Typography Project 1 - A Storybook (Mister Babadook)

27/09/2017-18/10/2017 (Week 5 - Week 8)
Tiffany Kezia Joe [0333043]
Typography and Hypertextuality
Project 1:  A Story Book

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Lectures

Briefing/Lecture 1 - Week 5 (29/09/2017)

After Mr. Vinod explained about Adobe InDesign, which will be used for our Project 1, he continued by giving us lecture about development of letterforms. The early letterforms development started from Phoenician to Roman. Long time ago, people write by scratching sharpened stick into wet clay or carving into stone with a chisel. The first alphabet was the Uppercase forms which are simple combination of straight lines and pieces of circles as the materials and tools of early writing required.

Image 1.1 Phoenician

Image 1.2 Phoenician, Greek, Roman alphabet

The Greek developed a style of writing named Boustrophedon (how the ox ploughs) which is the lines of text read alternately from right to left and left to right.

Image 1.3 Boustrophedon

Typeforms have developed in response to prevailing technology, commercial needsand aesthetic trends. The following typeforms classificatiom by Alexander Lawson;

• Blackletter (1450)
• Oldstyle ; Caslon, Bembo, Garamond, Janson (1475)
• Italic (1500)
• Script ; Kuentsler Script, Mistral, Snell Roundhand (1550)
• Transitional ; Baskerville, Century, Times New Roman (1750)
• Modern ; Bell, Bodoni, Caledonia (1775)
• Square Serif (1825)
• Sans Serif (1900)
• Serif (1990)

Lecture/Tutorial 2 - Week 6 (04/10/2017)

No Lecture, Additional workshop about Photography. We learned about Aperture which control the amount of light to create depth of field/are of clarity in your camera, ISO, and Shutter speed which control the duration of the time of the shutter to allow light to reach camera's sensor. 

Lecture/Tutorial 3 - Week 7 (11/10/2017)

Today's lecture was about understanding letterforms. If we look closely into each letters, although it may appear symmetrical but it's actually not! As an example, in Sans Serif, every "a"s are different. Either the thickness, the curve, or the stroke. The smallest changes will create a huge difference in letterforms.

Image 1.4 Sans Serif

While designing our fonts, which we will be doing in Project 2, one thing that we should always keep in mind; maintaining the x-height. Curved strokes, such as in s must rise above the median (or sink below the baseline). 

Instructions

PROJECT 1 (20%)

The Brief 

A Story Book. 

Duration of Assignment 

3 Weeks (Briefing on Week 5) 

DEADLINE 

Week 8 

Description Text: 

Title: Mister Babadook 

If it's in a word or in a look you can't get rid of the Babadook. 

If you're a really clever one and you know what it is to see 

then you can make friends with a special one, a friend of you and me. 

His name is Mr Babadook and this is his book. 

A rumbling sound then 3 sharp knocks 

ba Ba-ba DOOK! DOOK! DOOK! 

That's when you'll know he's around. 

You'll see him if you look. 

See him in your room at night and you won't sleep a wink. 

Let me in! *whisper* 

I'll soon take off my funny disguise 

Take heed of what you've read...*whisper* 

and once you see what's underneath... 

YOU'RE GOING TO WISH YOU WERE DEAD.

I'll WAGER with YOU, I'll MAKE you a BET. 

The MORE you DENY the STRONGER I GET 

LET ME IN! 

In this project you will be asked to express typographically the content above in a 16-page booklet. No images are allowed. However some very minor graphical elements, i.e. line, shade… might be allowed. 

Utilising the knowledge gained in the exercises and other modules from the same semester, you will use Adobe InDesign to typographically compose and express the text within a given size. And, upon completion you will create a digital ebook utilising the navigation and animation settings to enhance the expressions of your composed text. 

Requirements 

The student must document the above progression in their eportfolio and A4 hardcopy portfolio. The results of the phases must be collated and presented. A thumbnail printout of all 16 pages, and an ebook for desktop viewing must be produced. 

Submission 

1. All gathered information (failures, successes, epiphanies, sketches, visual research, printouts, websites, images, charts, etc.) documented logically and chronologically in the A4 Clear Sheet folder. The works must be labelled and dated. 
2. All gathered information (failures, successes, epiphanies, sketches, visual research, printouts, websites, images, charts, etc.) documented logically and chronologically in the eportfolio for the duration of the project in one post. 
3. Generated eBook uploaded to the eportfolio and the relevant printouts of the artwork in the determined formats, in the hardcopy portfolio. 

Objectives 

1. An appreciation of the skills sets and mental discipline required in Typography 
2. To develop necessary skills and sensibilities for effective typographic communication. 
3. To introduce the use of Grids, layouts and page flow.

Work Process

Instead of doing rough draft, I decided to start directly in Adobe InDesign since I could change the layout easily. Initially, I already made quarter of the storybook with two typefaces; Caslon and Futura because I feel like certain sentences suited Caslon and the rest more suited with Futura. But then I finally chose to work with Futura since I consider sans-serif would go better with children storybook. Mr. Vinod also told us that it's better to work with only one typeface so we will be able to focus in expressing the sentences. 

