Alicia Prieto for December 19th

I worked in a group with Rainie and Amanda. Our book ended up being about different cultural foods in the city. I was happy with the outcome, and it was changed from the original idea of holiday recipes. We had a tough time deciding what to focus on. If we had to do this again, I would choose something more personal that I could make into a book. Already I feel like I would recreate the book making process with family photographs or stories.

I was very happy with the book quality. It made it really worth all of the hard work. It is a completely different experience to see the finished product as a book. It often feels like books are sacred objects made on mysterious ways and this class dissipated all of those ides.

It was tough to work as a group on a single object. We compromised by focusing on content first then designing around it. We each went home and tried our own designs, then reconvened and blended them. In the end, the design was much different than any of us were expecting, and thats ok! It was challenging balancing this book with my other 4 classes. Google drive and email were the main places where we worked. The final product looks very good, however I made a mistake when sending out the book for printing and the cover suffered slightly because of it. The crop marks are visible on the back cover, ununfortunately. I was impressed with Blurbs book quality and how nice and professional the project looks!

 

 

Alicia, Rainie, Amanda for December 12th

Team: Amanda, Rainie, Alicia
Project: Cultural Food Next Door
Aesthetic Summary: The book is about cultural foods found in Flatbush and Brighton Beach, Brooklyn including Flushing, Queens. These foods will be located in specific restaurants describing the taste, atmosphere and area as well as a little bit about the foods background. It will have bright pops of color in transparent text boxes and have a clear visual hierarchy.

Printing Facility: Blurb
Type of press it will be printed on:
Number of colors: 4
Color profile: CMYK,
Size: 6×9 in, 15×23 cm
Pages: 26
Cover Type: Softcover, wraparound
Binding: perfect bound
Paper finish: White uncoated
Paper weight: White uncoated, 70#
(105 GSM)
Paper brightness: white
Bleed: 9 pts
Set up costs: n/a
Proof costs: $20
Minimum quantity:3
Cost per unit: $8.75
Turnaround time:  14 days

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Alicia Prieto for December 5th

Our group and I are working on 3 spreads individually. Today we are hoping to finalize our document and assemble it in inDesign. We will finalize our font choices and titles. We have each been designing separate food-based spreads but we have not finalized our cover. I have been doing location-based cover pages for each location (Flatbush Av, Flushing Queens, and Brighton Beach).

Alicia Prieto for November 28th

Team: Alicia, Rainie
Project: Cultural Food in New York City Neighborhoods.

Printing Facility: ABGPrinting
Type of press it will be printed on: Medium

Number of colors: 4
Color profile: CMYK,
Size: A5 (5.83” x 8.26”)
Pages: 24
Cover Type: Gloss Laminated Covers

Binding: Spiral, Black coil binding

Paper finish: Gloss White Paper

Paper weight: 80 lb

Paper brightness:

Bleed: 0.25in
Set up costs:
Proof costs: $10
Minimum quantity:1
Total cost: $ 300
Cost per unit: $25
Turnaround time: as little as 4 hours.

Alicia for November 21st

Team:  Rainie，Amanda，Alicia.

Project: Festival Recipes

Aesthetic Summary: Bright, cheery and colorful graphics. Full bleed images. Small B&W illustrations. Pull quotes and copy in type boxes.

Printing Facility: Blurb

Type of press it will be printed on: 80# Semi Matte

Number of colors:5

Color profile: CMYK

Size:7X7

Pages:20

Cover type: Wrap around softcover

Binding: perfect binding

Paper weight: 0.5g

Paper brightness: Semi Matte

Bleed: 0.35

Set up costs:$15

Proof costs:$15

Minimum quantity: 4

Total cost: $100

Cost per unit: $14.99

Alicia Prieto for November 14th

I worked with Cynthia on the MILK book. Working with her was an interesting experience because we have different strengths. Cynthia is a very strong designer in Illustrator, whereas I am better with Photoshop and Indesign. When we began working on our book, we had a very different idea for what it would look like. I knew that I wanted it to not have the same violent imagery as a PETA book, and I thought we succeeded in that. Ultimately we agreed on vector art, and it really became a successful design in the end.

I enjoyed working together because it meant I had to communicate my thoughts on layout and aesthetic effectively. We had good workflow and swapped the file back and forth several times for editing. We ran into issues once it came time to print the work. It was difficult to arrange the document for double sided printing and we ended up reversing the order of the pages. I regret not taking the time to do a test print before the time it took to present. I really enjoyed designing in color and designing informative graphics.

