Book Project!

If you were given the task of designing a 32 page (minimum) book that was conceptually your own in every aspect, what would you write about or want to show? Oh, and by the way, you have just a little over three weeks to do it. This was one of our final projects for Process and Materials. My first decision was that I wanted my book to be primarily image based. I’m not the strongest writer and the project’s turn around was so quick that this seemed the best option for me personally. So I stated brainstorming. I came across a fortune cookie fortune that I have had for years. It reads:

You find beauty in ordinary things. Do not lose this ability.

Over the years I have collected over 30 fortunes. So my first concept was to create spaces for each of these seemingly ordinary slips of paper that would somehow inform the fortune itself. I started taking pictures, and things just started looking cliche and just didn’t feel right. Back to the drawing board.

The more I thought about my favorite fortune the more I realized that it was those particular words that inspire me. Thus, the words, and not the fortune itself, became the inspiration for my book. I began taking pictures of, well, ordinary objects in ways that showed the detail and beauty that we as busy individuals undoubtedly overlook. I collected about 200 photos of things ranging from pencils, walls, headlights, and quite a few fire hydrants. From this collection I narrowed them down to the best ones that filled 60 pages. I took the title of the book straight from the fortune: “Ordinary Things”. I then prefaced the book of photos with the following:

Think about your day.  What do you touch and see as the hours and minutes progress? You may only remember a few significant things like an automobile or cellular phone; however,  every day we encounter objects that we very easily over look. It seems other external stimuli dominate our senses  and we lose sight of the details of our surroundings. So many beautiful things are unnoticed because we are bombarded by these external forces that define what “beautiful” is. I seek to challenge this. There are many things that we take for granted as well designed or naturally formed objects. It is in these ordinary items that I have found beauty. This book is a compilation of photographs taken over the course of several days. These images capture subtle moments of splendor that exist in reality and are not contrived. I hope to inspire viewers to see whatever objects they come in contact in a new light and by doing so, stir a new appreciation for seemingly ordinary things.

We sent our final PDF files into the online publisher Lulu.com. It was quite a nerve racking process for me. I kept getting error messages while uploading saying the dimensions were wrong. I checked over and over and over again to find out what I had done wrong. After a lot of frustration and some tears I realized my bleed settings were at 0.25 instead of 0.125…DUH! So after fixing the most obvious thing in the world, I was finally able to upload the PDF’s and order my book. About a week later the copies arrived. Flawless. Exactly how I imagined.

Below are some of the examples of the photos included within my book.

Registration at its Best

When approaching the term “registration” I was a little perplexed. Mostly because I knew I recognized the term, but also because it didn’t seem like it would be the easiest thing to represent. But knowing that the primary purpose was not only to educate classmates but also to refresh my own memory of printing terms. I began researching through the text book and on the web. Most information was pretty straight forward and mostly said the same thing. Maybe this concept wasn’t as difficult as I initially thought.
I decided that is was far more interesting to show what poor registration looked like and use it as a design element. this was carried through nearly every element. I learned a lot about the term just by figuring out how to generate it on my own.

Field Trip to Williams Visual Solutions!

On Tuesday we, as a class, visited Williams Visual Solutions (http://www.wmsco.com/www).  Williams has been family owned and operated since 1947. It was started by Levie Williams and is now in the hands of his grandson, Bubba Williams. They work a lot within the Chattanooga community providing graphic communications. They are primarily a printer but also work with clients from the concept stage to design to completion.

They provide many different options for clients from digital printing to book printing and are Mac based. We had the opportunity to see all their different printers and plate makers. Digital printing was explained in full by their new business developer, David Smith. It was really interesting to see how the company has evolved since it was owned by Bubba’s grandfather. Not only did their business and technology expand, but also their facility.

They were super accommodating and it is clear that every member of the team is passionate about what they do as a company. They were even kind enough to provide us all with lunch! At the end of our time at Williams, they explained some of their future goals and plans and it seems that Williams Visual Solutions has a bright future in store for them. I can definitely say that this experience will certainly encourage me to use their services someday.

The Chattanooga Times Free Press

Thursday we had the privilege of visiting the Chattanooga Times Free Press Newspaper. The tour was led by Frank Anthony the Vice President of Operations. Although my carpool arrived a few minutes late (it’s a common mistake to find one’s self at the office a few blocks down; according to the secretary), we didn’t get to miss much of Mr. Anthony’s history lesson of the Chatt Times. He was a friendly man who has been in the business for many, many years. He told us that he even apprenticed on an old Linotype machine when he first started in the news printing business!

