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.

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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.

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