Someone said that they couldn’t remember how everything was done and how we got at this day. Hussain said that he couldn’t stop wondering if he could have spent these last three years doing something better, when all I was thinking was food. That and how did my body manage to cope with all this: I woke up at 430am to start writing my statement, left at 6 so I could be at ABC at 7, got my prints by 8ish, then headed to uni to put together the final piece for SI2, finished the statement and finally handed in. All this time with no food or water. We are a strong species, us humans.

The Piece – that’s how I’ve decided it to call it – look alright. I’m not saying good, because I’m still overwhelmed and too attached to it to judge it. The frames look very sleek and it feels like you are holding something precious, a nice reference to the weight of memories.

When put together, it looks like a weird infographics piece of work, with the dots and the grid. That, I like. What I don’t like it’s the fact that because it’s not perfectly aligned, the lines of the grid make it look a bit blurry at places and that ruins the transparent effect. I think I’ll make another print with no grid for the degree show, see if that makes a difference. But overall, I think the effect of depth and the transparency, give a good feeling of the layers of memories, floating in a different space/universe; the brain, perhaps? I would love to get some feedback on this one.

The final portfolio with the print outcome looks rather satisfying. I really appreciated Paul Rennie’s comment about how you can tell that all this has been done by the same person, it looks coherent, which is also what David mentioned about how our portfolios should be at the last meeting. It really made me happy, and if I had time to stop and think about it, I think I’d probably cry – especially when as he was leaving, said, well done Emanuel. This is what I handed in:

And this is how:

I like the plastic box, it looks cheeky!

And with that, it all ended I guess. I know I should be out somewhere celebrating, but it’s been a really long day and tidying up the mess my room  took a while. Plus, the thought of a night bus scares me more than the dust I found under my desk.  If I’ve learned anything from the whole process is that documentation is very important and it makes a project look like a story.

Also, sugar rush keeps you awake longer than caffeine.
So long and thanks for all the fish.

Even like that, I like them – I think it’s nothing more or less than a recording of memories. Maybe with less emotion but I guess they call it cognitive for a reason. I’ve added the layers on photoshop, to get an idea of how they’d look once in the acrylic frames.

Again, I like it! I just hope that the width of the frames will add some depth and if that happens, then I’m sure it’d look amazing. Problem is, each one of those frames costs like £9!! And I was thinking of buying 2-3, but now that I have these visuals, I really want to make it stand out. That’s like £50! Not to mention tomorrow’s £75. Ahhh..this better get me a first or I’ll starve to death trying!

Also I liked the way that Fraser Muggeridge studio hadn’t sanitised the hell out of the images for the Downtown New York exhibition poster at the Barbican – both of the above sources were useful reminders to me when preparing the magazine to not be nervous about letting the materials speak for themselves and to treat the empty space and images as equivalents.

Here are a couple of images of my magazine. The back cover, and some laser cutting I had done for one of the inside spreads:

]]> http://designandinteraction.net/charlotte/2011/05/19/some-further-print-research-for-japan-magazine/feed/ 0 http://designandinteraction.net/emmanuel/2011/05/19/last-minute-design/ http://designandinteraction.net/emmanuel/2011/05/19/last-minute-design/#comments Thu, 19 May 2011 11:32:16 +0000 emanuel 104.559 ...read the rest...]]> To be honest, it wasn’t so much a last minute as last few hours. Morning hours to be exact. I finished designing this at 6am but it definitely worth it and it makes me wonder a bit; what if my portfolio is just print? If it looks like this, then I’d take print any given day.

I’m finishing the cognitive mapping one, but don’t let that fool you. Still no outcome. I really don’t know why, it’s as if I don’t want to do it. The folder looks great, it gives a very good idea of the process of the project. I couldn’t leave all that research on memory out of it, so I put it all in an A5 booklet. The inspiration for the design came from a paper I read during research; it reminds me of old, scientific papers and archives with the booky typeface and the justification. I thought it would be appropriate for the content and the context. Oh, and I loved the charts.

The blue paper also gives it this old school feeling and as always Baskerville delivers. So this will also go into the box, which reminds me: I need to print the labels for the boxes. I bought the acrylic frame from Muji, but not sure I’ll end up actually doing something. On one hand, it’s a shame, because it’s the first time I actually have a pretty clear vision of how I want this to look. On the other, I don’t feel that bad, because I think I’ve managed to show a good amount of work and commitment to this project.

Anyway, the day is still young. So is the night.

.

It includes:

• the printed matters outcomes, the tv guide in both sizes plus development and layouts
• plus the whole series – re-design
• there’s the what if poster at the bottom
• the what if research outcome booklet and
• the CSMApp manual

Marie said she really liked the.. oh fuck, what’s-that-word-again?!! The little things that wrap around each booklet explaining where each outcome comes from. Without the folders showing and explaining the whole process, it just looks like.. I don’t want to say print, but you can’t really help it, can you?! The only problem is that if I want to include the foam-board covers – their size looks and feels really good when holding them all together – the lid won’t close properly. I could put them in the Black Box of Objects but that would mess the Order. Need to re-consider.

I know you can’t probably tell and I know I don’t really feel it now, but I’m quite happy with how this starts to look.

I spent the day wrapping things up, which can only mean one thing: more printing. ABC did a great job, again; the what if booklet looks so good in paperback and it works really well with the black and grey of the inside. Yesterday’s printing failure turn out to be for the best, since I re-designed the cover. I’m glad I could find another use of the ‘order’ illustration.

I also reprinted the television guides series on card, because I had the idea of putting them on foam-board and presenting them as a final suggestion of the redesign.

Finally, because all the final outcomes will be in the same box (a.k.a the Black Box of Final Outcomes)I thought that a good way of labeling them would be to add a what’s-the-word-im-looking-for? It’s like a wrist band but not for…wrists. It would give a sense of identity to the body of work and it’ll be easier for our good examiners to find which outcome comes from which project.

As far as progress is concerned, I think.. I don’t want to say I’m getting there in case I jinx it. The cognitive mapping is proving to be a bit hard to nail. since I’m stuck at the illustration of the map, which is ridiculous and has to be sorted out really soon. Other than that, the folders are good to go, still need to print 1-2 pages for each of them and I can put them in the boxes. Which brings me to my problem.

The skylines is my first self project and the mapping the second, brining the number of final projects up to 5. If I have five folders in two boxes that means one of them will have only two. Which, as I’ve said before, for an OCD person like me is like placing delivery menus randomly and not based on size.. No, even worst! I feel really bad I’m starting to think that I won’t include my home/away project. I’ve only made 4 pages and I don’t think I have the right mind to sit and come up with like 10 more. So I can either:

• add a folder with what I’ve done so far, which is not much there because all the photos have gone to the skylines project folder or
• add a folder with my statement and find a way of cleverly breaking it up in 4-5 pages.

I’ll stop here and start working on the mapping folder, so I’ll be done by the morning and go over the final printings.

I really wanted to try printing the black pages on black ‘Plike’ 120 gsm by GF Smith but just did not have time to go to Old Kent Road and buy the 50 odd sheets I would have had to get (I tried shops and printers nearby but no one stocks Plike as a routine supply). I’m really disappointed about that as Plike has a really amazing texture – almost suede-like – and it would definitely have added another dimension to the magazine. Guess I’ll just have to live with that.

Most of all I’m happy with the cover. I got some slightly heavier stock for the cover and went through the double-photocopy and print process again to test it. I chose Zerkall 120 gsm  (the other white page stock is 105 gsm) to give the cover a very slightly weightier feel but it still has the slightly smooth on one side and matte on the other thing going on as i was keen to choose a cover which preserved that texture. Here are the front and back covers with the text printed on them – the text is cropped to fit with the ‘partial view’ title. Next stage is to finish off any small outstanding print bits – nothing to difficult left, cut all the pages down and bind – simple Japanese binding – black linen thread bound on the left hand edge (because it’s a magazine from my perspective) not the right (as in Japan)

I did some shopping today; got a nice A3 box for the final outcomes to go with the black box I’ve been thinking of using for the objects. Got some nice paper to hold the postcards for the self project – I like how they turn out, they have a vintage feeling, I think it’s the corners, they bring to mind old photographs for some reason.

Went to ABC to get the chaos booklet and the CSMApp manual printed as well. Both came out a bit faulty though; I exported the pdf with a downsample option that made the photos really blurry then when cutting the booklet, the really helpful guy used a block of wood that left a mark on the paper. I’ll go back again tomorrow and re-print them. It was also good to know ABC can print acetate quite cheaply.

I’ve almost impulsively – not to say subconsciously - decided to use the black photographic box for the final outcomes and it’s starting to look good. I wish I could say the same for the photos my camera produces :/

The major thing that needs to be done, is the illustration for the cognitive mapping project. It’s so easy and can be done really quickly, but I don’t know what’s taking me so long.  Then I can print at ABC, buy the acrylic frames from Muji and put the thing together. It was suppose to be ready by Sunday evening and spent most of today’s morning in the Masterpiece meeting.

Huge success. To quote Dave, that’s bullshit. That’s how he felt for my project, which I guess he’s right but then again I wouldn’t go up to his face and say you’re bald. Combine that with the work presented by Olga or Inessa and it’s pretty fair to say the photographer in me was not happy this morning. And you don’t want to know how the designer in me felt when he found out.

Caught up in this madness, I forgot to post the logo I made for the iPhone application.

It won’t be seen in CR blog anytime soon, but I think it works for the purpose of the application. It reminds me of the U.S. high school logos they have for their soccer teams. Not sure the southampton row line should be there, it’s really small and when scaled down to fit the iPhone interface it looks like a blur.

I also re-designed the concertina to make it match the colors of the logo – lesson learned kids: never leave the logo for the end!

I really like this one; from the cover to the layout, I just do. Especially those small numbers at the bottom of the pages and the little symbols. Now I need to find the right paper and see if ABC can do the trimming and creasing, it would really save time.

… I’ve been getting everything printed and I’ve decided to change to this image below for the covers because it totally sums up much of what I want to say. It’s a very ordinary style of Japanese house which I photographed on a very rainy day in a convex traffic mirror. The distortion of the ordinary is really key to what the magazine is about and the road signs in English and Japanese pointing out tourist sites really fit with that. The text will be broken and split betweeen the front and back cover just as in my earlier desgins (but set down the fore-edge) – screen-printed in silver ink.

I’ve struggled a bit to get the print effect I wanted but am happy I’ve cracked it now. Even though Rathna thought it would be fine to put a magazine made on photocopy paper in as a final piece, I was unhappy about it because an element of what I’m doing is to point up the dichotomy of refined and trashy and also because I wanted the magazine to feel more interesting when you hold it.

So, I photocopied all the images for the magazine in the newsagents on a bit of a rubbish photocopier (grainy a bit speckled, variable toner etc) and then got the pages printed (in two different printers which had a different quality of print) on the poster paper I bought (see earlier post). So the photocopied quality is still there but the paper feels more sophisticated and a bit more substantial and interesting as it’s matte on one side and a little bit glossy on the other. Phew! big problem solved after a lot of running round printers who would not print on my paper.