'A Guide To' Book is made

My 'A Guide To' book has finally been put together after many weeks of dilly dallying and putting it to one side I finally took the time to print it out, trim it down and mount it together. There are some errors, mostly the large posters are the wrong size due to a printer error at uni. Also some pages are trimmed in a way that cuts into the text due to a combination of print errors and trim errors. For the most part though I'm very happy with how it has gone together though.


Now called 'Why I Hate Trains & Other Stories' here are a few pictures to show how it looks.

Now to do the several million other tasks I need to do before hand in

Typography

Still working away at my book project, maybe taking too long, in fact definitely taking far too long getting it done. Going to be a mad rush to get it finished for sure!

Here is another glimpse of what I have been up to though

The grid the A is drawn on will be on an acetate layer so you can see how the grid is prepared and how the letter looks on its own. Going to be 'mazin if I get my act together

Yes, this is work

If you don't agree that this is valid uni work you're just jealous that you didn't think of photoshopping a panda onto a motorbike

It's all drawing to a close

So then, about 3 weeks left of the year till we need to hand all our work in. Shit, that's not long at all.....Good thing that I have nearly finished my journal, not so good that I have several other loose ends to tie up. 


Today I need to mock up my 'A Guide To' book again, get paper and ink to print my journal on, fine tune some work for TQ Magazine and then  think I can start getting things to their final stages...It's going to be blind panic, but that's always fun to look back on.

More Clues

Another clue as to what my 'A Guide To' project will look like, with ruler guides, base lines and everything. 

Progress

Hello, quick screen shot. Exciting stuff

Travelling

Ta da, one poster on the subject of travelling. Not a huge change from before and not sure if it's the choice I'll go with ultimately but it's another improvement I think. 
Changes are:
Correct colouring of land and water on the globe
plane changed to be smaller, with dotted red flight path
Line of longitude and latitude changed to an orangey/red to tie into colours used on maps
Lines of long and lat changed to be thinner and only semi circular rather than fully circular
Copy under globe has had changes
Size of copy in bottom right reduced from bold to standard
White stripes in the green, white, blue stripe removed and left to show paper stock colour

Eurghhhhh, help please

Fancy something different? Go Travelling! This is another post deliberating over the work I did yesterday.

I'm trying to create a poster about travelling to accompany a short piece I have written. This morning I changed a few things to the work I did yesterday and think it's improved but I'm still not overly keen on the final piece. My attempt at making a 50's style promotional poster has fallen a tad short of the mark. Not sure whether to sack the idea of and go back to an original idea that I had last summer. The old idea is pretty conventional and the photography isn't good enough quality to blow up to the A1 size that the finished photo is going to be but it is easy enough to do. 

Opinions please

p.s. I have just realised that i have the sea in green and the continents in blue......cheers to my mum for spotting that one

Bad day at the office

Spent most of today trying to do a bit of work but really my head wasn't in it today. Have been trying to make a poster for the traveling section of my newest book project 'A Guide To'. 
Not only is there a spelling mistake but the idea of taking a different approach to creating a poster about gap years and general studenty traveling hasn't proved overly brilliant. It's my usual style of simple imagery and a bit of type but it doesn't seem right. 
Blogger isn't playing nice so can't upload a photo. Lucky for you lot

More posters

Same as yesterday but more of it. There are now 4 songs represented in the this link by here. Enjoy them

Been busy making posters

Other than looking at modern versions of Edward Hopper paintings (see post below for more details) I have also been making some posters for the music section of my book 'A Guide To...' 
First of all picking my four favourite songs to try and represent was near impossible so after spending most of the morning on iTunes doing nothing I went on my 25 most played tracks list and picked four at random. I have yet to attempt designing a poster for my fourth and final poster (Swimmer by Broken Social Scene) but here are the other three in internet book form. Some of you may remember I actually did one of the posters a while back, but it's had a subtle tweaking since then to bring it up to par. 
Now I need to figure out how to perforate, fold and sew them into a book. Yay


Look at them here

Oh hello

So I've been working away on my 'A Guide To' book project and one of my spreads is about my family, it wont look like this, but I thought I'd put up a little snap shot of what I'm doing anyway. I only tried it as a quick idea and think it's turned out alright. Me and my Dad look quite familiar it seems.

Some inspiration

Without even realising what I'm currently working on my little Portugese friend Dal sent me this video. It's a different result but a similar approach to what I'm up to.

Mocked up

So then, after a day of graft, a visit to staples (and homebase, although that was less useful) and a few select swear words I have created a mock up for my new 'A Guide To' book. 
It's going to be about 1cm wider than A5 for the time being, and basically it's awesome. Japanese stab stitched with a whole bunch of cool stuff going on inside, most of which has already been mentioned but there will be some surprises.
About 40ish sides, not really sure anymore, it's hard to count due to the amount of things that pull out and fold etc. Im sure the printing stage will still be super hard but now that I have a rough mock made up I feel great about the whole thing.
I also managed to write up six of my sixteen sections of copy so thats pretty nifty. 
I would take some bad pictures but they would be exactly that, bad. When I start to get some images involved I'll start putting some pictures up.


Till next time

A time to relax

I do love the Easter, a time to relax and enjoy some time away from studies. Or so it was before this year. I've had one week of the holidays and that was spent getting the exhibit ready, cleaning my grotty student house and making magazine spreads. Been back home in Swansea for a day so far and that was my day of rest, spent fixing my road bike and  cooking various types of potato dish (pommes boulangere and hasselback roast potatoes before you ask). 


So here I am on day 2 of my relaxing visit home planning out my 'A Guide To' book. The plans are coming along well but may be too adventurous, with my current plans in order printing the thing out will drive me to tears, possibly madness. I have 20 pages roughly designed so far and that includes,a cut away section, printed acetate page, 2 french folded pages, a double sided fold out poster, expanding bookcase picture and a few more bits and bobs that I can't easily describe.


Hopefully I will be able to mock up a version later and then get started on some words to accompany the many bewildering imagery options I have created. 


Happy Easter / Passover depending on who's reading this.

Next project

Even though my previous project is far from finished I have started to put some thought to my next work. After my tutorial on Thursday I had a decent idea of what I wanted to do and the last few days have seen me mull it over in my head whilst getting some odds and ends tied up.
The idea behind my new project is to combine everything I like and enjoy into one. So, the design practices that I enjoy are image making, typography, layouts and grids systems, book design and fabrication. I'm not saying any of these are my speciality but they are what I enjoy doing and the idea of doing something I don't enjoy makes no sense. 
So what will this typographic book with set grid systems and a variety of images be detailing? Basically everything else I love, Wes Anderson Films, the music of Broken Social Scene, Postal Service, Death Cab For Cutie, Modest Mouse etc, riding bikes, cooking, Rugby, T-shirts, Summer, the sea, drawing, singing badly, walks in the countryside, traveling, bad jokes, in-jokes, alliteration, word play, the environment, the cities of Swansea and Manchester, hating on trains, new things, collecting junk, putting up posters, going out, sombreros, my box of shoes, new books , good jeans, good friends and a I'm sure more than a few other things may get the nod before I'm done.
Other than making a book (working title is 'A Guide To.....') I also need to make some business cards and a website, make a journal, sell and print some T-shirts and before all that I need to go see the work I shall be exhibiting at Noiselab Manchester from Tuesday to Saturday this week.