Design Context - Research Progress

So far, since the Easter break I have been contacting and collating the content for the design context brief. In the past year, I have realised that one of my main focuses in design is on the process of developing publications, which are information driven with a focus on typography, format and finish. I decided to use this brief to support both my design practice and professional practice, therefore focusing the title on 'The design process of publication designs from leading & progressive creative studios'. This title combines my passion and interest in publications designs whilst also allowing me to network and contact the relevant studios who produce work that I love.

So far I have got in contact with a healthy number of design studios from around the world, some of them are ones who I have contacted before or have gained some work experience from in the past. A good number of them have said yes and I have sent questions to now, with the deadline of 20th May to get everything in. I do plan to making a start on the design and format of the publication, but am aware also that it will be influenced by the content and images they provide me therefore part of it will need to be developed once all content has been received. So ideally if I get everything back to me my the 20th May, I'll have about 5 days to develop this before I submit it to print, leaving just under a week for the printed outcome to get back to me ready for hand in.

At this stage, I'm considering using Lulu to print and bind my design resolution as they are cost effective and the quality of bind and print seems reasonable for the price. After looking at some of the past context books that were printed through Lulu, I wasn't too keen on the colour print quality, the price of them are over 4 times the amount of a black and white and I didn't really see the quality of it. So currently considering printing in black & white with an attachment of full colour images to rectify this issue.

I have briefly mocked up this 114 publication to test the quality of lulu's black and white printing service with full colour cover. At the moment, the rough specification for my publication is around 114 pages, I want to get an idea of the thickness from their standard stock and also measuring the thickness of the book's spine for the final publication, whilst also having a printed mockup of something that has a similar format to my final publication. Main things on the publication are things that test the detail and quality of the printing, so things like line weight, gradients, half tone images and type point sizes are all part of the book. Other things also include the bleed, margins, and gutters for the book, things that I'll definitely need to consider but won't really know the actual quality unless I get one printed out.

Spreads

Open publication - Free publishing - More notebook

Cover, this tests the bleed on the cover, printing quality on the spine and colours for the cover.