Finishing

Example of a duotone (black / blue)

Example of a duotone (dark blue/light blue)

Duotones
Two examples of duotones, both record covers. The first is a pretty simple two color job with a base blue layer and then a black halftone pattern on top to make the shading effects. The second is a classic Joni Mitchell album, with a duotone photograph, light blue and blue are the colors for this one. I always kind of thought she looked like David Bowie in this pic.

Bad photo of a Spot Varnish

Example of Spot Varnish

Varnish
The first example is a cd cover. The mean looking guys in the background are actually a spot varnish coat (though its a little hard to tell from the bad photo). The second example is a dvd box for Sin City. The movie’s title is embossed and spot varnished. It’s really a sleeve that goes around the actual dvd box.

An example of die cutting

An example of Die Cutting

Die Cut
The first example should be pretty familiar to everyone. They hang from your rearview mirror and make your car smell (a little) better. Had to include it just because its a classic. The second example was a valentine I found laying around my parents house. On it the letters XOXO are cut out to display a flood varnish underneath and the edge is cut with a “cute” pattern.

Example of embossing

Example of embossing

Embossing/Debossing
Both of these examples are using embossing. The first is actually on tin box set for Ray Charles. The legend himself and his trademark smile are embossed on the cover. The second example is a book I pulled off of my shelf. There are hundreds of books with the title embossed in this manner.

Example of thermography

Example of Thermography

Thermography
Thermography is a technique in which heat is used to raise the ink off of the printed surface. These were probably the hardest finishing elements to find (people seem to be over using it on business cards). The first example is an old ticket stubb from a bluegrass festival. The ink in this one has little sparkles in it to, something you don’t see very often. The second example is a appointment reminder from the dentist. It’s kind of boring, but hey, its thermography!

Example of perforations / scoring

Example of perforation / scoring

Perforation / Scoring
Both of these examples are ticket stubs. The first is from a David Byrne show I went to last december. The second is a receipt from the Rave movie theatre. Most tickets have some sort of perforation in order to tear the stubs off. The David Byrne show was fantastic by the way!

Examples of interesting folds

Examples of interesting folds

Folds
These examples are folds that we have been basing another project on. The first is a map that has an interesting way of folding up. it has a smaller down-fold on the bottom which contains information such as a map key. The second example is a small accordion fold booklet that actually folds up into a little book. Most accordion folds do not have this sort of cover treatment and it really helps the piece feel more solid and book-like.

Example of binding

Example of binding

Binding
The first example of binding is a spiral ring bound cookbook. Cookbooks and other manuals often use this technique so that the book will lay flat on a counter without being held. The second example is a pretty standard perfect bound book, in which the pages are set into signatures (or little books) and then glued to the spine.

Example of packaging

Example of Packaging

Packaging
The first of these two examples is a cell phone box. The box reminds me of Apple’s packaging, except in black. It unfolds to a die-cut opening through which you can pull out the phone. Also, on the cover, the photo of the phone is spot varnished (along with other elements on the package). The second example is the classic Stride gum package. The package is about business card sized and folds up/closes through a small score in the front. Good packaging has definitely helped this gum become a best seller.

Example of foil stamping

Example of foil stamping

Foil Stamping
These are two examples of foil stamping. The first is a pack of cigarettes my friend/classmate Claire brought back from Prague for me. The packaging was a nice surprise (and much more aesthetically pleasing than the same box is in the U.S.). The Parliament “crest” is foilstamped on the front. The second example is from a samples kit from Print100, an online business card printer. The logo for the company is foil stamped onto a small calendar card.

Cindy Li, designing your future

Last thursday the graphic design department was fortunate enough to be visited by designer/illustrator/web wizard Cindy Li. The day was packed full of events including presentations, Q&A sessions, networking opportunities, and a delicious lunch at Easy Bistro provided by Medium. Cindy was an informative and exciting speaker, and her passion for her work was clear. She spoke to us mostly about the benefits of social networking. There are so many opportunities and connections that can be made today through the use of social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter. She discussed at length how to properly use these sites and maintaining a professional presence. She encouraged us to think of ourselves as a brand, and pushed us to use these sites to develope our brand.

I do have to admit, all the social networking stuff frightens me just a little bit though. I am the type of person that needs to disconnect from time to time (as many of us are). Though this is not a bad thing, it is important to consider when developing relationships on these social networking sites. For instance, it is important to consider who you are letting into your little online world, and to know that when you are participating in these networks, there is always somebody watching. Cindy discussed the many ways you can protect yourself using various privacy tools and options that these networks provide in order to keep the information you don’t want to share a secret while still sharing the stuff you don’t mind others seeing.

