Geometric shapes in print – 2

There are some excellent examples of geometric shapes used in print, they again use the same techniques in previous posts, you will see these here;

Varg Eyewear use the techniques covered in geometric shapes post to promote their glasses and this allows for a fresh looking design that stands out from the crowd.

Outliners use geometric shapes to create a window to the image behind, it creates a simple, clean but interesting front cover, this is something I will consider when  designing my printed design.

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Content Layout

Understanding layout of content is going to be a vital part of my brochure so that I am able to present the web trends in a readable, fashionable way. Using a mixture of images, text and white space creates an interesting layout on paper. It is understanding to balance these elements that creates a visually appealing brochure. I have found that if you are to have text, to make it understandable, the best layout is to use columns of two or three. You can see quite a few examples of this method used below;

Some printed material focus their efforts more upon the typography than the other aspects of the design, this creates a different feel to the printed material, you can see some examples of this here;

This example is excellent because it also shows the method of cutout text to reveal an image through the text.

Another important thing I noticed in print is the shapes used to add additional interest in the subject is the addition of shapes and lines around a person or object. I think this allows the reader to instantly recognise what is at the centre of attention. You can see some great examples of this here;

References;
http://inspirationhut.net/inspiration/42-excellent-examples-of-magazine-layout-design-for-your-inspiration/
http://indulgy.com/post/pEfMtH34d1/layout-dansk-magazine
https://www.behance.net/gallery/Magazine-Feature-Magazine/9812813
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/marindsgn/3894231417/in/photostream)
http://www.amandamocci.com/#1906059/THE-UNIVERSE-POSTERS/
http://www.aisleone.net/2012/design/typographic-revolt/
http://www.opus-design.jp/press/item_539.html
http://www.magspreads.net/2013/07/fashion-look-book-layout-design.html
http://milesmind.tumblr.com/post/44590898712

Promotion Pack – Flyer

The flyer was designed using the colours of my logo, I also used white as the text to stand out from the background. I decided to make certain words bolder and leave the rest of the test in the regular font. Once I was happy with my overall design I decided to print them out to make sure they worked properly. Below you will see my analysis.

As you can see the general layout works really well and actually looks very professional but you can see the lighter font doesn’t work when it is smaller. This means I need to remove this, so instead I will use sizing of the font to differentiate from the different areas. Below is the second and final version of the flyer, there are a couple of things worth noting in this version though. Firstly the background colour looks more like a black, I think this is more to do with my home printer than the colour being wrong so I will test this using the professional college printers and decide from there if I need to change the colour. The only other ‘issue’ is that at the top you can see the logo on the other side of the paper, this won’t be an issue in the final stage as it will be printed on thicker paper therefore will not show up.

Below you can see the three different iterations of the flyer I would be sending as part of my promotional package. The oldest on the left has faint text and is made from flimsy paper, the next is made from slightly better paper and has adjustments to the the type to made it readable and then the final piece on the right is printed on card with a gloss which looks very professional.

Wyke Printers company visit

To understand the process of creating a physical hand out like a business card or letterhead, I found it was vital to research the companies that produce these things. I organised a visit to G.F. Smith, the paper manufacturer and Wyke Printers.

One of the first things I learnt when being showed around Wyke Printers was about the ‘blueprint’, a paper cutout of anything that needs to be folded and cut to create a certain shape. The photo below shows the blueprint design for a folder that the company Lincat are paying Wyke printing for. You can see the design has dotted lines for folds and hard lines to be cut. The layout of the content is shown as it would be so that should there be any mistakes, they can be easily resolved. There are many machines in the building that do lot’s of different jobs, things like stapling books together, printing, checking colour levels  etc.

Along the top of each piece of paper printed, there is a set of colour codes which are read by the computer system, this will determine whether each machine has the correct amount of each colour in it. Wyke use CMYK (reason for this has been mentioned in previous research). You can see the numbers on the machine actually match up to the different colour sets on the paper.

Finally I shared the initial ideas for my self promotion material, and was shown the piece of equipment you can see below, if I was to create my designs on a mass scale, I would use a printing press, this basically is laid out like the blueprint you can see at the beginning of this post and will make the relevant scores and cuts on the paper, this saves time and money. Then all that needs to happen is the relevant folds, glue and and then they are shipped to the customer. This is obviously ideal and has shaped the way I will arrange my designs. This is the press I was shown:

The science of colours

RGB colours (red, green & blue) are used on the web, but CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow & black) are used in printing. The reason for this is somewhat scientific, when you add all the RGB colours together, you create white while when you add all the CMYK colours together, you create black. Therefore in print it is cheaper to use less ink, and white is the colour of the paper most commonly printed on, so it would make sense to stick to CMYK so that you can just build the colours up by adding the right amounts of all cyan, magenta and yellow to create the colours and adding equal amounts of each. On the other hand pixels are naturally dark, and require electricity to give off certain colours, therefore black on screen uses less energy than white on screen. So again to allow the colours to build up, you start of with black, then to save energy and power you build up with the other colours. So the reasoning for the different colour specifications is technically to save money.

CMYK

RGB

Obviously the colours are made up of different attributes, the three attributes that can change the quality of a colour are described in the HSI (Hue, Saturation & Intensity) colour model. This can be seen below, the one at the top is the technical description of the version below which you will recognise from colour palettes in computer programs.

You will also recognise the same pattern in rainbows and apple’s loading wheel.

References:

(http://www.maclife.com/files/u129772/1_BenColorCapture.jpg)

(http://www.itc.nl/library/Papers/HENGL-pixel.pdf)

(http://cruxcreative.com/rgb-vs-cmyk-when-to-use-which-and-why/)

G.F. Smiths Paper Company Visit

To understand the process of creating a physical hand out like a business card or letterhead, I found it was vital to research the companies that produce these things. I organised a visit to G.F. Smith, the paper manufacturer and Wyke Printers.

G.F. Smith is a paper manufacturer founded in 1885 by George Frederick Smith. The start of any printing process is with the type and style of paper you are going to print on, so i took a trip to the premises and got a private tour. I spoke to a manager about the history of the company including how debt almost destroyed the company in 1915, supplies being shortened in 1939 because of world war 2 and the purchase of the Hull premises in 1969.

During the tour I was shown the room with their clients whom had had used their paper in their packaging. It also showed off all the different colours they could offer their paper in. You can see an example of this book here:

This room full of different types and colours of the paper which was for clients to touch and feel the actual materials they might be using in their product. The most important lesson I learnt during my visit, was there are different weights of materials measured in GSM (Grams per square metre), different colours,  and effects that can be applied to the card such as a gloss. These allow the card to be styled in a certain way. The company also offer press services to imprint the card with a certain design, a client would buy a press designed specifically for their needs for anything up to £2,000 depending on size and intricacy. You can see one of G.F Smiths presses below

Companies like G.F. Smith offer hand made services as well, to do jobs that cannot be done by machine, things like making bespoke envelopes. You can see a team of women sat at a table here making hundreds of these type of letters. With hundreds of clients around Yorkshire, they have a huge warehouse that stores all the paper. This means they can work hand in hand with a company like Wyke printers to meet a clients need for a really speedy delivery on the deadline.

I was also shown another client area, where customers can come and physically feel the paper itself. As you can see with these images:

There are lot’s of different types so by having the client actually being able to touch the product they would be buying is a brilliant way to make sure you know what your buying, having the right quality material is very important for any business and the market is estimated to be around $23.8 Billion a year.

References:

http://www.bugwood.org/intensive/forest___paper_industry.html