Research, Collect, Comminucate - Development

I wanted to include a Middle Earth tube map and a few character profiles, no matter whether I decided on a poster or book jacket, so before I decided which to do I designed these parts first.

I drew out a still image of Frodo, Gandalf and Gollum from the films and outlined them. I kept it simple and left out facial expressions, partially to allow a reader to make their own assumptions on facial features but mostly to keep it minimalist and simple. I didn't want to overwhelm a viewer with information about the book and a hugely detailed image.

Initially I wanted to break down the image, using my primary research, to show the words that people used to describe each character in percentages, giving the viewer an idea of how to see the character before reading.

I lined out each section after measuring the fractions according to the 6 most commonly used words (or similar words), but found that when it was filled with the colour it looked too busy and it would be more effective filled in in different shades of the colour theme I planned to have for each design.

When designing the tube map, I wanted it to be similar to the London Underground map but make it fit a more medieval style to fit the theme of the books. I varied the lines to be different shades of the colour theme of each book.

I printed a basic map of Middle Earth and by following the plot of the book I marked out the route taken by Frodo in his journey to Mordor. I added lines for each area of Middle Earth to fill out the map and give the reader an idea of the length of their journey.

In the image above the type is difficult to see but in order for it to be legible on a dark blue background, I had to use the lightest shade that wasn't white to keep up with the theme.

I found that the information I had gathered would be most appropriate for a book jacket so I returned to that idea and starting designing the layout on InDesign. I based the measurements on an A5 sketchbook I had, including an extra 5cm so the jacket can fold into the book. I chose one colour for each book and varied the shades for the illustration and tube map, to keep them consistent with each other in terms of style.

I started designing another map to show and compare the significant mountains and rivers in terms of height and depth, however after giving some thought to the layout of the jacket I wasn't sure I would be able to include it if I wanted the tube map to be large enough to be legible.

I started to design the jackets themselves on InDesign, separating the sections out with varied shades of one colour. I found that while keeping all of one book blue, another green and another brown, they each became quite individually overpowering, as a lot of the colours were dark. The font remained Helvetica on the jacket, apart from the London Tube font I used for the map. I wanted to keep it as simple as possible in the hope to compromise for overwhelming the rest of it was.

To make the jacket slightly more infographic based, I did some research into nominations and awards but almost all that I found were for the films. I then decided to make the focus of the jacket to be a new design as a celebration of a Special Edition DVD release so that I could still use this information for it. I chose the most prestigious awards and placed them in a compact layout.

I maintained the structure of the type for the awards in the type for the title, varying size to put emphasis on some of the words. I printed them to make sure they were the correct dimensions and found that the type on the inside of the jacket was cut off at the edge. Similarly some of the sections folded too far over into the next section, and the colours and small size of the type for the tube map weren't completely legible due to them being on such a dark background, so I had to, change the colours of the lines and type, as well as adjusting the size of all the type.

When I printed them all off for the final crit I was unhappy with the colours as they didn't appear linked to each other and were much more varied than I planned on them being, some on the Fellowship edition appearing more violet than blue. While that could have been due to the printing, I was unsure on the colours prior to this. When printed, the information also seemed more sparse when I wanted the information to be the main focus.

The feedback I got from the crit was similar to my own feelings about it, where the simplicity I tried to exaggerate gave off that there seemed to be a lack of time invested in the design. While this wasn't the case as I had changed my plan so many times, I saw exactly what was meant. I decided after the crit to spend a few more days adapting the design to make it strictly information based.