[BPB] Design discussion

Dublin_Gunner

If the dust cover was/is transparent, a photomosaic would work really well on that.

You'd have the imagery slightly transparent with the white of the cover still showing through, would give an almost 3d effect to the photomosaic...

Plain white would be nice, but IMO the boards logo doesn't lend itself to a simple, clean design. It just looks out of place.

Maybe a simpler version of it without the stroke could work, and not as heavy. Just IMO.

ThOnda

I am quite against pictures on covers, apart from the Santa's night out

Keep it simple and in line of previous cover - it was chosen by public vote.

And keeping is as democratic and transparent, avoiding any "best of..." pictures would be the only way to go.

Morrisseeee

Well there's only one way to go for the front cover, and that a pic of a scantily glad young lady holding a copy of last years edition !! (well sex sells, don't it !!) << only kiddin

I liked last years cover, simple, black and ooozed quality !

democrates

Morrisseeee wrote: »

Well there's only one way to go for the front cover, and that a pic of a scantily glad young lady holding a copy of last years edition !! (well sex sells, don't it !!) << only kiddin

Pics or it didn't happen.

For once I only half agree with ThOnda, keep it simple yesish, but I like change because I've memories of years stuck in a horrible miserable rut, plus I've a feeling that we need to energise and make changes to blast our way out of this recession. It's all psychological. I'm just chipping in by way of brainstorming here btw, whatever the doers do, kudos, respect, and gratitude. /2c

Morrisseeee

Pics or it didn't happen.

OK here you go!

I've seen the boards.ie logo (ie. a photo of the logo in lights) being posted up a few times, random thread I think, and maybe an idea like this could be conjured up for the front page ?!?!

melekalikimaka

right gonna ned set up email account for photos.


can we get details on size and res for photos soonish?

Ideo

Any thoughts of the order of the photos in the book?

I was thinking that you should avoid having both portrait and landscape photos beside each other? like if the front cover was page 1, then pg 2 = portrait and 3 = portrait, but never 2 = portrait and 3 = landscape?

Do you know what i mean?

oscarBravo

Yup, that would be a design goal.

Fionn

you might say the same for colour and B&W or portraiture and land/seascapes, reportage etc.

I would imagine the goal will have to be for randomness, with perhaps a little help from the designer

oscarBravo

Sometimes total randomness can seem a little... forced.

I'll be aiming to keep portrait photos together, because they just look better on facing pages. Beyond that I'll be inserting the photos more-or-less in the order they appear in the book. That said, sometimes I'll see photos that just look good together, and I'll be nudging them onto facing pages.

It's a balancing act, like pretty much every aspect of design.

And I'm not a professional designer.

oscarBravo

oscarBravo wrote: »

...I'll be inserting the photos more-or-less in the order they appear in the book.

That is quite possibly the stupidest thing I've ever posted, and nobody noticed.

What I should have said is that I'll be inserting them more-or-less in the order that they're submitted.

That said, sometimes I'll see photos that just look good together, and I'll be nudging them onto facing pages.

As it turns out, more often I'm nudging things off facing pages if I don't think they work together, but for the most part I'm just going with arrival sequence.

It seems to me that the facing pages very often complement each other entirely by chance, which is great.

oscarBravo

OK, let's talk about cover design again.

There are three ways I can go after last year's classy black cover: either go negative, as I have with the interior pages (black on white); stay with black; or start a trend.

Having varied the interior design, I'm not inclined to leave the outside unchanged. Apart from anything else, it makes it even harder for next year's and subsequent books to be anything other than black.

If I go with white (or, more accurately, palest of pale cream), it's still not clear where next year's book can go. Black, then white, then...?

So I like the idea of starting a trend in a particular direction. It relies on later designers to agree with the trend and to keep it going that way - in fact, the downside is that it possibly cramps later designers' styles somewhat. But I think that's something we can live with.

Always when I'm thinking about this, I'm picturing a dedicated bookshelf in my library with several years' worth of boards.ie yearbooks. So I decided to do a mockup of what that would look like. It's crude, but to give you some idea:



(Obviously you have to imagine the 2009 changing year-to-year, but I couldn't be bothered putting that much work into a mockup.)

The colours are chosen at regularly spaced intervals on a standard colour wheel. I've chosen the intervals in a way I think works quite well - reasonably distinct colours year-on-year, but in a very steady progression first outward, then around, the colour wheel.

I'd like people's thoughts on this, because the first book - the black one - is last year's, and the second is going to be this year's, so basically I need to decide on a colour.

xia

I like idea with different cover colours for each year. And going from black to white there directly would block the possibilities for years to come.

Fionn

my 2cents!

we had black last year which the majority were happy with, so why not the reverse this year, the only thing is i'm not that much a fan on pure white like 255 255 255 it's a bit cold thats why i picked the slightest hint of cream to warm it a bit. It still makes it look classy and exudes that feeling of quality in my opinion.
After that perhaps the primary & secondary colours that'll give you 6 years plus B&W thats 8 years in total and if we get through those then the tertiary colours. Not sure if we'd get another 20 years out of this?

