CHLOE LIU

Communication design student at RMIT University

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Group project reflection

Personally, I think that our communication was the worst part at the beginning. We were hectic because we were not listening to others’ opinions, which made all of us irritated and frustrated. After creating a Facebook group chat and constantly having a meeting outside the class, our relationship has grown a lot, which was more effective to reach our project goal. 

Also, it was great working with a group as it can combine talents of group members contributing knowledge, skills and ideas. For example, Pual is good at written and spoken communication and Parkon and Lulu usually contributed some unconventional ideas. Most importantly, I am very glad to be part of this group as it helped me to build up a friendship with others.

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Group project PDF

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Final bookwork & Rationale

Title: Shop now Dimensions: Parcel 16 x 25cm, Book 12 x 17.8cm

The idea of my post-digital book was inspired by my online shopping experience in which I am always unaware of my purchasing behavior of similar items. For example, buying similar lipstick colours in different brands or tons of masking tapes in the same illustration style. However, not all purchases are valued by us. Some online purchases are still in-use while some ended up as rubbish. This reason lies back to the convenience of the internet which encourages us to purchase without deep consideration.

The purpose of my book is to capture our behavior of online shopping. The ideas and concepts are visually represented by photography. The idea of a parcel is used to package the book as it can create the experience of online shopping delivery. I imitated the delivery label to minimize the risk of having the book damaged and lost. The book cover is printed with the title “Fall sales, 50% off” and “Shop Now”, the banner in red colour exactly shows how online shopping web pages attract people to click into the website. A mouse icon is deliberately added next to “Shop Now” which helps to differentiate the differences between a poster in a physical store and an online store.

For the internal pages, a nice photo of the featured item will be placed on the left page, illustrating the idea that it was once a favorite of the owner. A blank page with a cut-out outlining the featured item will be on the right page. A sense of mystery will be created before flipping over the next page as readers have a chance of guessing where the item would be placed. Flipping over the blank page will reveal the actual situation of where the item has eventually been placed at. The background of where the item was placed at, regardless it being on a shelf or a wardrobe do reflect one’s personality and style.

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WEEK 12 | LAST CLASS

In todays class we worked on both our personal project and the group project.

For our group project all of us had their on task to do. Alexa and I was creating the ai. files for the title to be printed in vinyl. We both had to figure out the measurements we wanted to have and to fit it within the restrained of the vinyl size and printer. We found the biggest and the best size for the type set. Hopefully it will work out fine, when Andy prints it out.  For my personal project I printed out a rough prototype of the book. I had feedback from Andy and some of my peers, which helped me to go forward with my final book. I just have to wake up my life and finish the book and print out the final asap. 

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My brain can’t function well when it comes to math..... 

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Layout for posters / catalogue so far.

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Creating a fake shipping label

Here is the fake shipping label that I made. I decided not to ship my book to Andy because I don't want to risk of getting lost, demage an delay. Therefore, I made this label to pretend that had been sent to Andy. I also wrote Andy's name on the label as he is the only receiver. And the QR code I made is actually the link of my Tumblr, I am thinking of replacing it with the link of rationale.

The inital parcel that I made is so hard to fold as it needs a folding machine to do that. I then ended up reusing a parcel that I found at home because it is more environmentally friendly than buying a new parcel.

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Refinement: Cover design

My original cover was named as “They are my favorite”. I especially crossed out the word ‘are’ as it means that people get bored with their favorite online purchases and those products are not their favorite anymore. However, I think the original cover doesn’t seem like the topic of online shopping. Therefore, I’ve done more layouts which are inspired by the sale posters from UniDays as they provide lots of discounts for university students. In case readers may misunderstand the cover as the poster in a retail store, I deliberately added a mouse icon next to the words ‘shop now’ which shows the internet element.

 I couldn’t believe that a little change of cover can be so different in representing my book. Now I am more satisfied with the cover design and thinking of creating a spot UV on the final cover.

These screenshots were the research I have done at the beginning stage of the project.

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Week Eleven - group work

Today we met outside of class to discuss the front display and talk about the posters and the website. Andy printed out some photos of the exhibition windows and we cut and paste some different typefaces to test out sizes and styles.

I then did a rough sketch with a white gel pen of the typeface we have decided works best. It is a black letter, but simpler, longer and more narrow than the previous one.

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The start of my hand modeling career! 

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Web design

Group project

As the artworks are too tiny to display, our group and Andy suggested making a website with QR codes for the exhibition. Lulu and I are responsible for web designing. We had a meeting last week, discussing how we want to design the website. We both agreed to keep the web design as simple as we can because we only know the basic knowledge of Dreamweaver. We will make a homepage and individual pages for each book. These are some layout we made:

After consulting with Andy, he liked the layout on the bottom left and suggested us making a landing page for mobile version. He also mentioned that we needed not to make a website as he wanted us to focus more on the exhibition. Therefore, all we need to do now is to make a mobile layout and email him a pdf file.

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Week 11: Final refinement & book binding options

Individual project

As the content of my book required people to guess where the purchases ended up at, I hoped that readers can read the book by following the page number. I thought of doing perfect binding as it gives a professional appeal to my photography book. However, the book cannot be laid flat which is hard to hold the book and reader may read it randomly. Then I thought of doing thermal binding as the book can open 360 degrees or lay completely flat.

