In my mind I passed a huge milestone yesterday; I made my first hardback book. By made I mean completely hand crafted with my own blood, sweat, tears and glue and by first I mean first eleven.
To say I’m relieved at getting them finished is a fair old understatement. Given that the final hand-in is this Tuesday and that I had no idea how to make the books I was worried I wouldn’t get them done in time, leaving me with nothing to wrap my final book jackets around for display at the Degree Show. Luckily, my lovely girlfriend showed me how it’s done despite being busy as hell preparing for her own Degree Show and it was wonderfully straight-forward.
I’m not gonny go into how it’s done, that’s not really why I’m writing this, it’s more to show my excitement at learning a new craft. Here’s a wee selection of images from my day.
Read the rest of this entry »
Today is a monumental day. It is the day I handed in my last ever essay, at least as far as this course goes. It means I have five or so weeks to finish off my Irvine Welsh project uninterrupted by writing or award submissions. I was clever enough this time around to actually complete the writing part about a week in advance, leaving me with plenty of time to come up with a nice looking thesis and get it properly printed and bound.
Because Design Report Two is obviously a continuation of Design Report One, I wanted the aesthetic to reflect that. I created a cover based on the revised Penguin vertical grid, a 1950s update of the classic tripartite design my last essay cover stole.
Read the rest of this entry »
Today I finally posted off my entries to the Penguin Adult Prize and Puffin Children’s Prize and what a relief it was. I spent the majority of yesterday running around Garthdee getting things photocopied, printed and bound but it seems to have been worth it considering I’m still rather pleased with my final covers, as well as my submission boards.
I have even submitted a wee snippet from my Perfume cover to represent my work in the Gray’s School Of Art Degree Show Booklet.
I couldn’t find the right image from my Irvine Welsh project at the time so thought I’d go for a cropped photograph of my award entry, and I’m rather pleased with the results. It’s not giving too much away but, then again, that might not be a great thing.
Read the rest of this entry »
I’m currently a torn man. For anyone who doesn’t know, my project for the next few months is a new series of cover designs for Irvine Welsh’s books and below you’ll see a development idea I’ve been working on to represent the series as a whole. The only problem I’m really having with it is this; is it too closely associated with the film adaptation of Trainspotting?
Read the rest of this entry »
It’s that time of the semester again, essay hand-in day; this time known as Design Report One, with part two set to follow next year. This time around we were allowed to do something a bit fancy with it, rather than just the good ol’ A4 classic look. I didn’t want to go over the top with it, mostly to keep the content of the essay prominent, rather than have it lost in the design.
As you can probably guess, my main topic for discussion was book covers. Generally, the essay talks about why books are given new covers every few years and how their relationship with the contents compares to that of album sleeves and DVD covers. One of my main case studies is the classic Penguin covers we are all so familiar with so I thought making my design report seem like it bore one would be nice idea.
I ended up with two “formats” for lack of a better word. The first was your traditional A4 style essay.
Read the rest of this entry »
