Spot the differences

Tags

color correction, photoshop, spot the differences

Original Image

Edited Image

 

Answers

In my composition, I wanted to make it challenging to the user, but not so tough until they cannot find any and give up quickly. Because my picture already has a lot of colors and content, so it is already challenging enough to compare between the two images. Hence, while I can choose to make smaller changes to increase the difficulty even more, I decided to make many of changes large and obvious enough, so that an average person should be able to find about 5-6 quickly in a minute. I also wanted to make my edited version clean, such that it is difficult to tell that it has been edited even without looking at the original version.

My plan was to make them see a few pretty obvious ones to keep them going:
1) The 3 on the poster (hopefully they only see 2 because of complacency)
2) The missing fire image beside “Hot”
3) The 2 mirrors in the top left corner.
4) The extra Danger sign

The more challenging ones are:
1) The color change of bottle cap
2) Different color for one of the sauce bottle
3) The missing white string over the mirror

Final booklet

Tags

grid, hierarchy, image, typography

My Final Booklet

PDF versions:

Exported Pages with Crop Marks [10582kb]
Exported Pages without Crop Marks [10580kb]
Exported Spreads with Crop Marks [10566kb]
Exported Spreads without Crop Marks [10565kb]

Screenshots (Exported Spreads without Crop Marks):

 

My final booklet printed by Kinkos (nearest to foreground) and some of my trial prints/booklets to test for colors (located in background):

 

Intent/Meaning of Booklet

Through this booklet, I intent to encourage students to study abroad in London. This is achieved by showing a student that while studying in London, he/she can easily find great food and entertainment. I also included many interesting pictures that can bring out the excitement in London.

 

Grids and design elements

For my booklet, I used a modular grid in the spreads to create a flexible, yet consistent alignment and placement for the headings, main body text and images. For each spread, I chose one photo (the photo on the left spread nearest to the heading) where I would only highlight one coherent color/hue and greyscale the other parts of it (spread theme color/hue) to make the spread look interesting. The pictures and colors were chosen to represent London such that it can create a sense of Isomorphic Correspondence. I wanted people who have been to London before (or those who are planning to go to London) to recognize the colors and relate to the London icons/photos easily.

For the 2nd spread on “Learn”, I also made use of the fact that the spread will be printed across the same sheet/page (hence reducing alignment problems), so I extended the Portico, University College London photo across the middle of the page. As for spreads 1 and 3 (“Play” and “Eat” respectively), I also shifted the placement of the images on the right spread to make them different as part of the design of the booklet, to make it less repetitive.

The caption for each image is aligned to the bottom right corner of the image, and also a white transparency overlay is placed on the image to ensure that the text is visible and easily read. The caption (font weight and size) is made such that it does not capture too much attention away from the photos.

 

Typographic Variables

I used a couple of decorative London-related fonts to convey the style of my book, because I wanted to bring out the fun and happy side of studying, while in London. Apart from in-class critique, I also did a few users testing from my friends (those who have been to London especially) to obtain feedback about the choice of font. I generally received very positive feedback about the choice and size of typography. Initially, I planned to use the font size from the typography samples done earlier, but they appear to be too large during the design process, and so I changed them accordingly to suit the overall design of the booklet.

I also made use of size, color, uppercase, orientation and white space to communicate the main heading with the reader, and to also capture the reader’s attention to the main headings on each spread. I wanted to draw their eyes to the heading and give focus to the headings as they look at the spreads.

Using font weight, I wanted to draw the reader’s attention to certain keywords in the main body text of each spread to quickly provide an idea on what my content is about describing London. As for the main body, I used a fairly easy to read font and size, as well as leading to help make the paragraph easier to read.

I also used a font weight with a white opaque overlay to help communicate the image to the reader using captions at the bottom right corner of each image. I experimented with different font size and weights of the captions using paragraph styles to ensure that it does not draw too much attention from the images themselves.

Finally, I also played around with typography to create a London “logo” such that it resembles a London bus, to make the front cover more interesting, unique and dynamic.

