SOUTH AFRICA FACT BOOK WIP
Objective | I will be creating a fact book for the country of South Africa using text from the CIA’s World Factbook. The overall goal is to create the perfect coffee table book that tourists would like to take home and collect. This will be achieved through creating a book with a cover that describes the country and follows the Brand Guidelines for the tourist office of South Africa and appeals to the core audience/persona that the guidelines
are targeting.
Mind Map 1 | After reading all of the text on my country (11 pages of extensive information) I pulled the facts that I found to be most interesting, which was honestly most of them because South Africa is so rich in history and has breath taking scenery. I generated the mind map with some ink pens, colored pencils, and a 13 x 19 sheet of paper.
Mind Map 2 | After refreshing my memory on all of the history and facts of South Africa, I put together a quick mind map to put my ideas for the book down on paper. I explored how I wanted the book to feel, things I wanted to challenge myself to do, inspirations, and how to incorporate photography. I also left myself a little note to take risks this project, I want to really challenge myself to push boundaries.
Culture | The first thing I did after reading all of the nitty-gritty details of South Africa was find imagery to represent the beautiful culture. The fact book will include tons of photography and imagery so I believe it was really important to get a full grasp on the culture to do South Africa the justice it deserves.
Texture & Color | When I think of South Africa I often think of the amazing textures of the animals, plants, and beautiful scenery. I put together a mood board (left) for the wonderful textures that just scream the adventurous land of South Africa. I then moved on to pulling photos to match the colors from my brand guidelines (right). They represent the bright vibrant colors of the land and rich colors of the culture.
Type & Layout Inspirations | In order to not break the brand guidelines I created for my country, I reused the same typography mood board (left) that inspired me to pick the typefaces I chose for the guidelines. I then spent countless hours searching for layouts that I aesthetically enjoyed and generated a mood board of layout designs that are elegant, yet adventurous to appeal to the persona the guidelines target, a young 23-year-old woman who owns her own clothing line and travels the world with her golden-retriever and boyfriend.
Thumbnails | These are rough thumbnails of cover ideas (left) and layout options (middle & right). The cover ideas consist of circular and geometric patterns and a possibility of using photography. The layout sketches focus primarily on carrying out movement on the pages to lead the eye, using full bleed photography, and two-columned text.
Rough Sketches | After sketching some thumbnails I created some rough sketches of my favorite cover (left) idea and a layout that is heavy with type to show how I am considering handling type. The cover will include the country name, tourist office logo, a brief description of the contents in the book, and feature some design elements from the logo. The layout will use some block color, a two-columned textbook, and will continue the use of the design elements from the logo to keep a consistent theme throughout the book.
Test Running Ideas | I then spent a few hours diving right into InDesign to start fleshing out the page layouts while utilizing new assets learned in class such as text wrap, splitting columns and spanning columns.
Establishing a Grid | The absolute first thing I did was establish a solid grid. I chose to use a 9 x 12 grid to allow myself creative freedom while still maintaining a solidly followed grid. I also created a master page for the intro to sections. I wanted photography to be the main visual factor in the book to appeal to the instagram/blogger persona already established in the brand guidelines.
Start with the Stats | Then I started with was the stats. Starting with these spreads would make it easier for me in the long run for getting the heavy duty statistics out of the way. The statistics section I thought would be the most difficult to convey in the playful manner I created in the Brand Guidelines.
Tabs, Tabs, Tabs | I immediately knew upon reading over the statistics that I wanted to organize all of the stats in a clean, minimal manner. Tabs were my best option in carrying out my vision. I struggled quite a bit with setting up the tabs in a correct manner, but after some help from instructors, I finally got the hang of them. Here is a video of the final touches of setting my tabs for the geography statistics.
Bringing my love of photo into play | I fell head over heels in love with photography my freshman year, and use photography within my design work whenever the appropriate opportunity arises. Since I was not able to actually travel to South Africa, I went to Franklin Park Conservatory to take my own photographs and playing around in my new favorite program Adobe Lightroom to edit the photos. Here are some of my favorites from the trip.
Yikes, this isn't me | I ran into some trouble within the economy section because I was trying so hard to jam pack the information in as few spreads as possible. The result was a few spreads within the book that just didn't feel like me as a designer and what I was trying to capture through the Tourist Office of South Africa. I went through many different versions shown above, from completely vector solutions to multiple photography based data visualization.
It's all about the people | I originally focused heavily on data visualization and charts within the economy section, however, after consideration I realized that the main data visualization should be found in the people/culture section because South Africa is the country of the people. Above I show where I began (left) with a simple spread with tabs and a photograph of children in South Africa. However, I then did a complete change and took this amazing photograph and spread it over an entire two paged spread. I also took this idea of full spread photography for data visualization and took all of the amazing facts about the people and culture to create more visualization.
Color is Everything | The logo I created played a very big part in the creation of the brand guidelines and the mailer. I shyed away from using the logo in the beginning of the design process for this project. I realized though that the logo is vital to the brand. I utilized the logo as an unconventional chart for export partners to South Africa. I color coded the tabs to match the elements from the logo for measurements. Here is a video of matching the character styles to the correct country color.
Just let it breathe | At the beginning I tried very hard to cram all of the information into just 48 pages. I conveyed all of the information I needed to, but the pages felt weighed down and text heavy (left). I decided it was time to just let the type breathe. I changed the leading of the body copy and weight to give the type a light-hearted and airy feel rather than a heavy block of text slapped on the page.
Cover time | I saved the cover for last because it will either make or break the book. Even though we are told not to, we always judge a book by its cover. To ensure that people would want to pick up my book and read it if the book were to be laying on a coffee table I chose to blow up the logo really big and use bright color blocking. The eye is naturally drawn to bright colors which is what I was going for.
Published Spreads | Here are the completed spreads of the overall book before purchasing the final hardcopy!
