OUGD504: Studio Brief 01 - Design For Print - Evaluation

The book was produced in both commercial standard and made by hand. This is to gain an understanding between the differences within industry standard print and producing a book on a student budget using university facilities. There are limitations within both. There are only certain adjustments you can tell a company to print and guidelines they must stick to to be able to produce the book for you. When printing on your own you must know exactly what you want to achieve from the book to make it yourself. Both methods helped to demonstrate which would be the more appropriate option depending on how many you are going to produce and how you are going to produce it. If it's a limited edition the option to make it by hand is more feasible and makes the product unique. If it needs to be mass produced to be sold it would be more cost effective to produce it in bulk.

The final book was manufactured by a professional printing company. It had 8 days turnover time. The conversation between the manufacturer gave a clear insight into what producing work to print professionally is like in industry. Personal deadlines needed to be made and deadlines for the manufacture were needed to meet my deadlines. The document set up had to be extremely precise down the last dimension and dpi set up. The organisation of the pages and artwork needed to be given specifically too and it was a lot of back and forth emails and phone calls. It is important that the main focus on colours in the book were in CMYK for the digital printing because it ensures the colour we work with will be accurately reproduced during the print process.

The final book meets the aims and objects set at the beginning. A colouring book aimed at 16-25 artsy individuals was made. However, in the final crit it was discussed that perhaps the illustrations should have been hand rendered by using fine line drawings instead of random shapes. The design being scattered and busy looking could be too complex for a colouring book because some people using it may be perfectionists and want to colour within the lines.

It was stated that this design could be better for different media such as water colour which is more free and harder to control. This means the stock choice would have needed to be reconsidered but if the book was produced again then the design could easily be modified to be suitable for that media. This would be done by adjusting the paper stock and the thickness so it would hold the liquid but it is agreed that the design would have been more appropriate for a paint instead of colouring pencil. 

The design is successful in terms of creating a mindfulness colouring book. The blue tones represent the sky and reference the original image. Blue has connotations of calm and serenity so instantly when you see a blue book amongst a shelf of quirky activity books it should release a sense of indifference and peace to the viewer. The concept of the design fits with the uniqueness of the books within fashion retailers. It has an alternative aesthetic to it rather than a standard fiction or non fiction book. This one is more interactive and for the user to experience something. The item has been purchased on my online shop so it is a marketable book.

I found this brief extremely challenging because of the stress of working to committed deadlines and having to organise my time efficiently to meet print deadlines in commercial standard print. However, it taught me a lot about the actual production and file set up considerations.