Diving in a sea of tourists

This blog went appalingly empty of any recent event. Uhm... I am going to talk about this in my essay/oversized post or whatever I will make before Tuesday, better to leave it at the moment.

Moving to this post's subject, I am somehow busy with the London book project, not exactly my cup of tea, but kind of interesting. No idea of how it is going to end up, I have got pretty much few ideas, but confused. So far I have done well enough, I am up to my expectations and I have to say it is inspiring, it goves me various hints in trying out different things, then I guess this means it works as planned by the tutors.

Therefore I decided, following Lora's invitation, to take a little trip to Central London, something I do less and less lately, I have to admit, and took a fair amount of random pictures.

Unsurprisingly, it has been a very good idea, even though at the moment I was cursing every single tourist I came across - thousands of them, everywhere! - because I got inspired and collected more useful material than I could imagine. Now it is all about using it wisely, the real task. Here are some examples of what I made playing around today. Oh, time lapse is great!

Compressing five weeks in few lines

First stage

So the ISTD project started apparently well, at least I thought it did. Well, I was wrong.

I still have to say that I enjoyed every bit of it, studied typography as much as I could, went mad for grids, got some very interesting idea... Unfortunately though, my tutors did not seem quite pleased with whatever I was doing at each single step of the work. At first my design process was upside-down, because I quickly had strong ideas about formats. Afterwards I was not going around all the time with my research to visually back up my development. Then I was not experimenting enough. Soon after that, I went too far in experimentation, so I should revert back to something more conventional.

This is pretty much what actually happened. The result of all of it has been that I got quite stressed and I produced a very dull outcome, in my opinion.

What did I learn then? To follow my own judgement much more, stop giving limits to myself, listen to tutors less and less - they are not telling me what to do, they are giving hints out of their own opinion, nothing more and nothing less. It took me a seriously long time to get it, but hopefully this time I will stuck with it.

Second stage, kind of...

First experiment, failed

Second experiment, crazy but interesting

"Offensive" development...

Back to the first stage, updated

Last stage, the dull book

Why I have been away for so long

 

Long holiday, fulfilling life, countless engagements, lack of inspiration to write... and the ISTD project!

Now, how can I write about it just after it is over and be fair? No idea, I think it is going to be difficult.

First approach: I wanted to do it so much I could not wait for the briefing session to take place.

The tutors, Paul and Ben, chose to go for the reinterpretation of Flatland, a Victorian novella by Edwin A. Abbott, quite interesting and unusual. As the brief from the ISTD asked, we were supposed to produce a new edition of the novella which was not necessarily a book as we could generally think of it. Apparently so a huge amount of freedom on our side, especially considering the organization's conservative approach toward typography, according to both Paul and Ben. Five weeks to submit an almost final version of our idea, at least close enough to clearly see the potential of it and if our skills were at a remarkable level to go for the real ISTD assessment.

Brief clear, strict timetable made up by the tutors, to help our time management, because of the relatively short time given to work on the project. Everything started out smooth and exciting, off I went, research and first rough ideas in few days time. Piece of cake, I was so excited I could not ask for anything else. Little drawback: it had been clear from the very beginning that I would have spent the next five weeks just deep inside Abbott's paradoxical universe and nothing else...

A very long time...

I just can not believe it took me so long to make up my mind and get back here writing. I am not in the mood yet, if I have to be honest, but I suppose it is better to start somehow something I have to do.

Where did I leave it? Two and half months ago, straight before handing in my pdf for term 1, it seems.

Result: 57%, average (some 65, more 55). Disappointing, no more, no less. Slightly upsetting at the beginning too, no more after a while and a more careful, less emotional, analysis of my outcome. It pretty much looks like shit. Not disturbing, unsettling shit however, which would not be so bad after all, but just like soulless, useless shit. Maybe an accountant could achieve similar results after some little efforts. This is what makes me really sad in the end and understanding why I ended up creating such a worthless piece of work does not make me feel any better.

Cool enough, I can find a good number of ways to blame on my tutors for my disappointing results, like I have been listening too much to their generic/general, foggy advices. I tried to create a pdf that does not steal attention from its contents because of a too flamboyant look. I tried to be tidy and keep it simple. I tried to make it functional and easy to navigate. I tried to keep it in the mood of the variables, to show a bit of subject knowledge.

I ended up in total, unmistakable dullness!

Fair enough, it is still better than I could expect, considering how much I disdain each one of the variables given. Unfortunately, it is a further example of how dull my works can be most of the time.