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Introduction + Designer Pages

Using the structure from the inside front and back covers, I replicated this for my designer page as I thought would be a good idea to have portraits of the designers within the circles rather than it being a basic name + image layout and makes it more interesting. The introduction page I have kept short and straight to the point and is centred to focus the attention of the reader looking at the centre and move gradually to the next page. 

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Acknowledgements Page + Inside Back Cover

Here is my acknowledgements page and inside back cover which is the same as the inside front cover. I wanted to keep my acknowledgements page simple and easy to read so I did a basic set up. 

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Back Cover Development

For my back cover, I have made a change to the heading ‘Pop’ which was originally centred which is now at the top in full white as I thought the original looked more like a front cover so to make this look more of a back cover, I also added some text that could hook the reader to start reading my book. 

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Front + Back Cover Designs

Looking at the covers for my publication, I wanted them to look consistent and engaging with the use of vibrant colours so I stuck with the ‘4 elements’ theme with reference to ‘pop’ culture with the use of bright colours. In the back cover, I followed some feedback suggestions of including portraits of the interviewees so that it lets the reader know that these are the faces of the people in the booklet and would be interested to know more and read about it. I have also colour coded each of the images in these covers to its assigned part of the publication they are featured in which are hinted in the front cover. 

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Contents  + Acknowledgement + Introduction Pages

Here is the current design I have created for these three pages. Still yet to fill in the acknowledgements page but I thought this would be a good layout for now. Also because I have thought of using the ‘technology’ network pattern from the inside cover for my ‘meet the designers’ page, I am thinking of having this page after the introduction instead of the end where I have replaced with the acknowledgements page. 

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Minor Changes To Publications

To get a bit of consistency throughout my publication, I had made a few minor changes to these two publications which was editing the background image of the ‘My Mother, In Her Words’ publication to black and white and I have also added borders from that design to the ‘Inspiring Journey’ publication. The black background in the second DPS was also changed to white so it matches the contrast of black and white from the first DPS. 

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Contents Page Concept

Moving onto my contents page, I initially thought of using some technology aspects that would mirror something similar to a bus route or train station map, which I thought would be a good idea to add ‘icons’ based off of the elements I created in the front cover. For the title ‘CONTENTS’ I have used some of the typefaces from the front cover initially from the four publications. 

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Front Cover Development

Because I thought the other cover was too simple and wasn’t too sure how it looked, I have made some changes to the visual look of the cover as I wanted it to pop out but still represent what my publication is about. I have decided to stick with the colourful look as this makes it more interesting rather than having just black and white. I first trialled this cover look with a limited colour palette including red, black and white but it didn’t come off as interesting or appealing for me personally. Therefore, with this front cover design approach, I looked at the four elements, air, water, fire and earth to inspire my designs here without the colour scheme being too colourful. To stick with this theme, instead of having full black silhouettes for the images, I chose a darker value of the same colours used for the backgrounds of each of these. The only black coloured elements in this cover design is the pen that leads the viewers eyes to the centre title ‘people, objects, places.’ This still needs more refining and will keep working on this further. 

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Front Cover Development

Based on the feedback I received on my first concept of the front cover, I have decided to not use the covers from each of the double page spreads as the viewer will be seeing it anyway. What I did instead was use main aspects from the stories in each publication and designed around them in each corner of the front cover with the title ‘people, objects, places’ in the centre. This concept I think is quite solid and could work if I refine it further and make it pop more. 

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Feedback On Front Cover Concept

The feedback I have received on my front cover concept indicated that it was too literal and needs to be stripped back down to make the audience think about different interpretations of what the book is about from just an aspect of the cover. I also do feel like it makes it very obvious for the audience what the book is about which is ultimately something to consider, ‘what really makes someone pick up a book and want to read it.’ It was even suggested whether it is appropriate to have the four DPS on the cover because they will be seeing it anyway when they read through it which was helpful. The feedback also commented on the different typefaces used to create the heading which was working well but needs to be worked on more to see where it can go. What I will do with this is think about how I can visually show and highlight the key aspects of the book as a concept that doesn’t seem too obvious. Perhaps I could use the key themes of culture and passion to drive my design for this book and it doesn’t need to be called ‘people, objects, places.’ 

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Front Cover Idea

Although this is something I would usually approach after getting all my designs for all pages designed, I thought I could jump straight into creating a front cover design idea based on this magazine cover I found on Google. What I like about this idea is that it intends on merging the 4x double page spreads into a single page with a main title ‘people, objects, places’ in typefaces used in the double page spreads. My plan to bring in the work for Georgia’s DPS, I am thinking of using her illustration technique to create patterns that could be on the front cover or inside front and back cover pages. 

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Colour Scheme 

Using the colours eye dropped from all four DPS, I created a potential colour scheme that I could work with when designing my publication. This will not be set in stone but it will help me get me started on some design ideas. 

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Extra Page Ideas

For the pages that do not include the 16 pages from 4x DPS, I have noted down on these pages what they will have which gives me a clear idea on what I will need to look at and design for and allocate a time schedule I can take to do this within the deadline of the assignment. 

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Getting Started On 24 Page Publication 

Before designing my 24 page publication with all the 4x double page spreads from three others including myself, I have created a little mind map on Milanote that will help me identify and consider some important aspects like similarities and differences from all the double page spreads. This will hopefully further help me design a consistent design system throughout my publication. 

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DP1 Development

The particles in the last development were too strong so I brought it back into the background. I have also changed the typeface for the maintext ‘Maori and Pasifika’ to a more suitable typeface that could work. The typeface I used is Obveron. This was a really nice font I found as it includes ‘technological’ aspects. What inspired this design idea development was from the use of particles which reminded me of the movie ‘Tron Legacy’ and so I replicated this style and thought it would work well with my concept. Although this looks quite simple, it seems quite effective however, I would like to explore the use of Maori/Pasifika patterns and add these to my double page spreads. 

https://www.fontspace.com/obveron-font-f55906

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DP1 Development

I wanted to add a bit more colour that relates to technology more like blue so I started adding more particles in the image in blue and added an outer glow for the text which I am planning on working more on. 

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DPS Feedback + Development

From today’s class, I received useful feedback on my work in progress 2 DPS to date. The feedback I received indicated that it has great use of photography/image making techniques particularly in the second DPS with the strong centred position of my subject. What I needed to work on was the layout of text which needed to be spread out into the other pages to make the order of the spreads clear. It was suggested that I play around with the size of the elements including images and headings for the first DPS. The feedback also indicated that the image in the second DPS came out more strong than the image in the first DPS because there was no image treatment. Therefore, I have attempted to play around with this and used the same technique of liquifying and masking using special brushes to get the dust-like effect in both of the images. What I also worked on was arranging the text around so there wasn’t any repetition of information in one DPS. From here I will keep working on making the text look better and explore other ways of working with shape elements.