Coffee and water

I turned the coffee postcards into coasters. I think they work much better, and context means that people are more likely read them as they will be on a table in front of someone for a potentially long time:





I have also been taking photos of water bottles for a post card that compares the profits of the water industry to the number of people without clean water. I want one photo with ten full bottles of water, and one with one full bottle and nine empty ones.

Here's some of the positions I tried (with full bottles):







Here's the final arrangement (very hastily 'Photoshopped'):



Although I was speaking to Laura M. today and she suggested instead of 9 empty bottles, nine bottles filled with dirty water. I reckon that could work better and would be clearer.

Chocolate

Another 'info couplet' - again, the context is going to be what makes these work, I'm just trying to gather the content first, before thinking too much about context. I'm aiming for 15 pieces of info - potentially this could then be 5 sets of 3 'things (eg. 3 postcards, 3 bill boards, 3 web-banners, etc.). Anyways, one about chocolate and child labour (I have just used google images for the image, but it get the message across for the purpose of my blog).

Asylum Statistics

Coffee, clothes and climate change

I have started to figure out how my 'Made You Think' campaign will work - about time too... Basically, there is going to be 'promotional' material, juxtaposing information which creates links between us as British citizens, and the rest of the world.

Working logo:

Here are some of the statements I have been looking at - please note, this is probably not the final format, I have just done them like this to' get them down'.

Fairtrade Coffee: 

What do you think of my 2p coffee stain? I constructed a big cardboard 2p to make it...

Tesco's clothes (not final imagery):

 

I could not find the statistics for this one, so had to abandon it.

Government spending:

New Maps

I have been attempting to put together a map making it instantly apparent that Britain's global influence is massive.

I have taken the areas of War, Colonisation, Unfair Trade and Drug/Human Traffiking, and made a map only showing countries that are noticeably effected by the UK in these areas.


This map is made of different coloured stripes representing the different elements. (Click to enlarge.)





I'm not sure if people need to know specific details, so I have simplified this one right down, so that the darker the colour the more affected the country has been. Not sure how to do the key though. (Click to enlarge.)

Maps

I just remembered that Fred told me about Peters Map a couple of weeks ago, so decided to check it out.

Basically, the standard world map - the Mercator map - accurately plots the shapes of countries, however to do this is must compromise of scale (when transferring 'data' from the surface of a shere to a rectangle there must always be a compramise).

Because it was made in the 1500s (the start of the colonial years), the positioning of Europe means that it's scale is exaggerated, and the scale of Africa and South America is shown much smaller. Worst of all is the 'Greenland Problem' - because of is northern position Greenland appears the size of China, despite the fact it is actual around a quarter of the size.

The Peters Projection Map instead compromises the shapes of the countries for an accurate scale, meaning, politically, a much 'fairer' map that represents all the countries equally.

Mercator Map


Peters Map


I also found a link to this map of the Peters Map website. Its a map of the USA, predicting the voting in different states, however, to make it communicate the information more directly they have based the map on population (which is the important part), not geography. Awesome idea - it looks good too.

I've actually spelt my name wrong

I was just putting this post together. As I was uploading the images of my lovely book I noticed the last thing I ever wanted to notice, ever. I had made I spelling mistake...I spelled my name wrong....on the front cover....

I must have pressed 't' the short cut for selecting the type tool in InDesign, not realising I already had the type tool up, and a text box selected. I must have done it just before I exported it because I made sure I checked I had spelt my name right (I didn't want to look like an idiot did I).

After nearly breaking my fist punching the wall, I realised that this could infact be a blessing in disguise: lets face it, the Lulu cover is going to be some flimsy overly glossy piece of crap. This is an excuse to make myself a new cover. I can have full control over the stock I use, all I need to do is tear the old cover off (its just a little bit of glue down the spine), and glue a nice new (typo-free) cover. Awesome!

Every cloud....

Anyways, here is the original post (check the cover at the end)


I uploaded and ordered my Design Context book from lulu.com yesterday. It took ages, this was for two reasons. 1. I'm an idiot and kept noticing mistakes and having to reupload it. 2. Lulu's an idiot. She doesn't give much info on full bleed pages, I had to search through the frequently asked questions section to get info I needed - ie, do you export PDFs as spreads or single pages, and do you add bleed to all edges, or just the outside ones?

Still £18 for a 127 page book isn't three bad at all...

Click here to download it as a PDF (if you do this please don't tell me about any spelling mistakes or owt like that — I really don't want to know).

Here's some spreads:







And the cover: