100 book, progress etcetarahhhh

With my original intentions i started my research by looking into the equipment of snowboarding, boots, bindings and the board etc Then onto Destinations and resorts to go snowboarding, Professional riders, specific tricks and a general list of them, 

From here i went to produce mock versions of what a page may look like on the different areas of research...

Rough idea what a page could look like if the book was of a 100 boarding set ups. What i ideally had in mind was to produce a book of a 100 snowboards and their designs, however finding decent images of a 100 boards would be quite problematic and time consuming so i thought id try with focusing on type...

This was a sticker that i had made as part of a group for a previous project, I thought it was quite interesting as a way of making Text more exciting. So i took this cheeky concept and used it to create a page for book of 100 resort/destinations...

The outcome from this was i thought successful, bit lovely! 

First day back we were given a new deadline which was to create a 32 page bound book by the following monday, so i had to get my jog on...

It was around this time where the first group crit took place and we were to show our research etc 

The crit overall was really helpful and fairly positive, the main problems or concerns were that what the market should be, whether it be to enthusiastic snowboarders who already know the sport or aimed at people that might not know a lot about it but are intrigued to get involved. 

There was also comments made that the book of 100 boards would lack original personal images and with a book being mostly type could get boring.

so, i need illustrations, i need to choose a content which allows me to create images for.

After some thought i decided to go with a book of 100 snowboarding tricks, the market being anything from pro, recreational and brand new riders! 

The plan is to have mostly text but with illustrations depicting the trick mentioned.

This was the first draft page i made for the 32 page booklet, Its okay but nothing great, i like the minimal feel and am quite fond of the style of the title, 'Air Tricks'. As time passed, i found myself on saturday day finally starting to produce and design the book! So with little time i ran with this style of page and got on with the job. 

monday 7:30 am, 12 hour slog from sunday evening, excellent. 

Just another example of a page from the book.

Crit time again, Again i found it very useful, firstly i got some decent constructive criticism and its helpful to see what other people had and can produce in this amount of time. 

The main points that came up about the book were;

Negative

. Lack of illustrations

. A bit 'samey'

. The Process i took making the book 

. becomes dull due to similar pages

Positive

. Interesting subject/matter

. Illustrations made work well

. Genious trick names

Looking back at this i did a little brainstorm thing and decided what to concentrate on and figure out where to take this, the main things i've now started to work on are, producing illustrations for each of the trick category's, Grabs, jibbs, Spins etc

If there's a way of involving board designs as comments were made in both crits that the graphics of snowboards are highly designed and interesting.

Working with adding several colours and fonts. 

Also and quite importantly move onto printing the book properly using indesign duplex and binding etc! hello friday print drop in,

byebye for now 

Book of 100, SOI

1. State the title & focus of your work in response to the brief.

The general focus of my work is snowboarding and right now i'd say that the title is, 'A guide to...'.

2. Identify specific areas of research that you intend to investigate and methods that you will use.

As i want to produce a form of guide to boarding, not only as a sport or hobby but lifestyle i want to research into all areas of it, this means looking at boards themselves, the range and style of graphics, the sizes, the technology, the anatomy and type of board and what its made for, different brands of boards etc

The research for this will probably be in the form of lists, collected images from magazines particularly Document Snowboard,

www.documentsnowboard.co.uk 

photographs and figures, figures mainly coming from searching into sizes and the technology. 

Other areas that i plan to research into include resorts and places to go boarding, again this most likely to be lists, this also being easy to apply to the '100' idea. 

From here i can go to look at the fashion of snowboarding, similar to looking at the boards, focusing on range of styles and brands. The somewhat do's and don'ts of being a boarder, focusing on the culture. This however may be tricky to search into as its uncommon to find and well i don't know of any made guide to being a boarder. You'd just have to take my word for it! 

Then there's more list producing looking at the number and varying tricks you can do on a board, looking at professional signed riders making a living and turning it into a profession.

3. Identify specific practical methods and technical processes that you intend to use in order to visually develop your ideas.

One method i intend to use is to create images on illustrator using live trace on top of photos and drawn sketches and images, this can become very useful as they can become relevant and can used in different ways, whether being put into a larger image or on its own as the focus of a page or something of less importance. 

I also want to include drawing some perspective typography, maybe just the numbers 1-100, as i've just recently learnt how to correctly draw this way it appears to be a good way of practicing it and it also looks pretty sweet. 

Another method i want to use to visually develop my ideas is the use of slr cameras, from this i can get decent photographs of my board, all the parts to it etc and my clothing i have for boarding as well as practice using an slr camera. 

4. What methods will you use to evaluate the progress and success of your own work? 

The main method i'll be using to evaluate my work will be the ongoing group crits, which i've found useful with previous work projects, being able to have other people input their own ideas and opinions concerning my work and whether they see and understand what i try to convey within the work. I also plan to just refer to tutors as they seem to ask the right questions and give general advice on where to go next.

