Indesign Article - Zebra

I wanted to keep my article mostly image based as, out of most of the animal options, zebra's appearance are most striking and I wanted to employ that as focal area for the double page.

The image I chose was a bit too complex to set text against without some sort of backdrop. I wanted the image to stay consistent throughout so I dropped a shape over the image with a low opacity, enabling the viewer to see the image but not have it make the text unreadable.

In Life of Pi, the human characterisation of the zebra was a japanese sailor, so by using this as the header, for people who have seen the film they will understand the context of the article, and for someone who hadn't seen it, may want to find out the correlation between the header and the image.

I chose Headliner .45 for the header, a type which in my opinion demands quite an understated attention, especially in the dark subtle tones I used to remain in keeping with the image. It also appeared slightly eroded, with a style similar to that of Japanese letterforms.

I wrote my body copy revolving the film around the zebra and although that isn't the theme of the film it explores the symbolism from an angle that maybe hadn't been exhibited before.

After the minicrit we had in our Design Principles session, I received some good and very helpful feedback, one vital thing being to break up the text, perhaps with dropcaps or subheadings, so I tried both and found that they still worked well together and broke up the large body of text appropriately.

Another point was that I needed to include more images (a minimum of three), but I knew it would be difficult when I had a really demanding image in the background and I didn't want to take away from any part of it, especially the eye in the centre of the second page.

I decided to use a polaroid style incorporation of three more images, much more simple than the main one. By putting them down the side I avoided blocking the eye and managed to avoid breaking up the page too much, which would probably have happened if I placed the images at the bottom of the page.

I was pleased with the outcome, and although I would have liked to include a subheading, it quite overwhelmed the page, given that there was quite a lot of body copy when I finished writing it. I was really happy with the background and I think I got lucky in finding an image that could be wrapped around well.

I would have liked to experiment with the layout more, but I pretty much stayed with my initial idea the whole way through. I would have liked to try breaking up the text and placing it around the spread more interestingly but given the nature of the images in this, I thought it best to keep the text simple.

Speaking from Experience

After our group crit I decided I wanted to make my cookbook specifically directed at packed lunches, as in my own and in many other people's opinions, the biggest cause of spending unnecessary amounts of money on food is lunch during the day at college.

I did some research to find out how much on average people spend on lunch a day and it came out between £3.00 and £4.00, approximately £15.00-£20.00 a week.

In order to find ways of cutting down on this, the packed lunches I will be suggesting will use things that might have previously been made for dinner, substitutes for expensive sandwich fillings like more expensive cheeses and a balanced approach to at least one meal a day.

I wanted to make it  a pretty illustrative approach in terms of the contents,  so I started making some simple designs for foods often used in sandwiches that I could reuse in a lot of them.

After some of the suggestions in our first crit, I decided I wanted to involve some sort of packaging or something to use for a packed lunch. I decided I would use the packaging for the posters themselves and make it into a lunchbox.

This was I could illustrate the exterior design of the lunchbox, allowing me to keep it simple on the outside as something that could be used again and again.

I started making some simple designs that would make the outside of the box look like the inside. I used illustrator to design some basic food in a balanced packed lunch.

Speaking From Experience Design Boards and Crit

The feedback I received in our first crit was mostly positive, with good feedback on my plans for production, making it a cookbook theme with recipes illustrated in a decorative manner that could be folded out and used as posters as well.

Since my whole concept is to be saving money in terms of food, I had given some thought to making it very specific, towards perhaps easy recipes to be used as substitutes for takeaway meals or substitutes for fast food. After my crit it was advised that I could direct the cookbook at packed lunches. When I thought about this, people do spend about £4.00 a day on buying food in our around college for lunch which adds up to quite a lot. It was also suggested that I could create an accompanying product to the cook book, perhaps a custom lunch box or bag.

Earlier in the week, Danielle Muntyan and I had decided to collaborate very casually since she had the idea for a typogateaux themed baking book. We each wanted to get on with our own book but keep it of a similar style and theme as each other so they could work as a two part. However, when I spoke about this in my crit, Simon and some others suggested that we don't get bogged down into working in a partnership. Both ideas were very specific and may not actually end up falling in to the same category, so we are rethinking the decision to work together.

Speaking From Experience Research

It was simple for me to choose a route to go down with these brief, just by looking at my two main issues when leaving home, one being having to figure out how to manage my money (the hard way) and the other cooking for myself, and since I'm a terrible cook I rely on ready meals and takeaways a bit too much (which doesn't help with the money management).

http://voices.yahoo.com/college-student-eating-habits-bad-health-the-5273449.html?cat=5

http://colourful-foodie.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/students-eating-habits-myths-exposed.html

I decided to combine the two ideas of eating habits and money management in the form of a student cookbook, but with so many variations of student cookbooks I knew I needed to do something that would give it a competitive edge. This tied in well with the money management side of things as I realised I could include pages with cheap alternatives to some food and ingredients and perhaps some healthier alternatives to takeaway and fast food options.

I had already planned to keep the design simple to mirror the simplicity of the recipes and to relax people who might not be great cooks. I started looking at books in this style:

I love everything involved with this design, the book like appearance lends itself so well to the actual content and the fold outs can easily double up as something decorative which would be ideal for a student living in a cell like bedroom in halls.

Plenty of these examples embodied the design style and fusion of food and lifestyle that I wanted to include in my own cookbook, but the standout design for me was the 'Bread and Butter' fold out cookbook, the idea is interesting and innovative and I would love to explore something similar for my own design.