Documentary

Introduction and Reflection

In this project we created documentary papers in English. One of the major tasks was finding a story, something or someone thats worth sharing. Each media class constructs a different type of documentary. Since I am a design student I constructed a book. My topic was on caricatures and I wrote an extended profile on Kyle Ames, a professional caricature artist.

This essay later developed in a book. The research paper essay we developed in English should resemble professional narrative style journalism. This documentary was a huge undertaking. Finding three interviews and looking to get good photos all the time was stress-full. Additionally I had to revise my paper several times until I had a final version I was proud of. Overall I was very proud of my documentary and learned a-lot in the process about caricatures. (click on image for essay)

Design Class Production

In design our task was to produce a book for our documentaries. We used InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator in order to achieve this. Our book must include our photography of interviews and subjects, and graphic elements. We focused on design principles, such as unity, repetition and alignment.

Below our some pages of my book.

This page shows my table of contents. On the left is a caricature I painted in Photoshop for my book. This caricature took me a while, because of the colors. The header and title font choices I used in this book were markers. I chose this because caricature artists tend to use markers for live fast drawings.

Here is another full spread from my book. On the right you can see a full bleed photo of my subject, Kyle Ames. In order to make full bleed photos it is important to have bleed lines in your document. Bleed lines predict the printers inaccuracy printing a harsh white board around your image. This full spread also shows a pull quote. Pull quotes are quotes we want to stand out and are directing taking from our interview transcripts.

Click on the image below to view Not Just a Funny Face! 

The Process

This screenshots shows my workspace in Adobe Illustrator as I design one of my graphics in my book. On the left you can see the tools we use. The most common tool I used to make this graphic, is the pen tool. The pen tool allows fro smooth and crips lines. I also use the line width tool to give my lines more variance. On the right You can see my layers, and swatches. It can help to separate certain colors on different layers. This helped me keep the whites in this photo in the back while grays go over.

This screenshot shows my workspace in Adobe Photoshop. This was one of the illustrations I used for my book. On the right you can see the layers I used. Other than that I only used one brush to complete this sketch. The brush I used simulated a graphite pencil. I increased the brush size when I need larger broader brush strokes and decreased the brush size for details.

This screenshot shows my workspace for Adobe Indesign. On the very left are all my tools. In the top left are my swatches and colors I restricted  myself to use in my book. In the bottom left is my text wrap options. In the top right are my layers. In the bottom right are my pages. The pages panel allows me to switch between all 30 of my pages. In the center of workspace you can see two spreads of pages I designed. Notices the grid lines in InDesign show me where to align my objects, photos or shapes. Also notices how my picture and blocks of color exceed the page lines and go to the bleed lines in order to get a better print.

 

Photogallery