 

The design process/decisions and feedback from in-class critique

I experimented with and printed a couple of different compositions prior to the in-class critique session, and I chose my favorite one for the in-class critique. These are photos of the comments for the draft that I chose and passed around.

These are some other booklets I printed for trial purposes:

Below are some comments from the critique session, and also a discussion of my final decisions and the changes I made for the final booklet:

• Logo: Most people who recognized it liked my logo and said it was very cute, but there were some who couldn’t tell that it was a London Bus. Hence, I made it look more like a London bus by adding a simple bus roof to the logo.
• Photos exposure: Some commented that some photos were too dark (particularly the cover photo and the UCL Portico photo), while some were too overexposed. I followed up by adjusting them using Photoshop and also printed many samples to choose a good exposure.
• Cover: The cover photo was too grey-ish which made London look gloomy. I worked on that by increasing the brightness and curves using Photoshop.
• Headings: The main headings were too large. I made it smaller and also created a margin between the image and the heading to give them more white space.
• Captions: I agree with the comments that the bold captions took away a lot of attention from the photos. Hence, I removed the bold font weight.
• Grammer issues: There were some grammatical and spelling errors in some of the paragraphs which I fixed.
• Photos shine: There are some shine in some of the photos, which I used Photoshop’s clone stamp tool to remove.
• White transparency overlay: Someone mentioned that the white transparency was not sufficient. However, I thought it was sufficient enough so I decided not to change it.
• Emphasize important points in main body: I also used font-weight (bold) to highlight an important bit of the text so the reader can quickly find the key words of the meaning that I want to bring across. For example, for the “Play” spread, I emphasized “shopping haven”. For “Learn”, I highlighted “work and play hard” and for “Eat”, I chose “food paradise”.
• White space: I also agree with some comments which mentioned that there might be too many pictures on the right spread, and thus insufficient white space, and that can cause the reader to lose focus. Thus, I removed 1 picture from each of the spread for “Play” and “Eat”. Then, I experimented with the grids to make the layout of the remaining images interesting and also to give them sufficient attention using white space.
• Design consistency: Initially, I planned to make the design such that only 1 photo on each spread is used to to clearly highlight the color scheme of each spread (i.e. Red for the London telephone booth in “Play”, Blue for the typical classroom photo in “Learn”, and Orange for the Chinese Food Stall photo in “Eat”). However, only it wasn’t apparent enough, so I made it more obvious.

Things that worked (which I kept)

• Clean layout using modular grids
• Nice choice of photos
• Good use of color scheme on different pages, and colors to represent London
• The London logo (cute!)

Cover ideas

Tags

image, sketches, typography

Prior to designing the book covers, I sketched a few potential ideas. Each of these sets represents front (right) and back (left).

From my sketches, I came up with these 3 compositions, which are mainly a mixture of ideas from the sketches.

For this first composition, I had some inspiration from the Chip Kidd Book design cover designs lecture, where there was a sample shown to us with a man punching another person into a book. I then thought of study abroad, where it will be nice to have a book involved, and to have London icons popping out of the book, which creates a dynamic feel. I experimented more using a “red” hue color scheme for the cover. I used Photoshop techniques taught in class to do cropping and selection tools to produce this composition.

 

In this composition, I wanted to make something fun out of the fonts (so that it looks like a London bus), which I used on the front cover. I also wanted a picture can significantly represent London (so I chose the London eye), and one that is large enough that can spread over the 2 spreads (and also with myself in it) so that I can talk about myself for the back cover page. I also used the transparent layer effect in Photoshop for the background to support the text as taught in class.

 

In this composition, I experimented with the idea (from my sketches) of having some London icons in a silhouette, and also a picture which can represent London (I chose Westminister with the London Eye).

Spreads Draft 2

Tags

grids

With a system grid, I explored a couple of different variations for draft 2, and they are as follows:

Composition 1

In this composition, I was experimenting with having captions for the images using a transparent overlay, as well as vertical images on the right page. However, I figured that the text were too long, so I planned to reduce the width of the text box.

