Presentation Boards

Here are the presentation boards for each projec, plus a brief explanation of the information I've given and why.

Open publication - Free publishing

So with the Manchester Book Fair, I included a splash board that had a summary of the concept and audience etc. A shot of all the products I produced, including a close up on the spot varnish detailing on the cover, some shots of the spreads, where I've tried to highlight the spot varnish finish. It was difficult to photograph so I've handed in the product as well. I've also produced a board that highlights the extra materials. What I haven't included, quite deliberately is a context shot of the book at the book fair, no one needs to see a photo of me and whoever manning a stall to emphasise the point of it in context, it felt like a waste of a board.

Open publication - Free publishing

DSW has a brief summary of the lgo, her audience and the concept etc. Before looking at the stationary range I produced, then the press release booklet I've made for her and finally the website I've mocked up for her, all with type specification information.

Open publication - Free publishing

The cult brief was specifically about type and layout/ print and finish, so I documented each one of the different finishes I used on the boards a long with a detailed type specification. There was intentionally no context to avoid limiting myself in terms of what prints and finishes I could use.

Open publication - Free publishing

The membership pack brief simply has a splash page for each organisation followed by shots of the stationary for each membership pack. This has a type spec a long with colour swatches included in the information.

Open publication - Free publishing

This was a day brief so it has a quick summary of that as a concept, a board on the pysical release and a board on the digital release.

Product shots and evaluation

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.

Putting my books together

Open publication - Free publishing
^cover



^Poster

Open publication - Free publishing

Open publication - Free publishing

Above is the book in it's conventional layout and below is the book and overlays paginated so it folds into 2 duplexed leafs holding 8 pages each. I had to do this so I could create 2 screens to print the spot varnish on as a pose to 8 A3 screens.

Open publication - Free publishing

Open publication - Free publishing

Once I'd printed and screen printed the covers and posters, I had to cut them all out. An issue in screen printing came up; When I started screen printing the spot varnish over the inside pages, it became apparent I was only going to get one print out before I'd have to wash the screen, this meant that it would take days to screen print the content. I made an executive decision then to have one with spot varnish on the inside for the purpose of photographing and including in my portfolio and then the rest that I'd be selling at the book fair wouldn't. This wasn't ideal but I think it was neccassary in terms of finishing the brief on time.








^cropping all my pages down


^Folding my pages ready to crop.


^Books and posters ready to sew.


^Sewn up books I used a 2 up saddle stitch to bind them together, but it was a bit of an odd variant, because there were two 8 page booklets inside it, I had to sew threw the the cover twice to ensure that both booklets were tightly bound to the cover.


Inside stitching, ready to cut down.


Cropped and sewn book and poster with plastic sleeve and sticker.

Now I've got product shots to take and photoshop them ready to make concept boards. I'll show these in my next post where I evaluate how this whole thing went.

Poster And Stickers

The Poster was a very quick turnaround, essentially I had to get the image and layout from the cover and apply it to a larger scale. I also decided to include the summative quote I'd chosen from Soren Kierkegaard. I asked David Gasi and Jonny Packham for some quick input on how to lay it out, they both agreed that the quote looks best aligned left underneath the large header. The header it's self looks best centrally aligned to the image behind it.

Open publication - Free publishing

I decided that a good way to protect the book and the poster would be to put them in A4 comic wallets and have a sticker to seal the pack up. I immediately knew that a triangular circle to mimic the shape of the spot varnish on the cover. I thought a nice touch would be to put the edition number on the sticker so the buyer knows how limited edition the books are. It also means that I can set that out in quite a formal way, without having to pencil it on the back of the cover and tarnishing my design.

Open publication - Free publishing

I messed around with how to present it, whether to use numbers or words etc. I thought that using the font Dave designed also meant that the sticker and the book tie together as one piece quite nicely. I decided that just the numbers, presented like fractions was a little misleading. I opted for the numbers of the edition 1,2,3,4,5 etc. followed by 'of five' this means that the number of the edition is more immediate, communicated through one symbol, rather than having to make sense of a word.

