OUGD 404 - What is a book - 10 Things research and development

Research for my 10 things you need to know about graphic design. Ive been looking at lots of different zines recently and I like how a lot of them are laid out, I want to take some ideas from these and use them in my own way. I want to keep the publication simple and too a minimalist style because I feel it will best work this way.

I like the way the letters have been stacked here to reflect the title. I will layout some typography in a similar way in my 10 things.

The red brackets on this page really add to the whole thing, if they wernt there then it would be a very standard spread, I might experiment with using something like this.

This was an advert I found in Creative Review, the use of type and image works really well together.

My book needs to contain some of the following -

colour theory 

typography and font rules

semiotics

pantone matching system

grids and layouts

sizing (points, picas and inches)

grids and layouts 

illustration

anatomy of a typeface

negative space 

type hierarchy

Im going to research each individual area by looking through my past blog posts and notes taken from the lessons, I want to include the individual things i feel relate mostly to my and this year of graphic design. Illustration will definitely be a feature of my 10 things book as a lot of my graphics is illustration based.

The layout of my book is very important as it is a book about graphic design so the book should reflect well on the subject, I have drawn up several thumbnails that represent some of the possible layout designs that I will use on some of the pages. 

I want to use a square format page for my book as i think it will be a bit more interesting that just a standard format, Ive chosen a page 23cm by 21cm so that I can fit a double page onto a sheet of A3 mainly to cut down on printing costs. 

Selecting a typeface is a very important part of creating a publication as its something that will remain a constant throughout the book. After trying out several type faces I found two that worked well together.

For the headers and sub header I chose to use a typeface I found on Dafont called Go Long 

For the body copy typeface I chose Futura because I feel its quite a simple font that complements the headers well when I tried it out on a mock layout.

My final 10 things document will include the following categories. 

Readability
Legibility
Colour theory 
Grids and layouts
Pantone colour matching 
Semiotics 
Typography 
Points and picas 
Illustration
Fonts