Kismet Arts Tangent

Today was the last scheduled gathering of my class of first-years. There was some celebratory crepes involved and a lot of brochures for an Italian bicycle tour. That’s just how we party. It was the final for both the InDesign class and the macro-typography class which focused on using grid structures to create layouts.  It was a bonding experience as we all tried to decode the instructions to convert our files into booklets– there’s a machine that prints and staples your booklet in one go. This machine is not perfect as people who reprinted or had to remove and replace staples will tell you, but still quite a lovely thing I would like to own. I would make booklets for everything.

Here’s a facing pages spread from my brochure. 

It was interesting designing this. I ended up doing a lot of the layout in the last week (after Jason taught us everything there is to know) and it went fairly smoothly. Character styles and paragraph styles aren’t the torture devices I thought them to be. They make things go a lot faster and keep everything consistent and organized. (Character styles and paragraph styles is a feature in InDesign where you can store settings for fonts and use them again in the same size and leading etc.)

Designing a whole book is tricky. Consistency and variation is not easy to achieve. I made a little photo collage map for each region and designed that page around the map.  For the opposing side, I laid out the text then added photographs to fill some gaps and reinforce some groupings,  conscious of keeping the text legible. Long wordy documents like this, I find it easier to tackle after reading it a few times and seeing things that can be put onto snipes, headlines and call outs to give the piece texture and readability.

(Earlier Post Relating to This Project)

I lost the original file for this somewhere in my computers. Probably because I haven’t invested in a home for all of my things, I always assume that if my home computer doesn’t have something, my school computer does and that’s not always the case. But, it is a good exercise to redo projects because it’s never the same twice. All the happy accidents and re-considerations make a better product. I addressed the issue of prominence. For practical products, it’s important to have the type, the part that consumers look for, nice and big so that when they are looking, quietly whispering to themselves the numbers of the specific requirements, they’ll see this label and Bam! A purchase is made. This motor oil is especially formulated for hipsters longing for a past where the red, white and blue where symbols of can-do attitude and hard work.

(Earlier Post Relating to This Project)

Today we had another critique for the labels. I’m farther away from success than I thought. I am too much of a romantic to promote motor oil. This was one of the few products where Tom said that it was silly to put a little heart-warming bio on the back. He said that products like these had pragmatic users that wanted to know about the actual differences in the way the product can benefit their lives  and not just make them feel good about themselves. That’s why I now have to come up with labels that say actual oil type information. I envy my classmates that had fun coming up with different flavors that impressed the class. Memorable ones were men’s deodorant flavors Azure Ice and Midnight Party.

To get my laughs in anyways, I put the labels on a maple syrup bottle. A student pointed out it was a twist because for years now, when they do pancake commercials, it was a trick to use motor oil.

(Earlier Post Relating to This Project)

Jason had us design three versions of this gum pad. Each student had to come up with our own headline, but photography, copy and logo provided. First, we thumb nailed many formal versions and many chaotic versions. And then executing the best of both worlds into to respective designs, take the parts that work from each and combine to create a third composition. He wanted us to break everything from how we usually understood it and it generated approaches we wouldn’t have initially thought up. This is a very simple and effective way to make something fresh and fun. (Above: (Left) Final (middle) chaotic (right) formal)