Now I have to:
-Prep all my files for print (today)
-print the book content, the covers and the posters. (today)
-print the exposures (today/tomorrow)
-set up my screens (tomorrow)
-screen print the spot varnish (tomorrow/wednesday)
-Assemble all my books (wednesday/thursday)

The last two double spreads

I've been struggling to think of what to do with my last two spreads, It's easier to make it into a 16 page document than a 12 page document in terms of paginating and folding it. I guess it gives me a chance to make full page images that act as bookends for the content. I thought about the title I'd chosen earlier and its connotations: Conspiracy is a word that almost discredits the theory that it holds. A conspiracy is the ridiculous thoughts of a deviant character. Hidden Truth essentially has a very similar meaning, but the connotations of the phrase feel less open to cynical judgment. I wanted to create two splash pages that use odd ciphers and symbols that are appropriate to each word, so conspiracy would have symbols meaning 'lies' or 'concealed' 'imprisoned' etc. that suggest very negative things, where hidden truth would have symbols tat mean 'truth', 'honesty' etc. around them. The fact that people might not understand these symbols isn't the point, the book it's self is supposed to be ambiguous and I'd like the 'truth' of this book to be ambiguous and involve similar investigation by the reader.

Here is some research into symbols that were appropriate that I did from the extremely badly laid out symbols.com
Appropriate symbols for 'splash pages' although I use that term loosely:
Neptune


Square Within A Square


Heiroglyph for contain



For Truth:


Ma'at Feather
(I can't seemt o find it's symbol.com page but it means truth and law.

Saturn


Native American:




Perthro Rune




Conspiracy:
I started work on the first 'splash' page, looking at different images that would take up most of the page. I wanted to keep the column where the page number free because I thought it left an interesting dynamic throughout the book. I started with the hand image that I'd used for the book covers that didn't really pan out. I thought it looked quite interesting, but it didn't really work conceptually in this context either. I then started applying stock photos of space that I thought were really visually engaging when made into duotones like the rest of the photos. I thought that this linked in with the concept in terms of a cosmic attitude to lies and truth that the symbols I'd been chosing represented. I felt that using this type of imagery at both ends of the book would act as great bookends for the book, creating a parallel between beginning and end. Initially I started with halftoned images, but I felt that because nothing else in the book so far was halftoned; I felt this would be quite jarring with the rest of the content, so I spent forever and a day finding a couple of space images that were large enough to fill an A3 page without reducing the quality.







And with the appropriate symbols for concealment and lies put over the top, ready for spot varnish:



Hidden Truth:

Hidden Truth splash came together about as quickly as the other one. I just mimicked it with a slightly different space background. Again representing the cosmic principles of the symbology I'd used. The difference between the two i that the words 'Hidden Truth' are also spot varnished on this page, creating a nice parallel between the concepts of the book, and responding visually to it's themes.






I appreciate this doesn't look like a lot, unfortunately I'm ding this whist looking after a child full time for the week, this has severely hindered my ability to document throoughly. I'm a bit disappointed because it means I'll probably lose a lot of marks. I might come back to this towards the end and re-document what I can find.

Designing the spot varnish bits

I had to move quickly with this also to meet the deadlines I'd set myself in latest action plan (see project management file), The key to the success of the spot varnish elements is really about making sure the typographical elements say a message uniquely and clearly, that the symbol choices are appropriate to what the rest of the message is about and that elements of it are clever, echoing themes from within the regular content of the book.

I started with the spread about 'Secret Societies and The Lizard Men' because I had a really strong idea of what I wanted to do with it. I wanted to put lizard eyes of Barack Obama's eyes in spot varnish and then put an Illuminati symbol on his forehead, I thought that this would be quite a nice way to tie the content of the book and the spot varnish elements together on this page:


I thought that this worked OK, but its a very similar concept to the cover and I don't want te book to feel like it's playing the same symbols over and over again.


Despite this I tried puttingin a circle shape to mimic an iris to see how it would look, It looks eve worse, I think the heaviness of the filled in circles overpowers the linework of the rest of the symbol.


I then decided to look at an upside down pentagram. The theories about the secret societies are often doomsday theories from extreme christian thinking, so the idea that Obama might be the Antichrist seems appropriate. I also quite like the shock factor of sticking a pentagram on Obama who is quite a popular political figure over here.

I started working with some type, using Dave's 'extralight' version of his theory typeface. I started writing text that had enough words to mimic the way the type is laid out in the normal content, with the same line spacing and point size also. I started with the phrase 'THEY rule the world' but I wanted to highlight the most absurd of the theories as the truth so I changed it to 'REPTILES rule the worlds.' Then I put it into the document just to check everything lined up properly and also to simulate how it might lok as a spot varnsih byt reducing the opacity of the overlays to around 20%. At this point with all of them it allowed me to assess whether this idea was gong to work or not, thankfully, I feel that on this layout I'd come up with something really strong quite early. I could move on and work quickly.





