Run The Gauntlet - Case Study breakdownUniversity of BrightonFeb May 2024
The Aim:
To transparently interview a diverse range of designers about their professional creative practices, largely revolving around themes of contentment.
Context:
A desire to platform the lived experiences of working professional graphic designers beyond just their big successes, and to give an audience of learning designers (like myself whilst developing the project) a realistic look at the industry they are looking to enter. Warts and all.
The Brief:
Due to the younger audience, accesibility was at the forefront of the project. Not just in relation to ease of access but likewise being visually engaging and digestible too.
The core challenge presented by the project was needing to develop all of the content myself through spoken/written interview, and to source willing participants in the first place without financial compensation.
Developing the visuals
Due to the nature of the graphic designer’s career path becoming less obvious as time goes on, it felt relevant to my project that the visual treatment reflect this aesthetically.
I decided to go the route of Suminagashi, a form of Japanese paper marbling, to create the patterns that later formed the key visuals for the project.
Image-edited results
Here are a few examples of the patterns once scanned in at 600 DPI and edited in Photoshop for maximum contrast. Following this, extracts of the scans were prepared in Illustrator for lasercutting onto plywood as letterpress plates.
Letterpress experimentationThe letterpress room at my university gave me freedom to experiment with a variety of paper stocks and colours with the patterns. It was important to me to ideate on lots of different combinations and textures as opposed to settling too quickly.
Letterpress results
It was an interesting aspect taking the project from analogue, back to digital when creating the lasercut plates using Illustrator, before bringing it back to analogue again with letterpress. Typographic layout & design
The publication itself went through many stages of trial and error, with frequent test prints to scale to help me in dictating areas of concern in the copy, and paragraph flow.
Thumbnailing was always done prior to commiting to developing layouts in Indesign, as to not limit my thinking too abruptly trying to make something immediately polished looking.
BookbindingAlso seen in the book binding process was an earlier CMYK test print of the publication before I settled on risograph printing for the final design’s print run. Initially each chapter was represented by it’s own colour. However, this wouldn’t be cost-effective in risograph. With the latter being cheaper to print en-mass in one colour. I opted for red as it felt the most fitting, with red thread to match.Risograph printing processI worked with Liv White, from Dopple Press, and the resident risograph manager at the University of Brighton. To cut costs, and reduce paper waste, the publication was designed to print 2 copies on 1 A3 page. This resulted in the publication’s brochure-esque shape.
Publication final results:The final results of the printed publication was the most rewarding aspect of this project, and I remain very proud of it as an outcome.
The project tested all aspects of my skills, from initial concepting and ideation, to Indesign layout, to tapping into all the university had to offer, including letterpress, book arts, and laser cutting facilities. All the while micromanaging the design process with all the challenges that came with critique.
Read the full PDF here.Instagram Examples:
The concept behind the instagram page was to utilise the same typefaces, and textures as featured in the publication, and website. For better distinction on the Instagram UI between posts, I decided to opt for different colours per topic as opposed to all red like the main publication.
Website Examples:Unfortunately, the RTG website couldn’t feasibly be upkept by me long term due to the costs involved. But everything else from the project remains available.
The site went through various iterations as I tried using various softwares, including Framer, Readymag, and mainly Cargo. The intention was for the RTG site to be as straight forward as possible.
Typefaces were carried over from the other elements of the project for cohesion, with the suminagashi pattern animated to softly flow in the background in a pale grey. As a way to keep that aesthetic present without being a point of frustration or as to distract from the text.
Featured on the site, as seen below, were animated gifs of each interview participants name. Which I digitally adapted after physically lettering in the letterpress workshop. In my opinion it was a nice attention to detail that added another level of engagement for the viewer at the start of each interview.