 

Composition 2 (Only 1 spread)

In this composition, I reduced the size of the headings that are not in focus. Also, I also experimented with the pictures on the right side, and vary it’s length. I also tried a vertical caption.

 

Composition 3

In this composition, I also experimented more with the captions but using arrows. I created more white space that created steps and an inverted “L” (stands for London?). However, I felt that the white space on the left spread was a little awkward.

Composition 4

In this final composition (also my preference), I played around with the headings and removed those that were not relevant (rather than placing them out of focus) and made it bigger. I also increased the size and changed the guides a little to align the text to the picture. I also removed the white space on the right spread. For the center spread, I wanted to make it a little different because content can be easily spread across the two spreads.

Mood board, color palette & Spreads Draft 1

Tags

color palette, grid, mood board

2 Mood Boards

Color Palette

I chose a hue of the 3 primary colors – red, blue and yellow (sort of orange) for the colors because they represent London very well. This is because red represents London very well, with all the ubiquitous red buses, red telephone boxes, red/blue underground logo etc. Blue is also a color which represents London very well, with the red/blue underground logo, blue Tower of London, and finally, the royal color of yellow reflects the royalty, as well as the famous Yellow London cab.

Screenshots of grid and 3 interior spreads

We had in class critique sessions, and the comments are as scribbled below. These comments helped me conceptualize my grid and layout for the spreads (first draft) below.

Final grid and 3 interior spreads (Draft 1)

I decided to use the modular grid that are vertically clustered towards the right side of the page as such, to help align the captions of the pictures, and help to create an interesting concept for cropping the images. Moreover, they also provide a lot of flexibility of providing a right margin for the images.

Typography study & Sketching grids

Tags

hierarchy, typography

Typographic samples

For my typographic samples, I experimented with a mixture of serif and sans-serif fonts in each set. For instance, for the first one, I tried out a whole set of different sans-serif fonts, and for the second set, a mixture of serif for the title and sans-serif for the subtitle and body paragraphs and so on. As for leading of the body text, I used the default leading of 14.4pt for all the sets except for the first set, which I used 18pt. This is because I tried changing the leading for the other sets and it didn’t seem to fit in nicely. I used a couple of decorative London-related fonts to convey the style of my book, because I wanted to bring out the fun and happy side of studying, while in London.

Book Design, Grids

Tags

book design, color, grid

For my initial exploration, I first brainstormed on the content. Through this book, I figured that I want to emphasize my passion for technology and travelling around the world.

Thus, my initial ideas were:

1) My Study Abroad in London

2) My Life as a Developer Evangelist in Microsoft

3) My Silicon valley trip

Because I have many pictures that I want to display in the book, I quickly figured that there will not be sufficient flexibility if i were to use a manuscript grid. Column grids might work, but I realized I do not have sufficient text to fully utilize the column grids to a large extent. Finally, I decided that I wanted more control over my pictures (like an image gallery), and thus I explored using the modular grid, which was more suitable for the purpose.

For each of these content ideas above, I went through my photo collections to search for pictures. Then, I also segmented each of my ideas into 2 or 3 different categories to be placed between the 3 spreads (shown in sketches below; the grid sketches below are independent of each content idea, although they are drawn on the same sheet of paper). At the same time, I also explored different few types of modular grid layouts while thinking of the content.

For the first one, I thought of using multiple rows and column grids, which creates a matrix of cells, where content may overlap to create an interesting visual impression. However, soon I realized that too many rows and column grids defeats the purpose of using grids.

In this iteration, I focused more on columns rather than rows.

For this grid, I experimented with the Windows 8 apps layout while using a modular grid. This is something interesting, because it is a well known layout used by Microsoft, so I thought I could give it a try for my booklet.

Then, I simply played around with the evenness of the widths of the rows and columns to see how my content my fit into them better.

Dummy Booklet

In class, we also did a dummy booklet to see how the grid layout and content will look like on the actual booklet. In each of the 3 spreads here, I also experimented with different types of modular grids, and for the front and back, I used a simpler grid system, and experimented with a column grid as well as a manuscript grid.

