My weekend

The weekend consisted of wine and happiness. Although, I did go to spring football practice as well. 

Page Design and my prior re-design

Page Design is the process of placing design objects, such as text, headings, and images, consistently and effectively on the page, taking account the information you are trying to convey, actual visual field, characteristics of the design object, and relationships implied among them. The definition I have chosen to improvise slightly on is long but, considering page design is not a one note process, necessary.

Kimball and Hawkins write a lot about the concepts that are involved and interplayed within page design, and it's impossible to truly hit on all of them because certain designs call for certain strategies but not all. One main concept mentioned by Kimball and Hawkins I took into consideration was culture. Culture is the relativity of objects and their location within a page design. In my redesign of Anthony Bourdain's book The Nasty Bits I had to remind myself of the conventional ideas of where components of a book cover belong.

Unlike Asian culture, American culture insists we read from left to right, and our book covers act on that. In my design above, I decided to use a picture where Anthony Bourdain is depicted as walking but the original photo I found depicted Anthony walking the opposite way, away from the book entry. In American literature, I figured that almost symbolized him walking away from the entry of his own book-- a bad way to start off someone's reading experience. So the first thing i did was make sure that he faced the direction of the book's material, not away.

Another component of page design is sequence. Sequence revolves around what order your page design objects are presented to the reader. It played a large role in my design as in the original, published design as well because for certain writers and celebrities the first component of a cover presented is their name. Anthony Bourdain is a very recognizable American figure and it needed to be represented well and atop of the pecking order, so to start off my sequence of components I put his entire name first. It allows people to see the book and immediately become curious whether they knew of the book's existence or not because Bourdain is a celebrity. Following his name was the title as well as his figure beside that with a bar code and quote from the times last because they are less recognizable or culturally revered as a title and last name is.

Another affect of my design was the use of power zone. Power zone is depicted in the book as the left side of the page as well as the top. It's as if you were to create a capital L and turn it upside down on the page. The use of power zone is used by having Anthony Bourdain's figure exist on the left side of the cover in the power zone. His figure is what I consider to be a "mission critical" object because he is the proprietor of everything written in the book and as well as the person selling his personality in the book. Putting Anthony in the power zone is to put him in an area of the cover that people naturally gravitate towards with their eyes.

Also, a large contributing idea to my design was of balance. I didn't want Anthony's body to be penetrated by any letters of his title because I knew, given the photo I chose, there would be room next to him to place it. With Anthony on one side of the cover it allows a dearth of space to the right of him of which I was able to fill with content.

Redesign #2- Book Cover

My latest redesign is of the book The Nasty Bits by Anthony Bourdain. Upon first glances, I think this is a relatively sad cover for a guy as cool as Anthony Bourdain. He is a guy/critic that demands respect with highly articulated, and fiendishly hyperbolic, criticisms and opinions. His fake grin with the senstive looking face-resting-on-palm look just doesn't do his persona, or great writing, adequate justice. I used photoshop to recreate the true style he emits, which is to say confident and take-no-bullshit.  

Firstly, I had to choose a new picture to use. The one above didn't suffice, so here is what I chose:

Although I it, this picture has inherent problems. For example, when your eyes read this cover they want to go  from right to left, which is an unwanted characteristic of something you read left to right. It's almost like, symbolically, Bourdain is walking away from the opening of his book. To recreate a feeling of "follow my direction towards my story", I naturally turned the picture around. I wanted Bourdain to face the opening of his book, not seem to be walking away. Aesthetically, it's more pleasing. Here it is:

Contrast: In the first book cover, I'll admit, there is plenty contrast. The original has dark colors with a piercing red, but I don't feel the red and dark colors meld with each other very well. In this redesign, I made sure to go with probably the most classic contrast known to man: the black and white photo. But I didn't stop at the black and white. As you can see in the original photo, the photo is filled with color, from the sky to the graffiti, but in the redesign I chose to leave Bourdain as the sole personification of color against the black and white. He is a well known figure amongst a multitude of different communities and to have him brighten up what is to be a dark, black and white, cover is eye catching. Also, there are slightly different fonts and font sizes. The top where it says Anthony Bourdain is in Times New Roman, a conventional font, while the title Nasty Bits is in a font where every limb of each letter is the same thickness. Then the obvious quote from the New York Times below is in a more plain, smaller text. 

