- Minimal text, only include what is needed
- Photographs organised into Street Names as 'Categories' / 'Chapters'
One of the main aspects of any publication are how the images are laid out in the book.
In the book Layout by Ambrose / Harris they discuss how: 'a key function of layout is to let the elements, especially the image elements, perform the tasks that they have been selected for. Images add drama and emotion to a work, but how they communicate with the recipient depends upon how they are presented. Images can be used to enhance or instill a certain feeling or attitude to the material.'
Josef Müller-Brockmann states that 'The fewer the differences in the size of the illustrations, the quieter the impression created by the design. '
As the publication will be a picture book it is important that the images within have as much visual impact as possible.
The street system that was decided upon in the crits gives the publication a sense of order rather than randomly having the pictures stuck in anywhere and also makes it easier for readers to go and seek the elements of typography they find in the book for themselves if they so wished. Having the text information divided into streets also creates distinctly marked out chapters so readers can clearly see the beginning and end of a new chapter, which is one of Jan Tschichold's golden rules in designing a successful book.
The 'route' for the book was then chosen to determine how the book would flow:
West Street > Eldon Street > Devonshire Street > Rockingham Street > Division Street
There were 2 reasons behind this decision. The first was that it was a natural route of walking for visitors and residents of Sheffield with each street leading onto the next in a kind of snaking motion, rather than participants having to backtrack along streets to get to the next 'chapter' in the book.
The second reason was that a lot of the Streets, due to the nature of them, were very grafitti orientated, whilst the main Streets such as West Street and Division Street contained a lot more signage. Splitting them up made the publication more fluent and engaging, spreading out the mixture of content between Street Art, Signage and other forms of typography.
Content and layout was then merged by making extremely rough thumbnails of various layouts to see which pictures should go where in the format.
'Choices relating to scale affect the way in which we view an image. An image with a large scale dominates the page and is the focus of attention, yet making a graphic too large can result in suffocation. At a smaller scale however, the information contained within the image may be missed or ignored. ' - Ambrose / Harris
The first attempt at making a layout was visually similar to that of 'Bubblegum' and 'Badly Repaired Cars' by Ronni Campana, which I had seen in Village book Store and analysed in a previous blog post.
Although the minimalist look of this layout gave a clean and structured finish, it potentially used too much white space and ran the risk of becoming a bit stale and disengaging to the reader after a while. It was neat but didn't give off a sense of energy that the book needed to communicate, therefore not accurately representing the personality of the devonshire Quarter.
Experimenting with a different layout, a second image was added to each double page spread. This looked better but again seemed to become quite monotonous after a while, making the book seem claustrophobic with the many colours and shapes being boxed into the same layout on each page.
The design didn't breath or flow fluently. It did make the book seem more energetic and lively but it still seemed to be lacking a certain element.
The third layout began to look more interesting and fluent, incorporating a mix of the two previous ones as well as some full bleed images and double page spreads. At first glance the design appears more chaotic however this represents the 'urban village' feel of the devonshire quarter, where independent shops and cafés come and go every year, popping up as one thing and then morphing into something new. The same way the stickers and graffiti get worn down by the weather and new ones are just slapped back over.
The unpredictable nature of this layout breathes life into the publication and makes it more engaging to the reader, encouraging to turn over the next page and see what will be next.
After getting feedback on the above layouts my peers agreed that the bottom layout was the most appropriate however it needed some uniformity to stop it from looking too cluttered and confusing. They suggested that to keep the book looking energetic, yet legible it would be advisable to stick to 4 different page layouts throughout the book to keep it fluent.
For example the layout must consist of either full bleed double spread, 1 x image on 1 x page of a double spread, 2 x off balanced images in a double spread and 1 x full bleed page in a double spread.
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