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Design Research Dissertation / Bachelors of Design (Honours) in Creative Media / Taylor's University
Assignment 2: E-Publication Design
Table of contents
1. MODULE INFORMATION BOOKLET (MIB)
2. WEEKS
Week 8 - Week 9 - Week 10 - Week 11 - Week 12
3. PROGRESSION
3.1 Moodboard
3.2 Cover Page
3.3 Title Pages
3.4 FlipHTML5
4. FINAL
5. REFLECTION
1. MODULE INFORMATION BOOKLET (MIB)
This is the Module Information Booklet for this module:
2. WEEKS
Week 8
Dr. Hayati reached out to me regarding my Draft Dissertation and I explained to her about my situation that was unfortunately similar to my dilemma during Research Methodology. I explained to her about my situation that was unfortunately similar to my dilemma during Research Methodology.
This week was Independent Learning Week, I found it a bit hard to focus because my other modules did not adhere to the ILW so in the end, I mainly focused on my other modules instead of my E-Publication but I tried my best to work on it on the side.
Feedback:
- Try to be more communicative with Dr. Hayati if I’m facing any problems.
- Focus on E-Publication first.
Week 9
This week focused on the progress of our E-Publication ideation part; moodboard and theming of the overall design.
Feedback:
- Find a theme for your E-Publication (i.e. cute, contemporary, modern, abstract etc.)
- Then only after that should you start designing a moodboard.
- Pick a specific part of your research to add to the aesthetic of your E-Publication.
- When thinking of the theme, think of the keywords from your title.
- Explore on Pinterest the many different “ 3D” elements people have done in design for cover pages or other themed pages.
Week 10
This week focused on the progress of our E-Publication design; cover page and also the title pages.
Feedback:
- Pick a specific part of your research to add to the aesthetic of your E-Publication.
- Play around with a good colour palette.
- The cover page placeholder doesn’t have a focal line of the title.
- Right now the pages doesn’t give off the theme of ‘texture’
- Play around with the different textures in nature (leaves, webs etc.)
- Man-made textures are also something to consider (nets, fabric, bricks etc.)
- Keep a good balance of colours.
- Since the theme is contemporary, maybe make the title feel bold or “avantgarde”.
Week 11
Anxiety crept back so I did not attend class but I continued to work on my cover page with some sketches. Did some sketches of the different title pages as well (mainly the Table of Contents and the beginning sections of the Dissertation).
Week 12
Did not attend class again (｡แต ◞ _◟) but with the deadline coming close, I'd ask help from my senior (Jannan). She showed me her past E-Publication work and recommended me some ways to improve my workflow (˶แต แต แต˶). Was feeling really anxious that I wouldn't be able to get work done in time for the deadline but I pushed through despite knowing it'd be a late submission because I wanted to at least submit something I was satisfied with.
3. PROGRESSION
3.1 Moodboard
I initially was a bit stumped because I wanted to try to add in the initial idea and moodboard of adding “halftones” or “waves” as a more 2D texture kind of thing. So I created the above moodboard based on those two keywords but I received feedback from Dr. Hayati about it in that these are more elements rather than theme. So, I went back to searching Pinterest for actual ideas behind the theme of a contemporary design but possibly focusing more on a single or multiple textures to incorporate into the design.
As for the newly chosen colours, I decided to chose a warm colour palette that has both warm and cool colours but leans towards a mid-saturated tone.
3.2 Cover Page
Fig 3.2.1 Initial Cover Page Designs.
The first two initial designs for my cover page were simple because I didn't really have an actual idea of how to design it per se. I quite literally just took halftone pictures from the internet and added them blindly onto the page. There wasn't any really play or experimentation with the cover so I tried to focus of composition for the 3rd version (Cover 3 in Fig 3.2.1). Again, it was quite a simple composition and I didn't play with the colours yet.
Feedback:
- The cover page placeholder doesn’t have a focal point/line of the title.
- Right now the pages doesn’t give off the theme of ‘texture’
- Play around with the different textures in nature (leaves, webs etc.)
- Man-made textures are also something to consider (nets, fabric, bricks etc.)
