Design Considerations.

 Looking at a number of aspects of design production I collated the content into a small a5 zine to get a feel for how it would look. The images seemed lost on the page and the size of the zine did not show the images large enough, the posters needed a wider space so that details could be seen and appreciated. The paper was regular cartridge paper which was influenced by old zine styles of cheap manufacture for wider distribution. Continuing to research into different sizes of publications it is clear a larger size is required to fully show the content of the book.

For the cover, the initial idea was to design it like a poster board with layers upon layers then scanned in, this idea then changed to collaging a poster from all the posters received which would form the front cover. The cover would be influenced heavily by the poster boards, this rough style also links in with other research undertaken. Changing the dimensions of the book to a4 give the book a long feel like it was out of proportion with it being to high and not wide enough. Continuing to look for a more appropriate size to the book, it seemed that all poster books had the width of an a4 page of paper but with a shorter height, for example -

'Oh So Pretty. Punk In Print.' - Toby Mott

A Visual guide to the punk movements from 1976 to 1980, looking at periodicals, posters and art work from the time of anarchy and anti establishment fuelled sub culture which stormed the nation. It presents 500 artefacts - 'zines,' gig posters, flyers, and badges - from well-known and obscure musical acts, designers, venues, and related political groups. While punk was first and foremost a music phenomenon, it reflected a DIY spirit and instantly recognisable aesthetic that was as raw and strident and irrepressible as the music. As disposable as the items in this book once were, together they tell a story about music, history, class, and art, and document a seismic shift in society and visual culture. The books dimensions are 280 x 215 mm (11 x 8 1/2 in), this size would be efficient for Leeds Music Culture publication as it would allow images to have enough space for clear viewing as well as space for descriptions.


For the binding initially the idea was for the publication to be a zine style which would be made entirely from paper, but looking at the experiments attempted, e.g the cover being a collage of torn up posters, this would then be scanned in, but having seen the outcome of the experiments it became clear that the cover should remain a collage on a hard back cover bound with tape with the pages of the book with a simple saddle stitch, this would keep the publication clean and easily read.  For the idea to collage the front cover it was clear that the collage had to wrap around the edges of the grey board so that it was covered entirely. The saddle stitch and book tape idea was attempted to see if they worked, the book tape wraps well around the covers to merge it and from the front and back though the saddle stitch through the tape does not work to well, there is no relevance to it, it is best to keep this stitch hidden behind the tape.


Keeping with the collage effect, and creating a look for the book, the title needed to be placed within the book as the covers were purely poster collage, a concept was thought of to have the title of the book and author name in collage within the first few pages of the book.

The letters were ripped from the posters used to make the collage, this gives a punk sort of feel (Influenced by the zine research) This will be stuck into the first few pages of the publications taking up the entire page.