Uni project - Guidebook 01by ~kimiko

Designs & Interfaces / Editorial Design

Semester 1 2007. 3rd year Bachelor of Design, 2nd year Graphics/Media elective.

18x10cm, three colour palette (blue, brown, orange). 4 spreads, back cover and interiors. The inside cover has an extendable flap, which hides a map of the Sydney CBD as it's changed over time.

The brief for this was to design a guidebook for a historic houses trust site of our choice, which we had researched earlier. It had to have a limited colour palette and use images and content sourced solely by us. It also had to include a diagram or map and an icon set designed by us.

I had a lot of fun with this project, and some frustrating moments. For a long time I had tried to make the back cover image of the doorway work as the front cover, but I couldn't get it to produce a meaningful layout so I scrapped it towards the very end and used a completely different image. I think it works a lot better. Another part was experimenting with body copy layout to get something dynamic going instead of boring columns of text, so it took a bit of trial and error in that department.

I'm really pleased with how it turned out in the end. Working with a limited colour palette was interesting too; you couldn't rely on the inherent colour quality of the original photographs, and you had to think about the tonal adjustments of the colours you chose.