Submission Finals, Rationale & Evaluation - Freakonomics Penguin Award

Submission Finals, Rationale & Evaluation - Freakonomics Penguin Award

Submission to Penguin was easy enough, following the given guidelines and templates a single front cover and a full spread was included in the submission PDF document, no explanation was needed for initial submission a further expansion of the concept and visuals will be requested if this design is shortlisted. 

Finals, Concept & Rationale

Book covers for economic books are quite dry and follow a similar quite boring aesthetic, the focus taken from this brief was to place economic books into a more contemporary light, aimed at the contemporary economist. 

To place economics in a modern day light a concept was created based on taking aspects of the everyday theories discussed in this book and create a visual representation of them through typography to meet the typographic needs of Penguins requests. This allows the aesthetic to sway away from the standard cityscapes and financial connotations using stock imagery or dry aesthetics in common economic books. 

Each glyph is individually designed and based on a different aspect of the book. 

The idea of using a simple black and white scheme gives it a more contemporary feel and sways away from the common use of colours used to denote finances and other business jargon. The alternative arrangement of the designed glyphs and the body copy follows a modular grid system, this modular grid system takes influence from old fashioned tile games, this adds a sense of interactivity too it and further enhances the idea of solving a theory is like solving a puzzle to an economist. Offering the end user a "Gateway into the world of economics" in a subtle, conceptual and interactive way. 

Working on an iconic overview of the book based on the hidden side of everything the glyphs are shown in a distorted way on the back cover, the clarity shown in the front cover shows how the book unravels these everyday issues and makes sense of these through complex theories. 

Evaluation

I chose this brief to expand on knowledge of hierarchy, editorial design and conceptual type design all focusing on an intended target audience to enhance my knowledge base on how to connect with an intended audience. 

Theres a pretty even split on how successful I see these aspects of the project carried out, the concept idea of portraying the hidden side of everything through image based typography influenced by aspects of the book worked well with how the distorting elements reflect with the clear and clarified typography on the cover. But I think some of the aesthetics used for these glyphs and there subjects there portraying could have been a little clearer, this could be taken too ways though. The idea of economics is to decode a theory so investigation into what these glyphs emulate can be discovered through investigation and reading of the book making a link between the two, the idea of the book cover was to draw people in so in this sense it works. 

But from a creative point of view I feel they could have shared more precise aesthetic connotations to emulate the subjects of the book. 

I enjoyed the opportunity to design typography with a more conceptual purpose, rather than relying on legibility and readability I was able to refresh my past interests on image based type design but in a more contemporary digital sense. 

It was good practice expanding on layout design for editorial work, theres lots of constraints within these types of format and usually a lot of body copy and visual content to organize so I needed to consider how the hierarchy of information is communicated through layout, colour, weight and typographic origins and anatomy. The use of a modular grid system allowed lots of layout freedom though without things feeling out of place and unconsidered. 

In terms of hierarchy of information I feel this was carried out well, by creating image based glyphs this created a focus point within the outcome that carried the whole concept and the requirements of the brief aiming at contemporary audiences through these aesthetic glyphs. The weight of them drew attention in but didnt overpower the contextual typography surrounding them, through the use of a modular grid system this information was communicated to the end user precisely ye had a certain interactivity and motion too it keeping the eye moving around the page which works well with the concept of unpicking and working out theories. 

The use of simple black and white colour scheme met the contemporary needs and maintained focus on the glyphs with no visual distraction, the boldness of the headers and these glyphs work alongside each other to place these glyphs into context as there is brief explanation of some of these glyphs within this body copy on the front cover.

If I was to carry out this brief again using the same concept I would focus on expanding the idea of a puzzle more, an idea that had lots of milage in meeting the needs of the brief that mentioned it needed to be a gateway into economics, this use of a puzzle would act as a vessel for the end user to decode the cover, much like they decode theories. The idea of presenting the hidden side of everything worked well though, maybe a few more days development on the layout with these glyphs could have presented a more interactive aesthetic to the front cover.