHOSEN DESIGNS

To create the first of my designs I begun by grabbing an image of a vinyl record from Google Image search, which I would use to get the basic dimensions of the shapes, when I would trace the image. You can find a copy of this image here.


I then added a background, which covered the bleed, I used a colour similar to that of one of the background slides on the Secret 7 website. By taking the screen shot from the website, importing it into Illustrator, and the using the colour sampler tool, and taking the green colour, which I think pops nicely in contrast to what will be the foreground. The lack of hue in the foreground, which will be created, being mainly greyscale-monochromatic, with the introduction of a new colour, works well, I think. 








Below are the five designs. 







Saturday 2 February 2013

OUGD405: Design Process - Workshop - InDesign

As part of this module, we have had various workshops, showing us how to develop our skills in essential software which we need to be able to use as part of the Graphic Design industry. The three main programs which we need to learn Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.

InDesign is able to work with multi-page documents, being the mains strength.


You can see above, the product of the two sessions, although, I'm fairly confident with Adobe InDesign, as I was taught it at College, I really learnt some useful tips and methods with will definitely benefit me in the future, when I need to use InDesign to create something.


  • InDesign is very similar to illustrator and photoshop, they contain the same tools and pallets.
  • Letter, Legal and Tabloid are American size papers, dis-regard them.
  • Set your paper size to the finished, trimmed, paper size.
  • Use a Bleed, with a standard bleed size of 3mm. 
  • You can change the layout of the page, as in margins and columns, and other document settings.