Here's the product shots that seem to work the best/highlight the strengths of the work. Now for a lengthy evaluation of how I feel the work has progressed:
Context and Understanding My Audience
I thought that I did quite a good job of looking at my audience, who were mainly art students studying in the building where the book fair took place. I conducted several interviews to try and gain some understanding of my audience's views on conspiracy theories. I also read a lot of books and did a lot of research to collect content and knowledge. Through this I gained understanding of the system of signs that people associate with this kind of publication; duotone/monotone photography, grainy stocks etc. And I was able to subvert this by combining it with my research into contemporary arts and culture publication design. At this point in the project, I alo felt that my time management was running effectively, I was writing to do lists and managing to keep to the timescales I'd set myself.
With this amount of background knowledge, I was able to start directing the way I wanted to go visually. Looking at the semiology of groups like the Illuminati and other secret societies to create something ambiguous and mysterious whilst always appearing very contemporary in it's design.
Design Direction
Following on from the previous point, I started looking at the idea of having a unique typeface to work with as a title/header font. I wanted something that would be both readable and suit the unusual signs and symbols I'd been looking at as part of this conspiracy theory book. I realised quite early on, with all the workshops that we were doing with Fred that typeface design wasn't an area of specialism that I was interested in so i decided to outsource to David Gasi. He's very interested in type design and I figured it would be a nice quick brief for him to work with.
The brief then took the form of a collaborative practice for this period. I sent him some samples that suggested the kind of things that I wanted to work with and then he responded to them, giving me things to look at and give my opinion till we got to a point where we both felt satisfied. I think this element of the practice worked pretty successfully as well, and developing this diagnostic of where my skills are and what I might need someone else to bring to my practice is going to be a really useful tool for working in industry.
Once this was complete, I started working on layout and at this point planning my time was also working successfully. I was able to plan a task, complete it and get feedback on it from other members of the group who specialised in typography every couple of days. This allowed me to correct parts of the typography where there was widowing. This crit process also allowed me to work out things I hadn't noticed before (being relatively new to typographic design) such as how the leading and linespacing was a little tight compared to the very open 'theory' font that Gasi had designed for the headers that had quite vast line spacing. This feedback and guidance lead me to chose the very rounded Century Gothic at 7 pt with 10 pt line spacing and +10 leading that allowed it to breath and compliment the font Dave had designed with me.
Design Production
At a similar time I was looking at the potential for interesting print finishes that would make the book even more collectible. I initially looked at the idea of putting secret messages into the book using unusual ink processes to hide them, I wanted the body copy of the book to be balanced, and then have the spot varnish say these outlandish statements, creating a contrast between true and false and potentially challenging the perceptions of what true and false really are. Initially I wanted to use black light inks, that would only show up under a UV light and at first this seemed really possible, however, the more research I did, I quickly found it was way outside of my budget constraints and then the website I found it for cheap on wouldn't ship it over to England so I had to compromise, which wasn't fun at first. I felt let down, like my great idea would never see fruition. I then decided spot varnish would be the best way to go about creating a similar print/finish based solution to the concept. This was much more realistic as a goal.
At the point of designing the overlays for the spot varnish, my time management went to pot. I realised I'd spent too long designing the rest of the book, as well as committing to other briefs. I began to work with tunnel vision at a quick speed, not consulting anyone's opinion over reading week as I was doing it and I stopped trying things out, which is extremely bad, and I'm sure it'll result in the penalisation of marks from my over all grade, which is unfortunate but it's a mistake I'm going to have to live with. This meant that I had a backlog of things to document and I wasn't able to document them thoroughly, leading to patchy latter stages compared to the reasonably thorough start I'd got off to.
I also had problems with the paper stock I wanted to work with. I'd initially printed a load of tests on some free papers I'd been sent from 'conqueror' and one of them Conqueror 25% recycled fresh white CX22 at 160gsm, seemed perfect for the job; not quite ice white, uncoated so the ink would sink in like the ink in the 70's UFO books I'd been looking at. It also was the right weight to get a balance between being thin enough to work in a book without a ridiculous amount of creep and also thick enough to duplex on without the ink form both sides always being visible. Unfortunately this was so expensive, again I had to compromise, so I looked at all the paper stocks we had in university and the one most similar to it was actually standard cartridge paper, it was a little more yellow than the paper stock I wanted but it seemed to print successfully. I don't like having to compromise on a project and this, just like the black light ink, felt a little deflating, however I had to get over it.
My final crippling disappointment and blow to the project was the actual production of the spot varnish. Initially my progress started well, the covers looked really strong and the varnish printed well, the design of them looked really sharp too. The posters went similarly well. When I got to the inside content it became impossible, I was beginning to have to do one print and then wash my screen out, meaning that it would take an inordinate amount of time to print all of the books. I made the executive decision at this point to make one really good printed book with spot varnished inside for myself and then the rest that went to book fair would have no spot varnish insides. I made the decision that it would be better to have no spot varnish than incredibly badly and lazily printed spot varnish in the books I was going to sell.
Initially the brief I'd written said to create an edition of 10, but this changed to 5 taking into account the time and cost of producing a specialist spot varnish finish throughout the book. This isn't such a big deal, but I need to make that change to my brief so I can fulfill the criteria.
Conclusion
This brief taught me a significant deal about how to get the best of this module. Firstly, I need to be more thorough with my planning, towards the end of designing and into production, I had very little control of my time management and this did effect the quality of the outcome. I also realised how highg my expectations of what could do were and it was disappointing when this couldn't become reality so I need to set more realistic goals for what I do. Overall though, I worked really hard and I feel like I've created a nice piece with a great concept that will sit very strongly in my portfolio and this matters to me the most.
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