Any thoughts or comments?

I've been playing around with my original table of contents page that everyone liked best, which originally looked like this:

However, it was recommended that I add some color, so I was wondering how the red was working.

This image below helps a little, showing the full page (better than a white page on white background like above)

A work in progress. Very slow progress. Slow and frustrating progress. Perhaps not even any progress at all.

I can't think of the last time I was this frustrated with anything.
Sounds a bit dramatic, perhaps, but I have no idea what I'm doing. InDesign is simple enough with my rudimentary knowledge, but there are a fair amount of things that I can't do at my skill level.
Say for example I have this image:













It looks perfectly fine, which it is. But I want to put this logo on top of an orange background, which I do. However, it has a white square behind it, because it is a square image. So how do I get rid of the white background? I've tried editing the image in Photoshop, but I have never used photoshop before today in my life, and therefore (logically) do not know what I'm doing. I have spent probably an hour trying to fiddle with this blasted penguin, but to no avail.

The same basic problem applied to this image as well:

The issue with this photograph is that, unlike the penguin above, I WANT it to have a white background. I only want to see the pile of books, and not the table and whatever is behind it. So once again I tried my hand at photoshop, and once again failed.

Another major issue I have come across is that of the internet. Frankly, it has let me down. I have discovered today that Google images is only so helpful. It has reached the point where I have looked up ever variation and combination of "classic penguin" "penguin book design" "penguin books" "tschichold" "penguin classics" (and so on) possible, and have probably scoured through every image labeled with one of these tags in an effort to gather a large enough selection of images to work with in my layouts. However, there are not very many pictures that fall into the category of what I am looking for, and those that do are of such extremely low quality and small size that they would be impossible to work with.

One more small qualm I have is the fact that we have been restricted to the Helvetica neue font family. However, my designer had his own typefaces that he created and which I have conveniently downloaded onto my computer. Why am I restricted to Helvetica when I could write about Tschichold in the font that he himself designed?

And as a final conundrum, the new sized grid is presenting a variety of issues that did not come about while I was working with the original grid. It is being all kinds of crazy. For starters, why are the vertical lines purple instead of blue like the horizontal guide lines? And why are the purple vertical guidelines in groups of two while the blue horizontal guides only have one? Why does a pink box outline remain around certain things after I have hit the "W" key to get rid of the guides?

I feel desperately confused and utterly helpless.

Book Design Show

On Friday I went to the Book Design Show at the University Press of Kansas.

They gave me a free book showing the winners from the 2011 Book, Jacket, and Journal Show!

After looking through all the books on display, I thought I would make a comparison of some of the Table of Contents since this is one aspect of our upcoming project. I thought it was interesting how, although they all share the same function, they look so completely different.

      One book in particular really struck me-- called Infinite City by Rebecca Solnit. Initially its cover caught my eye. It had some really interesting textural elements; the cover felt like a cardboard material, but the text on the back was printed on a smooth paper.

When I opened it, I discovered it also had a very unique layout and design. 

(sadly however, the pictures are not very high quality considering they came from my phone)

The book also had some very interesting and amusing maps:

And speaking of amusing (though unrelated)... I also found this silly little cactus:

Here it is, finally completely sanded!

I left it to dry overnight because of the polyurethane, and when I came to class I turned it in without remembering to take pictures of it finished! I snapped these two quick photos of my box sitting on the table, but it completely slipped my mind to photograph the inside and all angles! 

Silly me :(

Work-Day:

Here follows a stream of photographs detailing the process my block of wood underwent. 

I began by attaching a cut-out piece of paper detailing the scale and general outline of my box using double-stick tape as the adhesive. 

I then cut out this car silhouette from the original 5" x 8" x 2.6" block of solid walnut. 

Next I cut off the two sides. With the remaining middle section I cut off the bottom (which I thought would later become a box, but did not). Then with the top of that middle section, I cut out the middle and hollowed it out. 

(It is only resting on top momentarily for this picture- not attached)

Taking out the bottom middle section (which I had hoped would become the box) I then glued the remaining walls together.

(These handscrew clamps were so much fun to work with!) 

Below is my improvised impromptu revision for the issue of the flaw in my design:

Instead of making the bottom portion into a hollow box in which to place the object, I chose instead to use what little remaining wood I had to created a pedestal of sorts on which to place my object. 

Sanding...

... More Sanding...

(Basically just a ton more sanding followed this)

To the band-saw we go!

Finally, after all the preparation and planning, we were finally allowed to use the deadly tools!

Practice round:

      No, this randomly sawed up piece of scrap-wood is not especially aesthetically pleasing, but it served its function to familiarize me with the bandsaw. 

      But before I went anywhere near that shop of horrors, I was going to have everything mapped out to perfection so as to ensure an easy experience. So, the night before our work-day in the shop, I sat down on my futon with my cardboard model and my drawings and attempted to plan out exactly how to go about this procedure. 

       Here are my attempts to rationalize the complexity of cutting a three-dimentional shape using a tool I have no experience with:

      While I do think this preparatory planning was helpful come work-day, it did by no means ensure a perfect and problem-free operation. 

      In fact, my planning did nothing to prevent a mishap. Luckily, my mishap was fairly minor and did not necessitate a complete do-over. I did, however, have to go back to the drawing board and figure out how exactly to go about resolving this misunderstanding between me and the band-saw. You see, I wanted the saw to do something which it was sadly unable to do. So my original intent of having the bottom portion of the car silhouette become a hollow box was unsuccessful. 

      (More pictures of this to follow shortly)

Orthogonal Drawings:

Reflection...

Written Reflection on David Pye reading: The Nature & Design of Aesthetics

      This article emphasizes and focuses on how vital a role economy plays in design, despite its frequently widespread lack of acknowledgement. The article makes the point that economy is a major influence on design that often goes unrecognized. Sometimes people may refer to a product as being 'better' when they really mean it is 'cheaper'. Particularly in the field of construction, an enormous influence is exercised on shape by the cheapness of technique. 

The article then goes on to discuss the numerous techniques involved in altering materials. Two of these main techniques struck me as being highly relevant for our project, namely wasting techniques and construction. The first involves carving away at a material until the shape you desire remains. I realized that this was the method used for our band saw boxes, beginning with a solid block of wood and cutting that down into a box. Construction, which is the second technique, is making a whole out of parts by connecting them, which we also utilized in our project using wood-glue as the connecting element between the walls of the box. 

A long discussion on the meaning of human happiness follows, focusing on the contribution design makes in our everyday lives and well-being. According to the article, “the aim of design is to promote human happiness”, but design can only promote conditions in which happiness becomes predictable. These conditions are of freedom from primary ills such as hunger or tiredness. However, happiness is not a term that can be absolutely defined as a standard among all people since it means something different to everyone. But despite the fact that happiness is a vague and indefinable term, design nonetheless contributes to it by beautifying the environment. 

Models Galore!

      I retract a previous statement I made in regard to how much I hate cardboard. In fact, I love cardboard; but only on small-scale! And also preferably when it doesn't have to support my body weight. Therefore, making these cardboard models was quite fun, actually.

Model The First:

(Absence of space as shape)

Model The Second:

(Car Wheel)

(somewhat unimportant note: based on the unique three-spoke design of the Saab 9000 Aero wheel!)

Model The Third:

(Nuts and Bolts Box)

Model The Fourth:

(3-dimentional car shape)