All in all, it was a very exciting day and a nice change of pace. Many thanks to Ms. Li for taking the time to come and speak with us!

TasteBuds finally finished.

So our semester long project working in conjunction with Crabtree Farms and Leadership Chattanooga, TasteBuds, is finally complete. What an experience it has been. We have all poured so much time and work into this project over the course of the semester and it is really rewarding to finally be finished. It has been a very taxing experience, to say the least. We have pulled many, many late hours and often had to sacrifice other work to stay on top and meet deadlines, but in the end it will be so nice to see all our hard work in the hands of others.

The food guide will officially be released April 17th at Crabtree Farms’ spring plant sale. While we still have not seen the finished product, we were given the chance to look at the proofs last thursday during a lunch at Easy Bistro, generously provided by the folks at Medium. It is has been a very educational experience, not just in the realm of graphic design, but also in the importance of buying local produce and supporting your local community. There are so many good people that are involved in this movement and it is encouraging to work towards a goal that will help better your community.

Many thanks go to all of my classmates for their hard work throughout this semester. Many thanks to Williams Company for their help in printing the guide. Also, many thanks to the folks at Crabtree Farms and Leadership Chattanooga for providing us with this fantastic opportunity. It has been an experience that we will never forget and we are very thankful for the chance to work on such a positive project.

National Print Group

On another of our incredibly exciting field trips, we recently were fortunate enough to visit the National Print Group, one of Chattanooga’s many talented printing companies. I had never really heard of these guys before, even though I have driven past their facillities many, many times. This field trip was amazing. These guys do work for some amazingly large clients (some which even provide guards to ensure confidentiality with their materials) and they do some great work.

The National Print Group is located off of Amnicola Hwy, just down the road from Chatt. State. Well, that is where their main facility is at least. The tour we took lasted 3 hours and we did not even make it over to their other facility (which houses the digital and silkscreening operations). They run the largest offset press in the world (9 colors!) and boast several other high-end pieces of equipment. Of course we got to see all of these and talk with each of the individuals who operate them. It’s absolutely amazing seeing this stuff in production and watching everything happen. The tour guides were all extremely friendly and more than happy to answer our questions (so many it forced us to delay the second part of the tour for another day).

Once again, I am continually surprised at what I find going on in Chattanooga. It is amazing what is sitting right under your nose yet you never knew about. An excellent field trip and a great learning opportunity, many thanks to the NPG!

TasteBuds… finished?

After many sleepless nights followed by countless revisions and versions, my teams part in the TasteBuds project is coming to an end. This thing is gonna be good. Our team has split the work up evenly over the course of the project and everyone’s work has been voltron’d into one magnificient, clean, and beautiful piece that will surely be a useful tool in helping to develop local food culture. Many farms, restaurants, farmer’s markets, food artisans and more have expressed a great interest in being a part of this and our goal of continually supporting the local food community. Our files will shortly be sent to the printer and then it will be only a matter of time before we are holding in our hands the final product of a semester’s worth of hard work.

The guide will be packed full of useful information about local food production. It will contain everything from an exhaustive list of farms within the Chattanooga Foodshed, to information on other ways you can get involved with or support the local food movement, and even a beautiful (if i do say so myself…) seasonal growth chart. We do have some minor revisions to make before we can send things to the printer, but for the most part, the hard part is behind us.

What an experience it has been. We have all learned so much through working on this project and our persistance will surely pay off. To anyone and everyone in the Chattanooga area, mark the weekend of April 17th-19th on your calendars and be sure to get your copy of the first Chattanooga local food guide.

Printer Guide Continued

Work has been moving along with our classes printer / vendor resource guide. We have had a couple of critiques of the work we have done so far and people are coming up with some pretty interesting designs. Due to a misunderstanding about the nature of the project, I assumed (never a good thing) that all of the information on the page should be legible and clear. Of course I was excited to learn that this would not be an imposed constraint and that we were allowed to experiment more freely with our designs. As stated before, I am still working with color, composition, and typography as the elements to express the two chosen “inspirational” words for my layouts. The two printers I was assigned are Print100 and Southern Advertising and Sign Service, LLC.

I have chosen to relate Print100 to Joy, and Southern Ad and Signs to Grief. There is obviously no actual relation between these emotions and the actual printer, I just feel like the nature of what I am doing with the actual design fits best this way. Southern Ads works with installing large-scale signage, and they operate alot of heavy machinery, so their layout is very mechanical and metallic looking. Print100 is a bubbly and exciting China-based 4-color business card printer so their layout will emphasize CMYK process colors and will have a fun, fluid design.

