design practice: February 2014

In today's session we were set two short tasks concerning the format and layout we would use with the information and images we were given.

For the first task we were required to create an A5 flyer promoting an exhibition at the MoMa in New York. We could only use black and white and had to use the logos for 'Jackson Rising' that we were given. We were given 45 minutes in which to create the flyer.

Layout 1 – Minimal Text / image:

Background:

This simple layout will ask you to utilise a short amount of body copy, title, date, and location. The minimal amount of text allows for the simple use of single imagery and the type to serve as the main visual elements.

Brief:

You are asked to produce a simplistic flyer design for Jackson Rising Exhibition at MoMA (Museum of Modern Art – New York) using the instructions below.

Specifications:

Format: A5 – Portrait

Title: Jackson Rising

Sub-Title: Curated by Jenny Dowd

Date: August 3, 2014 - August 31, 2014

Copy: Four artists met at an artist residency at the Ucross Foundation in 2013, now they come together to inhabit at MoMA, New York.

Location: MoMA, New York.

Contacts:

info@jacksonrising.com

www.jacksonrising.com

www.moma.org

Image: Jackson Rising ident / MoMA logo / NYU logo

Use of two colours only: Black and white

(Use embedded InDesign file and follow grid.)

Save as PDF file.

Below are my responses in the time period given:

I chose the final version as my finished flyer.

Task 2 involved us making a brochure for the exhibition, this time taking into account much more text and image other than just the logos.

Jackson Rising

Background:

This text/image heavy layout will ask you to utilise body copy, title, date, and location, heading, sub heading, imagery, indexes, highlighted quotes. The amount of text allows for the use of imagery and the type to serve as the main visual elements.

Brief:

You are to layout and design a 10-page concertina folded brochure for a forth-coming exhibition titled ‘Jackson Rising’ at MoMA, New York. All images, copy and branding are included. You have to create a visually stimulating layout that showcases the artists’ imagery but does not sacrifice important information in this process. The images and information must flow harmoniously and offer a taste of what is to be expected during the exhibition.

Branding elements must be kept to black and white. Images must be unaltered and in colour.

Considerations:

Headings, headlines, body copy, grid, type, colour, image sizing, bleed, margins, flow, audience, narrative, language, purpose, size, external print methods, preparing for print, stock, distribution.

Specifications:

Format: A5 x10 – Portrait – Concertina spread (front and back).

Title: Jackson Rising - Curated by Jenny Dowd

Dates: August 3, 2014 - August 31, 2014

Location: 11 W 53rd St, New York, NY 10019, United States

Introduction:

Four artists met at an artist residency at the Ucross Foundation in 2013, now they come together to inhabit at MoMA, New York.

List of artists:

Ruth Boerefijn

Lindsey Glover

Mayme Kratz

Jenny Dowd

Ruth Boerefijn:

My process is experiential. I make visits beyond my self: to Iceland, to the store where the fishermen buy their supplies, to the library.

The feel of manuscripts, photographs and maps give my hands something to articulate when later, in my studio, they work knotting and looping lengths of fishing line. It loses form over time, and can be reshaped; it is resilient. The line is a symbol of connection, of reaching into the depths for nourishment.

The colored paper is cut from my own drawings from nature-imprinted with other narratives and perceptions-through which I punch holes as a way of forging through them to get to the act of new expression.

Text is also a material with a memory and a shape. I struggle to arrange words so they can articulate beyond history to character, story, felt experience, and new possibility.

Lindsay Glover:

Using multiple projections, Lindsey Glover transforms the Loft into a space for the exploration between perception, memory and experience. She collects photograph and video images that are later re-examined to find parallels in context, all the while focusing on the capture and storage of time.

Mayme Kratz:

Mayme Kratz creates art from the natural life of the desert that surrounds her Phoenix home and studio. Viewing collecting as a way of archiving memory, she assembles a variety of natural forms—tangled birds’ nests, feathers, bones, seeds, snakes, and cicada wings—and captures them submerged in resin to create rhythmic, abstract sculptures and reliefs. “My collected specimens celebrate the endless cycles of change and rebirth in nature,” Kratz has said. In addition to these hanging and freestanding works she has also created a variety of videos and installations, including an interactive outdoor sculpture made of found tumbleweeds meant to disintegrate over time.

