OUGD603 - Brief 8 - Notebook / Journal - Development - Notebook lines

Notebook Lines

To work out what line width would be appropriate for within the notebook different variations were printed out to see how they would look in real life. These were also compared with other notebooks to get a sense of their functionality. It was decided that the second set of lines would be the most appropriate for a small notebook and still make it easy for people with different sized handwriting to use the book.

For the arrangement of the lines within the book it had been considered in previous initial ideas that these could be rotated to create angled lines and negative space within the pages making blank areas of space to also write on. 

To create this idea it was considered that lines could be printed onto a sheet of paper then when layered within the book at an angle and cut down this would naturally rotate the lines within the book whilst creating the geometric shapes within the pages and lines. Creating all the pages this way however might be quite awkward to write in because of the angle of the lines, so this would have to be tested to see how function the concept would be.

Alternatively it was considered that the lines could be clipping masked to fit within a geometric shape. This would allow the lines to be straight and potentially more functional to write on, whilst still allowing both lined areas and blank spaces to be created. By clipping masking the lines into geometric shapes this would recreate the same shapes that would be made if the lines were straight with the pages then rotated. This allows the idea of the layering and quirky shapes to still be created within the line design without the need for physically doing it to the pages. Potentially these pages could also be rotated within the book so that the pages were cut in different ways creating physically geometric pages.

These ideas were tested digitally. A block of lines was created and rotated in different ways so that they overlapped and expanded off the pages in different ways. The block of lines was placed over two artboards to create two different pages with the same block of lines. Rotating the lines in this way reflects the process of layering and rotating the pages that will be used within the book to create the book format. Rotating the lines created varying degrees of angled lines which would encourage the user to rotate the book to use it making it more interactive and playful. Negative space is created within these designs allowing each page to be multifunctional.

In the other experiments a rectangle was layered over a double spread of straight lines. The clipping mask tool was them used to cut the straight lines to match the shape of the rotated box. This allowed the same forms to be created within the pages however all of the lines would be straight making it easier to write within the design. Negative space was also created within this design making them similarly multi functional to the other idea.

The block of lines in the first experiment and the rectangle used in the second were both sized to be the same as a double spread within the book to reflect how other pages are rotated within the book with the same process being used with the lines digitally.

It was considered that each page could be cut to a completely different geometric shape however this perhaps lacked the consistency of using the same shape but at different angles over the pages.

Overall it was decided that the pages with the straight lines cut to geometric shapes would be used as this would make the notebook more functional at a small size (A6 or A5) whilst retaining the same quality as the first idea. It would also make the book easier to produce as the pages will be able to be bound as a block rather than rotating all of this type of page individually.