Typogateaux

Initial stages;
First getting the brief for typogateaux, lots of different ideas came to mind about what I should do, then I decided to team up with Melissa. We both looked individually at different ideas then brought our ideas together to see what we could make.

Design sheets;

My first ideas were to create a teared cake, looking into type exploding from it, like a volcano, maybe using popping candy to increase the effect when its being eaten. But then I wanted it to not only include typography but have a graphic design context to it. So I then looked at favourite fonts and typefaces, having most popular on to, down to average, then the bad. But then I thought that it would a judgement call, as some people like using rubbish fonts.

Then started to look at cake pops, as I found that it hadn't been done before in the brief typogateaux. This would make our entry unique, therefore me and Melissa decided that producing cake pops would work well for us, also to make it typogateaux we wanted to make the cake pops letters. I then looked at different ways which we could decorate them, for example; stripey, spotty, christmasy or plain.

Thinking about different way to display the cake pops was the main concern as when they have been produced they can't simple remain uncovered and just on a surface. Therefore I thought about polystyrene blocks to stand them in, also looked at placing then in a cake. As long as the cake and the cake pops kept to the same theme this would work well.

As it is close to christmas, I thought that it could be a good idea to do a christmas themed cake, although after speaking to Melissa about the decorations and theme we should use, we decided to go with a girly pink and white theme, and thought to use spots.

The final idea;

Also after researching how to make cake pops we found that we could use little cases for them, then they can be transported into college, also we could just place them around the cake as the are quite heavy, and the cake/polystyrene may not hold them all.

Making the cake/cake pops;

Making the mixture

Decorations

Choice of tine sizes

Ready to bake, two tears and extra for cake pops.

Cake for the cake pops.

Crumbling the cake.

Ready to add the frosting to the crumbled cake.

Start forming letter keeping the letter in the space of 5cm by 7cm, and a depth of 1,5cm to keep them all consistant. Also the stick need to be able to stay in the cake pops, this requires us to have a certain depth.

A

Thinking about counters, we could have cut them out but the candy melt, which goes around the outside, will cover it up anyway and it will have less of a structure and may fall apart easier, therefore we decided that this will make our typeface individual as we won't have counters.

B

Cake half crumbled for the cake pops.

ABCDEF

Melissa cutting out the H.

Almost a full alphabet.

Dipping

We had difficulties when putting in the sticks as some of the cake pops that had been made first were slightly harder to get in as it crumbled. To get the sticks to stay in the pop we had to put some of the melted candy melts into bowl and dip the sticks into them then immediatly put them into the cake, then freeze them so that they stay in place.

Ready to freeze.

The base

The base for the cake was made with the same vanilla sponge as the cake pop, also we thought about making layers but it may have looked slightly off therefore we made it like a giant butterfly cake. Cutting the top off the cake and putting the same frosting into the cake and some jam, then putting the top back of, and coated it with icing.

Freezing.

Cake pops

We decided to make some normal cake pops as well as when we were putting the letters on their sticks some of them were cracking and looked a bit week. We thought that putting them in the freezer will make them harder and keep them in place until they get coated. But just in case we decided to make some normal cake pops because we thought that this could be our back ups, also we had some left over cake pop mixed. With the remainder of the cake pop we had mixed, we decided to make some glyphs such as ? ! / 1.

Top layer of cake before iced.

Iced and placed on top.

With the tears after placing the top cake on, it showed lines, marks and didn't look very professional, therefore we decided to ice the gap in pink, which was harder than we initially thought it would be. Although the icing doesn't look like it has been done very well it all looks the same, therefore keeping it consistant on the bottom and the top.

Making the spots.

Icing the letters.

When icing the letter we decided to do two layers because they were very delicate therefore doing the first coat and then letting them set meant that on the second coat we could be a bit rougher, to get more on. We used the polystyrene to keep the letter up and make sure they don't touch each other or stick to each other.

We different sized circle stencils and cut them out for the cake and the letter. Although this took a long time as we should have found some circle cutters or something, as they weren't very well crafted circles, although Melissa found a way of disguising the jagged edges so it didn't look as rough. Also as the letters were small the circles had to be even smaller therefore we used a straw as a cutter, and it make the process a lot quicker.

