PART 1 - Planning
For the next task as a group after the Presentation we decided we should do a thought bubble of the possible things we could do for the Newspaper task. At the moment we are unsure what to do and I suggested we should go back to the theme that we had done for the group presentation based on scientific illustration, considering we know most of the information we had gathered for it as research and we can just implement what we found and expand it into this new project. The others are not secured on the idea yet, but we had noted it down, along with several ideas we can do for the newspaper.
Afterwards we assigned ourselves to specific roles who
would be responsible of their creation and input that will eventually piece the
newspaper together at the end of the project. Taking everything into account of
what we have so far, all we need to do is to finalise the theme/topic for the
newspaper that we would all agree to do, before we can get into creating the
content. We have kind of established our individual roles, and some may
overlap/crossover to one another, as some of us do have some of practical
skills or knowledge of another role, while maintaining theirs. Since there’s 5
of us, 2 of us would need to share roles, considering there are 4 roles of
management.
Thought bubble of all the possible ideas we have so far,
things may change over time throughout the course of this project.
I would be in charge of the quality control of the images,
such as size, resolution and digital output. As I mentioned before about
overlapping between two roles, I may help with design (layout, text, fonts,
etc.) since I am working with images I would need to see how it would interact
with the text content and image placement.
I think we all need to get together every Monday to discuss
what we want and what we need to do together as a team and the only thing that
would hinder us is for some of us who does not turn up for Professional
Practice. With the absence of a group member, or worse, a few members, those
who are in attendance for Monday would have no idea what the others had done,
as well as unable to have a group discussion, which can be critical to advance
the project. We may have a long time until the deadline, but that doesn’t mean
we should leave it until the last minute, we need all the time to prepare.
PART 2 - Layout planning/drafts for pages
We have now agreed that the topic for our Newspaper would be based on the methodologies of traditional and digital printing of artworks, and this is our first step of advancement for the project. At the moment everything is basic but we will flesh out what we want to explore for the topic of the newspaper once we all discuss and agree what we want to achieve for the content we are going to create, whether that content consists of interviews, double page illustration tutorials, etc.
Our newspaper title, “So Basically” is currently a working
title, we have not finalised nor agree what title we would want to give our
newspaper yet, so as of now we are sticking to this current title until then,
but who knows if this would actually be the final title?
With the recent meeting of our group members, despite 2 of
them being absent, we agreed to move forward with the plan of having our
newspaper based on printing. We figured that the other two who weren’t in at
the time of discussion would agree with us to go forward with this topic,
because they don’t seem to mind at all, and as a group it took us quite a while
to make a final decision, because everyone of us were uncertain and each of us
has our own topic that we personally wanted to go for. But in the end we have
settled with ‘Printing’ as each of us have some knowledge of particular
specialism in printing (digital printing, screen printing, risograph printing,
etc.)
One of our group members, Beth, reveals some examples for
our newspaper layouts.
PART 3 - Meetings and Ideas
I have attended the meeting of those who are responsible
for the images for our Newspaper groups to listen in for any information that I
would need to know regarding on the role itself. Most of the information are
just of general knowledge of resolution, size and quality, which I already know
of considering I have been using Photoshop for quite some time. While the
meeting didn’t have much new information, I attended because it was compulsory
and to hear if there was anything specific or new that I need to be aware of
that I could take into account for the newspaper project.
Not a lot has happened, but after the meeting I sit in for
the InDesign tutorial of how to create templates and layouts for the text and
image to be placed in. Our member who is in charge with the Design role was
absent for the session, so I thought I should listen in on this tutorial so I
can pick up a few new things I can do with InDesign myself, though I lack the
experience, in comparison to Photoshop, of using it to its full extent which I
may struggle with when using the software.
Some few examples for my double page spread layout. We
wanted to keep the layouts of each of our double page spread as consistent with
each one so the pages in our newspaper doesn’t feel out of place between one
another, although it really depends what each of us wanted to do on our pages.
The final layout for my double page spread would probably end up being different
compared to the drafts as shown.
PART 4 - Update and Progress
We are half way through the project and it seems everyone
is not engaging as much as time passes by, not that we are unorganised, it
seems that all of us are becoming somewhat disconnected with the project while
we are working on other on-going projects. There hasn’t been as many meetings
as before, and not all of us are in together during the days. When we ever do,
some of us are not in and we don’t really tell each other what has been done
for the newspaper. We had a few brief meetings/updates on what is happening,
and it appears from now on it’s down to our initiative to do our double page
spreads before we assemble the newspaper. I continued working as usual, working
out my pages and piecing everything I got for my double page spreads.
For the fundraising part, there seems to be no progress at
all and I don’t know who is in charge with it, since I’m in charge of the
images (or should I say, originally in charge of it, considering the group kind
of fallen out of their roles now and everyone is just doing something for the
newspaper) I have no idea how are we going to get the money to print our
newspaper and the only option we appear to agree is to use our own money and
put it forward for the printing. However I think it was Beth or Chris who said
it is better to print using the risograph printer to save ourselves some money
and the time that is needed to originally print the newspaper through a website
that would take roughly 10 days for it to come, which would be too late because
of the time we have left before its deadline.
So we came to an agreement that we are going to print using
the risograph, though I need to double make sure that we are, because I don’t know if the others members are aware of it.
I continued on with my double page spreads to finish them, although
my expectations for our newspaper print is pretty low, considering the lack of
contribution that we all are offering together as a group to get the newspaper
project up to speed and organised, though I think everyone has done something
for it, it’s just that we are not organising the project properly which had
fallen out of our hands and we don’t know the overall progress of what is
happening with the newspaper.