Repetition: The repetition is most represented in the colors. Other than Anthony Bourdain, the entire cover is in black and white. 

Alignment: Alignment is a key ingredient to all professional documents or covers. To help fulfill my alignment needs I made sure to use the grid system provided by photoshop. In the original book cover, when looking from the front, there is a quote on the top left corner and on the opposite side there is a red circle. I saw that there wasn't any particular alignment that they followed so I completely avoided putting anything in those two corners. The corners in which I sealed the title with the center of is completely aligned with the black rectangle's left side below it. The corners that I created to contain the title are aligned as well, which was something that I did take from the first cover. 

Proximity: The use of proximity is useful in the design of a book cover because, like this book, there sometimes a second title. In this case, besides The Nasty Bits, there is the title Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones. To imply relationship, which is the purpose of proximity, I contained the second title within a rectangle and placed it directly under the primary title. Also, instead of placing the title directly on Anthony Bourdain's body, I placed the title right beside him so that it seems like an  accompaniment. 

Stylistic Choices:  As I introduced earlier, I dont believe the first cover represents Anthony Bourdain, or, more notably, his book title. The book is called The Nasty Bits yet he seemed to do his best to smile but in a truly happy manner; he looks more exhausted than happy. In true form, Anthony Bourdain is actually energetic despite his frail look but also, given the title, he should look more serious. So find what it really means to be him, I chose the photo of him walking along a graffitied wall with a more serious (more nasty) demeanor. Aside from changing the photo altogether I placed a barcode on the front of the cover to imply something nasty and eye-catching that doesn't belong on the cover despite its practicality.  

Significant Concepts from Kimball/Hawkins

The 3 concepts that I feel I try and embrace are the laws in a theory that was presented to me called Gestalt Theory. Gestalt  theory supposes that we dont see edges, shapes, or blurs. Instead, as people, we see the sum of those parts, such as a dog, a tree, a car, a house, or whatever is being depicted. The theory then breaks into specific laws. One law being the Figure-Ground Discrimination. The law separates perception of an object (figure) and context of an object (ground). The law has helped me realize that object perception and context should marry each other but in contrastive ways. In the design of a document, an object or information that is supposed attract primary perspective of a viewer should contrast from the paper or vehicle, which puts the object in context.

Grouping is the second law of the gestalt theory. Grouping is something we have covered extensively in class and in class we all learned that it suggests relationship when things are in close proximity to each other. The Gestalt theory breaks down grouping a little more specifically by proximity/similarity, continuation, and common region.

In terms of proximity and similarity, it is presented that we group things together that are closer together and that we perceive similar figures as belonging together. Continuation assumes that we imply a relationship between things that are lined up. Continuation is stated as the "foundation of alignment", which makes total sense as alignment is the structuring of different objects to share the same edge or congruous placement on a page. It's a component of design that I have learned is vitally important to create an easier viewing experience for people.  Common region states that items within the same are belong together.Common region is very useful in the insertion of graphics and information. If certain pieces of information and a graphic share a region than presumably they have a connection or relationship that is supposed to be noticed by a viewer. It works equally well with just graphics or just information alone.

Good Figure is the the third law. The Gestalt theory suggests that when using grouping techniques a figure is stronger, stable, and more consistent, allowing an easy experience for a viewer/reader, we are then using techniques to make a good figure. We take notice good figures much easier than we notice bad figures but what people don't realize is that a good figure that uses grouping principles isn't always complicated with too many components. Brevity/minimalism is stated to be more effective to create a good figure because more complex components isn't always efficient. I made sure in my last redesign that I used plenty of simple components as to not overload a reader for a simple card.

I used all three of the concepts within the Gestalt theory because I thought they were the most concise and, in my opinion, most correct based on my experiences. The 3 three laws/concepts offer good advice and information for a designers to take in and understand for future projects. What I feel I took most seriously was the use of continuation because if one thing is most noticeable is that when components of a document are not aligned properly, which affects the reader by subconsciously breaking the connection of objects that people make when that connection was not supposed to be broken, merely because of continuation/alignment problems.