Assignment 2 Feedback

Daniel Sutton Book design 1 – assignment 2.docx

An excellent effort for your second assignment. Your research and preparatory work is extensive, the sheer volume of thumbnails and mockups produced to test the composition of the cover artwork in relation with the spine and back cover is impressive, and indicates a methodical and exploratory approach to generating engaging cover artwork. Your use of digital software to produce clean and uncluttered designs, as well as to demonstrate details within your designs, such as the gold embossed motifs on the hard cover versions, really highlights your skill in this area, and all of your mockups are of a very high standard. An extra step could have included looking at integrating the end papers into the cover design, they could feature a repeat pattern of your cover motifs, for example, or they could even be used as a way to continue the design inside of the book in order to give the viewer more of an interactive experience. Just a thought.

To summarize;
● Clean and engaging layouts.
● Good integration of text and image elements across each publication.
● Extensive preparatory work evident.

Overall your response to the second part of the course has been methodical and thorough, there is evidence of you using a range of approaches to image making and integration in order to widen your repertoire, and further pushing of your process to see how your methods and materials behave and the results they can produce is advised. Your use of typography is coming along very nicely indeed, and I would encourage you to continue to make the most of the content of the course by continuing to critically evaluate your response to the tasks as you go along, and push your making where there is opportunity to do so.

Moving forward I would recommend that you regularly put aside some time to conduct independent work, whether that is in the form of drawing, font design or bookbinding/folding techniques.

I’m delighted with my feedback for the second assignment which is very positive. My tutor suggested that I could integrate endpapers into the design which is a valid point and something I can look at when I rework this assignment. I need to put some more time aside for independent work as well.

My tutor has also suggested I look into the following:

Take a look at the following organisations, all of which are dedicated to book arts;
https://londonbookarts.org/
https://arnolfini.org.uk/whatson-category/minibabe/ https://centerforbookarts.org/

Also here are some people/groups that you might find interesting, including the designer of the wonderful The Secret Lives of Colour, the illustrator of a version of The Handmaid’s Tale, and a lovely film of graphic designer Karel Martens;
http://www.jamesedgardesign.com/ http://florenceboyd.com/portfolio/book-covers/ https://posterzine.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkZT7-Xn4C4