Brief 04 : Interior Design Prospectus

Open publication - Free publishing

Interior design invite development

Dave and I spent some part of today further expanding the interior design publication brief. Along with the promotional posters, we decided that the publication could potentially be posted out to prospective students for example. Therefore to accompany the publication we decided to develop an invite that would carry the same design direction that we have developed so far.

The invite functions as a wrap around for the publication, providing exhibition dates and times. Together these will go into a translucent envelope and be sent out to people. We wanted something that would be consistent with the rest of the publication, therefore using the same design format and guidelines that we had defined earlier such as the fluorescent colour, rules and typographic specification.

The design is quite minimal and in keeping with the rest of the designs we have done for this brief, the tag line is bold, direct and has a strong impact, with the smaller details printed on the back of it.

Interior Design - Version 09 progress

Dave and I spent yesterday making the relevant amendments to the interior design publication, most of it was placing the correct copy in and adjusting the type accordingly. We've also made the changes to the order of the publication and updates images with ones that are more appropriate. Below is the email that we have sent to Steve with a list of the changes and any changes that are still outstanding.

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Hi Steve

This is Tim here, Dave and I have been developing the interior design publication further today, updating with relevant images and copy. Attached is a PDF of the updated version of the publication. Here are the changes & updates with details to the spreads that require some attention in terms of copy or missing information that we need from you.
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Cover - Removed dates

Inside front cover - Potentially placing in LCA contact/address details here?

01         Replaced statement with quote by Bruce Mau.

02-03    Placed updated copy, reordered welcome message to go before contents page.

04-05    Staff profiles - waiting for the majority of the staff information. Updated with Course overview details.

06-07    Level 04 - updated with correct copy and references should all be correct.

08-09    European Study Visits - updated new Berlin trip photos and type is now set to 'Regular' as opposed to 'light.'    
10-11    Level 05 - Correct copy and all references should be correct

12-13    Renamed from European study visits to UK study visits.

14-15    Level 06 - Renamed title from 3rd year to Level 06. Updated with correct copy. Still need to update the image on right page.

16-17    Context of Practice - Renamed section, updated with James Beighton's text. 
        GIDE competition - Still require copy for this page. Cannot find copy for Katie Lawrence

18-19    Case study 01 full spread - Updated with Martha Burrough content.

20-21    Case study 02 1 page - Theresa Tang
        Case study 03 1 page - Jo Gomm - Don't have any images for this case study.

22-33    Case study 04 full spread - Karen Dammone. Updated with correct copy and images.

24-25    Course showcase break - updated with new images but still require 2 more suitable images for this. Problem opening Tiffany Lai's folder. Cannot find Franco Pillitteri's images. Type has is now set to Regular.

26-27    Showcase 01 - All correct images and references, resized images for Yanin. Require year of work/graduate.

28-29    Showcase 02 - Correct reference but still need images for the other page. Require year and level information for Anthony Rimmer's work.

30-31    Showcase 03 - Updated with correct references, but still need year info for Ice Lo's references.

32-33    Showcase 04 - Updated with new images, PDF banner and correct references, require year for Sarah Dufton's reference.

34-35    Free Range - No change except that we've changed the page order to go before prize winners now.
        Prize Winners - updated content and revised layout.

36        Acknowledgement - Updated details

Inside back cover - LCA contact could go here as an alternative to being at the front.    

It would be great if we could get these details to us sometime this week so we can made the amendments ahead of our next point of contact. Let us know if you require a printed version of the spreads and we'll get these to you ASAP. Ideally we'd like to meet on Friday with a final version.

Feedback and notes from Steve

[Place annotated book images here]

Interior Design feedback

Had a brief meeting with Steve yesterday with plenty of thorough feedback on the mockup we presented last week, and several things to amend and add in terms of images and actual content. The feedback on the design direction was fine, he was happy with our design decisions and the direction that we have developed. Main issues to respond to was to place in the content for the publication, which we had expected anyway.

Steve returned our mockup with plenty of annotations long with the relevant CDs containing the images and copy that we require. We're still aiming to get this publication ready for print along with the other yearbooks, so looking at just under 3 weeks to get this wrapped up. We're planning on spending a full day next week on making the adjustments and updating with new images, ready to present back to Steve on thursday.

Meeting with Steve Edge 05/05/11

Met up with Steve yesterday to present our first printed mockup. As per usual, the meeting was brief and straight to the point, simply put, he was pretty satisfied with what we had put together in the short amount of time. He approved of the design direction that we had chosen, both the use of the fluorescent colour, the structure of the look book.

All in all, it was a reflection of our progress on this project so far, our design direction and decisions have been approved and supported by Steve, so it's pretty much good to go. For now we're just waiting for Steve to supply the copy and a few more images that we could use to replace some of the existing ones.