Sticking the spots on the cake.

Type pop packaged.

When packaging the letters we had to be really careful not to pull the sticks out of the letters. We put the gold tags on first, this kept the packaging in place, then cut them down so that the gold wasn't visible. We then put pink and white bows on top of the gold to cover it and make it look aesthetically pleasing, also keep it with the same theme. We underestimated how much ribbon we would need as the plan was to have both pink and white ribbon on both, but we didn't have enough therefore we used alternate, and on the cake pops we used both.

Final cake

Choosing the name for our typeface took a long time, we thought about it all the way through making the cakes. It was only right at the end where we thought of type pop, as we thought it is simple and to the point. Putting the name of our typeface on the cake links the cake to the letters, just in case the letter don't stick in the cake very well.

Finished type pop.

Presentation

Presenting the type pop on the cake we found hard as the letters are really heavy therefore putting them in the cake at an angle was hard and they started to slightly fall down, therefore we shoved them really far in so that they can't fall. The initial idea was to use LCA in the cake but unfortunately the C suffered on the ice on the way in and was really weak, and was at a risk of breaking therefore we didn't want to temp fate. Although we put the '!' in instead and it looked good and worked well, also positioning the letters around the cake worked well too.

Trophy

 Typogateaux went really well as me and Melissa won, and this is the trophy that we got for it.

Evaluation;

Me and Melissa worked really well as a team, we both did individual research then brought it together to get a broad range of information for our project. It worked really well even though we thought half way through that it might fail because of the structure of the letters.
If we were to do this again, we would probably have made the letter a little bit thicker so that they have more depth to put the stick in, this would make the letters more sturdy. This would have made the process easier as on some of the letters, they fell apart and had to make them again, which made the process longer, therefore this would cut out a large chunk of time. We would also have thought about how to cut out the circles from the icing, maybe getting circle cutters, this would have made our lines sharper.
If we had more time we could have made the cake bigger, we could have had more tears to it, and spell out the 'Type pop' in the type pop. We could have also made more glyphs, as in the end we only had two as two of them broke when we were trying to coat them, as we used them as tester just in case they went wrong as they weren't as important as the rest.
Overall I think that it went well, and as we won we shouldn't really change anything, although I would have tried to change these things anyway to make the cake even better. We wouldn't change the baking aspect as the cake pops taste suprisingly nice. We worked well as a team and I would work with Melissa again.

How To...Make People Read More

Initial ideas;
The initial ideas we had for this brief were to work as a large group, this way we had more people, therefore would get more work done through the week. When planning how to do, How To...Make People Read More, as we all had different categories, we thought we would all assign different jobs. We started to brainstorm ideas which we could use for this brief;

We were all thinking of different ways which we could get people to read more. Coming to the conclusion we should start with helping children to read more, showing them the joys in reading, and making it fun for them. We were going to use the story The Wizard of Oz, and have it leading from the entrance of a school to their library with illustrations following the story, this will enable children to enjoy reading more, and show them where to go to do this. We then thought that we would just use quotes on walls outside leading to public libraries, also entrances in schools to their libraries. We would also create bookmarks that children would be attracted to.

When organising what people in the group should do for this brief, we decided to go with each of our strengths, therefore people who were better on illustrator could create the characters and people who are better on photoshop could do the photoshopping the images onto walls e.t.c. I was given the task to make the bookmarks. Everyone had something different to do, as Jasper was doing the spacial design, looking at where the quotes will go what what they will look like, Ana looked into the quotes and what they will say, Mel made the sticker charts and the stickers, and Danielle was creating the characters on illustrator, these are the characters she sent me;

Bookmarks;
Knowing that I had to create the bookmarks I started to research it thoroughly to find out which books to use, and what makes a good children's bookmark, why they are attracted to them and how I should apply that to my bookmarks. I also thought about have reading lists and reading levels on the bookmarks, so that when a child has finished one of the book on that list, they can check it off, this will engage the children more, it will give them something to do and look forward to when reading.

I looked at making the bookmark into a character so that the children will engage with it more. Looking at having information on the front and the back of the bookmark or just on the front. Also considering stock as there will be a check list on the bookmark for the children to tick off when they have read the book, therefore it can't be laminated.

