When initially given the brief I knew that it was going to be one that I enjoyed as it involved creating a publication. This isn't really something I had done this year up to this point, so to be able to do this was something I was looking forward to. I found it very easy to choose a subject and begin to collect research while starting the initial development phases.
The thing that I really liked about doing this publication was that as it was research, the content was already there and I just needed to reword it to fit in with the tone of voice that I wanted. Writing original body copy is something I haven't ever been incredibly confident at, so to have a base to work with made me much more relaxed throughout this brief.
I wanted to use this brief as something to develop my personal practice in the way I create publications. Up to this point my work has been quite structured, with everything in it's own place and not really a large amount of creativity in my opinion. I felt that the work I had done up to this point wasn't my best and wasn't as good as I could have made it, so I really wanted to push myself and my visual skills in this brief. With this in mind, I immediately got started on the brief and found that my eagerness in this really helped the later development of the publication.
I found that when it came to the first crit, where I had the written content and general layouts, it was much more useful to me as the feedback given was constructive and helpful. If I had turned up with any less, I don't think the publication would be what it is today. I think that this crit was a fundamental part to the development of the publication and of my practice. Before this crit, I had done the layouts and put the content in, and had thought that I was pretty much there in terms of finishing the book, with only a few changes that needed to be made. However I found that this crit really opened my eyes to the possibilities of where I could take the design further. It definitely helped me with the idea that you can always develop something more and refine it more.
The main skill I picked up in this brief was perfecting binding a book. I already had knowledge in a couple of simple techniques, such as Japanese binding and pamphlet binding, however I really wanted to make the book look and feel more professional so decided that perfect binding was the way I wanted to go. Learning this was a lot easier than I had initially thought, and I found that because of the nature of how I am with crafting, I found it very easy to improve my skills quickly. When it comes to mock ups I have always tried to get them to the quality that it would be if it were the final piece of design, so this definitely helped in getting the binding as good as I could in the initial trials.
Being confident in this skill really took a weight off my shoulders and meant that I could focus all my efforts on the development of the book as I knew that the binding method of the pages would be strong at the end. Developing the layouts is something that I thoroughly enjoyed throughout this brief. I think that this is the strongest part of this brief by far.
The weakest part of the design, I feel, is the packaging. Packaging is something that I've never really had a huge interest in making. I do like to look at packaging, but I have never really been too great at designing packaging or designing for packaging. I think that this brief did help me overcome this a bit, but I do think that it wasn't as creative or visually good as I could make it. I do think I should have spent more time on this instead of overlooking it initially. I spent so much time on the page layouts, I should have done the same with the packaging so the book would be consistently strong.
Another area of weakness for this book came down to the choice of stock. While I had thought about the stock for the pages, and was very happy with how these turned out, the stock for the cover is something that I did overlook and didn't carry out particularly well in the end. I went through a few different variations and when it got too close to the end, I don't think I created the covers that I wanted. This is definitely something that I have taken away from this brief. Getting the stock right is as important as the design, as I have come to understand.
While I don't think the final outcome was terrible, I do see the errors and do see where I could have improved the design choices made. The one positive about my book being like it is now is that the pages can all open flat and no information is lost or ruined. This had been a previous concern in the way the book was before this final outcome, however I managed to fix it by fluke, which was good and something I was happy with.
I thoroughly enjoyed this brief and think that it was a good brief for me to do as I really do like making publications over other design work. While there are errors, these are things that I have learnt from and will take this experience forward with me to help my future practice.
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