My preference would be for the white(ish) version i posted a while back.

ThOnda

4th from the left looks nice.

AnCatDubh

oscarBravo wrote: »

OK, let's talk about cover design again.....etc., etc.,

Fionn wrote: »

my 2cents!, etc..., etc....,

I wish I knew something (anything) about what you guys are discussing

Hence I'm happy to roll with whatever you come up with.

Only thing I will say and its a very uneducated thought - should we jump across very distinct colours ie., from the example #1, #2, #6, #11, etc.....

Other uneducated question - is white/soft cream a durable colour for a cover?

CabanSail

There has not been enough disharmony & in-fighting for us to produce the White Album yet.

I like the Colour Wheel idea.

oscarBravo

AnCatDubh wrote: »

Only thing I will say and its a very uneducated thought - should we jump across very distinct colours ie., from the example #1, #2, #6, #11, etc.....

That's not exactly in keeping with the idea of a colour wheel, that's just picking random colours.

Other uneducated question - is white/soft cream a durable colour for a cover?

That had occurred to me too.

Fionn

here's some disharmony and thoughts

looking at the mockup it might work if the first book had not been black, as it is the black looks slightly out of place there and certainly doesn’t follow the colourwheel theme!

however,

are we designing for this year or the next couple of years? perhaps future designers will not want to be constrained by whats ordained here!, it's not inconceivable that at some future point, someone will come up with a different design and all this will be a moot point - I just cant see this being followed for each successive years without someone wanting to change it.

I think we can design for this year and let next years contributors decide on what they want next year!!

@ CabanSail
I don't think the light cover would be any less durable than a dark cover in my opinion.

@ ThOnda

this is what the cover might look like in that colour - the logo would need to be tweaked colourwise too but not a huge prob!

oscarBravo

Fionn wrote: »

are we designing for this year or the next couple of years? perhaps future designers will not want to be constrained by whats ordained here!, it's not inconceivable that at some future point, someone will come up with a different design and all this will be a moot point - I just cant see this being followed for each successive years without someone wanting to change it.

I think we can design for this year and let next years contributors decide on what they want next year!!

This is very much my thinking. We can start something, and we have no guarantee that it will be carried on. I'd love to think that I'll have a lovely uniform-looking set of books on my shelf in a few years, but one of these years a designer for whom a uniform set of books isn't a priority is going to insist on a completely different size book...

And at the same time I'm thinking that if next year's designer wanted to be able to carry forward a consistent theme, wouldn't it be nice to have laid the groundwork for that?

democrates

I think if the colourwheel were started it would be carried on (people are still following the ten commandments if we're talking shelf life), imagine if this was year three and a trend had started in y1 & y2, how much support would there be to deviate from that? I suspect none, and that the concensus would be to continue the tradition.

If future generations want to change things and maintain concistency then let them imagine up a solution, we'll see if they're as clever as they claim to be.

I'd still prefer deep red for 2009 to represent the recession, just giving that colour selection a horizontal flip...:D

Fionn

I disagree, its human nature for people to want to change things around, comparing it to the 10 commandments is stretching it a tad eh? and tbh how many of those are followed these days??

I think it'd be better if the colour was put to a vote, that way everything is democratic and transparent,

my preference for this year is the pale white/cream colour
democrates wants red
ThOnda expressed a liking for blue
anyone else have thoughts on this?

If this can be agreed upon, things can then move on

democrates

All grist for the mill is the way I see it, and although I'm a democracy zealot when it comes to politics and the social enterprise, in cases like this where it's unpaid volunteers putting work in for the common good I don't expect to get a vote, I think volunteers earn the right to call the shots, pardon the pun , plus the idea of design by commitee makes me nervous...

Nisio

So if the cover rotates on that colour wheel theme what trend does the inside pages follow?

[preference]my own preference being for black pages/white writing[/preference]

What colour do you get if you average all the pictures in the book together, mostly landcapes might give a bluey/green colour presumeably

Fionn

hmmm.. my take on this is that we should have consensus among the community, after all we are all volunteering our services in one way or another, we designed and came to a conclusion last year after everyone had their say and a vote was taken, it worked quite well and I think everyone was happy and there was no complaints or dissent it’s a good formula for success I think we should carry it on this year too

oscarBravo

Fionn wrote: »

hmmm.. my take on this is that we should have consensus among the community, after all we are all volunteering our services in one way or another, we designed and came to a conclusion last year after everyone had their say and a vote was taken, it worked quite well and I think everyone was happy and there was no complaints or dissent it’s a good formula for success I think we should carry it on this year too

yoink

Covey

I'll have to admit, I wasn't a fan of the black border around the photos last year. But I thought the black cover was classy.

melekalikimaka

poll up now.

cream/white for me... but its up to ya'll i guess...

one day the iron curtain of mele will fall, then you will all bow to my mono tones :mad::mad::mad::mad:

Fionn

crikey!! nearly missed the Poll