Deepak John Mathew for the tremendous support, guidance and encouragement he provided throughout this project. I would like to acknowledge him for encouraging me to realize this project in a limited duration. In addition, I would like to give special and sincere thanks to Vijay Kumawat for his support and encouragement time and again, which gave me the motivation to see this project through to completion.
The result is intended as a coffee table book that consolidates the various snapshots and cross-sections of the institute's journey across locations, departments, people and cultures.
IIT Hyderabad // A Contrarian IIT
Defining purpose
The form of a physical book not only provides the important possibility of tangibility for this journey, but also the act of giving and giving as a sign of appreciation. In addition, the form of the photobook makes it possible to make a carefully curated collection easily accessible to the public, given the clutter of large numbers of copies that the digital space of photographs entails. The coffee table book is intended for the various stakeholders of the institute such as the Board of Trustees, IIT Hyderabad fraternity, visiting faculty and students, prospective members of the fraternity and other guests and dignitaries.
Scope as an individual
Aligning purpose
For this project, the framework followed the Golden Circle model very closely, as the start of the project was defined by my individual goal of gaining hands-on experience in print design and production. The project therefore took shape to be akin to a commissioned design work that would exist in the industry, with the presence of a client, a team of photographers and designers, other suppliers and a task at hand. In other words, the model followed in connection with this project was as follows.
Why: To understand the print production process through a practical experience, to facilitate my practice in the industry.
Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad
Apart from its many educational affiliations, IIT Hyderabad also focuses on fostering entrepreneurship. Since then, he has incubated 14 companies in the fields of healthcare, energy, design, education, etc. With rapid progress like this, the institute has consistently been ranked among the top 10 engineering institutions in the National Institutional Ranking System (NIRF).
Additionally, IIT Hyderabad has achieved 196th position in QS Asia Pacific, 100th position in QS BRICS and 10th position in the first edition of Atal Ranking of Institutes on Innovations Achievements (ARIIA) for institutes of publicly funded.
Print design and academia
Scope and limitations
A growing number of institutions, largely design schools, are now focusing on the production of these printed materials to be made in-house. Not only does this allow for complete ownership of the material to the institution, but it also provides a space for experiential learning of design. Each type of printing technique brings with it the need for very specific machinery and tools required for each of the stages.
Some of the design schools that are increasingly embracing in-house print production are the Rhode Island School of Design (USA), the London College of Communication (England) and the National School of Design (India).
IIT Hyderabad Coffee Table Book
As part of their print design curriculum, students are encouraged to also become involved in departmental or institutional level activities such as the production of event-specific t-shirts, bags and other merchandise, admission brochures, magazines, graduation books, calendars and so on. Such production encourages the students to be actively involved in the various printing processes such as offset printing, screen printing, gravure and relief printing, letterpress printing, hot metal printing etc.
Print Design
History and evolution
Print design historically marked the beginning of a new era and was an important milestone in the graphic design industry. Over the years, this invention of the East led to the introduction of metal movable type and Johannes Gutenberg's flat printing press in 1450. Movable letters changed the rules of printing and laid the foundation for the modern day press.
Later in 1873, the first photograph was printed using halftone printing, which made it possible to achieve the full range of tones.
Industry at present
Future prospects
The complementary relationship opened new gates in the domain of interactive printing projects using techniques such as thermos colors and electroluminescent inks. An example of this is the illuminated Bombay Sapphire gin packaging by Webb de Vlam. The packaging thus created uses electroluminescent ink, which allows it to light up when picked up, activating a hidden mechanical switch.
Another example of this technological crossover is Sarah Weigold's editorial project 'The Book of Bi-Polarity'. In addition, it also uses QR code technology to link audio files of the book being read by Steven Fry. Projects like this and a number of others, such as Think with Google and Adris Groups.
These changing times and technological advances are also pushing print designers to redefine their roles and to be more adaptive and experimental in their practice.
Book Design
- First instance and evolution
- Types of books
- Anatomy of a book
- Folds and binds
The physical format of the book defines the category of the book depending on the cover and binding used – which can be both. Depending on what the book is intended for, the design and formatting of the content of the book in terms of layout, binding etc. The guidelines generally have to do with the different parts of the book that a designer needs to understand in preparation for the design process.
