Book Design - "Wabi Sabi"

This is one of my favourite books at the moment - "Wabi Sabi is the quintessential japanese aesthetic. It is beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incompete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional". Its got good content, but what makes this book for me is the stocks its on, the fact that it is all printed in greyscale except for the cover,  and the actual book design of the columns and paragraphs is really easy and comfortable to read. I like the full bleed Image idea which is used throughout the book too.  This is something I have been looking at and was helping me to make decisions about stock and printing process whilst having to deal with a budget. The book shows for me that you dont have to spend big bucks on something to realise it to a point of perfection - as long as the content and function leads a book, the look of it will follow and be totally apropriate to what the book actually is.

Existing design for the college

This is the first yearbook of the BA(Hons) Graphic Design course. Because I have articles and images that have to be presented in an engaging and appealing way, I thought I'd look at what has come off the same course as me, and has been for the LCA institution. On pages with imagery the type is pretty minimal, and is tight in a column at the side of the page. The stocks that were used for this book were really nice too. I dont know if choosing a stock would be an option for me as it would have been supplied.

This year's course prospectus. Immidiately, I was drawn to the foil on the cover (not an option for me in this instance) and the way that the type overlays images. The type is big and easily legible - Looks like it could have been Century Gothic Bold, which works really well  here. The type inside is set on in strict colums with bold headings, with the heading type at the same size as the copy. From looking at this publication, I think the stricter and more complex I make a grid, the more information I will be able to fit on a page in an appealing way,making it check out visually with the rest of the page.

Yearbook Number 2 from BAGD. There are some really interesting uses of type and layout in this book, and I like the way that the images arent always sitting on white space, in the lst image you can see this happening, with reverse out type cutting through the solid black. Reverse out is something I have been playing with and I think it works well to help command a message and cut through dark colours or dark images.

This is last years prospectus, the pages with alot of copy in them split up visually with two colours and the cover was embossed (really nice type on the front)  which is something I would love to do on my newsletter but somehow I'm pretty certain that the budget for a newsletter wouldnt really allow for that. These four publications give me a clear idea about how other designers have dealt with the same problem that I am, but in a much bigger way. I think it was good to look at this to see what sort of standard of quality I should be aiming to achieve.

Amazing Mcbess

Morning breath - Colourways

I think most illustrators get a bit jealous of the images that come out of morning breath. I know I do! I love the way they use colour and tone. The Queens of the stone age poster is Two colour plus tints, and it just shows how much can be done with black through to white before other colour even comes into it. Youve got, mid tone, highlight, dark areas and outlines, then the pink just adds to the overall impact of the image.

This would be a good way for me to think about my images tonally, If I do want to have the book in black and white, tone is going to be a really important part of my imagery to add depth. If I was going to work in colour, I think I would go about it in a similar way to this, usig overprints and a very choice colour pallette.

Reuben Rude

Reuben rude is one of my favourite artists at the moment, not for any conceptual reasons, just simply because of how he puts lines down on a given surface. His eye for it seems quite similar to mine, only difference being, this guy is absolutely shit hot at it. He works the same way in painting as I try to work digitally. The way he makes a character look using thick lines that run off into a sharp point is really effective, and then he further enhances this using alot of colours for fills or an overprint feel. In time, if I ever get the time to do a painting, I would love to explore the technique thats done here. I mean, it can be done in other ways, Morning breath are almost a digital equivalent only with more typographic insight.

Caspar Williamson, submission for Nobrow.

This was Caspars submission to Nobrow magazine. This is two colours not including stock and is made up of quite thick textural line work to make tones and shades on top. In print, it almost looks like a hand coloured photocopy because of the level of detail in it. What I like most about this image is the actual form he has chosen to give the jellyfish, with long tapering tentacles (Or cilia, as I have found out throughout gathering the copy for my book.)

Caspar Williamson / Glow pigment overprint.

Caspar Williamson is an illustrator/designer/printer. The work above is actually by Franz Vesolt, but as far as I can tell was printed by Caspar Williamson. Its a great idea, simply dat and night. in daytime you see the first image, and at night you see the glow in the dark overprint. Im really glad I found this because it shows how good getting some glow in the dark ink could be. Ive sent the check off for the stuff today, so I should have it half way through next week.

The line work here also works really well with the glow overprint, its simple and suits being illuminated because of its content. This is something I am hoping pulls off well with my use for the glow in the dark. The idea is that I'm going to print my squid icon I developed at the start of the project over the front cover.