Image 2.1 Presets

For this project, the size of the storybook should be 205mm x 205mm. Mr.Vinod recommended to us to create this storybook within sixteen pages. However, if it exceeded sixteen pages, we should add four more pages. All of the margins should be 10mm.

While working, we could set the guides by going to the Layout-Create Guides. As for me, I set it to be 10 to ensure the layout was arranged neatly.

Image 2.2 First draft page 1

Image 2.3 First draft page 2-3

Image 2.4 First draft page 4-5

Image 2.5 First draft page 6-7

Image 2.6 First draft page 8-9

Image 2.7 First draft page 10-11

After I have received feedback from Mr. Vinod, I had to make a lot of changes here and there. Either from font selection and the layout since my storybook didn't seem to flow and lack of connection.

Final Work

Image 3.1 Page 1

Image 3.2 Page 2-3

Image 3.3 Page 4-5

Image 3.4 Page 6-7

Image 3.5 Page 8-9

Image 3.6 Page 10-11

Image 3.7 Page 12-13

Image 3.8 Page 14-15

Image 3.9 Page 16

Thumbnails

Hardcopy Storybook

Image 3.10 Front Cover

Image 3.11 Contents

Image 3.12 Back Cover

Google Drive link: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0BwvX6cwupT3gWW9nVGIwR19EUkE

Mister Babadook Animation

Feedback

Week 6:
General Feedback: Mr. Vinod told us to see the examples from senior's work and learn from it. Instead of mimicking directly, we should think and dissect the ideas behind the arrangement of the words in storybook. If our work exceed 16 pages, we should add 4 pages more and the credit on the title page should be 7pt.

Specific feedback: Overall, Mr. Vinod and Mr. Shamsul asked me to re-arrange the placement because some pages still look messy and seems like disconnected from one page to another page. Variations of placement also needed since I tend to do a lot of diagonal arrangement. They told me that "a friend of you and me" page was beautiful and suggested me to do more of centered arrangement. I must keep in mind that the connection and flow between pages need to be there and maintained.


Week 7:
General Feedback: We should always update our feedback and do what we're supposed to do based on our feedback. After we've finished the storybook, we are required to animate it. Rather than animating the whole book, it'll be better to catch reader's attention and focus by animating the important word and using the suitable effect for it. 

Specific Feedback: When reviewing my finished work, Mr. Vinod mentioned that I have several issues. The main issue was because I used various typeset; roman, condensed and italic. For the pages in the beginning I mostly used roman meanwhile in the middle I changed it to condensed. Hence, the pages seems disconnected from each other. I also need to pay attention to details such as the kerning and alignment. After reworking again and fixed the issues, finally Mr. Vinod approved my work and I could start working on the animation.

Week 8:
General Feedback: We should update the e-portfolio for project 1 since the final submission of e-portfolio is next week. The pdf and the animated storybook should also be updated in our blog. While briefing about the project 2, Mr. Vinod explained about the criteria of creating the font and we could learn & analyze from the ten given typefamily which we have used for the first project.

Specific Feedback: Today was the submission day of project 1. I showed the hardcopy and animation of my storybook to Mr. Vinod and Mr. Shamsul. In the midst of presenting the animation, Mr. Vinod said that I selected the appropriate effect for each sentences which could convey the story nicely and attract the reader's interest. He also told me that my animation work and the hardcopy storybook were well done

Reflection

Experience
Week 5; It was difficult to express a story book with only words
Week 6; I was having hard time in maintaining the flow and connection
Week 7; I applied too much variations in typefaces, thus it added more mess to my work
Week 8; Choosing minimal effects in the animation is better than having too much effects going on

Observation
Week 5; Designing a story book isn't as simple as I thought
Week 6; It was super frustrating to find suitable layout, because I was running out of idea 
Week 7; I tend to create centered layout instead of exploring more layout
Week 8; Doing the animated storybook didn't cost me a lot of time since I already planned it beforehand

Findings
Week 5; Reading more book and paying attention to its layout helped me a lot
Week 6; Learning from my classmates' and senior's work gave me chance to explore different style of layout
Week 7; I should try to go out from my comfort zone and learn more
Week 8; I really enjoyed while doing the animation because it finally finished and I am satisfied with my work

Book of the Week

White Space Is Not Your Enemy by Kim Golombisky and Rebecca Hagen

Image 4.1

As a beginner in design world, I often find myself confused about the fundamentals of design. I simply attracted to this book because it contains the general brief explanation about (almost) every single thing in designing.

Image 4.2

 Either typography, colors, print, or layout, this book covers all those things in simple manner which is very great for beginner like me.

Image 4.3

This book also have glossary in the starting pages, which will basicly introduce the terms before diving in deeper into the topics.