The first decision was a choice of format and grid, being a little under confident in layout and page design I decided to use a simple rectangular format 21 x 15cm and in keeping with our previous thumbnail task I re-used the 6 column grid as another simplifying method, just so as not to push myself too much too quickly.
I began by thumb nailing some basic design ideas with my printed and pre-produced content as a guide working to estimate how much space would be required for the headers, images and text.
Working on a small scale, at least the first time round, was slightly difficult for me, I found that I struggled to visualise the final page even with it's elements roughly laid out before me. The part I found the most daunting however was that i couldn't even decide what looked good and what looked bad, I certainly preferred some but I had no idea why and finding a decent balance between white space and content was daunting.
To combat this I decided to produce some 'full scale' versions, (or at least larger versions) so as to visualise them better. This certainly helped me in some ways, ( like that I realised the thumbnails only looked so good because of the thick lines and the comic book look to them) but yet I still couldn't tell if any of my ideas were good and if any of the layout sketches were strong or weak.
Still a decision had to be made and I felt my most original idea was the centred layout (pictured above) and so I produced another set of full scaled versions with the content very loosely placed into it. And these, along with my other full scale sketches are what I took into the crit with me.
For the crit, the main thing suggested to me was developing a stronger grid and producing layouts based off of it. The content was sound and the sketches were described as good, but after looking at other people's work I knew they were right. In comparison to others my layouts looked horribly messy and rather juvenile, there was also a slight issue brought up to me that I hadn't left space for a decent amount of body text, which was something I hadn't even thought. To get the amount of body copy in that I wanted the point size wold have to be so small, it'd be illegible. I needed and wanted to start over, produce a stronger grid and thumbnail all over again.
They also suggested for me to just start producing digital mock-ups, which I agree with. I'm from a drawing background and trust my hand skills over digital production, however when it comes to something like layout and page design there is no comparison to using the actual software and so I made sure that when I went back to develop a grid, I produced this digitally.
My layouts needed three things, a consistent design 'feature', a good strong grid and a respectful balance of content and white space. So this was at the forefront of my mind when it came to round two of thumb nailing.
I felt that I didn't want one layout for every page of content, so this is where the design feature came in, a consistency throughout all pages allowing for a bit of creativity and change. This feature became the page number/page name (sub heading) and the basic grid (above) using the rule of thirds to divide the page horizontally became the stamp for the rest of my designs.
So now comes the digital development, using my sketches, my content and indesign I started to physically produce the final 10 pages. Surprisingly it turned out to be rather uneventful and simple, the newer sketches I had produced translated very nicely into digital format and only a few minor tweaks were required in order to fit in the required text and images.
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