Design Practice 1 - Studio Brief 2 - Book Club

Graphic Design: A New History

The artist of my book is Stephen J. Eskilson, who has produced Graphic Design: A New History as a predecessor to his revision, Graphic Design: A History. This book was produced as an academic tour of graphic design from the past hundred years. Eskilson has not produced any other books which suggests he is not only a scholar but an actual designer as his main profession. The book was created to be a referencing tool for undergraduate students in order to create informed theory work all inside one book. The publisher of the book is Laurence King, a publisher known in the creative industry as they mainly publish books in the arts. They are a well-known and respected publisher, so Stephen must be a knowledgable figure in the creative industry. They have also published books by authors such as Pentagram, which are quite influential.

The purpose of the book is mainly to cater to undergraduate students and to create an in-depth recollection of graphic design from the past hundred years. This could be used for either teachers to use as a guideline of chronological events in graphic design, or for undergraduates themselves to catch themselves up on major events and use the book as a referencing tool. The text heavy aspect of this book suggests it's not meant to be viewed more as an aesthetically pleasing piece of art more than the communication aspect it holds. 

The ethos followed within the book is hard to identify due to the literal storytelling in the book, but I think the author intended to make an un-biased recollection of events, meaning his ethos wasn't a prominent factor in the creation.

The classification of the book is 741.605 which I think is the category of the history of graphic design. Here is a screenshot of what other books are in the classification in the library. As you can see they all refer to past graphic design instead of contemporary or future graphic design. The books are all information based and all sound text-based as opposed to image based which also back up my claim that most of these books are forms of referencing tools.

Design Practice 1 - Studio Brief One - Final Design

My final design was challenging for me as I found it quite hard to break away from my usual modernist design aspects, but I wanted to try and think outside of the box, and interpret the brief in a more post-modern mindset. With my design, I tried to interpret the lyrics in an abstract format, mainly focusing on the window sill lyric.

I think in hindsight my design was too confusing. The elements themselves were effective, but when put together I think they made the design too busy, and some of the feedback I received said that the [windowsill] text simply wasn't needed. I feel this was because of my habit to work with type. I feel as if without type, my work isn't complete (even if this isn't true.) This is clearly something I need to work on in the future.

Design Practice 1 - Studio Brief One - Research

I decided to begin my research by looking at past Secret 7 winners in order to attain some inspiration. Here are some images of past winners that I found interesting, and help me gain an idea of what the level of expertise is needed to be chosen to win.

There was not as much information as I could not find many past winners, but these are a selection. As you can see the covers are mainly illustrations, and I believe this is because it is easier to convey a message without being too obvious. I also think it is easier to show off originality through illustration, and you can convey more of a message on a small 7" vinyl cover. I think due to these reasons, I will try and produce a cover with illustrated material, even though that is not my strength in Graphic Design in order to try and challenge myself and to think outside the box, personally.


I decided to further my research by researching some of the most influential album art designers in the industry, starting with Peter Saville.

I think this cover by Saville is one of his more abstract covers, due to the layout of the cover (the monochrome set being offset to the image) and the use of inverted colour imagery as the cover. The grey background gives a low contrast effect to the cover which relates to the title, The Monochrome Set and I think the imagery relates to the album name, Strange Boutique because the imagery in itself is strange. The use of white space in this cover can be seen as quite modernist, although I think the offset title adds a hint of postmodernism.

I really enjoy this album cover because of the use of illustration mixed with typography to convey a clear message. The use of spacing between words and letters is used to represent time going slowly which I think is a very clever technique, adding a hidden meaning to an album cover. The mix of illustration and type is effective in both attracting the audience and informing them of what the cover is about, and the mix of black and off-white is aesthetically pleasing to the audience. 

I think this is one of my favourite album covers ever made due to the process it took to create it. The drummer of Joy Division simply told Saville about the diagram, and Saville created an album cover with it. The simplicity of the process is interesting because he didn't seem to put tons of research into it, yet it became almost an icon of album art that almost anyone into music has seen today. The fact that something so simply made can become so influential is interesting to me and influences my work as I never try to produce anything too complex, as it starts to become hard to interpret to the audience. The image was actually of the first pulse sonar ever recorded, which has no relation to Joy Division in my knowledge which also makes this image interesting to me, I would like to know what persuaded Saville to create this as an album cover with no meaning or relation to the album itself.

After researching a number of Saville designs I have noticed he liked to alter the colours of his imagery, I personally think this is because he liked to create almost caricatures of his subjects by creating dream-like imagery. The use of text creates a wide amount of white space but one thing I noticed is that the text is not completely in the middle. This relates to the first album I described where the title was offset. This adds an element of post-modernism or "breaking the rules" as it looks quite awkward when you look at it for long periods of time. The use of a soft vignette on the album cover gives attention to the image in the middle of the frame and can be used to control the direction the audience looks first.