mariaphilp-grad702cd

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Reflection

Overall I really enjoyed this semester, being able to explore topics that are close to home and experiment with typography. If I were to change anything, I would have put in more time to experiment with what material the cover could have been printed on. I feel that I have created a foundation that can easily be built upon in the future. With more time, there is an opportunity to explore different forms of media, such as sound or touch, but this is something that I can build on in future over time. 

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Print Day

Today I took my file to the printers, I thought it would be better if I were there in person to explain which stock paper to use for which pages and make sure everything was in the right order.

At first the page order came out incorrect because we had removed needed blank pages. I find doing wire bound a bit more difficult than doing normal spreads just because I had some one sided pages in between and different stocks. It got a little confusing but I was able to work it out with some drafts and test prints.

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I sent a PDF of the book to friends and family, to get another pair of eyes on it. Mostly to help with spelling errors and grammar. I find regardless of how many spell checks and proof reads I do, I am bound to miss something as I am looking at the content every day.

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Katie showed me a really cool example of a book that was a similar brownish/orange colour to my drafts. I quite liked the contrast of the blue with the colour. The material of the cover was similar to the material used for book binding which is something I can explore.

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On on one feedback with Katie

Give room to the content, add more pages and space out the text from the imagery. Potential to have spreads with just images.

Remove title pages with imagery and start straight into the interviews.

Make page numbers smaller.

Move margins further out and bring the content in.

Add quote pages.

Adjust the leading to be tighter for headings.

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Feedback from Katie

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I used the China White and Snow White stock paper to differentiate between content and title pages, I also used silk paper stock for the imagery as it makes the images stand out more and look crisp.

125GSM Snow White — Content Pages

250GSM China White — Title Pages

230GSM Silk White — Selected Imagery Pages

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Made a quick draft to figure out which pages to use different stock paper with.

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Colour Palette

I was looking at traditional Fijian methods of dying and found out that the way they get the light brown colour used on Masi comes from boiling the bark of mangroves and sometimes a mixture of that and red soil. I got the colour palette above from this process, the orange being the colour before it is printed on masi, when it tends to look a bit more on the brown side. The off white colour represents the colour of masi and the blue is the water used for the boiling process.

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ITC Zipper W02 type exploration

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Typeface Research

I also looked at buildings and structures in Fiji, specifically around the time Fiji reclaimed its independence from the British. The forms of the buildings were an interesting mix of circular and sharp edged shapes.

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These digital drawings are based off the scamps I did in the earlier post, I experiments with motifs within the letter, but I felt it was looking too busy. I will keep experimenting with type, and leave this option in the back burner for now.

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Typeface Scamps

I started off with pencil sketches because I find its easier and quicker to get ideas out this way before committing to drawing it digitally. I took a lot of inspiration from Fijian motifs on masi and carvings, looking first at the simple shapes they formed. Stripping it down to shapes like squares and triangles and putting those together to form letters. I noticed inward triangular and rectangle edges that I thought could draw from.

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Elements and border exploration

Today I did some exploration with design elements, these elements are based off the triangle shape, similar to the shark tooth pattern used throughout masi and carving in the Fijian culture.

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Typeface Research

I paid a visit to Tautai art space for the opening of an exhibition that had majority Fijian artists showing. This piece of masi was large hanging from the ceiling. I noticed the Masi patterns are quite thick and blocky compared to barkcloth designs from other Pacific cultures.Black and brown were often used. 

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Typeface Research: i seru kau (wooden comb)

We see a reference to the Fijian wooden comb a lot on masi prints.