Preliminary Design Process

Upon embarking on the Humber Jazz Ensemble's CD project, I began by taking into consideration the time constraints that will be present with this project. I thought about how much time I will have for developing a concept and producing a mock-up CD case for the client presentation.

After considering this, I started by conducting a research of the Humber Jazz Ensemble, or better yet, the entire music program at Humber, to get a feel for the atmosphere and aspirations of the faculty and students. I then proceeded to read through the client brief that I recieved in class, and tried to get a good feeling of what this CD means to the students and the Jazz company. I did some additional research on the meaning behind the word "prologue", which is essentially the introduction to a beginning, or the introduction to a story.

From the research, I was able to conduct a type hunt, where I searched for typefaces that I felt related best to the message being communicatied from my research and ones that would communicated the feelings and emotions of the music and CD contents most appropriately. This stage is so critical in my personal research procedures as ensuring a proper typographic vernacular is critical for me, as I use the type and the feelings and tone being communicated in the type to develop layouts and other visual elements for a piece.

I then produced several thumbnail sketches and figured out how the layout was going to function upon assembly. I explored several layout options and type treatments. This project is one in which how the type is handled will have a profound effect on the success of the design solution.

After thumbnails I moved to the computer and produced a template layout. From there I applied my concepts and explored type setting methods, as well as the application of the photographs to the layout. I printed off my layout variations and will present them to Heather on Monday.