Book Jacket Design
With a new project brief and a new idea for the time scale I have managed to produce each of the following designs in just under a day. With strict restrictions on what we can use the amount of colours we can use and the actual idea behind the design it has prompted a side of my design, which I have never really worked with. Having such a short amount of time and such strict boundaries it means that the idea has to be original and has to be thought of very quickly. Once I had an idea I had to run with it. I have decided to try and keep a theme running throughout the 3 book covers, which results in a nice, and smart looking series of books.
The first book we where given to design was the invisible man. Although the design, which I have produced, is a very basic idea of, well and ‘invisible man’ it is the quality of the artwork, which makes it effective. Sourcing the right images and editing certain things to produce a front and rear cover which flow together. The addition of the red highlights gives the image a more eye-catching appeal. I like this design because it was the first time I have had to stick to I tight timescale and tight design boundaries.
Moving onto the second book cover in the series we were given the title of ‘Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’. Having followed on from the pervious week with the colour schemes and the same strict design boundaries I have produced the image you can see above. The idea behind the cover is that the two images you can see have been split and altered to show the effect of a split personality. With good one side and evil the other. If I was to have more time on this project I would have made sure that the detail of the images and the brush strokes were the same. i like this image because even though it has stayed with the boundaries and within my series it has a different effect to that of the invisible man.
Information graphics are graphical imagery, typography and photography, which visually represent information, data and knowledge. The whole idea behind this kind of graphic work is to get complex and hard to understand information or data across as easily and quickly as possible. Some great examples of this are:
- Signs
- Maps
- Journalism
- Technical Writing
- Education
Information graphics is all around us every day. Much of the data we take in is portrayed by that of information graphics. The thing I like most about info graphics is the fact that it isn’t all text based and visually displeasing. The whole idea behind it is not only to get the information across to the viewer but to also provide a visually pleasing image for them to look at.
Timelines are used as another type of information graphics to show what major events have happened thought-out a period of time. Whether its for a companies profits losses or facts an figures surrounding a certain project area, time lines are a great way of presenting data which is both very pleasing to the eye but also it can been taken on board very easily.
The design of a timeline can be very user based. The information can be moved around and showed however the designer feels right. Some of the best timelines that I have seen are all visually pleasing and interesting. The way that the designer could keep an audience interested with the facts and images is by introducing maybe some interactive media within the design if that is not possible they could use so eye catching imagery.
Data presentation is yet another type of information graphics. This is the way in which data can be presented on the page. For information graphics to be effective it is down to whether the data is eye catching or visually pleasing if you manage to complete these aims then the data being read should be fine. There are incredible amounts of ways in which data can be presented. The present page and following are going to analyze the ways in which data can be presented and how effective or un-effective it can be.
Again very much like any of the information graphics focus areas the choice of where and what you surround your information with is entirely up to you. Data can be another quite boring group of information but the way that you present the data is what will keep the reader interested. The right text choice and colour choice could be another influence on how the information is portrayed.
Maps are a great example of information graphics. Not only do they help a lot of people get from place to place but they also show different altitudes and changes on the earth’s surface. Nowadays the use of maps has decreased mainly due to the introduction of sat-navs. Even within a sat-nav there is a great amount of information graphics. All the way down to that of the moving 3D or 2D maps.
There are all styles of maps a lot of fisherman out on the seas uses sonar and other technology to view where the right fish are. These images are shown as again either 3D or 2D images. On the right of the page are ranges of different map styles, which are all in use today.
Maps are slightly different to a lot of the information graphics that I’ve covered. This is because they don’t tend to used much text within the imagery. Therefore it is more to do with the colour choice and how interesting the map looks. With an eye catching map design the person observing the map will take more interest into it.