Of the projects that stood out to me, the DAPL and anti-Trump book really had my attention. I enjoyed that the Trump book was a pamphlet because it was very uncommon. Their image treatment really inspired me to try and make that same “hand-made” feeling. I would have liked to be in their group! The DAPL book stood out for its alternative use of paper, which did so much to reflect their own topic.

If I had to start this project over I would love to make something that felt more personal to me. With the current political climate, there is no lack for controversial issues, but I think it would be great to design something honest and close to my own alignment. With the ability to print in color it would be great to incorporate found images, photographs and colors into my final project.

 

Alicia and Cynthia for November 7

milkbook

Project Title: MILK: Join the Moovement
Concept / Issue: Drinking milk is harmful in many ways. The book presents the reasons why people would want to reconsider drinking milk.
Aesthetic Summary: We wanted to use bright images and vectors as opposed to graphic photographs. A lot of the reading material related to food consumption and animal rights can be drab at best and bloody and intimidating at worst. We wanted to make something that would serve as an alternative.
Art: Vector images of milk, cow prints, milk bottles.
Copy: Research on dairy milk benefits, history, and effects.
Color Scheme: CMYK colors, wood texture combined with bright, flashy colors (Orange, red,
Typefaces: League Spartan bold
Layout Notes:  Alternating heavy text based pages with infographics and simple illustrations to convey the idea.
References & Inspiration
Dimensions: 5.5 in x 8.5 in
Page Count: 8 pages
Substrate: coated paper
Binding: saddle stitch
Print Run: CMYK, double sided
Budget: $10
Additional Notes: pages are set up for double sided printing and folding

Alicia Prieto for October 31st

Project Title: Milk
Concept / Issue: Milk isn’t all that good for you.

Aesthetic Summary: Bold and bright, eye-catching and simple for easy legibility. Consistent palette through the whole project.

Art: Vector shapes, cow print, vintage milk ads.

Copy: Informative information about the dangers and effects of drinking milk

Color Scheme: Teal,Orange, Yellow, Pink & Red.

Typefaces: Impact- may change
Layout Notes:
References & Inspiration (at least 3-5 sources): procon.org , The Influence of Advertisement in Fresh Milk Consumers’ Behavior , got milk, the surprising history of milk

Dimensions:8.5″ X 5.5″
Page Count:8
Substrate: 30lb bond paper
Binding: saddle-stich with staples
Print Run: 10
Budget: TBD
Additional Notes: Informative anti – milk broucher/booklet that will hopefully educate the reader on the misleading benefits of milk.

Alicia Prieto for October 24th

It was enjoyable to put in so much work for such a small book! It truly made the biblical pamphlets people shove into my hands so much more appealing (in a way.) It was interesting to see the process that it took to design such a zine, and I liked the hand made feeling and the portability. I see myself making more of these zines and spreading them out throughout the city, forgetting them on the subway for people to read.

I found that all of the zines in my zine collection were very interesting. I spent time with each of them to get a feeling for people’s interests. I enjoyed the diverse topics people covered, from physical objects like the beara beara bags, to consumables like bubble tea and coffee, to time periods (the 90’s) to metaphysical concepts such as the major key and the Good Vibes zine. I felt that the books that were designed to be black and white worked the best, as well as the ones that went for bigger, bolder design to communicate information effectively. The thing that did not work in these zines was designing for a “regular” page. Until I ran a test, I did not realize how truly tiny the space I was working with was. I was happy with the way my zine turned out, because I planned ahead for the trimming of the book to be part of my overall layout. I could not find an overall motif, however, I did notice that most of the books were designed vertically, and only one book was horizontal. I found that the horizontal layout of the emotions book made sense, since it would be have been more disjointed to fit the sign language hands on separate lines.

Seeing the interview book and the coffee lovers 101, I feel like next time around I would love to do something more informational. To me, the zine format was perfect for an informal instructional guide, and I found them to be fun and interesting to follow along. I also wish I had designed in color, just to see what would have happened! I designed in black and white because I wanted to have more control over the output, and I found that it worked the way I wanted to because there was no information loss during the photocopying process.

 

 

Alicia Prieto for October 17th

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