CDF Project 5: Grids, Style, & Format
Print
2019
Individual Project
About the Project
The goal of this project was to create a booklet using the concepts of typography and grid systems that we learned in class. The assignment was to create at least 8 spreads in which our design choices were informed by the content and to combine words and images to create meaning.
Ideas
The nature of this project allowed for a lot of creativity and original content. I really wanted to exercise my drawing and creativity, which I don’t typically get to do in my technical studies, and thus I struggled a lot with settling on an idea.
Some ideas I brainstormed:
- Children’s alphabet book (26 pages, each with a letter of the alphabet overlaid on a line-drawing of something that starts with that letter)
- Color coordinated book (items that are all blue, items that are all red)
- Coloring book
- Calendar
- Astrology
- Bucket list items
- Food in Taiwan (pineapple cake, bubble tea, scallion pancakes, stinky tofu, beef noodle soup, braised pork over rice, oyster omelette, gua bao, oyster vermicelli noodles, tianbula (oden / olen), etc.)
- Personal portfolio
After I narrowed it down to 2 choices, I wrestled between the children’s alphabet book idea and my personal portfolio for a long time. Then after much debating and discussion, I ultimately decided that I would create a personal portfolio for this project.
Inspiration
While considering all the ideas I had, I looked online for inspiration. I consulted a lot of zines for formats and color schemes and also found some really cool uses of different papers and transparencies.
Something I really liked across many books I saw was their use of pages of different shapes and sizes. I really wanted to incorporate that into my book.
Initial Sketches and Concept
I started with really simple sketches of a couple of pages I wanted to include in my book.
The top sketch in this photo is a layout I was considering for showcasing a project I worked on and deployed at my internship at Squarespace last summer (the link isn’t broken! I worked on the 404 error landing page you’re seeing).
In the bottom sketch, I played around with pages that were half-width and thought about what transparent paper might look like.
I also listed out the main sections of my portfolio that I wanted to highlight: art, photography, and tech. I thought it could be cool to name my book “APT”, an acronym of art photography and tech, since this word means “appropriate or suitable in the circumstances” and “quick to learn”, both prime qualities that employers seek.
Digital Iterations
I started with the section I thought would take the longest to format and design — the tech projects. Going off my initial sketch, I mocked up these layouts to showcase the 404 page I created for Squarespace. The first is a divider that labels the section, which I envisioned would prepend all the other sections too. Then the next page was the old website they had and once you flip that over, you get to the new website which I developed. My vision for the left-hand side of the “new” page was to have all the elements that constitute the website — “SORRY” in the 6 languages that Squarespace offers, the black background, and the text/links. I wasn’t sure if having all the words made the page too crowded, so I created a separate variation that only had the English “SORRY” on it. I asked the class for feedback on the 2 variations during interim crit.
Notable feedback I received from Interim Crit:
- black & white contrast works well, but can be confusing
- square book is cool — could be pun for Squarespace
- font choice is nice
- liked the half-page
- can’t envision what the whole book will look like since the content is so different across different sections
- definitely add color (in other sections)
- add more text to describe this tech project so reader knows context
This feedback was super helpful! Although I didn’t have much of the book complete yet, I had a good idea of the direction I wanted for the rest of the sections — definitely add color, more different-sized pages, and add more context for the projects I’m showcasing.
Final Compositions
I had a lot to do to finish up this project. For the final spreads, I incorporated a dusty pink theme on titles, page numbers, and accent pages like the Table of Contents and the Contact pages. I created a hierarchy of color and page widths: a darker gray and wider page for the main section dividers and a lighter gray and smaller page for the subdividers (mainly just for tech projects). Content pages remained white and full-width.
For the tech projects, I added pages with QR codes that would lead to the websites, which felt fitting since it was a technology section. I also added more information to introduce each project, as suggested to me during interim crit.
I experimented with interesting layouts for my photography pages in an attempt to balance the whitespace across each page and the spread as a whole.
Below are a few spreads from my book:
Final Book
I thought a lot about how I wanted to present my book. In terms of CVs and résumés, this was not a single sheet of paper that could be uploaded as a PDF and was instead a physical portfolio with multiple pages. The only way to deliver this book to recruiters and employers across the country was to send it through the mail, so I thought it would be cool to present the book as a package you’d receive and have to open. I made the cover out of chipboard, created a faux shipping label on Illustrator, and used gray washi tape on the edges of the opening to emulate tape on a package. I made the opening of the book in the center of the front of the rather than opposite the spine like a normal book and attached the back-most page of the printed pages to the center of the chipboard.
Each page of my book is 8.5" x 8.5". I had a total of 56 pages (28 spreads) with which I created 7 signatures, each sewn with a 3-hole pamphlet stitch and then stitched together by the bind.
Reflections
I’m pretty satisfied with the final outcome. I really like the outer look and feel of my book and I think the pages of different widths really sets apart the section dividers and content pages.
Some things I wish were different:
- straighter page edges
- better/tighter binding
Some things I wish I tried/experimented with:
- using transparent/semi-transparent paper
- using thicker paper for some pages (i.e. Table of Contents, Contact)
Overall, this was a really cool project to make as my final CDF project. With fully original content, it was really nice to see all my work from different aspects of my life come together. This class has been a blast!
