Feltron Annual Reports

I believe I blogged about these reports in the first year of the course, but I have come back to them as I feel they can be inspirational once again during the premier league report brief. These annual reports have been well documented in the past but I think they are quite unique so I decided to feature them again.

This is the kind of aesthetic approach I will adopt during the brief with the oversized type and simple vector shapes work well particularly if I find a stock that gets the most out of the prints.

The Feltron reports have got better year on year, so if you haven't seen them I urge you to take a look here.

Statement of Intent - Year Three

YEAR THREE
Statement of Intent

Rationale
My design practice will certainly focus in typography and layout in a variety of forms and to cover many areas of interest I have. These areas include subjects such as publishing and editorial which covers book cover design and magazine layout, promotional design which covers posters and flyers and corporate identity which covers logos and stationery.

I still see my main interest in design for print but I still want to show that I can work for screen too on things such as interface design and static graphics for electronic delivery. I feel this will beneficial to me once I leave as I know from my experiences this summer that new technology cannot be ignored, and so knowledge of it is essential in today’s market.

My aesthetic approach seems to sway towards sharp, clean and impactful, much like the examples I have been posting on my blog over the summer. I like to work with and manipulate typography to portray meaning in terms of scale, weight, orientation, leading, kerning and character styles and want to learn more about grid systems before the end of the year.

Statement of Intent
I want to create clean and crisp design solutions to strengthen my portfolio in the areas I have stated above. I want to work within advertising, public or information sector and the briefs I have chosen/written allow me to do all three and still with a focus towards type and layout.

Outside the briefs and studying I would like to secure a placement to work in a local design studio once a week. I feel that the experience and connection with the industry will put me in a better position once I leave and will also open doors to a career.

2.BRIEF
I feel the briefs I have chosen/written will enable me to express my layout and typography skills and also allow me to develop on other skills such as branding and packaging to a certain degree. I happy with my choices and feel that there is enough scope for each of them to be taken further and to be focussed down to meet the criteria. I also feel that there is enough of a range of briefs so when I do use them for my portfolio there are differing examples.

The collaborative brief will enable me to work as part of a team which I deem important at this stage as it is something I would like to get used too, and I will hope to build on the success of previous collaborative efforts and maintain a good working relationship until the end.

3.RESEARCH
My research will take the form in the same areas as I have searched through before. I feel that the facilities I can access at the moment are luxurious compared to that of the average design studio. I still plan to use magazines, books, and the internet as the bulk of my research, and I also plan to gather primary evidence through online and offline questionnaires and surveys.

4.PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT
I intend to use the print facilities frequently as well as getting my hands dirty with traditional printing techniques. In every situation the printing will be to deliver mock ups and/or final prints. I will attend workshops involving screen design to further my knowledge in that field for the branding briefs particularly as there will be web delivery involved.

5.RECORDING, DOCUMENTATION & EVALUATION
My blogs will once again become my main source of documenting and evaluating. They have served me well in the past and I have continually kept them up to date on a day to day basis during some projects. They will be used to document contextual investigations as well as recording and evaluating my own design practice throughout the project.

Crits will be the next opportunity to evaluate my work against others to see what can be adapted, changed and developed throughout the briefs. This will become the main point of user input so will become an important part of my design practice. After crits I will evaluate where I am at, and write a plan for the next one. The action plans will also be documented on the appropriate blog.

Penguin Books

In light of the brief I have just talked about, I have found these lovely examples of classic penguin book covers. They have a format to work too but each one seems entirely different. I do encourage the uniformity of it but its also good to see how much of a range you can get through the use of colour and different compositions. The majority of these were designed in and around the 1960's.

Collaborative Brief

Me and Liam have been talking over the past few weeks about a collaborative effort on the back of discussions at the end of last year. We first of all planned to do something this year depending on what our focusses were for the year ahead at the end of summer. We both have picked up on an area that we both consider interesting in the publishing sector.

After this we both decided on create a series of book covers to showcase type and layout skills. We both feel we can benefit from each others skills as well as work ethics and for me personally it would be good to see how Liam works.

I wrote up this brief as a starting point and we will look to strip it back and write something with more focus soon.

_______________________________________________________________________

BRIEF TITLE
Book Cover Collection

The Brief
Design a series of book covers to promote a collection of books of your choosing.

Background
To celebrate its 75th birthday in 2010, Penguin is publishing a new Penguin collection aimed at new readers.

The re-issue of classic books will be designed to replace existing copies of the books and add to new readers collections. The classics range will feature five books initially but will be rolled out to include more titles if deemed successful.

Concept/Proposition
Impactful and desirable to readers but keeping the essence of the original issues.

Considerations
How can you get new readers to interact with these titles without alienating the people who bought the original?

How can you capture the integrity of the titles and also update them successfully?

Think about framing, format, colour, type choice carefully.

Will your designs be typographically or image driven or a mixture of the two.

Mandatory Requirements
The book covers should be scaled to the same dimensions as the current penguin releases and the penguin identity should be visible on the front and back covers.

The rest of the design decisions are up to you including the selection of titles.

Target Audience
New young readers who want to a taste of classic fiction.

Deliverables
Covers are to be presented on A2 mount board along with any other development work.

Tone of Voice
The tone of voice will remain in the spirit of the original title.

Info Graphics

In light of the briefs I have chosen I wanted to look around for some inspiration to give me some ideas on a suitable design direction. I have not looked into information graphics before but it ties in with what I want to achieve and the way my design direction is going seems to suit this.

I remember looking through the consults website earlier in the year, and found some nice info graphics examples and so I wanted to repost them to jog my memory when I come to the premier league report brief. I already have an idea in my head of how I want it to look and this is the closest thing to that idea.

This facts and figures publication is printed on a cheap basic coloured stock and this is the kind of look I want to go with my report as it will be a free publication for fans, sponsors and footballing authorities.

*Spotlight* Idealismo

Idealismo is another agency I found via Aisleone who are inspired by typography and layout coupled with some simplistic yet impactful branding, they have a good portfolio at the end of it.

Kicking off with this lovely example of branding for A2 home design. They incorporated a new identity with a theme that runs along the stationery and is cleverly used with imagery too.

The reverse side of the paper is also printed with a distressed texture which could be linked to the planning process of A2's work.

*Spotlight* Toko.

Toko, formerly based in Rotterdam, Holland and since 2008 permanently operating out of Sydney, Australia, are a multidiscplinary design agency.

I picked up this link from Aisleone which is a great resource for inspiration involving type and grid. Toko tend to work with type and layout for the majority of the work and they also have some nice examples of corporate identity and exhibiton artwork.

The first example pictured here is a poster designed as part of the lyrics & type poster series, where designers, illustrators and typographers are invited to design posters featuring the lyrics of established artists.

This design is representative of the multilayered sounds together with the lyrics which are threaded through the sound.


I have also included this work for Code Magazine which is dedicated to documenting style. Toko designed the whole design style for the magazine and has the Code as a long standing client.

All the spreads incorporate this torn effect which links to the content of the magazine. They do not report on the latest fashion, they dig deeper into the origins of fashion and I feel the torn effect really works well with those values.