LAYOUT DESIGN

I decided to look at the layout for my publication and experiment with the different pages. Looking at my previous research I wanted the designs to be minimalistic, easy to read and have a lot of white space around it to portray the open space that a garden city is represented by. Throughout my experimentations I looked heavily at structure and layout that conform less to the grid as there was not a grid that I thought would work for my publication. Instead I just have a lot of white space. For each of the different pages in the book I did around 3 different layouts that I thought could work for my publication.

1 - 'brief history of the town' - for this page I decided to go with the third one as I thought the layout would work better due to the spacing, remembering that it is a double page spread that will be folded in the centre. I thought these images represented the history of the town well as Howard was a main aspect of the history and he named the memorial after his wife and the stone talks about the 'garden' aspect of Letchworth as a garden city. 

2 - 'garden city movement' - the images on this page were chosen to represent how it is a city but with a lot of 'garden' included representing how it can be both. I chose the layout of the 2nd image to be the final image due to their being an even amount of white space surrounding the pictures so the attention of the eye is put on all 3 pictures rather than looking at  image 1 where the eye automatically is drawn to the left of the page because of the big white space at the top right of the page. 

 

3 - 'ebenezer howard' - the first image is the layout I chose for my publication as images 2 and 3 I think the rectangular picture overpowers the other picture taking away the attention. I also made sure there is even spacing between the edge of the page to the centre of the page to give it a clean and minimalistic design.

 

4 - 'three magnets' - I was originally going to go with image 2 for this page however due to it being a two page spread the images would be folded in the centre and I realised it would be hard to see what the images were so Image 1 is the one I went for so that both images were easily visible.

 

5 - 'Spirella company of Great Britain' - I decided to go with image 4, I was going to go with image 3 however it got suggest by a peer that if it all about white space then maybe there should be more openness to the overall page which is why I adapted image 3 to give it more white space.

6 - centre page - as this was the centre page I just thought one big image to go across both pages would suit it well as it is the only page in the publication without any text on the smaller piece of paper n between. 

7 - 'settlement' - for this page I did the first design and liked the way it looked due to the spacing between the pictures and the open space so I used this one. 

8 - 'UK's first roundabout' - for this page I went with image 1 as I thought it was the image that was easiest on the eye and minimalistic. 

 

9 - 'cloisters' -  for this page i chose image 3 due to the angles in the photograph of the building leading the eye to the right of the page towards the second photograph. It works best with the surrounding white open space. 

10 - 'norton common' - a lot of the research I gathered was images that go across the whole page so I chose this image to do a double page spread. I chose number 3 for this page as I thought it being central there is even spacing on both sides of the picture which keeps everything even for the viewer. 

11 - 'quaker meeting house' - personally I think that number 1 is too crowded and the viewers eye is not directed to a certain place so is darting all around the page. I think the two images work better on the page together which is why I chose number 3. With both the images being the same size it which gives it a minimalistic and clean design which is what I have been going for throughout the layout. It also gives the page a good area for open space, reiterating the concept.