Type & Grid:: Pitch: Munich v Barcelona_done

Both spreads now done, again I've mocked up how it would look closed, opened out as a full spread or read page by page as you can do both with a concertina. I aimed to make the spreads work as a big folded out spread and also as page by page. This will be printed so the flip-side is the Barcelona focused spread, whereas this is the Bayern Munich one.

Colour palette of black, with red overprint on white stock.

Alternatively I might just print black onto red stock and have a white spot colour via screen-printing. Would be cool to do! Less ink coverage and would be cheaper to produce on a larger scale too

Closed

Read like a booklet

Opened out

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Next stage is to print it. For the purposes of the type and grid brief I will create a concertina fold, which will be simply digitally printed or I may push the boat out a bit and spot the colour the white with a silkscreen onto relevant coloured stock.

Either way in the future I want to push this concept further as I really enjoyed working on this and feel it could be a viable large-scale project in terms of an actual magazine with more content and more refinement. Why not!

Type & Grid:: Pitch : Halfway there

One side of the concertina is sorted. Barcelona side is done. I'm pretty happy with this, I feel my type & layout has come a pretty long way, especially since this time last year and the type & grid sessions this year have been very very useful. I really enjoy type and image for layout. 

One of the big learning points, including working on this layout is spending some time and getting the grid right in your head and the rules and logic you're working with before getting stuff into it. It makes life so much easier when adding content into it and it makes the work look much more well designed as well I feel.

Closed

Reading DPS at a time

The aim was to make the pages also work wen opened out as a large spread and still flow in the form of a big spread but work as individual pages too as a concertina fold allows this.

Opened out spread

The aim was to make the pages also work wen opened out as a large spread and still flow in the form of a big spread but work as individual pages too as a concertina fold allows this.

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next update will be when Bayern Munich spread is done and then when it's printed and crafted. hopefully by midway through the coming week.

Type & Grid:: Pitch: Progress so far

Progress has been very slow, I couldn't seem to get it right and wasn't fully happy with the type and layout but I feel this may grow on me a little bit and on the whole I'm reasonably happy and there are foundations set for the rest of the layout, the idea is for the front cover image to bleed off the right side of the page into the first inside page, to back up my concept of the concertina working as one big spread as well as page by page.

The colour palette is  + white stock. The blue is overprinted over the red.

The colour palette for the bayern munich side will be red and black plus white stock

Grid & Layout

So far I've used a Van De Graaf canon as a guideline for the cover and a 3x5 grid for the inside page and plan on tweaking and designing as I go.

Mock-up of how it would look as perfect bound book, I guess it will look a lot better when printed and refined a little bit

Type & Grid:: Concertina Booklet: Name and Concept

The product I'm going to create for the concertina booklet is a Football matchday programme available during football games in the stands and also around a week in advance at small, independent bookstores such as Village bookstore in Leeds. The idea is to create a well considered, contemporary and stylish, collectable football supplement, something different to what's available now. 

To see research into existing products, check out this post on my context blog.

In terms of the name, I didn't want to spend too long thinking about it but I wanted something subtle, memorable but also pretty self-explanatory especially when in context on a football magazine.

List of names:

Studs

Turf

Grass

Posts

Field

Spot

Goal

Pitch*

I went with Pitch, because the rest are rubbish and Pitch just seemed to work in my mind and I could visualise already how it would work as a logo.

The Concertina

I feel one of the beauties of the concertina fold is it can be read as a book a double page spread at a time, but also as one big spread as it's convenient and easy to just pull it all out as one big spread. So I aim to make the booklet work as a big spread but also a page at a time.

It also has two sides to it, which you read the opposite way by flipping it over and this format seems perfect and logical to focus on each opposing side.

When closed will be A5 size, so it's pocket size but also manageable when folded out to be one big spread

The content

To give the proposed magazine more relevancy I wanted to focus it on a real-life match and one which is upcoming and feasible to have a match-day program for. 

I picked Barcelona v Bayern Munich, the upcoming semi-final double-leg for the Uefa Champions League trophy. A huge match and visually and conceptually it opens up a lot of doors in terms of colour and content for each flip-side of the booklet.

The logo

The logo needs to be simple, contemporary but also referencing the topic in itself, as this is a type&grid brief I thought it was a better time than ever to create the logo out of a custom typeface.

Some development screenshots culminating in the final logo i'm going to go with. The logo will work in monotone, b&w and colour. For special annual issues the logo can be easily spot-varnished or foiled.

Early versions. Although I feel the bottom logo works I wasn't too sure about the halfway line reference in the dot of the i and it isn't too adventurous. So I decided to instead create a custom typeface with more of a visual concept and unique quality to it.

I decided to try and show the movement of a ball with the dot of the i and needed to have a lower x-height in the typeface to create the idea so I made my own simple geometric typeface.

Made up on simple lines and circles

Cut away elements to create the logo

Next post will be visual development and image of the grids used! Keep you posted.

Outlined version I plan to use for the programmes. I feel it works in an odd sort of way and is definitely different to what you'd expect. It has a sort of dated, 60s/70's quality to it, especially with the p.

Type & Grid: Frankenstein Type

Task: Pick a word from the list, whatever your eye follows


my word was
Resolute

Resolute to me means solid, strong, immovable and pretty much what's in the definition up there.

I picked 3 random typefaces which I'm going to cut up and experiment with interesting features of each typeface to create a letterform which is resolute.

I cut up, copied, rotated and experimented with the letterforms to come up with this...

Pretty resolute, but I felt it wasn't too adventurous, I was just putting blocks together so I went back to the typefaces and cut up an 'a'

I quite liked this O letterform. so smoothed over it and drew round with pen tool.

o and g

added a stem to make an A by cutting up the o itself, quite like this letterform

I'm not sure this looks 100% resolute, it looks a bit too fancy and fussy at the moment, the first effort with the blocks is much more effective.

I'll keep working on this

Type & Grid: Fibonacci Sequence 2nd attempt

I think I've finally come to grips with applying the Fibonacci sequence to page sizes, I've realised not to get confused by numbers as it's all about proportions, in particular the longer side when combining the previous two numbers.

It's literally the same as page sizes for common systems such as ISO sizes, A series B series etc. In that the length of one shape, becomes the width of the preceding shape and so on.


I started with one square with dimensions of

I'm going to go with these two page sizes as they should be perfectly proportionate and able to divide into 9th's and apply the Van De Graaf canon technique too.

##Applying Van De Graaf canons

I took the smaller page size, as it's almost an A3 size leaf, which I can create a double page spread out of at 410 x 250 mm

Here is the Van De Graafe canon applied to my page size. I quite like the format of the pages, they're a little more square than what would normally be an A4 size page if I went with an A3 spread.

To gain more flexibility I created guides which were half the distance between the outer edge and the content box margins which led me to my outer blue box...

This allows me to be more flexible and use my red content box for one type of content and almost have another content box overlaid on top so it's like two grids working in synchronisation hopefully.

After this it makes sense to apply a grid and guides, so I've done this here and also changed the content box a little for a different purpose: