Undertaking in the Fine Art yearbook project as collaboration with Tim, Vickie and Liam filled me with confidence. We are all dedicated to spending time in the college and therefore were almost always be available to discuss progression, issues and ideas face to face. As well as this we had the fortune of having a very helpful and organised group of Fine Artists to get feedback and necessary files from. This made our job a lot easier, so many thanks to them.
As our design practice’s all follow a similar thread, working closely with typography and layout, we knew our outcome would be largely typographic, making design direction development easier from the outset. It played into our hands well having the Fine Art yearbook, because with a multi-faceted discipline such as Fine Art, the work must speak for itself, allowing us to utilise our typography skills to subtly enhance the work, rather than become a design feature of the book itself.
It was also the first time I have worked closely with a printer, client and a tight budget all in one. With considerations to do with stock, finish, page numbers and colour entering the equation. I found this very liberating, being able to choose exactly what we wanted within a budget. It gave me faith in the fact that I was going into a career that though is a problem solving process; with the intention of pleasing a client and an audience, we as designers are also at liberty to have fun and extract a great deal of satisfaction. I also found it particularly satisfying negotiating the costs of each element of the design. I was largely in charge of the document structure and logistics, deciding how many pages were needed, and where page breaks would be needed to control pace and make up the page count.
For the designing each of us were allocated a section of the book to design once the direction and master document was set up. Liam did this, as his attention to detail and pure dedication to spending time on one thing, making sure things are exactly correct allowed us to think creatively and freely without the nagging thought that perhaps there was an error in there somewhere. However Myself, Vickie and Tim are all very confident in our abilities to do this too, but Liam was the man for the job none the less. We worked on our own section, bringing them back together to form a complete book. From there we sat as a group or in pairs critiquing each spread and constantly considering how a spread might work better.
Our attention to detail with the type was especially evident; aesthetically, conceptually and technically. While designing the Flier with Tim, we had a lot of fun tweaking the Colons and Hyphens and thinking more about how the subtle changes and variation of these would affect the overall design.
While the brief was indeed substantial in terms of learning curve and interaction with industry, it did feel a little thin on personal design. Working as a group of four had a lot to do with this, but at this stage of our design professions it was very interesting to work in a larger group on a single project, and although there is not much of a range to speak of, the impact of working on a brief such as this during my FMP has no doubt filled me with confidence that I could do it all again alone without a moment hesitation.
If one thing alone can be taken away from this project, it would be that I now certainly have the confidence and the professional state of mind needed to work in industry and communicate appropriately.
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