This one shows a pretty even rows and columns for modular grid (3 rows and 3 columns). I want to use it mainly to show many pictures. I also have an interesting menu at the left side showing the main content I have.

The title stands out here, with my content overlay on the right spread on top of an image. Despite having 4 rows and 4 columns, I gave the rows a lower width, to guide the formatting of my pictures to be cropped long in width but shorter in height. There were also a few cells that were simply whitespace.

In this grid, I was trying to place images towards the right corner of the page, but having an interesting blocks of photos cut off for continuation.

For the back cover, I created a two grid column to guide a photo of myself having fun on the right, and also a picture and description of myself (or for any credits).

Initial content choice – Behind the scenes as a Developer Evangelist in Microsoft

The idea I first chose was to document “Behind the scenes of my life as a Developer Evangelist in Microsoft”. I created a few drafts using inDesign to experiment with different types of modular grids and the displaying of my photos/content. However, I changed out of the content because I soon realized that many of these pictures that I wanted to show were pictures of me, and I would have a problem crediting the people who used my camera to take the picture for me. Nevertheless, this was what I’ve come up with.

Front and Back cover draft

Although we haven’t been taught how to do the front and back cover yet, I had some initial idea on how it should look like (below). It may change after we are taught how to do it properly in class. I used a simple manuscript grid.

A draft of a spread

I then decided to create a book which documented my life as a study abroad student in London, because I really like London (such that I went back again for a second study abroad semester).

Subsequent Choice – Study Abroad in London

My design of 1 spread with (supposedly) 3 different options (I did 5 here) using InDesign

I chose to make even rows and columns (3 rows and 3 columns) on the right spread to create a photo gallery style. On the left, I have a column to tell the reader which page he/she is on, as well as all the main headings.

In this grid, I wanted my content to be divided into the upper half and bottom half of the page.

In this composition, I wanted to guide the reader’s eyes from left to right using pictures cropped out horizontally using a grid which has low width between its rows. It was sort of like a (horizontally) rotated column grid.

In this composition, I tried to create an interesting collage using modular grids that clustered towards the right side of the page.

I experimented with column grids for this iteration.

Book Spread Exercise

Tags

grid, spreads

1. What is a modular grid?

Modular grids are a slightly more complicated system of grids similar to column grids, but with horizontal divisions marked by rows. These columns and rows divides the page into (consistent) modules or cells. These modules contain different types of content (i.e. images, texts, charts etc.), and can be combined horizontally or vertically to create spatial zones, which contain distinct and different groups of information. They are used to give designers more control over the spread, and is usually for more sophisticated layouts with lots of images and content, such as the newspaper.

2. What is a flowline?

A flowline is a horizontal line used for alignment, that breaks the page/space into horizontal bands. Flowlines can guide the eye across the page, and are used for starting and stopping points for texts and images.

3. How is a manuscript grid different from a column grid?

The manuscript grid is the simplest primary grid structure and is simply one large rectangular area for a huge chunk of text block for extensive continuous text and margins that define its position on the page. The column grid has its content organized into an arrangement of multiple vertical columns reserved for text and images.

The manuscript grid has no true columns, making it inflexible. On the other hand, a column grid has (multiple) proper columns, and the flexibility for text and images to fit in them. It is more flexible because it segregates the page into more than one part using the columns, and each column allows different kinds of information to be inserted, independent of what content other columns contain.

4. Explain what it means to deconstruct a grid.

Deconstructing a grid means taking an established conventional grid/structure and then altering it to create new (spatial or visual) relationships and to see what happens. This can be achieved by shifting or breaking apart grid rows or columns (and hence modules) or even rotating them, so that they overlap or create interesting proportions or layouts.

Color Exercise

Tags

color, composition, initials, rgb

In this assignment, we make a composition/pattern using our initials of our name and 3 colors in a square box of 3X3 inches in illustrator.

Prior to using Illustrator to design my composition, I made a few sketches on some of my initial ideas. From this exercise, I wanted to create something that is fun and interesting.

