OUGD501 - End of Module Evaluation

What skills have you developed through

this module and how effectively do you think

you have applied them?

___

My skills in writing have increased dramatically over this year and I feel that the final essay I created was a big step up from last year. I feel that after engaging fully with the lecture program, I have gained tons of useful contextual information which is very important for my personal practice. Whilst engaging with the program, I found certain topics and areas of personal interest which led to further research and eventually creating and essay and publication in response to. I particularly enjoyed the Panopticism Lecture and this is where the main starting point came from looking into modern day Panopticism working across Social Media. 

I have gained other important skills across writing such as how to properly plan and structure larger pieces of writing as well as essay techniques such as triangulation. I feel that this helped me successfully structure and generate my final essay this year. I got to create my own essay title which was also useful, and will be extremely important when considering my COP3 dissertation topic. 

After tutor contact, I was able to see what I was successfully achieving in my essay and where I needed to go away and become stronger at. I needed to work on my introduction and conclusion elements of my essay, although I had more than sufficient amount of research, I then went away to work on how I can introduce and come to a personal conclusion, which was really useful. I am also now confident when harvard referencing within any piece of writing with carious different forms of sources. 

What approaches to methods of design production

have you developed and how have they informed

your design development process?

___

I really pushed myself when working editorially with the publication this year. Due to my very interesting topic of Social Media Addiction, which was derived from my Essay and mainly the Panopticism Lecture, it allowed me to be much more experimental with the layout and format. 

I had a strong vision that I wanted the publication to be fairly confusing, much like pop up windows on a computer. This was achieved by using a certain metal binding technique along with different sized pages and leaves which gives the publication a very unique look and feel. I was happy I achieved this in the end because I feel it is much more successful for the topic than a standard saddle stitched book would be. 

The topic also allowed me to be quite experimental visually throughout the publciation. I wanted the look of the publication to reflect that of things you find on screen, be that social media, or general computer interfaces. I used lots of visual research of computer interface designs, both vintage and modern day, and my design reflects this. I also used the design of Facebook as a strong visual reference, as I feel this is the best way to grab attention and connect with my target audience. 

What strengths can you identify in your work

and how have/will you capitalise

on these?

___

I have really enjoyed a lot of the lectures this year, much more than last. I feel that I am fully engaging with the theories raised and actually wanting to learn more about them as I now realise the importance of this when informing my personal practice, when I used to think it was a waste of time. I feel like, I have a much more well rounded concept and theory behind the work created, and this is from gaining a

good knowledge of my chosen topics, through engaging with lectures, seminars and researching more thoroughly. 

Conceptually I have grown this year in other modules as well as this one. I find myself bot just going with my first concept, but using various points of research and participation to gain a greater knowledge of the topic before coming up with a concept I feel will be strong enough, unique enough and most importantly work in a real life environment. Engaging more with theory and being more confident about my topics have also helped me gain a much better concept and this will continue to grow into COP3.

I am much stronger when writing longer pieces with planning and structuring. I feel I have a much greater knowledge of writing techniques and researching methods to help get the best possible results.

What weaknesses can you identify in your

work and how will you address

these in the future?

___

Identify five things that you will do differently

next time and what do you expect to

gain from doing these?

___

I plan to create a much better plan when it comes to my dissertation next year. Much more than any of the essays I have previously written. I feel that uses my knowledge in research techniques I don't have to waste my time researching things I don't need. I can make a plan that involves both secondary and primary sources of research and can achieve this over summer to a high level putting me in good stead for when it comes to writing it.


I will organise my time in general much better, especially across modules. I feel that I am pretty good at Time Management on the whole, but I felt at times this year that I put certain modules on the back burner, this one being one at a time and I shouldn't need to do this. Luckily, it didn't have any serious effects but I still feel that by structuring a better time management plan, this can be avoided.

 

I will make sure I will fully engage with all the lectures and not just the ones that are interesting to me. I will make the effort to go away and find out my own research in relation to each topic so I get a clearer idea of something that could be useful to help informing my personal practice.


I will also be more organised on my blog next year. I often find myself at times going back through blog posts and drafts inserting tags and losing important information along the way. I can't afford to do this next year and I don't really have the time. I will just be on point more when it comes to correct tagging and generating posts rather than hundreds of unfinished drafts. 

I still need to work on my presentation skills even though they have really come along this year. I need to be confident in my work in order to make other people confident in it too. I feel that I am constantly getting better at this, but again it's something that needs to be fully sorted when it comes to the third year.

OUGD501 - COP - Final Publication Photoshoot

Selected Photographs ;

The cover consists of the blue folder with an additional white label which uses the title of the book in the style of a computer error code. This gives a brief introduction and insight to some topics that might be introduced in the publication. 

You can see how the metal acco binding clip works and holds the whole publication together including the folder. There is a 3cm margin on the left hand alignment of each page with a creased edge, for the interaction of the publication to be seamless. 

Clearer images show how pages work together and how the folded edge makes it easier to interact with the unique format. 