Lorenzo has also come up to us today to tell us that the print quote has has come back to be under the budget, which includes the 5th fluro colour aswell which is a plus. For now, we'll just wait for the copy from the Steve, a few images, a few tweaks here and there, potentially another mock up for a final check and we're pretty much there.

Interior Design - 1st Mockup

Our first mockup of the interior design publication, which is produced at a slightly smaller scale due to print restrictions.

Full publication development 07

After spending some time refining the spreads individually, Dave and I got together to make final adjustments to the publication, paying attention mainly to the flow of the book, consistency with the type, layout and the display of images, before taking this to print as our first full mockup. We have made a few last minute changes and additional details to the publication, most some of which we're not 100% sure with but will see how the printed outcome looks like and more importantly what Steve thinks of it. One of these is the decision to switch the front cover from red on white to white on red. Initially we felt that this would be too overpowering, but now that the spreads have been developed, we felt that it hasn't been used much throughout, mainly for headers and small text, therefore decided to switch the background colour of the cover to red. Although this is a bold decision, we feel that the controlled and minimal design approach keeps the cover together without looking too out of place.

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Full publication development 06

Met up and made the most of the long weekend to make a further progress with the interior design publication.Again, I focused most my time working on the spreads with Dave overlooking the progress and suggesting alternative ideas, whilst selecting and preparing the images to be placed into the spreads. The design direction hasn't changed much really, both of us are still very keen on using monotone images throughout the book except for the showcase spreads which will be in full colour.

Dave spent a long time going through and selecting all the images, which has definitely paid off, the showcase spreads seem to work really well, showing a range of developing and final rendered images, giving the readers an insight of the develop process of the course.

This was then handed over to Dave for some further adjustments, adding a few updated images and making the more detailed adjustments.

Full publication development 05

Moving on, we started considering how the images would be positions and where the copy / smaller details would go in the spreads. We spent some time developing these in turn, my main priority during this session was to pretty much nail down some complete spreads so that we can start applying images into them, whilst Dave was occupied with sifting through the X-amount of images, PDF files and presentations that was supplied to us by Steve.

In the process of experimenting and developing the spreads, we decided that we needed to section out the contents a bit more, with the fluorescent colour in mind, we decided to use only black & white images for the publication except for the showcase, which would be in full colour. We felt that the combination of full colour images and a 5th spot red would make the spreads too busy and it wouldn't really add much to the spreads, therefore decided that whenever we had full colour images, black would be used to replace the red. Therefore the booklet would mostly be red and black throughout, except for the showcase section where it would be in full colour, we made this additional decision because we felt that the showcase section should stand apart from the rest of the publication which is quite text heavy, separating the showcase would control the pace of flicking through whilst also keeping the design direction consistent and considered.

Full publication development 04

With the general design direction set from the previous session, Dave and I pushed on further with the this brief focusing on the spreads. Putting the whole publication together to start with, we've basically developed the core structure of the publication including the order of content and a rough idea of how the book would flow. We continued to utilise the set us of 0.5pt rules to aid the negative space and the layout of image and type around each spread, while still pushing the limits of the square format. This was a chance for us to test out whether the grid we've decided is working throughout the book rather than a single spread.
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Interior Design - Master Document specifications

Printed spreads - review

Printed the current spreads out for the first time to review our progress on this so far. We're at the stage where we've developed the spreads and have a fairly clear idea of the order of the publication, only thing to do now is to place the actual content and image into the relevant places.

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Further spread developments

Spent some time together with Dave today developing a few more spreads and refining the finer details of the grid specifications so that we can push on with the final document. Together we've narrowed down 2 different grid specifications, so before deciding on which one we would use, we experimented with a few different layout variations using the 2 different grids, the 10 and 8 column.

Open publication - Free publishing - More development

4th meeting with Steve Edge

Another quick 5 minutes meeting today with Steve, a chance for us to present what we have developed so far between us since the last point of contact. Just like the previous meetings, this was brief and straight to the point, with Steve picking out the more minimal approach that we developed for both the cover and the layouts. Again he was happy with us proposing to use a spot fluorescent but understands that we might have to compromise due to the budget. He also understood and liked the use of having full bleed images with type over for breaks as we have about 4 spreads free throughout the publication now that we are working on the 36 page page format.

All in all, Steve approved of pretty much all the development that we worked on. We have a much clearer direction on where we're taking this now and it's a matter of spending a few days to develop this between us now.

Spread Development

Further development of the spreads for our 4 meeting with Steve Edge. Athough we haven't really spent a long time working on this, the work we have been developing seems to be going the right direction, we wanted to meet Steve again during the Easter break so that we can push on with this in the following weeks, aiming to return from Easter with a mockup of the whole publication with Loren Ipsum as we are still waiting for the copy from Steve.