Cover and binding: This refers to the way in which the pages of the book are put together. The cover of a paperback uses a paper that is thicker than the inside pages of the book, but thin enough to be folded. A hardcover book also usually has a dust jacket that wraps around the hard case of the book.
This dust jacket is generally designed with the same appearance as the hardcover of the book. Endpaper: The endpaper is on the inside of the front cover and extends to the opposite page. This print space is surrounded by margins that extend to the section size of the book.
Content or book matter: In a book, the inner pages mostly convey the main matter or the story of the book. As mentioned earlier, there are several options for binding that a designer can choose from, depending on their purpose, the number of pages of the book, and the budget.
Coffee Table Book
Understanding the brief
Content Curation
- Building an archive
- Shortlisting images
- Narrative and navigation
- Collating write-ups
A large percentage of the content of a photo book is that of photographs, requiring them to be created and curated in a meaningful and purposeful way. Alaka K had initiated this archive and kept it for a short time before giving it to me for the purpose of a coffee table book. This allows the reader to understand the story in a certain way and also affects the speed of reading the book on their part in terms of navigation.
An understanding of the design principle of movement is therefore crucial for, among other things, the narrative and navigation. For the coffee table book, a number of narratives were explored, from chronological order to thematic order, as shown in Figure 39. On the other hand, a thematic order of the photographs tends better to this disadvantage of repetition.
A thematic approach allows photos to be categorized based on image content into groups such as history and origins, campus architecture, academics, campus life, etc. This approach eliminates the particular model of chronological causality for book navigation. It also allows positive aspects of the thematic approach, such as representative grouping, to be included as appropriate.
Like the thematic approach, the non-linear approach also focuses on the content, visual aesthetics and the composition of the photographs for sequencing. Introductory text became the textual content that set a background for reading the photobook.
Book design
- Specifications
- Moodboard
- Colour scheme
- Additional elements
- Exploring grids and layouts
- Exploring folds
- Type selection
- Finalizing the grids
- Preparing the document
- Creating page layouts
- Colour correction of images
Following a similar approach, the IIT Hyderabad coffee table book uses primarily white paper for image backgrounds, given the color palette provided by the 150+ photographs. Finally, the color Pantone P 49-15 C was chosen for the final sheet of the book, which is similar to the cover image for its sequel. Given the purpose of the coffee table book, some column grids and modular grids were explored on which sample page layouts were created for ideas and feedback.
Furthermore, while the photographs were finalized at a later stage, they were too focused on people and artistic cropping of the image could not be achieved for the possibility of information loss. The weights used for the coffee table book are Avenir Heavy (for headings), Avenir Book (for body copy), and Avenir Book Oblique (for titles and subtitles). Based on earlier explorations, and after gaining more clarity on the book's content, grids for the coffee table book were finalized.
A 6x6 modular grid was used for the images, taking into account different image resolutions and the need for some images to be quite small, allowing more flexibility than a 3x3 modular. A 6-column grid was used for the text, allowing flexibility in text placement given the short lines of some content and the abundance of white space in the 10x10 inch book, thus maintaining a balance between the various elements. The document for the digital design of the coffee table book is prepared in Adobe InDesign.
The page layouts were made into 3 specific kinds, based on the categories of textual content created earlier – these were introductory pages, separators/breathers and the inner pages that contained the majority of the photographs. Once a first draft of the coffee table book had been digitized, digital prints were sampled several times to check for color. In addition to this, considering that several of the photographs to be used for the coffee table book were produced years ago and lacked quality compared to recent ones, this phase became important to bring the two into a closer realm to the greatest extent possible.
However, by watching them work and understanding the nuances of color correction from it, I learned a lot more about images, color and quality correction, which I tried to apply by color correcting some of the photos for the coffee table book.
Cover design and binding
Explorations
Binding and print techniques
Testing and feedback
Dummy prints
This gave me the opportunity to work closely to learn how to bind a book perfectly – including printing, cutting, laminating the cover, aligning the spine and the actual process of binding everything into one unit.
Building vendors' contact list
Preparing file for print
Image and file formats
Experiential takeaways
Beyond print media