- Since the theme is contemporary, maybe make the title feel bold or “avantgarde”.
So after the feedback I'd decided to come up with a bit more bolder designs as seen in Cover 4 copy and Cover 4 copy 2 (Fig 3.2.1). I did start to like it better than the previous designs but something felt missing so I
I continued to work on my cover page with some sketches. I decided to go with a sketch that followed one of the inspirations I took from Pinterest that had lines extruded from a letter to give an interesting focal point.
I felt Illustrator was a bit restrictive with what I wanted to do so I moved to Photoshop to access the blur and effects gallery. I started by warming myself back up with Photoshop since it'd been a while since I had used it. The text placement was something to get used to; same with the UI.
But once I'd gotten my groove, I started to play around with the effects. Halfway through though, the effects kept bugging so I had to improvise by creating a slightly different look than what I planned. I added pictures of rock and and a pattern of woven wood in the negative spaces of the X in TEXTURING.
3.3 Title Pages
Initially, I only randomly grabbed references from Pinterest so I didn't really have a proper guide to what I wanted. The initial references I got were based on my moodboard that was scrapped after feedback. Most of which were also quite simplistic in composition so I tried finding more references.
I wanted to try find a way to fit all the sections of the dissertation into a single laid-out spread so I tried designing a spread (Fig 3.3.2) that could possibly fit them all. But I realised that:
1. It felt a bit cramped with the position of all the text together
2. There were still some more sub-topics that I had to include
so the one spread Table of Contents page plan went down the drain quickly. I decided that if I'd have to make multiple spreads for the section, I'd try to make it a bit fun and impactful. Hence, the current composition change in Fig 3.3.3.
I applied the similar style of Fig 3.3.3 to the other title pages.
To distinguish each section, I also made sure they had their own colours and also unique design for the "body" pages that were not title pages.
Then to maintain cohesiveness, I also borrowed similar themes and colours I previously used and applied them to later pages. For example, I took the theme of the List of Tables and Figures' page and applied it to the Conclusion page.
Because Recommendations was a longer word, I split them up and tried to play around with the lines and extruded them past the letters to match with the cover page.
For the Appendices section, I encountered a problem where I couldn't think of a way to efficiently display the questions and responses properly so at times the methods I tried were broken (Fig 3.3.7).
After some trial and error, I just decided to leave it at a compromise and just paste in screenshots of the questions and responses. I'm not too fond of how it looks but I'm just glad to have it out of the way.
Then finally I added the page numbers using the Master Page tool and looked through the entire file to see if there were any more changes needed to be made.
3.4 FlipHTML5
The entire PDF file ended up being a whopping 400+ MB that even shocked me so with the upload size limit of the FlipHtml5, I had to compress it using an online compressor. For some reason, Acrobat Pro did not work as efficiently on the app as it did online so I went with the online compressor instead. The 400+ MB file surprisingly got condensed to around 3 MB
I was actually really excited to see the entire file being in a flipbook format because now I could see how my designs translated to the actual format needed. It was also fun just flipping the pages too but that's going off-topic.
4. FINAL
File 4.1 E-Publication Design (Final) [PDF].
Link to Google Drive View: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VAVmJ1cKx_7bI40361zLIBZ3sLmNpzZs/view?usp=sharing
FlipHTML5 link: https://online.fliphtml5.com/rbwqs/lgth/
5. REFLECTION
I definitely did enjoy this assignment better than the previous one. Just the fact that I could work on designing something rather than writing felt a bit more refreshing and on my level (which to be honest is quite low) after my whole ordeal with Draft Dissertation. I liked thinking of ways to design a book cover and all and exploring book designs too. I remember I used to dream writing a book but now that I think about it, I think I'd enjoy designing one rather than writing.
However, I did work on it alongside my Final Dissertation and because I did not feel satisfied with my Draft Dissertation, I chose to wait until I finished up my Final Dissertation to actually insert the text and contents of it into the E-Publication. For that I did have to submit really late but I am just glad I managed to submit something I'm relatively happy with.
Overall, I'm definitely going to put 'design a book cover' as a new goal for me but mostly for storybooks probably (แต—แด—)
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