I thought about having a small pouch on the back of the bookmark, something that can be removed from the bookmark and stuck to a wall by the side of the children's bed or something. This would work well as you would be able to fit more detail on the poster, it could have information graphics on it, to show children how to read. You could also fit more books on the poster, although it might be a bit fiddly, and the pouch may take up a lot of room, therefore making the bookmark useless.

After doing my research about the levels of reading, I made some mock ups of the front and back of a bookmark, showing the different books they can read. This gave me a basis of how to structure the bookmarks, and where things should go in each level.

When Danielle sent me the illustrations I used the heads from them to create the bookmarks, when doing this I had to remake the illustrations because our software wasn't compatible, so it was difficult to make it the same. I created a structure so that the heads are all the same size and the 'bodies' are all the same size too.

After creating the bookmarks I printed them off to see how the print quality was, and as I screen shot some of Danielle's illustrations then put bodies on them, it was clear that the bookmarks were pixelated and needed to be re-drawn, so that they are a better quality. Here are some images and evidence of how bad they came out as a print;

Applying the levels;
Depending on which animal the text is on, the colour of the text could change colour so that it is easier to see. Although when experimenting with different colours of text I found that white works best for all of them. I then printed them out to show the group and see what they thought about the bookmarks. When we were thinking about the application of the bookmarks, we thought that we would need a book stand. Danielle was making the holder for the bookmark, and we realised the holder would have to be massive because of the size of the bookmarks, therefore we decided as a group that the bookmarks could be smaller.

Going form the top size to the bottom. On the top bookmark there was room for all six different reading levels, whereas there isn't room on the bottom one. Because of this I thought that the way which we can see if the bookmarks are working or not, is by completing one bookmark by ticking all the boxes, then taking it back to the library to receive the next bookmark, with the next 3 levels on it. This means that there will be have room on the bookmark as there will only be three levels on each, also we can see if what we are doing is working.

The white writing on the black bookmarks works really well as there is a high contrast between black and white. Each of the bookmarks has the lists of levels on the back, and the front simply shows the animal/character.

These are all of the backs of the bookmarks. Creating the backs of the bookmarks was more challenging than the front, as they are being double sided printed, therefore having the text in the right place is crucial. I also wanted to have consistency with the bookmarks, so having white text for all of them would keep that consistency.

The back of a bookmark levels 5 to 7.

The back of the bookmark level 8 to 10.

Both of the bookmarks look similar, by changing the colour of something like the text or changing the layout of the text will separate the two different leveled bookmarks. Although when experimenting with this I found that it was effective on some but not others, as I tried black text, but then there would have to be a white box around the text on the penguin as the penguin is black. Therefore as it looks better as white text, I will keep it like this for all of them, and when handing the next levels out at the library, people will just have to read the levels to check they are doing the right thing.

Having two options for seals, meant that we could chose which one looked better as a bookmark, we decided that the one with the grey heard would work better as a bookmark, less plain, but still simple enough for it to work well.

I decided with the patterns on the character I would make it as if the base was the actual body, therefore gave the penguin a belly and gave the giraffe spots. I initially tried to design them so that it was just the head on block colour, but found that it didn't look right, especially with the giraffe. As there is no writing on the front, it doesn't matter if its decorative, as it will only make the children want it more.

When changing the lengths and the shapes of the, I went from the top image to the bottom. When doing this I found it hard to change the shape of some of the different animals for example the giraffe. Therefore I decided to just put a white box over the bottom of it, as you can slightly see on this image. This did not work well, its doesn't look very professional, and it needs to be changed.

These are three of the bookmarks which have been redrawn on illustrator, they are a lot better quality on screen therefore will definitely be better when printed.

The finished bookmarks, front and back;

Posters;
Although it was Anna's job to come up with the quotes and put them into posters and do the designs for the wall murals, as we all had the same same quotes and the same illustrations of the characters. I decided to do some different layouts for them, also different situations that the characters were in.

Experimenting with posters;

This was used in the brief as one of the poster, it is trying to symbolise an adult of teacher telling children about reading and how good it is for them.