Standards Posters - change of brief!

 Pretty drastic change of idea from 'standards' as a general term to a much more focused term which relates more closely to my dissertation topic and research. Swiss Graphic design standards, this should also make the posters I'm creating more relevant as opposed to the really random outcomes previously achieved.
 

A list of possible standards within Swiss Graphic design that I could use. 

Ideas for various posters, the first for standard paper sizes, looking at overlaying tones with the dimensions of different paper sizes, and off setting them to give a much different outcome to what people expect from a paper size diagram.

The second examples are for standard typefaces of Swiss Graphic design. Not sure about these particular sketches though as they seem a little too plain. nothing much to them.

These final sketches are of another standards poster based on structured information, I went for a simple approach using the letters of the word structure, or structured, in a fairly tight grid but places in a manor that is based more on aesthetic. Think with work this could be really effective.

Typografia 2 - Flyer print tests

Initial tests printing the flyers on the laser printers in the studio. Think If I were to do these justice I'd have to have them printed downstairs on the inkjet printers, to get the black much flatter. here it is very rough, but I think it gives a good idea of how the design looks to scale. Even with some of the text at around 7pt it still remains easily readable so I think this is working fine.

Typografia 2 - Talk Transcripts

For the purpose of the exhibition, I thought it would be nice for those attending talks to receive a little transcript of the talk they've just attended as it will allow them to go over anything they missed but also have something to take away to say that they'd been there. I produced these quick examples of how they may look.

They're A6, so quite small and colour is added using stock so that the information can all be printed in black to save the cost for the number that would probably need to be produced. Because of the small size I would also propose that they were produced in different languages instead of using the two column layout like in the event programme.

Unfortunately I haven't managed to get hold of any of the talks, because people tend not to transcribe them (partly the reason for my doing these transcripts) so all the text in these examples is just lorem ipsum, however I think it gives a good idea of how the final booklets would look and feel.

The layout on the cover stays pretty much the same and the names will just interchange along with the stock dependant on the venue of the talk. Shades of red for the stedelijk and different tones of off white for the Museum Fur Gestaltung. 

A close up shot of the bind, which although I don't think is a particularly text book bind, gives a nice touch to the booklet. I initially set the type out on the cover in the way it is without thinking about how it would be bound, but on printing the covers out, I thought it would be really nice if the lines of the thread acted like dividers between the seperate elements of cover information. This also meant that the back could look nice a tidy aswell with a single line of thread.

This bind is also the reason for the offset columns, as quite a lot of the page is lost with this bind. 

Typografia 2 - programme mock ups.

Blank mock-up of Typografie exhibition programme based on a square format. I went for this because of square formats being very popular with Swiss Graphic Designers, and it is also something  I've never really worked with before. I quite like the brown cover, but as I've not printed on it yet I'm not sure how this will come out. Also it is very difficult to get the width of the spine when doing the cover as a full wrap around like this, I may have to look at another type of cover

Printed

Here are image of a printed test, using the layouts developed based on a 2 column grid, because of the two languages in the programme. I chose to set it in two languages because of Swiss designs want for a single communication that is not affected by language, having the two means that it is more accessible by those attending the exhibition, especially with them being in German speaking countries.

Not very clear from these images but this is also a french fold book, the inside of each of the pages will be printed with flood red to mirror the red of the identity and of the links with Swiss design. Any pages that are block grey, like the one above will also be flat red on the colour printed programme.

SF 2013 - Embossing covers.

The idea moving forward is that we will think about how the book may appear in a range, as most publishers wouldn't usually just produce a travel guide for one city there would be quite a number. the cover for each of the guides would then be embossed with an image that represents the city.

The example below is a fairly abstract representation of the holocaust memorial in Berlin in the process of being copper etched for the embossing plate.

This is an image of the plates with the film layer on the stops the acid solution from etching into the copper. Where there is no blue, the copper will be eaten away to create an indent. 

The plates after around 6 hours in the etching tank. Here it is evident where the copper has been eaten away and where it will emboss the material once put into the press. 

The first cover  for the San Francisco Bay Area guide, embossed with a detailed image of the golden gate bridge.  Think this is looking really good, and the detail really comes out nicely in the emboss.

SF 2013 - initial mockups

Our very initial mock ups for the alternative travel guide looking at using some designs done over summer. These designs incorporated a red rectangle in the bottom right of all the pages, from cover to cover. We felt this was a nice touch but wanted to have on the actual guide in a more tactile fashion than printing. So we decided that having a wrap around the front cover would provide a nice dash of colour to the greyboard covers aswell as a good space for information on the inside cover of the book.

We did some foil tests on the wrap to see whether we could achieve a nice consistent white as we initially wanted the text on the wrap to be white.  

 However the foil test was particularly unsuccessful and we decided that the black on the wrap looked better against the greyboard anyway.

We also attempted a fairly rudimentary perfect bind, simply holding the pages together and gluing along the edge of all the pages a number of times. This worked for the mock up at least.

The greyboard mockups with the wraps applied, the example on the right was attached using tape as we had not yet decided on the way that the cover would be attached to the body of the book. However I think these mock ups are a good start all the same.

Form~writing - screenprint

For the inpress event which we have been invited to as guest designers, we felt we should produce a series of specimen posters for the now finalised font we created. We initally wanted to produce 2 posters each, and we all designed a number of variations, any of which could have been used, but we felt that 6 would have been a good number of variation to have at a stall.

However when it came to the logisitics of screen printing all 6 A2 prints, each having at least 2 colours, we felt it may be better to have less variation but more volume, and choose one from each of us to have 3 overall. We felt it was quite nice that we all had a different take on the specimen posters, but all will be consistent in their colour and the information on the poster.


Below are the screen print positives printed at A2 scale.
These are the postives for the prints I designed, using my two favourite characters which are over layed to show the subtle differences and to mix the yellow and blue we've chosen to give a green like that of the british road signs.

Positives for the poster Joe designed. 
Focused more on the curvature and subtleties of the letterforms using enlarged letterforms to create more abstract layouts.

Positives for Yaf's prints.
which breakdown the font into lines almost just giving a taste of the font to give a bit of intrigue. The information provides anyone that sees it with a method of contacting us about the font.

 The screens in development.

Form~writing - Business cards.

While we were at Vernon street to expose screens we continued to experiment with our business cards using the embossing plates I'd made previously. We originally experimented with just greyboard and the impressions in the board were not particularly strong, especially as we were using 12pt goudy, which has some very fine details.  

Yaf on the Nipping press used for embossing at vernon street.

After a few more impressions on greyboard, we realised we weren't really getting a distinct enough emboss, even after sourcing different weights of greyboard. So we decided to try a few on thick card, which we could then duplex in order to get the stiff, consistently coloured business cards we were looking for without the density of the heavy board.

 Again we tried a few times and got similarly dull results, even on the much thinner card. On speaking with one of the print staff he mentioned that when embossing onto book covers the impression is always much better on bookrum when it is already applied to the greyboard cover. So we decided to pad our card in the nipping press with greyboard, not really knowing what to expect.

It worked really well, below shows the visible difference in impression made with and without greyboard padding in the nipping press.


Original impression on black card without greyboard padding. 

Improved impression after using greyboard to pad the plate and stock 

Original impression on white textured card without greyboard padding. 

 Impression on white board with the greyboard padding...greatly improved