The next layout I decided to work on was the 'Little Green Men' spread about aliens. It was another one that I had a strong idea about. I was inspired by this image:

It was supposedly given to renound crackpot/UFOlogist George Adamski by an alien in 1952, and he superimposed it onto his own photograph of a UFO. I figured that this image would be a nice collection of appropriate an odd symbols that would look quite effective, so I decided to recreate this ready to stick on the UFO picture I'd gotten from Jonny's books.
I simply drew the symbols out and scanned them in, ready to go. I turned them into illustrator files so I could increase the size if needs be and I started reconstructing the image in Indesign:


I started with the symbols I'd scanned and then used the normal layout as a guide to start bulding the symbols up around it. I put in the unusual swastika style shape central to the UFO craft in the Adamski image, but it looked a bit out on it's own.


I added some symbols around the swastika using unusual Sanskrit and symbol type families. This seemed to narrow the gap between styles of the symbols and the swastika thing. I also added some more symbols by copying th eorginals, flipping them upside down and delting half of them to fill out the page a little better.


I tried putting an oval round the UFO to mimic the Adamski image but it looked to smooth and didn't really suit the chaotic appearance of the symbols at all to well, so I decided to remove that.


I then added some circles to create a little bit of symmetry and also mimic an alternate version of adamski's drawing (not shown) where the symbols outside of the craft have become circular blotches. I felt that this worked because it balanced the darkness of the handles on the swastika type symbol.

I then quickly did the type, ensuring that it was the same point size and line spacing as the title on the page in the printed document so there would be a symmetry between the two. I chose the phrase 'Aliens walk among us' because it's one phrase that seems to permeate the culture revolving around this kind of conspiracy thinking. It's also a nice bold statement that works well with the concept of the spot varnish elements revealing the truth secretly, whilst the balanced view of the regular print is in fact false.



Here it is against




I followed this up with responding to the moon landing hoax page in a similarly quick fashion. Looking at the ciruclar image of the moon, I knew I had to do something that responded to that shape. I tried to lay out text that would lie within it, and again I went for a bold statement that kind of flies in the face of what we understand as established fact. This was in order to keep with the concept of the spot varnish telling truth, whilst the body copy of the booklet would give a balanced view that is actually lies.




I changed 'we' to man because 'we' makes the book or the author feel part of humanity, where as I'd rather it be completely detached. The statement feels more truthful if it is presented as unbiased fact, the 'we' makes it feel a little too personal for this.


Here is the text in context, I made it orange for the purposes of showing where it sits, and then I put it into 20% opacity to preview the spot varnish, but it's very difficult to view the black on dark blue anyway, so it might be difficult to see on the image.


I didn't do too much more with this, it isn't relay as based in symbology as the other conspiracies, they're about arms races and the government rather than aliens or secret societies. I thought I'd let the strength of those words speak for themselves.

For the Assassination and death section, I started with the phrase 'they are after you', I wanted to play on the paranoia that a lot of conspiracy theorists feel. I worked with this in a similar way as to before, making sure the type lined up with the type on the regularly printed page. I put in a symbol for a target, because I thought that this summised the themes of the spread very well. I also then decided to change the phrase to 'they knew too much' making a bold statement but less aggressive and directed at the reader.






Final overlayed on the document, 8% opacity, mimicking it's appearance as a spot varnish.


It's in the water:
I had the deadline dramatically encroaching at this point so I blitzed this last one out, trying to make sure I could have these done in time for deadline. I'm ashamed to say I used a phrase that came to my head quite quickly a long with a recogniseable symbol for water. I made sure that these were contained within the frame of the image on the main document, and that was it. This is not best practice and I'm realising now that I haven't been using my time efficiently if it's coming to a rough job at the end. I wanted these sport varnish elements to be well considered, and with some of them, they are quite well considered, but I feel like there's an inconsistency there, thankfully because it's a unique finish, the strength of the overall concept is probably enough to hide these.






Ultimately the issue here again is that I've gone on making decisions without recording them thoroughly and now the record is fragmented and not an accurate representation of what I tired and how many different ways I approached this book. I also did this over reading week on my own with an infant. I didn't really have many people's opinions to ask, so I feel like this half of the project has become quite insular. There's not much I can do about this with the deadline for getting this printed in time for the book fair looming.

Proactive things to do about above problem:
-I need to begin thoroughly planning my time,my work for this project has begun to suffer because I'm not planning out what I need to do and giving myself appropriate timescales.
-After this project is put to bed, I need to ensure that the rest of the projects in this module are more thoroughly documented, I'm going to lose marks on this brief because of it and I need to ensure that the rest of my briefs are better documented in order to limit the damage.