Design for Print: Around The World In 80 Pages - Initial Ideas

The collaborators met to discuss initial ideas for approaches to the publication. Both designers showed the kind of imagery they gathered from their individual trips, and then it was a matter of discussing a concept and reasoning behind the outlet of sharing and modes of communication. 

A key concept was the idea of the world and how to depict the world as 360 degrees / day and night / urban and rural / old and new. Both designs had collected imagery that ranged from day to night, and noted the popular use of LED type/signage, which was to be incorporated someway. 

Both designers agreed that the imagery represented the way they discover and take in new places, and that this would be a great starting point for the publication - to expose the design process. In turn, this would make the audience relatively broad, from those into photography, to those into graphic design / layout, the arts, and more broadly those interested in artistic publications. Adding an artistic value would achieve this, and visiting a variety of book shops meant the design knew there was a market/outlet for this kind of production. 

It was decided that we would each produce individual publications of the USA and Australia (the places the designers each travelled) that followed the same visual literacy, and then evolve the publication through methods of stock and bind to combine the two.

In order to maintain a coherent development, the design looked into gathering collage material that would be applied digitally to translate this idea of the design process exposed, as if keeping a sketchbook that recorded the journey, highlighting the colours, structures and typographic treatments of each place visited.   

Gathering collage material

The design then found the book 'A Century of Old Letterforms', which contained a whole section of imagery and information related to American typography. Much of this resembled the content gathered and experienced on the USA journey, aiding a greater contextual relevance to the work already gathered. 

The relevant pages from the book were thus scanned to use in the digital collage development the accentuate the typography of the signs in the existing imagery.

Grids:

Different style grid paper was found and scanned for use across the collages. A variety of colours, shape and form were collected to cover the diversity of architectural structures and patterning that the various imagery held. Keeping this consistent meant the basis of the style and colour for both the USA and Australia publications would follow a coherent visual language.

Type:

The early stages of the design process also considered typography quotes. The design did not know how much text it wanted to include and how well it would fit in the spreads, so gathered some relevant quotes of typography for experimentation within the process.

Organising & Initial developments 

The collaborators spoke about the name 'Around the world in 80 pages' as a stand out initial favourite, however at this time in the process, did not want to restrict ourselves to that count before we had developed the content. 

In order to deal with the vast amount of imagery, organisation was essential. Folders were made grouping the styles of photography with their colour, location, context and content. This would help with the editing and selection process.   

When grouping locations it became clear consistent colouring and typographic treatments that were relevant to these various location. Both designers edited with an idea of how colour would be manipulated and the relevant style of composition through digital collage. This was so that when brought together both sets of spreads would follow the same idea however be evidently adapted to the personalities of each designer's style.

The USA publication had collected a lot of imagery of LED signs. The design really wanted to find a way to incorporate as many of them as possible, due to the relevance of the various typographic styles and colouring. A separate fold out for this was discussed, producing a sort of concertina fold out that could possibly be used to signify night and thus separate the progression from USA to Australia (i.e. day to night to day).

Initial gif experiments:

playing around the different colouring during the editing stages, and putting them together to experiment with bringing the imagery to life

Initial composition developments

The spread developments focused on using digital collage to extend colour and form, accentuate type, present colour palettes, and thus play with deconstructing the technicalities of the imagery. 

The process looked at adding and taking away, and considered the diversity of spreads in communicating the atmosphere of that area. Heavy type and full compositions would be loud and busy, whereas stripped back, with lots of negative space may connote emptiness, abandonment or open road. Dark colours would connote nighttime and pastels may allude to springtime. 

Progress video

(introduction to share on social media platforms?)