OUGD501: Final Post _ Essay & Publication & Evaluation

Level 05 Essay

Reworked essay

"To what extent does Japanese modernist 
graphic design reflect the native particularities 
of Japanese Culture?"

Open publication - Free publishing - More abbas mushtaq



Level 05 Publication

Below are the individual elements as a PDF, the book element 
is it's own PDF and the poster section has it's own PDF along 
with a quick refresh of the book, so you can see digitally pretty 
close to how the publication is to flick through.



Photos of publication

Open publication - Free publishing - More abbas mushtaq




Modernism book element read-through

Open publication - Free publishing - More abbas mushtaq

Poster element read-through

This is digitally pretty close to the interaction with the publication and how you would read through it, for ease of use I've shortened the book element flick throughs as otherwise it'll take a while to read through this, to inspect the book in close detail, see the individual PDF for the book above.

Open publication - Free publishing - More abbas mushtaq





OUGD501
Summative Evaluation

Open publication - Free publishing - More evaluation

Read More

Publication:: Poster recreate 02 _ Hiroshima (1953)

The poster I chose to recreate in a comment on European and Japanese style is a poster for a movie called Hiroshima, released in 1953. Which in itself I find fascinating as the tone of voice is so informal and dismissive of a horrible catastrophe that happened only 8 years prior.



Original

European recreation

This style is more reminscent of war-time poster design, with it's heavy use of black and white renders with simple colourways and use of space and stock. The tone of voice is loud and informal already so I felt it worked well for a poster of this type, modernism is a progression and acceptance of technology so I took the idea of showing off technology, in this case plans and turning them upside down, to me they almost look like bombs themselves being dropped which is a commentary on my part regarding Hiroshima and the concept of rejecting and communicating terror in a lighthearted way as the original poster does.

Japanese recreation

Again here I've taken Japanese sensibilities by designers such as Shigeo Fukuda with brightly coloured stock plus a simple ink coverage of black and/or white. There is again a large emphasis on image and to be anti-war and peace. From close attention you can see atomic bombs are being dropped but they're attached to helium balloons, so they are infact being carried away from the ground instead of onto it. It's my attempt at creating a tongue-in cheek and again fairly abstract image to downplay and overcome the tragedy of Hiroshima as so many Japanese designers often aimed to do through design.

Both of these posters along with breakdown of the theories and aims of the posters, along with original artwork will be included in the publication.

Tomorrow - I will bind and photograph! Exciting times.

Read More

Publication:: Ideas / Thought Process

PDF of sketches and brainstorming of idea generation and basically just how my mind was working and the thoughts I was having when working through and trying to knuckle down a focus and concept for the publication.

The sketches are pretty rough but I feel give a sense of the way I work and visualise design, I find myself writing about how it will look more than actually drawing something, I rarely use colour and instead write the colour - pretty weird but all the notes give me all the information to visualise it perfectly in my mind.

When going through the process chronologically, it's easy to see the sketches becoming much closer to the final realised work.

Originally as you can see I wanted to make a more traditional book with an Europe and Japan theme running separately, I felt this was too generic of a response, fairly unexciting for me and made Europe and Japan seem as if they were two different sides facing against each other and this isn't what I wanted to say. Collaboration and mixing the two is the idea.

Getting pretty close to the final visual layout now

Specifying dimensions / point size and grid of inside layout of book element.

Hiroshima Japanese recreated poster, basic framework turned out very similar to the final poster.

Read More

Publication :: Pentax LX Poster _ Europe x Japan

Quick mock-ups collating the recreated posters 
and how they compare against the original_

Really enjoyed this and it's pretty much as effective 

and as much of an application of theory as I hoped it 

to be. I wish I have time to do more to a decent 

standard, I planned on recreating 3 examples which 

means 6 posters so I'm 1/3 there but Monday is my 

last day to work on this in my time management, so 

I hope to carry all out, if I don't achieve 6 I would ideally

 like to have another example recreated in both styles 

so viewer can compare and contrast with a more 

holistic view of both design styles.

Read More

Publication :: Same Poster_Through a Japanese Modernist Filter

I've recreated the same Pentax but in a Japanese modernist filter, I've again tried to apply conclusions and 'habits' of Japanese design of the 60's onto this design.

I've used an odd number grid, 9 by 13, the posters for Japanese design often are heavily weighted at the bottom as this is with a chunk of type on there, 

Japanese posters were/areh often more image based with the image taking more prominence, I've tried to illustrate a camera lens in a fairly abstract way, and it also looks a little like a human eye so it immediately captures your attention.

Although type is predominatly sans-serif, some serif type in the form of Bodoni has sneaked in here as they sometimes did on Japanese design, hierarchy is through size of type, more so than European design which relied on less differences in pt size and more subtle differences in weight for a type hierarchy. Upper and Lowercase is also mixed for hierarchy, generally it's just a lot more loose than European design sometimes, as this example is.


This will be a 3 colour print on yellow stock. I'm fairly happy with it, it proved to be a little difficult, more so than the European to work on as the style is still so new to me.

Print ready version, this will be printed right onto yellow stock to give the required look, although I quite like it in white too.

The illustration is meant to represent the lens of a camera, almost watching you with the central focus looking almost like an eyeball. The text wrapped around the circle is a small reference 

Some close ups of the type treatment.

Read More

Publication:: Recreating Poster_#1

I'm not onto the main and last element of the publication, recreating existing design in both variations of European sensibilities and Japanese sensibilities with my own take and my own conclusions on what I've studied - applied.

I feel this is a much more personal statement from me rather than redesigning European work in Japanese style and vice versa, it's more limited and takes away the idea of collaboration and similarities, it makes it seem as if it's Europe VS Japan and not Europe & Japan.


Anyways, finding a neutral and relevant piece of design has took me a lot longer than I thought, often from researching into modernist poster design they often promote exhibitions, products, gallerys and general events finding an event which I can apply theory too has been hard.


I also want to reflect the times of modernism and promote and sell a product or event as designers such as Muller Brockman often did.



////////

Progress has been slower than planned but the first steps have been made so hopefully it will get easier. Here's what I've been working on today


Original work

After applying European modernist theory and sensibilities.

Particular reference and inspiration has been built from Muller-Brockmann and Armin Hofmann and Electrical Appliance handbooks especially Braun stuff under the leadership of Dieter Rams in the 60s

Little bit of fine tuning but I'd be happy putting this into the publication, next up is the same source material but putting it in a time machine back to the 60's and applying it through a  Japanese designer filter

Read More

Publication:: Book & Timeline _ Done.

Book & Timeline


Nearly there. Book and timeline element are done and 
completed to a standard I'm happy with, Not binded 
and fastened together just yet as in terms of binding 
it's easy to create holes for binding through all the 
pieces at once for perfect alignment, doing elements 
individually can turn into a bit of a nightmare, a 
hole-punch even a few mm off looks horrible.

Pretty close to my mock-up so I'm now ready to 

work on the posters for the next couple of days, 

bind it all together and the publication will be complete.

Construction


The main worry and finishing process today was the 
use of white vinyl to emulate a white spot colour and 
create a more tactile finish. This was done by vinyl 
cutting and creating a transfer.

Book pages printed and with crop marks ready to go, 

only difficult bit was covering the small red cover to perfectly 

align with the content underneath.

Applying the white vinyl is a bit tricky but really pleased with 

the outcome and effect, definitely worth it.

Read More