Interview questions with one of my tutors that I can use for one of the double page spreads.
PART 5 - Progression of my double page spread
I have completed my double page spreads for the newspaper.
One double page spread is of information regarding digital printing, tips, and
general advice. The other consists of an interview with one of my lecturers,
Fumio Obata. Originally, the plan was to have a double page spread talking
about the printing method, which I had done, and the other was to be a spread
of a collection of digital artworks, which I did not do for a few reasons. Since
we agreed on printing the newspaper using the risograph I don’t think it is
possible to print the digital imagery of digital artworks through the riso (with
its very limited colour range) due to the fact that the riso is designed to
print 2-3 simple colour imagery and it would look odd and hard to see images of
digital illustration that involves a complexity of different range of colours
and tone. So instead I decided to dedicate the remaining double page spread to
an interview with my lecture about his knowledge and experience on printing
digital artworks.
Double page spread of the general information on digital
printing.
Double page spread of my interview with Fumio (colourising
the shapes still needs to be done).
Overall the double page spreads are ok, I’d rather keep it
simple than complicate things with complex imagery (as we are using the riso to
print our newspaper). I do not know what the other pages of our newspaper look
like (the other members are producing), so the consistency between our pages
may be different to one another. I just need to organise the colours that I
will use for the text and the shapes and make any final adjustments to the
pages before proceeding to print a test copy to ensure everything is ok.
PART 6 - Update and printing progression
We have finally be able to meet as a group, but with the
absence of Chris who should have been here with us to move forward with the newspaper
project as a whole, had caused a few frustration within the group. Jumanne and
Toby Luce had not started on their newspaper spreads, which has caused a lot
more pressure and frustration. We need to actually print on the day and they
had not done nothing for their spreads until now, which kind of annoyed me,
because as of today (07/04/2016) this is the only time we can produce our
newspaper using the Risograph printing, and we could not afford to waste any
more time otherwise, only stress and frustration of getting it done by the
deadline would cause more annoyance and low morale for our group.
My spreads are ready to print but with the lack commitment
from Jummane and Toby Luce of not doing any for their spreads until now is
literally holding off from being able to print, plus with the absence of Chris
on the day, we have no idea what he has produced for his double page spreads.
Later during the day Beth arrived and we managed to get
together with our double page spreads and to be sorted in chronological order
for printing, though there have been some adjustments and tweaking with the colour
separations (we decided to go for a 2 colour separation as this will ease the
time of producing the newspaper within the day), however with Chris not being
in we are unable to move forward to print the colour separation templates
without his spreads, which we really need to complete the newspaper. We managed
to contact him and have him send over his double page spread for Beth to fill
in the gap, and the content he had produced for his spreads is something we did
not really expect, as it was not about printing (not sure what the content is
about). This is probably a rushed attempt to get his spreads done for the day,
although we do not know the reason why he did it. Besides that, we were able to
move forward with the printing process with the Risograph to produce our
newspaper.
Layout plan sheet that Beth had managed to print our pages in proper order.
Front cover of the newspaper.
My double page spreads in the final print.
EVALUATION AND PERSONAL REFLECTION ON THE PROJECT
The results of the newspaper is pretty mediocre, due to the
overall lack of commitment from the group as a whole. While we may have
successfully finished the newspaper on the day, I still think a lot more could
have been done, but it’s the fact that we all are not really committed with the
newspaper and things were beginning to fall apart in terms of organisation and communication.
Everyone seemed to have gone off from what it was originally planned, and
everyone was undecided with what direction we are taking the project too, and
there has been confusion where one person thinks we are doing one idea for the
newspaper, while another was thinking of a different approach and this has
caused a lot of miscommunication.
This has then led to a standstill at the mid-way point of
the project and everyone does not know what we are actually doing for the
project, such as colours, consistency, methods of assembling the newspaper,
etc. which has caused frustration between group members, because we literally
have no idea what or how are we going to make the newspaper, which then led to
the abandoning of our roles that we all originally assigned ourselves to, as
some of us are not doing the job. The fund raising members, who I literally don’t
know who was supposed to be doing, didn’t do anything to raise money, and I
thought we are going to raise money, but it appears we are not, and the people
who assigned to that didn’t want to be involved in it, which had caused more
problems, which in turn led us to print using the risograph instead as a last
resort. I was in charge of the ‘Images’ but after a while, everyone else is all
over the place with their roles and this had caused some frustration and we
just ended do whatever we can for our newspaper spreads. From that point we
independently produce our double page spreads, for the sake of getting it done,
and we then group together for the assemblage of our pages to produce the final
newspaper.
To be honest, I didn’t really enjoyed the project as a
whole, as I had mentioned above, the organisation and the miscommunication is
what caused a lot of problems with the project and in our group. Some of us are
laid back and did not do anything until the last minute (Jumanne and Toby Luce
not started their spreads until the day of final printing) which was annoying.
I couldn’t do anything until we are DEFINITIVE on what we are going forward
with but everyone seems to agree either one thing or the other which, again,
caused some miscommunication. Originally I think Beth and Chris were in charge,
but it appears that their own views on the newspaper project and its
advancement/production kind of conflicts between each other, leading to some
disagreement about some of the ideas.
I believe that in general we are being overwhelmed with
other ongoing projects, which led some of us becoming more distant with the
newspaper project which probably had caused some lack of motivation and
dedication with the project, which is why there has been a lot of
miscommunication about the ideas we are going for, plus the lack of proper
meetings where some of us just don’t turn up for class. In the end, I’m just
glad we were able to finish the project before the deadline, it was a bit
frustrating and the final result of the newspaper could have been better, if it
wasn’t for the complications of communication.
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