Acetate
During my photo editing stage, what I really liked was the relationship between the typography and the disposable camera photographs. I thought that both the distortion I had done to the type, and the photographs, as separate pieces of design where very interesting and effective. So to develop those designs further I decided to try and physically separate those two elements by printing out the photographs on one piece of paper, and the typography on acetate. In doing this, I was able to allow the reader/audience to experience both the typography and the photography as individual pieces of design, but also give them the experience of seeing them merge together as in my original photo editing designs. My group agreed that the acetate was a good idea as it would create some audience interaction within the publication. The reader would be able to flip back and fourth between the acetate to experience a different effect/atmosphere of that page. The acetate will also be quite refreshing, and a nice surprise for the reader, as the acetate is see-through and a different texture/material, whereas the rest of the publication is will only printed on one stock and have quite a dark colour scheme.
To test out my acetate idea, I printed some of the my typography and photo edits on acetate, as well as on white and red paper. We decided that we should add the colour red into our monochrome black and white colour scheme to make the publication visually a bit more engaging and eye-catching, as well as to visually support and symbolise blood and the gruesome deaths within our copy/stories. I played around with layering the different paper stocks and designs I had printed, to see which combination of type, photo and paper stock would give the most interesting and haunting effect.
Layout Design
Tony from out group took lead in the layout design of our publication, but the rest of the group provided feedback and suggestions throughout, so the final outcome includes all of our contributions regarding layout and content choices. The format we choose for the publication was A6 landscape. We choose A6 because we wanted the publication to be comfortable to hold, read and transport if necessary, and we choose landscape because we wanted to have more space so that we could include illustrations, distorted type and edited photographs. To bind the publication we decided on a stab bound stitch. We choose this to not only to allow the inclusion of different textures paper stocks eg. the acetate, but also because the stab bound is quite an ancient and classic bounding technique, which we thought would be appropriate to symbolise the history and how old the events within our copy/stories are.
Draft 1
I the first draft Tony started laying out all the copy we had planned for the publication, and began to insert content in response to the copy. As stated earlier, we wanted the visuals to support and enhance the stories/copy throughout the publication. The colour scheme we choose to be primarily monochrome, black & white, but also wanted to include the colour red that would symbolise blood as well as make the key elements/content on each page stand out.
Draft 2
In the second draft we continued to add illustrations, distorted type and photograph edits to fill the pages and support the storylines. We also began developing the layout of existing pages, to make them more visually supportive of the stories, as well as to give the reader a more interesting reading experience. For example, by changing the page from a white background to a black background. I've inserted below only the pages which have had developments made to them, rather than repeating the same pages again. The pink indicates where one of my acetate developments/designs would be inserted.
Draft 3
Continuing the development of layout and content placement, Draft 3 includes more illustrations and graphics. The visual content was beginning to come together, with more pages being filled up. Our illustrators, Alex and Katie did a really good job at providing illustrations that would fill gaps in the pages where we were missing content that would support the story. The Graphic Designers, myself and Becca, also contributed with some typography-focused designs. Becca created the double page 'Limb from Limb' spread, and I created the 'Execution' edit. Tony was still focusing on the overall layout of the publication, adding content and playing around with the compositions on each page.
Feedback
At this point we went to get some feedback from the tutors. We explained our goal and concept, showed the publication design so far, and I showed my acetate experiments to give them an idea of what we wanted to achieve by using it.
The feedback we received was:
- Do you need two stories? Do you have enough visual content that will fill all the pages.
- Ask yourselves what is the overall vibe you're going for, what is the emotional intent. The stories are quite harrowing, whereas some of the illustrations so far are quite light-hearted.
- Make sure the intent doesn't come across as too plastic or 'whatever'. The visual content needs to be taken seriously, so make the illustrations scary, gruesome even.
- The type treatments and acetate are very effective, it will certainly give the publication something more intriguing and interactive.
- Overall I love the theme and style you're going for with this publication. The choice of typefaces and layout is very good, just watch out and be selective with your visual content.
After our feedback session, we went over our publication design so far and made some small changes to ensure that it doesn't seem like we are not taking the copy/stories seriously. Katie has quite a light-hearted and gently illustration style, which is what may have cause the tutors to give us such feedback, so she challenged herself to step out of her comfort zone and went over some of the illustration she had done to give them more of a "scary, gruesome" effect. She also drew some more illustrations. Alex's illustration style was already quite harsh and did not require many changes, he only worked at cleaning up his sketches/illustrations and playing around with colour. Tony continued to play around and work with the layout of the publication. One of our feedback comments was the worry that we may not have enough visual content to support both stories we had found/written, so Myself and Becca continued to play around with typography and create more visual content that would support the stories and could be included in the publication.
Front Cover
For the design of our front cover, we were inspired by one of the old books we had seen in Leeds Central Library during our research stage. The book had a black outside cover, with decorations/ornaments and the colour red peeking through some cut-out bits. We all really liked the mysterious and creepy effect this book created, and so took inspiration to create a similar front cover for our publication.
We also took inspiration from some similar in style books we had found online.
Our illustrator Katie drew the decorative/ornament element of our front cover. And we added the title of our publication 'Missing Pages' to the front cover design also. To create a similar effect as the book we were taking inspiration from, we decided to make the front cover out of three layers of black card paper. The first layer would be the background and base of the front cover, the second layer would be the decoration/ornament and title, and the third layer would be additional decoration/ornaments and a the title again. In doing this be wanted to give the front cover design some depth and texture, as well as to re-create the mysterious and haunting effect/atmosphere that the book from which we took inspiration from has. To create the bits of red that would peek through the front cover, we decided to cut out the shapes from all three layers that we wanted to have red, and to make the inside page of our publication red, so that when closed, the inside red page would peek through onto the front cover.
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| Second layer of the front cover. |
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| Third layer of the front cover. |
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| To create the three layers, we printed and transferred the front cover designs onto black card, and then hand-cut them with a scalpel. Me and Katie took on this time-consuming task. |
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| The front cover design put together, and half-bound. For the stitch bind we choose red thread to tie the front cover design together, so all elements can be cohesive, as well as to hint to the reader/audience the theme/style and colour scheme of the publication. Unfortunately because we only had access to a simple glue stick, the execution of putting all three layers of the front cover together had been a little disappointing as the dried glue can clearly be seen. Nonetheless, we were really happy with the depth, intrigue and haunting effect our hard work created. |
Mock-Up/Test Print
After we had finished the design of our publication, we did a test print to see if all the content was in the right order and if all the illustrations/graphics were high enough quality. We were all very happy with the mock-up/test print and so went down to the digital print studio to print off 5 copies of our publication, so that we could all keep a copy.
Unfortunately, there was one massive mistake that we all missed when we were looking at the mock-up/test print and even during the printing of our 5 publications. The publication was formatted to A5 instead of A6. We only realised this after we had printed everything and found that our front cover design, which was already made and A6, was way too big for our publication. We were all quite shocked and confused as to how we could all miss this, especially when we had made a mock-up/test print before even going down to the digital print. Although this was quite upsetting as we had spent quite a bit of money on publications that were not even the right size, we had to think quick and somehow bring our project back on its feet. We decided to quickly re-format the publication to the right size A6, and print just one copy in the right size, so that it would fit with the front cover design we had, and so that we had at least one example of how the publication is meant to look. So that the A5 publications we had printed did not go to waste, we decided to bind those as well in a slightly different way, so that we all had a copy of our publication even if it was the wrong size.
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