Jenny Dowd:

Jenny Dowd explores space and movement with a series of steel and Egyptian Paste vessels. The boats hover, dive and flock overhead while exploring the gallery in a playful dialogue.

Contacts:

Ruth Boerefijn: www.ruthboerefijn.com

Lindsay Glover: www.lindsey-glover.com

Mayme Kratz: www.maymekratz.com/

Jenny Dowd: www.jennydowd.com

info@jacksonrising.com

www.jacksonrising.com

www.moma.org

Image:

Jackson Rising ident / MoMA logo / NYU logo

Multiple Artist imagery

(Use embedded InDesign file and follow grid.)

Save as PDF file.

Print proof copy if possible.

Again I found that I was able to do more in the time we were given and so made two fairly different brochures.

Brochure 1:

Brochure 2:

The main thing that I learnt from doing these exercises is that I can develop quite a large quantity of work in a short time period, as we were only given a couple of hours to complete these.

In spite of mine and Leo's initial thoughts to focus on The Big Issue Up North, we thought that it may be more interesting and diverse to look into a redesign of Flack Cambridge, thinking that less people would chose this magazine. On top of this, Flack is much more text based than The Big Issue and appears as though it is targeted at a more specific audience, perhaps one that has more of an interest in reading the articles.

We started by re-writing the brief, giving us more scope to identify exactly what we needed to do. This proved extremely helpful as the original Monotype brief is very vague and at some points confusing.

We concluded that we would be able to get the most out of the brief if we had a selection of tasks that we would complete alone and a selection we would complete together.

We decided that we would each design our own typeface to be used for either headings or sub-headings, something we would decide on based on the outcome of our designs.

I chose to base my designs on a simple sans serif font, as that could give me the scope to experiment with it more than if I had used a serif base.

I started by outlining Helvetica Neue Light, and after doing so thought it might be interesting to give some parts of the letters a heavier line.

Doing this allowed me to do something interesting with the heavier line when it wasn't filled. I used a finer line to create a simple pattern on the inside.

After doing this I still thought the concept was a bit basic so I added a 'highlight' to the heavier side

After completing the whole typeface I put it in context by creating a quick mock up doubly page spread using my typeface as a header, however, I found upon doing this that there might have been too much going on with the typeface for it to just be a header. It had become a bit too decorative and so I decided to alter it a bit more.

I found that taking out the linear visual inside the heavier side actually made it appear bolder, as the lines had given it a delicacy that wasn't appropriate as a header.

I decided to name the final typeface Duotone Neue, taking the Neue from the typeface I had based it on, and calling it Duotone put emphasis on the almost even weighting between black and white.

One of the spreads that I was responsible for was the spot the difference spread. In the original Flack spread it is an image based game, and since we were creating a typography edition, we decided to do a typography based Spot the Difference.

I chose to use Garamond for the spot the difference as I thought that using a serif font would allow me to create more subtle differences to make it a bit harder than if it were a sans serif font. Similarly, to make it authentic I figured I would need to create at least 10 differences, and this would give me the scope to do that.

After finishing the spot the difference I created a selection of default layouts for the spreads, using the rule of thirds as a guide.

When I came to create the actual spreads I maintained the same initial rule of thirds guide but chose to alter some of the layout options I had made.

We had already decided to use a selection of pastel colours for the spreads, and so I took this into account when deciding on the layout and the use of both my typeface and the typeface Leo had designed for the subheads.

This spread includes two of the pages from the original magazine, a section on poetry in which readers can send in their poems to be published in the magazine, and the Spot the Difference.

The brief had stated that they wanted to see us making reference to the digital world and how we can create a digital counterpart to the magazine. We decided to give readers the option to download a PDF version of the magazine via the website, by submitting the QR code inside the magazine. Leo created this to be placed on one of the spreads of the magazine, as well as the listings pages that he was responsible for.

I chose to place the PDF download code on a double page spread that was based on a feature that had been in the previous issue of the magazine.

Below are a selection of front cover options that leo designed. We chose to base the issue on an 'impossible' theme as this would give us scope to include impossible typefaces as well as the content.