Exercise 7: Visualising, editing and critiquing

Based on your work from the previous exercises, think about how your designs work within the context of the book.

For example, visually explore how your artwork sits within the format of your A5 pamphlet – how the page might frame the artwork, how different pages sit together or how you might begin to develop a narrative across multiple pages.

This process might suggest new ways of presenting or developing your work. Think about how you want to finish your artwork, whether this is through typography, illustration, photography, drawing or another format.

Critique your work – what has the format of the pamphlet offered you, how might your ideas develop further, and how has your understanding of creative book design changed through this exercise?

In some way I have thought about the relationship of pages and creating a narrative with two of my ideas.

My cut out idea was a simple A4 fold but page 1 and page 3 are part of the same narrative. What’s revealed on page 3 turns everything on its head.

I decided to experiment a little more with my most developed idea, the Big Bang spread.

My original version used 6mm margins. With smaller margins there was more room and freedom for my text and design.

With a 12mm margin there is less room to play with. This impacts the illustration in particular where some parts are becoming too small to be clear and impactful. This leads me to think that the 6mm margin is much better.

With some heavier experimentation I kept the 6mm margins (except the inner margins) and rearranged my layout so that the minimalist illustration sits in the middle. This also spurred me on to be more experimental with my typographic alignment. In my previous two attempts the text was mainly flush left with the heading and subheading being centred. With this third attempt I kept the headings centred and some of the text flush left. However, I also used justified alignment and a circular path for some of the text that referred to the singularity as an extra typographic illustration. This layout allowed me more space so I could make the text bigger and still have plenty of space left. I thought it worked out fairly well and has the feel of a scientific book spread.

With the Big Bang idea I wanted to create a narrative over multiple pages in the style of a flip book where you can observe the circle that represents the universe changing. With my first tryout the obvious advantage would be that the pages could be flipped quicker and show a smoother transition. My third attempt could show the same transition over multiple pages but it wouldn’t be so seamless which is a potential drawback.

This exercise has definitely allowed to me to take a step back and reevaluate how I could improve my ideas. I thought my original layout for the Big Bang pages was good but trying the layout over both pages has opened up more possibilities and might actually be better.