I find that the entire time working on my ISTD entry pre formative deadline I was constantly working on the best IDEA, and the entire time spent after the deadline was simply refining this idea, this is not to say I didn’t do much work, the refinement and constant development of the project was much more demanding work that simply coming up and exploring many different ways to reimagine Invisible Cities.
I think what was the most important part of this post formative section of work was when I decided to move past creating in one large map, I instead broke the cities down separately in order to understand them better, and then I built them back up within the map ready for further refinements. I think this was the most important part because it really sorted my head out as to how I was going to approach the work, It allowed me to create a massively detailed large format piece of work by dividing it up into its different sections first, the research on Joyce Stafford helped to frame this as when I looked at her work I felt overwhelmed with all the content on the page, but once you delve into it in detail you begin to see how everything makes sense, for me this had to be done by completely breaking down the cities and placing them onto the rough print photos below. It allowed my brain to process each city individually on a format I am used to, and in the end allowed for a much more experimental and interesting outcome.
I went through many different approaches within the development stage of the spreads, using varied techniques from AR to specialist binding and sticking, considering using pull out tabs within the city of Fedora to translate the feeling of different reflections as well as implementing wheels cut from different rings out paper to allow full access to the book.
discovering my plan of, glyphs for expressing cities themselves and type setting and format for the chapters overall was another important part of developing my ISTD, being a key part of my theory behind making the large maps, and I took any rules and theory I could follow as at times I really wasn’t sure what would improve to decline the quality of my work, seemingly random fixes kept popping up and things I was sure would make my work better ended up making it to complicated and lost that delicate accessibility. the glyphs themselves also helped to cement a sense of cohesion amongst the large variance of colours and setting, due to the fact they were actually made from the different serifs sections of my chosen typeface, Migra Serif.
I really think ISTD has been my favourite project this year, it certainly has been the most complete, by this I mean it really focussed on everything, five weeks to perfect the idea, then more weeks to develop the big picture, with even more weeks spent refining the details, to then finishing off the last weeks with developing crystal-clear presentation to allow my carefully crafted designs to be as accessible as possible. I really wouldn’t change much I think I’ve pushed myself farther than ever before, working on ISTD even with multiple other projects being managed, and constantly updating my sketches and always noting down any potential new ideas and then exploring them, I think this has resulted in a detailed sketchbook that shows a clear exploration of everything I attempted, showing a clear rationale as to why I’ve made what I’ve made and why it is deserving of an ISTD.
due to it’s size my final outcomes can’t be uploaded to wordpress but there is a link to them here if it’s not possivel to extract them from the ISTD submission – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PokeO6N5gpyI_d-k9a-OYRk17fjeNip3/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1A7g_6okamqAtwm2fbqNhzfIp3DYV8GKr/view?usp=sharing
Aidan's Graphics Blog 