Publishing Design - Final Compilation & Reflection
Publishing Design
Jason Junior Lim Yung Hsin (034 0569)
Submissions
Exercises
Exercise Week 1
Mock-up MakingThis assignment was a simple instruction of creating and cutting paper sheets in a size between A5 and A4 (standard) to be bound together in a signature to form a book. The 1st step was to decide the size we wanted to design.
Figure 1.1 Measurements of possible sizes on A4
As shown in Figure 1.1, 3 sizes were measured, drawn and marked on the paper along with A5.
1) 23 * 20 CM (chosen size as highlighted in green tape)
2) 18 * 21.3 CM
3) 19.5 * 23 CM
Then, a spread was cut out of A3 paper to get a sense of the size.
Figure 1.2 Folded spread with 23 * 20 CM
Figure 1.3 Full spread of chosen size.
Lastly, a group of 8 sheets of the cut size was bound together with an elastic string to make a mock up of the final book.
Figure 1.4 Final bound signature with 32 pages.
Figure 1.5 middle of signature.
Figure 1.6 Pages of the bound signature.
Exercise Week 2
Van De Graaf Grid
This exercise we learned about the Van De Graaf grid system, which was a mathematically calculated golden ration for text space in a print. We 1st learned to draw it on A3 sized sheets to represent a spread. Then moved on to creating the grid in Adobe InDesign.
Figure 2.1 Van De Graaf Grid drawn on A3 paper.
Figure 2.2 Creating the grid on a 20 * 23 sized sheet in InDesign.
Figure 2.3 Van de Graaf grad on the spread size of the final print size book.
Figure 2.4 Text in Van de Graaf grid.
Figure 2.5 Text arrangement in spread according to Van De Graaf grid.
Figure 2.4 Text in Van de Graaf grid.
Figure 2.5 Text arrangement in spread according to Van De Graaf grid.
Signature Binding and Printing Layout
We learned about the way spreads are printed by folding an A3 sheet 3 times over to create a signature, then numbering each page that is created in order. The the sheet is unfolded to reveal the page numbering arrangement of how the pages should be arranged.
Figure 2.4 Folded sheet of A3 paper that is numbered.
Figure 2.5 A GIF of the labeled pages.
Figure 2.6 , 2.7 The unfolded pages showing the page arrangements.
Figure 2.8 A book binding with staples in the A6 size, made from a sheet of A3 paper.
Grid Analysis
We are to find a spread design on any book we can find and extract the grid design or the textual allowance in the spread.
Analysis 01
Analysis 02
Exercise Week 3
Form & Movement 1
(Attempt 1)
The assignment is to arrange and design a distribution of boxes in a spread for 16 pages with consideration of flow and movement.
Design 1
The assignment is to arrange and design a distribution of boxes in a spread for 16 pages with consideration of flow and movement.
Design 1
Figure 3.1 F&M design 1 on grids.
Figure 3.2 F&M Design 1 (B&W).
Figure 3.4 F&M Design 2 (B&W).
Figure 3.5 F&M Design 2 (B&W with colour accent).
Figure 3.2 F&M Design 1 (B&W).
Figure 3.3 Gif Animation of F&M Design 1.
Design 2
Figure 3.4 F&M Design 2 (B&W).
Figure 3.5 F&M Design 2 (B&W with colour accent).
Figure 3.6 F&M Design 2 (Image design).
Figure 3.7 F&M Design 2 (Image and text design).
Project 1 (Week 1)
Content Generation
Grid Layout
Final Grid Used
Typeset
Chosen Typeset
Heading: Book Antiqua 25pt
Body Text: Palatino 12pt
Pull Quote: Garamond 20pt
Subtext: Book Antiqua 9pt
Illustrations
All illustrations for the book, some are subject to corrections based on feedback received.
Project 2
Final Layout Design (No Cover):
Final Book Cover:
Final Book Thumbnails:
Final Book Link:
Final Book PDF:
Mock up:
Final Project
All Final Gifs
Book Layouts
Pages From The Book
Thumbnail Layouts
Pages PDF
Thumbnail Layout PDF
Ebook
Reflection
Experience
From a week to week stand point, I found this module quite interesting yet stressful at the same time. When we were originally tasked to write for content generation in project 1, I initially was planning a design style and illustrations I've never tried before but am interested in. Not to place blame, but when I presented my initial idea to Mr Vinod, he told me to look for inspiration in more local design or at least something close to home. This through me off course a bit as i struggled to find a new design inspiration. Although I found a few, mainly those of local borneo native designs, it didn't seem to translate well into my design. The ideas didn't even make it into my final book design. Sometimes it does keep me wondering if I had kept my original idea, would my book turn out better and would I be more motivated to complete it on time as throughout the second half of the semester I found myself loosing interest in my work and staying at home having to do house chores and other daily routines really took time away from me to fully focus on my work.
It's difficult for me to say, but being home all day during the Covid-19 Pandemic sounded appealing but really just made me unmotivated to do anything. But, as the work approached the final project, I was feeling more excited as it would be my 1st time creating an animated book. Having uploaded the design book made me relieved that my work was finally done and in a way that made me happy and quite satisfied with my work. The animations were fun and interesting to create, giving me a change to learn more about the animation applications and the capabilities they had. All in all, I do feel bad for disappointing the lecturers at times with the lack of work or progress, which were my own fault, but coming out of this semester I feel like I've learnt more about the new modern applications of publishing.
Observation
From what I had initially observed, most of the students hadn't had any experience with designing a book or publishing in general. I noticed that while writing for the content generation, almost everyone in class wrote about something dark or quite negative about the experiences in their lives that brought them here today and what they learned from it, me included. It's such an interesting subject to think about when the task was freedom to write about anything, but by the words of the lecturer, write about something you are passionate in and can design around. Seems like everyone was focused on their life experiences that either shaped or bothered them up until this point.
Interestingly, when it came to the design or visualisation of the book, everyone's design style and direction for their books were fairly different and interesting. Having photography and images as on of the illustration options, one student even used family pictures to illustrate the entire book which I thought was both interesting and intimate to their story and family. The book illustrations also gave me a good look into each person's individual style and design preference.
Findings
My experience with publishing was mostly with magazines, catalogs and portfolios, so being tasked to creating an illustrated book was new to me. For one thing, type setting and text arrangement was more difficult than I had known as new rules and standards applied. Justifying text definitely looks pleasing but is one of the most difficult settings to deal with as rivers and gapping between text becomes apparent and wrong which creates more problems than normal left alignment would. Another thing I didn't realize was possible, at least on InDesign was creating an animated book. This new experience felt like it has opened a new door for me to explore digital book design in a more interactive way. Having the animations throughout the book, really created a sense of how the author felt while writing the book and the emotions and feelings that the writer was trying to convey.
I did find that illustrating a book and how a book looks and feels is purely objective, some people who saw my book while it was in it's design phase felt that it looked nice and the illustrations really conveyed the feelings of the book, but Mr Vinod felt different. So based on that, I found that pleasing everyone is difficult so I should really focus on what I'm comfortable with and passing the module should be good enough.