- Magic
- Film & Television
- Ping Pong
I ended up choosing Ping Pong as I felt this offered me the most scope in terms of design and would result in the most interesting project. In terms of the different titles that we have been given to look into, I looked into each to ensure I chose the most appropriate route for my research. After having looked through each, I decided to work with 'An Exhibition Of...'. I like this title as it has almost got two meanings depending on how you think of the word 'exhibition'; in terms of design it means something completely different as it does in terms of the sport of table tennis. As I am now working with the idea of an exhibition, its meaning in relation to table tennis as opposed to design, I decided that I want to create a series of stills taken from video. I want these to be obviously screenshots from a video instead of trying to find very high quality footage. After I have experimented with various different ways of layering the imagery etc I will analyse its success and decide whether I want to continue with this idea. If so, I think that I would like to film my own footage to work with, as opposed to taking footage from online.
To start with, I used this video in order to gather some screenshots:
From this footage, I took a series of screenshots initially to work with. I then printed them onto sheets of tracing paper to see how they worked when laid over each other. I also tried adding strokes to follow the movement of the ball to see how visible it was when the sheets were placed on top of each other. Here are some images of the results and the mock-ups I showed at the crit:
As you can see, due to the opacity of the images, they appear to be blurry when placed on top of each other. However, I do like the way in which the line becomes more faded with each sheet that is placed on top, almost mimicking the idea of movement. I took these sheets into the critique in order to get a sense of where I was taking it. At the moment, I am quite unsure of what I am doing with the project and how it would work as a 16 page booklet.
The feedback from the critique went as expected; as I was slightly unable to explain what I was doing with the project and where I wanted to take it, people were unsure as to what to suggest. They liked that they could visualise the movement of the ball and the coloured dashes made it very clear as to where the ball was etc. However, they did mention using more information and I was often asked various questions to do with the technical side of the sport, such as the rules etc. I realised from this that I myself don't actually know all of the rules, at least not to the point were I could inform others of the correct rules.
CHANGE OF PLAN:
As I found myself telling people the rules, or on occasion not actually knowing about the rules when asked I have decided to go down the route of making a rule book which would inform people, no matter what their knowledge, about the rules of the game. With this new direction, I began looking at different lay-outs to see they various ways in which I could arrange the content:
I really like the coloured text and feel that it makes it much easier to read, especially in the places in which it overlaps imagery. I also really like the idea of using screenshots and dotted lines to show the game and highlight the various parts of the sport the rules are talking about. With this in mind, I came up with this layout:
Which I then applied to another page to make sure it could work consistently throughout my book:
Within this design, I have got the information relating to the place that I found the footage, the players names and information about that specific match, as well as rules correlating with the imagery. As seen above, these rules are discussing the paddle and so the imagery has been chosen specifically to show the reader what the rules are about. I then simply repeated this process for each page and produced the entire booklet:
Now that my book is finished I can focus on the second part of this project, studio brief 2, which involves continuing with our chosen research topic and creating numerous outcomes. I decided to produce work for this brief first before creating the cover for this book, which meant that when both briefs are completed they would work much better as a set. This is how the final printed book looks, including the cover that matches the work produced for studio brief 2:
Here are some close-ups of various features of the book:
In terms of packaging, I did the same thing as I did with the cover; I waited until completing studio brief 2 in order to create something that worked as a set. This being said, the packaging was very simple and appropriate for the research topic and mimicked that of cheap table tennis equipment. It simply involved a clear bag with a piece of paper or card stapled around the top to seal in the book, as seen below:
