GEORGIA EARNSHAW
Designer's Guide to Print
About
My mission was to design a publication that outlines printing techniques. This book will act as a “Designer’s Guide to Print”, which designers can refer to for all of the prepress tools at any given time. What will make this book unique from others is that relevant information will be displayed in a concise, creative way that is easy for designers to understand. The purpose of this book is to be informative, as well as aesthetically pleasing to ensure that audiences take pleasure in reading it, whilst also learning from it.
Research
To develop an understanding of how I wanted to design this publication, I conducted research into current publications on the market. The research included image treatment, page aesthetics, colour, page layout, grids, icons, illustrations, and typography. I also analysed the brand identities of different publications that I appreciate to look at, and enjoy readings. Doing this gave me inspiration as to how I want to design the publication. My key findings informed how I chose to design the publication
Brand Identity Analysis
Colour
From my visual investigation into colour, I discovered that I wanted to incorporate one bold, bright colour that would be contrasted with white and black. I wanted a colour that was eye-catching and playful, in order to ensure that the book has interesting elements to it. I chose to use a hot pink colour, as it evokes fun, happy and playful emotions. Keeping in mind that a book based on print techniques will be quite information heavy, I think that a vivid pink colour as the main, signature colour will make the book more interesting and fun for readers to look at and remain engaged with.
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Typography
I knew early on in my research into typography that I wanted to use a big, chunky, capitalised typeface for this book. From the examples that I had found, I could understand that this use of text looks bold, fun and modern. I searched for a typeface that could be a statement piece and would create a sense on interest for the reader. Therefore, I chose Bebas Neue, which is a capitalised, sans-serif typeface. I chose san-serif because each letter is straight and has structured lines, which has the potential to be used for other purposes than just letters, such as statement pieces. This typeface is bold, fun and currently on trend.
Most importantly, the body text had to be a typeface that was easy to read. This is because a book about printing techniques has the potential to be text heavy. I chose to use Helvetica Neue because it is a standard font that is easy to read. It is easy to read as body text because it is sans-serif, but also nicely rounded.
Page Development & Layout
The illustrations and images on this page show the development of what I imagine the first pages of the book to look like (the title pages and contents). The page layout or grid is simply structured to ensure it looks minimalistic and not overcrowded. On the title page spread, The heavy illustration on the left page is contrasted with minimum information and colour on the right.
There is also examples of how the contents page will look. This example shows how the theme of using big, bright titles will be a prominent element in the book. Once again, a simple grid has been used to place the texts in a very formatted and structural manner.
Research Evaluation
Illustration
The illustrations and layouts on this page show the development of the first pages of the book to look like (the title pages and contents). I first sketched the pages, to gain a vague idea of how I imagined the pages to look like. I then translated my sketches into InDesign to get a feel for the design of each page, which helped me to understand how I wanted the publication to look like. The page layout or grid is simply structured to ensure it looks minimalistic and not overcrowded.
Final Publication
The final publication is informative, whilst also being creative and fun. This is to ensure that audiences enjoy looking at and reading it.