For the cover and title page of this book I have chosen to keep it pretty simple. Splotches of transparent CMY inks are overlayed to form RGB and Black in a design that looks as if it collected ink splatter around the press. I can’t wait to get it all finalized, put together, and off to the printer!

TasteBuds Continued (again)

Changes, Changes, Changes. Part of the process of a Graphic Designer is to exhaust all possible solutions in search of the “right” one. Rarely (if ever) does one come up with the perfect solution on the very first try. My team on this project has been focussing on the printed materials, namely, the food guide itself. We have changed our guide’s size and folding style several times. We have tried many different things with the typography and overall design of the guide. We have designed and designed and designed again, and things are really starting to come together to form a complete and unified result. We are coming up on crunch time, as the release date for the guide is April 17th at Crabtree Farms’ spring plant sale, and though there is still much work to be done, I am confident we will make our deadline.

Another member of my team and I met with Bubba and David of the Williams Company to discuss the production of the guide and (as usual) they were very helpful and full of great insights. Things are perpetually picking up speed and momentum. The hours spent in InDesign are growing by the day. We have been and will continue to be working very hard on this project and everyone is full of enthusiasm and excitement to see the final product. Keep your eyes peeled for press releases and more information about the TasteBuds project over the next couple of weeks so that you don’t miss out on this informative piece of work!

TasteBuds Continued

So our project in professional practices, TasteBuds, is coming along quite nicely. We have put in many, many hours researching different folds and ways to construct our local food guide and finally we have decided on one that should prove unique yet comfortable. The process of laying everything out has been a learning experience without a doubt, and it has definitely helped develope stronger design skills. Things we have had to consider are the heirarchy of type, legibility and accessibility concerns, color schemes, how to interact with the information graphics, and of course, fitting all of the content while not overloading the page.

The response we have recieved in terms of partners applying to the guide has been very exciting as well. It is so encouraging to see these farms, restaurants, and other food producers/sellers so excited about what we are doing. Everyone involved has been very patient and encouraging. There are many people working on this (somewhere around 70 people total!) but everyone is working hard and we all want to see this become a successful project. Also, there are many elements that are being designed for the guide, launch, and website, so we all must be very careful that we work as if with one voice in order to reinforce the brand we have helped create.

I can’t wait to see how everything will come out in the end and I am sure it will be an interesting and unique way to educate those within the Chattanooga foodshed about the benefits of buying local produce.

Williams Company Field Trip

One of the most exciting aspects of my Professional Practices and Processes and Materials classes has been the field trips we have taken. One such trip was to Williams Company, a local printer in the Chattanooga area. Bubba Williams was our guide on what was an exhaustive, fun, and incredibly informative tour through their facilities. Bubba took us through every step of what they do, starting with the meeting room in which it all begins. Williams is ever-adapting with the digital age and they overviewed some of the steps they have been/are taking in order to keep their business current.

Bubba and company then took us to the design department to speak with their head art director. You can definitely tell when you enter the creative department of a business… it always seems the most inviting, fun, and relaxing. The designers talked a little about their process, working with clients, and their relationship with the printers themselves. Of course, no tour of a printing facility would be complete without visiting the presses. There is something about being around these mammoth pieces of machinery that makes me feel all tingly. Maybe its the smell of the inks or the giant warehouses they are in (large airy and empty spaces are just comfortable to me) but I absolutely love being around the presses. Beyond the presses we also got to see various finishing processes such as folding, trimming, binding, and of course everyones favorite, die-cutting.

The folks at Williams were so incredibly nice to take the time from their day to give us a tour of their facility. They answered all of our questions with enthusiasm and a genuine love of their work. I hope to be able to work with them at some point in the future.

Making a printer guide.

For processes and materials, we were given the assignment to design two layouts for two printers (one local and one nation/world-wide) to be placed into a book. The layout should present information such as who the company is, what they do, and contact information. We were charged with creating a composition using two images (taken from a previous assignment) that were based on two contradictory words. My words were Joy and Grief, so I must create a layout for each printer or vendor that expresses these two opposing emotions. In addition to the two layouts, we are to each design our own cover page, title page, and index or table of contents for this book. When all of the designs have been completed, we will each be sending the book off to be professionally bound with Lulu.com (also one of the printers that will appear within the guide).

In the process of designing these layouts, I will primarily be using color, composition, and typography in order to relate to the two assigned words. The photographs and images that I have the opportunity to use will most likely be transformed into unrecognizable textures or other design elements.

I have not previously used Lulu.com and am very much looking forward to seeing the results. It is always nice to see your work printed and utilized in a real format and this should make for a great portfolio piece.