Issue 1: SCHOOL

Working on this issue I encountered alot of hurdles and emotional breakdowns. Despite it looking deceivingly simple on the outside, this was the first stage of some sort of test. Starting with the successes, I think the illustrations came along way. Although time consuming, I managed to borrow my sisters iPad and learn Procreate to make my life easier and I was surprised by how easy and efficient it was to illustrate that way. The choice of paperstock worked well with the issue as well as the musk paper colour.

Onto the difficulties. Firstly I did not make a mock up first... which came to bite me in the future when I spent hours redesigning every spread. I think I spent more time designing this issue than the others which makes sense considering the design and visual identity will inform the rest of the series from the typographic style to the layout. However the printing portion really challenged me. Just a few of the problems include:

  • Cutting down the newsprint paper to A4 size for it to print in the printer as the dimensions were not A4 nor A3. MAJOR MISTAKE. This took a lot of my time and results were imperfect
  • Pages not guillotined properly leading to a lot of imperfect pages and a wonky finish.
  • Booklet not bound perfectly in the middle, pages not aligned together properly.
  • Text not aligned, hard to read, too cramped. However I fixed the formatting after feedback from the class before an extension was given.

Despite alot of the difficulties I received alot of positive feedback and some people critiqued the lack of legibility amongst the text. With that in mind I started to prioritise legibility and organisation of a clear hierarchy over style to show the eventual decline in that clarity as the series goes on. Working on this first one was such a great learning experience and I carried alot of the learning in the later issues.

Money spent: - Jasart Newsprint Paper - Eckersleys $0.50x20 = $10 - Musk A4 paper - Officeworks = $7.95 Time spent to make one issue: 30 minutes - 20 minutes - figuring out how to print with imposition - 10 minutes - cutting/putting together