What have you learnt? Throughout this project I have learnt how to manage my time more accurately, as the final piece being a book is a long process so timing it well is something quite important. I have learnt a lot about beer, craft beer, how it is made, what’s the difference between micropubs and pubs. I have learnt all about different peoples opinions on beer and if they thought my idea for my book was good or not. I learnt that a lot of micropubs are really badly advertised, however I’m still not sure if this is deliberate or not. As some micropub owners are middle aged and only want people they know personally in their micropub, I found these micropubs were the ones that tended to be less advertised. The micropubs I found that were more advertised were the ones that were more welcoming when entering, more friendly, had a atmosphere which attracted younger people. Such as The Fez had a Waltzers carriage in the window which you could sit in, this is the type of thing that attracts young people/hipsters to go in. What has influenced your decisions? My decision has been influenced by the micropubs I visited, The Two Halves and The Fez, and also by normal pubs I visited. I took in the atmosphere and discovered a new type of socialising when visiting the micropubs, to me it opened up a whole new world, which is what I want my book to do with young people. I also found that having an audience influenced my decisions a lot as it wasn’t always what I wanted my book to be, it was what would work best with my audience which was an interesting way to work as usually you choose what you like best. How have you responded to your findings? I have responded to my findings by making a map in my book that advertises each micropub that surrounds Borough Market, I feel that this doesn’t give too much advertising away to the ones that don’t want it and not too much advertising given away for free to the ones that don’t mind it. What was successful? I found my hop vector I made really successful, as I thought it reciprocated a passport page in the style of beer really well. Whilst making this page I discovered that passport pages are made with such small designs so they are impossible to photocopy to stop fraud. I also found that my lino cuts I did for my logo and beer stamp really successful, I cut both linos bigger than they needed to be so I could get the detail in on the type, I then scanned my prints in and scaled them down and exposed them to a screen so they wouldn’t loose any of the detail/texture and so they would be big enough for my book. What problems did you encounter? A problem I encountered was binding my map into my book. I found this a massive problem as the map was a fold out in the book and I also only had 7 pages in my book which meant the signatures would be an uneven amount. To overcome this I decided to put the map in a single signature as the folds would make it thick enough to work. Another problem I encountered was that I struggled to find the micropubs that actually surrounded Borough Market as none were advertised which I found quite odd, I’m not sure if this was on purpose or not, luckily I found the micropubs eventually. What could you take forwards? To take this project forward I could go into making a micropub book for every county/town depending on how many micropubs were in each. I would of also liked to have made a stamp for each micropub that was unique to them, this was my initial idea, however I didn’t get to do this because unfortunately I ran out of time and it wouldn’t of been cost effective as the stamps would of only been used once, therefore I thought doing one overall stamp would have been better as it gave me more time to spend on other parts of my book. Overall I am extremely happy with my outcome, I think it worked well and the idea worked out. I would like to do a lot more to this project and I think doing a project on beer has definitely opened up my eyes to the branding side of Graphics which is interesting as I would of never considered doing it until now, this could be a possible Final Major Project topic as my next project.
