VIZCOMBOBULATE

I finally got the final version of the PDF finished last night - and then designed the front cover today;





Again, it would have been useful to have had this done in the days of the group crits, instead I've just gone with what I wanted - in the hope that it suits everyone and feels relevant.

I decided on calling it 'Between us & them' because of the theme of us working for live clients. And also because, although the response was good - I didn't get any serious answers from my 'give it a name' forum discussion.



Although my favourite silly name came from James Robinson who came up with 'VIS-COM-BOBULATE'.

Despite the deadline for submissions being yesterday - I am still receiving them into my email account which allows me to work at a steady pace and keep busy and focused. The deadline was just there to get people motivated in time. Its getting to the point now though where I need to be chasing those who haven't responded to my group email, facebook group invitation and facebook messages. I have received 18 submissions so far though! Another 20 to go before the Friday deadline! - Heres how I'm keeping it old school and keeping track...



Those who have not yet responded - prepare to feel my wrath!

Brick Wall

D'oh!

Sent my pages off to the client over the weekend and he got back to me yesterday saying how he likes them and is excited at how the book is beginning to take shape - but has had a 'Eureka moment' and has decided that the book should have a Professor on the front cover and then should appear in each page - I need to re-design my pages to accommodate this dude!!







His meeting with the mentor he has for the book was supposed to be today (and he was supposed to show my finished pilot to him), but because of his new idea - he has pushed it back, giving me time to rework the designs, but not in time for the college deadline. Boo!

Home made crit

I arranged to meet with my tutor today to run through my layout so far and get some advise from a pro. I found this so useful as I have missed the compulsory group crits with this brief being set quite late. There are a few things I will change about how I'm setting up my layout - but I feel rather re-assured that I'm moving in the right direction after hitting a brick wall last night. This has left me feeling just as enthused and excited about this project as I was to begin with.

I also invited a bit of peer assessment with those who were sat around the studio today. Feedback was good - some of those assessing it had work in my mock layout which sparked some interest. But its always hard to tell if my peers are just being nice or are genuinely liking the work without Graham around to spark some brutal critical feedback!

A very usefully spent afternoon though.

Had a pretty good response from my attempt at getting the message out to everyone about what they need to submit and when by (today)...



...which has meant I have been able to make some progress with getting the work into the layouts. Here are the 8 pages so far...










After a pretty long slog - I wanted to check my progress and converted the pages into a PDF to check their flick-ability... and its rubbish. It could be to do with me sitting in front of this layout all day. I've been reading about layouts using text in notes and handouts in my type journal. I've been fighting off widows & orphans, keeping columns narrow (but not too narrow), keeping my point at a good size and I've been lining up images with the text.

Hopefully I can talk to a tutor tomorrow to get some advice on what I'm doing wrong and how I could make it better.

Is it the colours?

Is it the mish mash of hand drawn titles?

Are my text boxes too different on each page? (can't be helped with different word counts - but maybe theres a way of handling it better?)

Its a shame there are no more crits left. This brief came along quite late in the project so I'm now beginning to realise how important peer assessment can be - and also receiving critical feedback from tutors.

Slept on it...

And came back to it today...



It looks like less text to read. And there appears to be less free space. The image has remained the same size. I just don't know how to make the beginning of the text look like the beginning.


Time to consult the type journal. Uh Ohhhh...

Heck!

Well the hand type works okay, but I changed the layout about to fit the text the best way around a landscape image, and keeping it similar to Richard's layout. Nomzamela has double the text that Richard does. Does it look right? I can't even tell. I've put it into 3 columns... but the first column looks wrong. But it also looks wrong when its the last column missing a few lines at the bottom. Need to play around come more with it.