My initials are “TL” for “Terence Lim”. From my initial exploration, I explored a little by repeating, cropping, rotating, overlapping and scaling the letters “T” and “L”. For the first one, I tried putting a large-scale “T” and “L”, wanted to use colors and circles to make them look interesting. But I felt that it was not the kind of the fun that I want to portray.

For my second sketch, I experimented with the placing of the L, and aligned the bottom of the L to the top of the T. However, that didn’t seem to work well for me.

By the 3rd composition, when I was experimenting with rotating, and eventually tessellating the letters, it then struck me that the letters “T” and “L” coincidentally tiles and fits very nicely together. Moreover, I suddenly realized that “TL” was also the initials for TesseLation. Then, I become incline to portray my initials using something similar to a tessellation. The tessellation also had the potential to form an interesting composition using colors.

I continued exploring a little more, such as what I can possibly do with the order of the tessellation (repeating them at the same orientation, or even by rotating them around one another), or even cropping or overlapping the letters. For the overlap, I thought it might be interesting to overlap the vertical stroke of the “T” and “L”, and use colors to differentiate the two letters, while eventually tessellating them. However, it did not turn out very nice.

I also tried experimenting with different fonts, playing with rotating and saturation to bring out the figure/ground. In this example, I rotated the Ls to make them form a frame using the font Copperplate Gothic. Then I placed my initials inside to form the figure/ground. As for colors, I tried all primary colors red, yellow and blue hue, but I changed the saturation and hue to bring out figure ground. Nevertheless, I decided to stick on with tessellation.

I moved on and searched through a couple of fonts, and eventually chose Berlin Sans FB with a bold stroke weight, because it is wide enough to look like bricks as they tessellate.

To bring out figure/ground, I used colors. I knew I wanted blue as my hue, because blue looks professional, and often associated with stability and knowledge. For my figure/foreground which highlights one set of “TL” which I want to place emphasis on, I used a blue with a darker hue (R: 13, G: 78, B: 138). Then, for the rest of the tessellated “TLs” which I want to place less emphasis on and put them into the background, I made use of the color wheel. I chose a couple of blue with a higher value, and eventually settled on one with an RGB value of (R: 71, G: 162 , B: 181). The two above mentioned shades of blue are analogous colors as they sit next to each other on the color wheel and have minimal chromatic differences.

Finally, as for the background/border of the square, initially I chose a shade of orange (R: 245, G: 147, B: 30) because it was a complementary color (opposite of the color wheel), but then I thought it looked too glaring and uncomfortable for the eye, so I decided to go on something that is less glaring. I experimented with a few colors and eventually decided on a shade of grey, (R: 232, G: 232, B: 232). The color scheme I eventually chose had a similar color scheme to the Twitter interface.

Eventually, I also experimented with different repeating styles using colors, and also cropping (the “T” using the “L” and vice versa). However, I thought cropping the “L” using the “T” was not very appropriate, because the “L” would look more like an inverted “T”, and cropping the “T” using the “L” (below) would place more emphasis on the “L” which is what I do not want.

Final:

Finally, I chose something which gave both “T” and “L” equal status, and to rotate them about so as to create a more dynamic composition.

Grid variations

Tags

grid, hang lines, layout

In this exercise, I chose Manuscript Grid, Column Grid and Modular Grid.  It is interesting to see how the message and flow of the same information can differ based on the different grids and layouts.

Manuscript Grid

Manuscript Grid is the simplest form of grids. In this example, I used one block of continuous text with an inside margin for the gutter, and also outside right and left most margins for the readers’ thumbs, and one large image on the left page.

 

(Multi) Column Grid

For this column grid example, I created a multi-column grid. These multi-column grids provide flexible formats for prints, and helps integrate illustration and text, like in this case.

Besides creating vertical zones with the columns of the grid, I also used a horizontal hang line to divide the page horizontally, which create zones for the illustration and text. The body text also “hangs” from this common line.

I also created some space called “gutters”, or white space between columns, which makes for better legibility.

 

Modular Grid

For this modular example, I used columns with horizontal guides to help group the information. The content (text and image alike) may span more than one column/row, and my approach was to use images to fill up a majority of the space, while leaving the rest for white space and text.