The development of these spreads have derived from the initial ideas of the front cover that I had worked on earlier, using 0.5pt vertical rules to divide the page up and to add depth to each page. Pushing on with the idea of potentially a spot colour or a primary colour throughout the cover and the spreads, I experimented with using red as the main colour for the copy aswell, but not sure how this will look when printed, particularly if it's a fluorescent. Personally, I think this would be a bold decision if we did decide to use the red for the copy, but definitely one that would make this stand out a bit more aswell. Something to play around and consider for sure!

So far myself and Dave have worked mainly with an 8 or 10 column grid for this, I decided to use an 8 column grid to begin with as it allows the copy to run across 3 columns, allowing each page to have a maximum of 2 columns of copy, leaving an extra column on either side of the page, either for additional copy, image descriptions etc. The grid is generally quite flexible and easy to work with, but we're undecided with whether to go for an 8 or a 10 for the time being. In general however, the spreads seem to be developing at a steady pace, that flow quite well with the various spreads we have worked on before and the previous cover ideas.

Open publication - Free publishing - More development

A selection of the more successful and interesting ideas so far:

Cover Development

Further developments for the covers, moving on further from the feedback given by Steve last week. He seemed really keen on the the use of a spot colour and the minimal approach with the design, so here I've pretty much experimented with that, playing around the layout, type specification and use of rules. I've kept the colour the same throughout for now, as I want to focus more on the format and layout of the whole thing first before considering how the colour would apply to it.

Open publication - Free publishing - More development

Below are a few of my personal favourites; I found the original one chosen by Steve a bit too overpowering especially for an interior design prospectus and the thought of potentially using a fluorescent red for the main colour.

I quite like the consistent application of the rules, which were originally inspired by highlighting the structure of the grid aswell as reflecting wireframe drawings of interior design renderings. This seems to make the composition a bit more dynamic, having more control over the way the eye reads the page and the hierarchy of type and general information.

Reversing the colors out revealed a much more subtle and interesting outcome, one that I feel is more relevant to an interior design prospectus. 

3rd Meeting - Steve Edge

The meeting with Steve today was brief but generally very positive on the direction that we've been working on so far. He picked out a few that appealed to him but eventually chose one final one that he like the most and wanted us to develop further. He seemed to prefer the more minimal approach, which is interesting, also stating that he liked the bold colours we used eventhough he wanted an emphasis on sustainability. 

Some initial ideas printed out to scale in full colour to present to Steve. These were the ones that we have selected out of the numerous developments we managed to work on so far. I think we've made a pretty strong start to this so far, having only spent a day actually working on the design aspect of it, we've produced some very interesting ideas that show great potential on where this could lead us.

A few key things that we have taken note of from this meeting are as follows:
- We will be going for the 36 page + cover specification.
- Experiment with the minimal approach as reflected from the cover idea that was chosen.
- Perhaps consider a 'what we like' spread to fill the 2 empty pages.
- Consider using a spot colour for cover & throughout the prospectus.
- 500 copies print run
- Consider multiple different stock choices if the budget allows.
- Maintain the minimal & bold cover
- Test out the use of vertical lines
- Mono/Duotoning images
- Colour pages

What needs doing between now and our next point of contact (Thursday 7th April):
- Look into printing costs and prices for spot colour/ stock etc.
- Experiment with the cover ideas
- Test out different typefaces
- Experiment with different colours
- Develop spreads / layout

 The 4 that were selected as ones that he had the most. Perhaps we should consider incorporating certain elements of all these into the spreads.

This was the one that Steve chose as his favourite cover design and design direction. Generally quite minimal but very bold in terms of the colour. We are hoping to use a spot colour for this, might not neccesarily be red/orange but a spot colour that runs across the whole prospectus would a nice touch. With the print run, page numbers and budget, this could be something that we can consider so will have to look into this in terms of price. A neon Pantone 805 could be something to think about! Exciting!

Elephant Magazine

Picked a copy of Elephant magazine when I was in Berlin almost a year ago and found that certain elements of it were quite relevant to our design context towards the interior design prospectus in particular. These were mostly the use of rules within the spreads, a detail that we feel we could explore in terms of making the spreads more interesting while still relating to the subject of interior design. Also the treatment of type and image layout is quite nice here, utilising a decent margin throughout, plenty of white space and a good balance between type and image.

Article

Another nice publication that we took into the meeting to show Steve. This was mainly to reference the use of a fluorescent colour for the inside section of the magazine, which looks really interesting. This is something that we could consider for use within our book as it could potentially be within our print budget. Instead of having a print finish, the whole design direction of the book could be driven by the bold colours and minimal approach to the layout and type. It would stand out against other books whilst providing an engaging and interesting read.

The fluorescent colours have been used for a selection of this free magazine from Sheffield, perhaps due to the budget or possibly the dynamics and flow of the publication, it was only used for a few few spreads. This made the magazine a little bit more interesting as there was a completely different direction and layout treatment to it, ultimately giving itself it's own section within the magazine. This is similar to something that we've discussed about possibly separating the showcase spreads and the rest of the book by the use of colour or stock.