After consulting with Andy, he suggested me doing the perfect binding as I can’t force readers how to read books probably. His words also reminded me how I read books in a bookstore as curiosity is part of human nature. Therefore, I decided to go with perfect binding as it will offer a nicer visual appeal. 

Apart from consulting the choices of book binding, Andy asked me to get rid of the samples I have made on the left page as it lacked consistency. Lucky, I have already replaced the samples with photographs before he said that.

The thickness of perfect binding starts with 3mm spine and all the way up to 60mm. However, I realized that my book is too thin to bind after experimenting a similar book that I found at home. The size and paper weight of it is pretty similar to what I expect in my photography book. Now, I am thinking of adding up more pages from 30 to 40 as the thicker spine will give a professional look to me. For the paperweight, I am thinking of using 300-350 gsm for the cover page while 150-170 gsm for internal pages. But I will definitely show my reference book to the printer to ensure that the printing is correct.

The difference between 40 pages and 32 pages. A slightly thicker but visually looks better.

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Development

For this project, I made many versions of mockup and prototype which recorded the changes of my design.  My initial concept was inspired by my online shopping experience in which I am always unaware of my purchasing behavior of similar items. For example, similar lipstick colours in different brands or tons of masking tapes in the same illustration style. The reason lies back to our consumerism practice which encourages us to purchase something without deep consideration.

At first, I planned to collect online shopping receipts from my friends and took a photograph of where their online purchases ended up at. I have thought of experimenting with the thermal paper as it shares the same characteristic with the actual recipe: the printed ink will fade over time. What lead me to hesitation in this approach is due to the difficulty in getting consistent lighting and color tone in my photographs. Another hesitation is on the sophisticated technique in printing together with a high material and printing cost. Therefore, I was really lost and worried because I was overwhelmed with lots of ideas and still no idea what to do when I was in week 7.

To get me back on track, going back to an earlier stage helped while reorganizing the layout of the book. After accessing the constraints mentioned above, I decided to replace the idea of collecting receipts with an interaction book. A nice photo of the featured item will be placed on the left page illustrating the idea that it was once a favorite of the owner. A blank page with a cut-out outlining the featured item will be on the right page. A sense of mystery will be created before flipping over the next page as readers have a chance of guessing where the item would be placed. Flipping over the blank page will reveal the actual situation of where the item has eventually been placed at. The background of where the item was placed at, regardless it being on a shelf or a wardrobe do reflect one's personality and style.

After a consultation section with Andy, he suggested me not to let the samples take over the photographs. However, I think that both of them are equally important. As some of the items such as shoes, CDs and books cannot be reproduced in the same form easily, samples of them are needed to illustrate them in the most realistic manner.

For the submission, I have been thinking of shipping my final book to Andy because it is part of the communication and delivery experience of my topic. But I have a concern on whether the package will risk of getting lost, damaged, or delayed.

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WEEK 10

This week we tested out the vinyl cutter for our window display. Russell started by teaching us how to use the cutter. We then calculated the measurement of the window to see how many pieces of vinyl paper we need due to a width limitation of the cutter. We are lucky to have 11 characters in the title ‘Wot is a Book?’ that exactly fits on the window perfectly. We thus need not worry about having to place two letters in one single piece. Afterward, we printed out two versions of our chosen letter ‘w’, one is cut in the exact letter shape while another one is a cut-out letter from a square. The former one was a more successful attempt as comes in the form of one single piece that makes tearing off easier. For the latter one, we had a problem in flattening the vinyl on the glass due to the large size. Many bubbles were left in between the spaces. Therefore, Andy suggested us to go for the first attempt as it would be easier for us reach success. Next week, we will continue experiment vinyl and do some further planning on the final paper.

After working on our group project, we were given some time to present and discuss our individual project. It was interesting to see everyone’s work and where we’re at as their topics are unique. 

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Some snapchat pngs📷. Please like/reblog if save/use💕

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Snapchat Filters – could be a good option to go with to show change/ alteration in images.

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Lost > Depressed > Hope

A video that shows a mock-up of my book. 

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Week 8

Group project

We did a milestone review in this week, explaining our idea and working progress.  We were also given some useful feedback from Andy, he suggested us using Blackletter as its historical context is appropriate for the theme of our exhibition. I think today’s presentation was not only able to receive feedback from peers but also practice our communication skill as we will present our idea to the librarian at the Dock next week. Hopefully, our idea will be approved. 

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Week 7: Group meeting at the Dock library

Today, we had a meeting at the Dock library and finally summarized our idea.

We further developed our previous idea. We have decided to divide the two windows into four by cardboard. The four windows can be viewed from inside the building and outside out it. However, two of the exhibition glasses will be covered up respectively on both sides. The first glass facing outwards will be covered up, yet with cut out letters of ‘Wot is a book’ which allows people to see through. Each letter is placed at a different eye level so as to ensure everyone’s being able to see through regardless of their differences in height. Other than this, the third glass facing outwards and the second and fourth glass facing inwards will also be covered up. This also helps to resolve the lighting issue caused by reflection of the sunlight on the glass at daytime. This design also enhances visitors’ interaction with the exhibition as people have to walk back and forth from inside of the building to outside out it if they have to appreciate the exhibition in a chronological order.

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“FOR LAST YEAR'S WORDS BELONG TO LAST YEAR'S LANGUAGE, AND NEXT YEAR'S WORDS AWAIT ANOTHER VOICE.” T.S. ELIOT