 

What is a Book?

To me a book essentially is a published piece of work that are made to be read. Mostly being a number of bound paper. 

This year santa bought me a book. so when i hear/see the word book i think of that! 

It was Russell Brands, articles of faith. 

which is a compilation of his column articles from the Guardian.

 

'Citin!

If you want to buy a book, why not look at this website.

www.amazon.co.uk

what is a book? hmmmm well how far can you take this, a stapled stack of paper, is that a book? there's justification for it as it is a load of bound paper what if it was unusual objects bound together? stones, cd case ruler??? thats mental but it could be forged into a book!

With my subject area being snowboarding, i thought it would be rather ruddy interesting to look at ski maps. Its main advantage in a way is that it's pocket sized but folds out to rather a large single piece of paper that is duplex printed. This is a form of book that im going to experiment with producing, i need a big piece of paper, and a blade! 

the only problems i see with this is the actual printing on a large piece of paper, print room..money? 

 It came to mind that with ski maps i've often found that they get ripped easily as they are prone to getting wet. so what about making something that is pocket sized like a piste map for someone to carry with them on the mountain, however making it water resistant by say laminating the pages and then to make them into a swatch style bound to help whilst handling and reading the book.

its peanut butter jelly time!

minus the jelly, aint got no jam,

whilst eating this highly arousing delight il be watching top gear. 

I bid you good night.

postman pat and his black and white cat

week 7/8,

Taking the recession opinion/message further, then given a brief to produce a mail shot which distributed this message. 

Again i had two main focus points, Bond and birmingham, with this in mind i straight away sketched some designs for what could go in and what the envelope could look like, having a bond theme whilst promoting Birmingham. 

It was during this process that i came up with the idea of creating a national vote in the UK which let the public vote for the city they want the next bond movie to be filmed in. 

Progessing with ideas and several designs i eventually ended up with final designs for the envelope, mailing list and contents of the mail shot...

overall i think as a series, the mail shots work very well, its minimal and somewhat elegant keeping in with the Bond theme, it clearly states the message i have created and furthermore is interactive with the target audience which i don't think was a common occurrence with other peoples designs. 

it is nice.

The Guardian newspaper is about news. on paper.

Week 6.  No News Is Good News. unless its because everyones dead. bugga. 

This project is in two parts, 

Firstly we had to choose a quote from a selection of articles in the paper, 

We had to research the topic the article talks about.

I chose the article that was based upon the scary-wary recession.

........i did some research...It was nice........

From this act we had come to our own opinion on the matter.

After finding the headline;

 

'If credit crunch goes on, next Bond location could be Birmingham' 

having the honour of coming from Birmingham i ran with the headline that was a quote from Mr Daniel Craig himself. Coming to the opinion... 'Bond Should be in Birmingham' 

second part;

message and interpretation 

From here I had to create 3 count it 3, the magic number and all that jazz, impact posters.

i had two things to concentrate on, Birmingham and Bond. 

after collecting images and also looking at political posters i came up with 3 designs which followed the mandatory requirements. 

These are the final 3 designs;

I was fairly pleased with the outcome, i had been away during the handout of this brief so i had quite a short time to come up with the designs. Furthermore as it was my first idea and it actually worked and looks half decent, surely thats credible! I'm quite evidently a bloody genius. obviously.  

A bit more orange. 'citing.

Week 5 now, what is your colour?

Colour = orange

After brainstorming on what is orange to me, words, objects, phrases etc that to me relate/show/is orange came to the conclusion that the answer to the question, what is orange? is...

'Orange is a Fruit' 

reason being, we got the word orange from the fruit, then gave that word to the colour of the orange, orange. How many times can i use the word orange in this without it becoming ridicularse? 

From finding out what orange is to me, i started to bash out design ideas that represent the answer, what is orange? 

so each design must be based upon fruit, even more so, the orange fruit.

10 designs done.

Here are my fave...

 

The crit we had for this project went as the french say,

'very badly' 

I was criticised firstly because i didn't have 10 designs at the time I only had 7,  I knew this.

I was criticised because the answer to the question was too obvious. well thats what orange is, it is a fruit, it is a colour, it was a fruit first. Why go into some obscure way to show orange, which at the end of the day may show what orange is, but is taken so far that you then have to explain what your trying to portray, which is rhubarb and deems it to not work therefore, the work is a failure. 

I knew and admit that this was one of my weaker projects, i didn't enjoy it, and the majority of my designs i wasn't fond off. 

However having a crit which told me something I already knew was just a waste of my and everyone else who participated time. Furthermore I was questioned when i objected to the crit and asked why i bought in work that i didn't like or think was any good. This is hilarious, next time i don't like my work and we have a crit, i just wont bring anything in and simply state, i didn't like it. All in all this was a low point of the course.