We learned all about the evolution of the news printing press and how it has changed from handset type machines to Linotype, Washington press, Associated press, to the hand fed Platen press and on to the rotary press. The history of the building itself was fascinating. It was originally a  hosiery factory in the 1920′s and then switched to printing when seamed hose went out of fashion in the 1950′s. The building has about 40,000 square feet of solid maple floors! This was necessary to hold the heavy machinery. The cost of building that way today would be outrageous! The building holds 300 tons of dead weight (when machinery is not moving) and it is built on an isolated foundation to prevent cracking and crumbling to ground due to the vibrations of running machines.

One of the most interesting facts is that the Chattanooga Times Free Press has history tied to the New York Times. I can’t remember it exactly, but in the 1950′s the struggling newspaper of Chattanooga was bought by the McDonald family which also owned the New York Times, I believe. They brought the paper back to life and it was sold within the family, but still has roots to the renowned NY Times. How cool is that?!

We got to see all of their printers, or “image setters”. Because they rely so much on being fast and efficiant, they have a back up machine for every machine in the building. The image setters themselves cost $130,000…each. Over all the building holds 5-6 million dollars in spare equipment alone!

The actual newspaper printer was 37 feet long and 10 feet wide. It prints on 11,000 tons of paper a year! We didn’t get to see it in motion printing, but even so, it was still quite the sight to see! They have huge tanks of ink including three 3000 gallon tanks of black ink. The ink is water based as opposed to oil based so that it dries immediately and doesn’t smear.

There was so much more that we learned and saw but these are some of the points that stuck out to me. Thank you Chattanooga Times Free Press!

Feild Trip!! A Visit to Allegra Printing of Chattanooga

Tuesday we took a fabulous journey to Allegra printing company here in Chattanooga. We were warmly welcomed by Todd Oates. Todd started by describing the company and how they work. They are a small commercial shop and pride themselves on not being located in some random shopping center. They work business to business and have a pretty detailed filing system that contains all aspects of a job done for a client including the inks, paper, etc.

We met their in house Graphic Designer Heather Rickets. She talked about how they tend to receive work for a job that sometimes is less than…well sometimes they are terrible and don’t work. She’s had to completely remake logos and designs because of insufficient file sizes or file type. This can require additional time on a job of course and additional funding from the client. She said sometimes you just have to make it work, no matter what you get.

Then we go to the printers. They have printers that do jobs from full color printing, digital printing, signs, banners, posters, bindery and finishing, and all kinds of promotional printing. We were introduced to “Bonnie” and “Clyde’ the digital printers. They are exactly the same printers but have their own unique problems. All of the other printers were pretty much incredible. We got to watch a $30,000 printer make di-cuts on some stickers (that had our names on them!). My personal favorite was the printer that did the saddle stitching. It was pretty cool. I have never seen staples on a roll before! So cool!

So we went along got to see some more printers lamination machines and they were kind enough to make us personalized note pads and stickers and gave Allegra water bottles and a couple of other little gems. The best part was the people. They were really awesome and very kind and accommodating. Thanks Allegra!

Layers Magazine Contest Entry

When we were first given the assignment for layers magazine, I was really nervous about the quick turn around. I read the article and checked out the two different tutorials starting with the text as image tutorial. I started with an picture I took of my brother to start testing out the tutorial. Once I got it down pat, I was pretty excited. “Hooray, for being able to follow directions!”

The next step was, how do I incorporate this tutorial into a fictitious film poster?  The more and more I looked at the image of my brother and the image used in tutorial and the treatment of text, I couldn’t help but be reminded of something I had seen before…AHHA! I was really reminded of the poster of the actual movie, Seven Pounds starring Will Smith. I could not get the straight on image of his face and the text serving as background out of my head. The image of my brother was somewhat similar so I decided to continue working with it and creating a movie poster parody.

I kept running into problems with the image being far too dark on one side of my brother’s face once the text “brushes” were used to fill in the image. It took a lot of time, but I finally was able to resolve the image in such a way that no important information on the face was lost. The brushes are made up of the number ’7′, ‘seven’, ’7 pounds’, and ‘seven lbs’.

There was another step in the tutorial that made the image up of horizontal text. I continued with this idea by using actual written information by myself and my brother (whose name is Kevin, by the way). I also used a random text generator. I have had some trouble finding the specific one I used for this project, but there are many out there. I combined the two techniches and also added an additional layer of text as background to mimic the original film poster. I continued by choosing a typeface that was as close to the original as possible and came up with a similar formula for my film’s tagline.

All together I feel like created a successful parody to the Seven Pounds poster and a peice that Kevin and I can laugh about for quite some time.