Mood Board

I created the above mood board to help me consider the various approaches I could take to designing my proposal. As I want to create a document that is easy to read I want to keep my content concise and laid out in a clear manner. I would also like this document to act as a template for all future proposals.

I have therefore focused on finding document formats primarily made up of text as this is a new project and will be lacking in imagery that I can use. I also want the document to appear more formal as it is a project management document that may be referred back to throughout the project.

I like the idea of using typography and colour choices as points of interest throughout the document. I love the bold use of black and white in the second to the left outcome as well as how typography has been used at different scales to create points of interest in the design. I also love the highlight colours throughout each document and how colour is used to draw attention to specific items by underlining and housing information.

 

Visual Grammer by Christian Leborg

Visual Grammar is a book written by Christian Leborg and is intended to be a primer on visual language and a visual dictionary of the fundamental aspects of visual communication. The purpose of the book is to define the basic elements of visual grammar, describe their patterns and processes and understand the relationship between individual elements in the system.

I thought this book could be helpful in providing me with a clear structure and approach to the visual grammar of my design proposal.

I wanted to start with the basics so I began by looking at format, shown above. In this section, format is described as

“Everything we see in relation to it external limits”

The following page discusses format in relation to scale and measurement. It also discusses different types of format measurements such as screen formats, topographic points and formats for maps, paper and books. It is interesting to note that is presented in Grid Systems in Graphic Design by Josef Muller-Brockmann it is also highlighted here that most book formats are based on the golden ratio. While I am not designing a book layout it still may be worthwhile to consider the golden ratio in my own document format.

As I am producing a formal document I thought it may also be useful to look at the section on formal structure. As stated in the Formal Structure page above

“When object are evenly distributed in a composition, the structure is formal. The axes according to which the objects are organized are called structure lines.”

My understanding of this is that when creating a formal document is to place elements of the design in an organised manner within the confines of the structure lines that make up my document. It may also be a good idea to keep my format regular i.e use repeated patterns in my formats so that pages with similar content types mirror one another.

I then moved to look at size and colours to areas that I knew I wanted to pay particular attention to following the creation of the above mood board.

Considerations that must be made in relation to size are as follows:

“The size of an object must be evaluated in relation to its placement and the format in which it will function.”

Taking the above statement into consideration I should therefore consider the content I am placing and its role in the format. I can then make decisions on sizes on that basis. e.g. while the body content is important I will not want the content to fill the whole format I will also want to make space for larger headings and subheadings, I will also likely want to leave white space as well in order to avoid cluttering my format.

I then moved to section scale as I felt this would be a natural progression from size and something I was already beginning to consider.

The following was stated in relation to scale:

“Upscaling/Downscaling

Objects are enlarged or scaled down along the x-axis and the y-axis. These directions are called horizontal and vertical or level and perpendicular.”

This is a very important consideration as it highlights how to scale objects up and down proportionally, a very clear mark of good design in my opinion.

Finally, I looked briefly at colour. Colour is outlined as different wavelengths of light. Colour is divided into three categories hue, ton and saturation. As I have covered colour in previous topics these are terms I am familiar with however as I have selected a monochromatic colour palette for my brand that I intend to use throughout my proposal document it may be interesting to experiment with differents tones and levels of saturation in my design outcomes.