Full Image Set via Scribd ; 

OUGD501 - COP - Initial Printing / Binding

Today I managed to get the majority of my publication printed. It proved difficult because I was using three different sized pieces of paper (A5, A4 & A3). This meant that I couldn't just print it straight from publication as one booklet. I had to pretty much print each page separately...

For each page when designing, I created a 3 cm margin on the left hand side which I then had to score and fold which will make it easier to interact with when reading the publication. Here you can see how I did it with the A5 pages. 

To create the holes I had to measure up the size of each piece of paper. I started with the A5 and worked out how to get the holes precisely in the middle. I then just simply used a hole punch where my markings where and attached these in  

You can see here how the two Acco fasteners are applied to the a5 peieces of paper to bind them together. 

 I did the same with the larger sections of the publication. I measured out the markings by aligning all the pages with the bottom left of each page. This will be how the publication will sit together. 

You can see how i've scored all the pieces with a 3cm margin. This creates a crease which makes it all easier to interact with when trying to read. The A5 pages fit snugly on top of the A4 with overlap. 

Finally, The A3 was added in the same fashion to complete the booklet.

Final Layout 

This is roughly how the final publication will look. It's still missing some elements that have yet to be printed. There are various acetate sections and some other type elements that i've not had chance to print yet. This will be done over the next few days. For now, heres the publication so far, It's starting to take shape now...

this is how the front will appear. There will also be a large folder which will fit around the whole publication. This will act as a front cover but also look as though it's a case report, which is the prominent look that i was going for. 

Close Ups

OUGD501 - COP - Final Publication (Digital)

Final Publication 


This is a digital mock-up of how the publication will look when printed. The largest sections of stock are around A3 in size, with the other two main sizes stepping down to A4 and A5. It was difficult to create this as a publication because of these sizes. I couldn't just create it in Indesign as a normal book. I  instead created three separate documents and a vague grid system which I followed, so I could see the gutters, margins and crop points for each piece to sit in.

I will then split each page into separate documents front and back, and print these seperatly. I will be a much longer process than just printing a normal booklet through Indesign, but I feel that the finished result will be worth it.

I had to just digitally mock up how the pages will link with each other so I could see that I hadn't made any mistakes and also to give me and idea of how they will look when placed on top of each other inside the publication. Here is the finished result with the pages starting from the closed folder flipping through the book to the last page...

Front Cover

Contents

Page 2 & 3

Page 4 & 5

Page 6 & 7

Page 8 & 9 

Page 10 & 11

Page 12 & 13

Page 14 & 15

Page 16 & 17

Page 18 & 19

Page 20 & 21

Page 22 & 23

Page 24 & 25

Back Cover 

I am well on the way now with these. I can print them as a double sided page separately because of the bind I am using which makes it a little bit easier. I've printed around half of the publication so it shouldn't be too difficult to get the other half done. 

the use of different stocks really alters the appearance of the publication so this digital representation isn't really accurate. Once I have completed the prints I can compile to the book and then get some really nice studio photographs of it to give a better representation. 

OUGD501 - COP - Publication Mock-Ups & Binding Method

Mock-Up (1)

I needed to create some mock-ups in order to get a solid idea of how it will look physically. Because i'm using lots of different sized pages and leaves in my layout, I needed to get a feel for this before solidifying the designs ready to print.

I split the publication into three main sizes which was based on the standard A5, A4 and A3 dimensions. They will be printed on these sized paper and then cropped to slightly smaller when printed.

I decided the layout of my publication using my previous plan of action. I quickly sketched where certain elements will sit and what pages will be placed where which gave me a really clear idea when moving my designs into the final layout ready for print.

You can see from the images above the (very) rough layout ideas and format the publication will take. I'm happy with this as a starting point now to start pulling together all the previous designs I had created into solid layouts. 

Binding Pins

For the bind of the publication, I really wanted to use metal binding pins and had this vision in my head from the very beginning. I feel that this bind will directly relate to the look, style and format of my publication. The main concept was for the publication to appear to be a large case report which will literally have a folder cover wrapped around it, different pieces of stock and sizes that can be added to or taken away, using the metal pins, which can easily be taken away and placed back in. 

I really like the idea that the publication is a mis-match of different articles, piece of text and imagery on different pieces of stock. I think it is very symbolic of social networks and in particular facebook. There are pop ups and different things pushed at you from all different angles. I think this bind will help me achieve what i wanted in created a version of the internet in flat printed format. 

Mock Up (2)

I created a second mock up which was very much testing the different stocks which was planning on using as well and how they would work within the chosen binding method. I decided to use two sets of metal clips to get a much tighter bind than if I was using one. This made sense because A3 was my biggest sized piece of stock and one pin holding that would be much too flimsy. This is why I went for two in the end. 

You can see here how the metal binding pins will sit with the stock. I will measure up each piece of paper i'm usually precisely before then created the holes using a hole punch and then these can easily be fastened together with the stock. 

This shows how the pages will work in motion throughout the publication. I realised that using this bind means that there is a significantly large margin on the left hand side, where a lot of the stock will sit but not be able to be seen because of the bind. 

To get around this problem, I will create a 4cm margin on the left hand side of each page. This will mean that nothing in the design area will be hidden by the bind.