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FMP - Hand-In Box

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FMP - Print - Final Book

I printed the inside pages of the book, and then left the cover and the binding process up to uniprint. In hindsight, the printers gave me so many issues that I should’ve just let uniprint do the whole thing, but overall I’m still happy with how the book turned out:

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FMP - Print - Failed Prints

When printing my book, I had trouble getting the printer to print my black backgrounds properly; they’d always come out looking grey and just didn't look good. I tried a number of different things in inDesign to try and fix the issue but none of that worked. The way around the issue turned out to be messing with the advanced settings of the printer.

Here are the failed test prints:

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Penguin Book Cover Print Out

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FMP - Print - Process Book

Here’s some pictures of my process book, printed by uniprint:

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Business Cards

The rationale behind the design of these was to keep the information minimal to mirror my website, and to use the front of the card to show parts of my portfolio. I’d have all of these printed off in various quantities, and then when I hand someone my business card, they have an idea of what my work looks like before they’ve even gone to any of my socials/website.

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This is a link to my website. It contains my photography portfolio, along with notable art/design works and links to my music. I have a basic description and contact form for those looking to work with me.

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Portfolio Presentation Spreads

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FMP - Critical Reflection

If I was to take up a challenge like this one again in the future, I would be more committed right from the start. The time of year was not helpful this time around. Since a lot of ravers and rave organisers are students, when everyone left Bournemouth for the Easter holidays, the raves dried up, and I had to go to London to find one. This was fine in the end as I got enough shots, but if I didn’t, then I’d be left with either an empty wallet from all the travel, or not enough shots to complete the book. Looking back, there were so many variables that very easily could have gone wrong, and while I’m glad they didn’t, in future I’ll be planning my whole project a lot better from the start to minimise pointless risks.

I think that the method I took of shooting on my phone and small pocket camera worked well in capturing the candid atmosphere of the rave, but given the limitations of these cameras, image quality did suffer a little. Honestly considering the tools that I had available, I’m actually really happy with how the images turned out, but some images I felt were lost to noise when it came to shooting on my phone. Relying on autofocus in these dark conditions was also a challenge, and I missed a few shots due to my cameras not focusing correctly in the low light. I think, given the chance again, I would try and work with organisers/venues to get permission to bring my proper camera kit into the raves, just to see the difference in reaction from the crowd. Would they be distracted by the camera? A lot of people want their photos taken when they rave, so how would this work from an ethical perspective? Ultimately, these kind of questions were what led me to shooting more discreetly anyway, and trying to not have any one person be the subject of an image if they are clearly identifiable. This approach worked well for how I envisioned the photographic style of the book to turn out like.

What I got from this project is that I’m now more confused than ever as to where I sit in the creative world. Am I a photographer? Well, yes, but I’m also working with type and editorial, so am I a designer? Well, also yes, but I almost feel that I’m not quite strong enough in any medium by itself, leading me to mix the small amounts I do know of each medium to throw together something resembling a cohesive project. This imposter syndrome plagued my work-flow for this project and led to me doubting my own abilities time and time again. But, despite these mental gymnastics that I’ve been forcing myself through, I’ve somehow ended up with a book that I feel I can show to others and not be completely embarrassed by.

I suppose it’s a rather fitting project to end this degree on; one that has raised more questions in my mind about my own practice than answers.

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FMP - Final Book Layout

This version of the layout fixed up many of the problems that the previous ones had. It has a sense of cohesion to it and a general storyline is shown throughout the progression of the book. In my opinion, it conveys the feeling of the rave well and allows the photography to do most of the talking, with type supplementing where needed. I was happy enough with this layout to bring it to print and look at getting the physical book made.

The final layout uses some images that I took at a rave very close to the deadline. The benefit of getting these images is that they were like the missing pieces that I needed to complete the book. The downside is that it left me so close to the final deadline that I had no time to add the printing and binding process in this “making of“ book. Overall, I decided that it was the best option otherwise I would’ve looked back on this project and been annoyed that I didn’t see it through to its full potential.

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FMP - Tutorial - Layout 2 & Feedback

At this point, the layout was starting to come along. I had looked into some photo books by Martin Parr and a few other photographers that I look up to, such as Tatsuo Suzuki and Daido Moriyama, and used their work to inform how I should lay my own work out. There was still much to be improved upon, so I brought what I had done to tutorials and got to work on adjusting my work based on the critiques I received.

There was actually another version of the layout between this one and the final one but I didn’t screenshot it so I just put the feedback for both in this post.

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FMP - Tutorial - Layout 1 & Feedback

The initial layout that I created was essentially a random assortment of assets that I had created. I just wanted to get something together in order to receive critique and develop my idea. I took this idea to tutorials and noted down the feedback that I received.

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FMP - Development - Photo Editing

Most of the edits that I made were fairly minor, as the photos held up for the most part. I cropped a few to make the focus of the images more obvious, but mostly it was just minor edits to colour and dynamic range.

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FMP - Development - Unused Assets

When I started thinking about laying out the book, I wasn’t too confident on the amount of quality photos that I had taken. This is mainly because I hadn’t done all the photo shoots yet and as a result, I was thinking of ways to do some other work (illustration/typography), with the photography just being an extra element instead of the main focus.

I had this idea to create a kind of storyline throughout the book, and I chose to start it at the queue for the rave. At this point I didn’t have any pictures of queues so I decided to do some illustrations instead. Illustration is not exactly my strong suit so I had to improvise a way to make it work. I decided to take photos of myself posing as a bouncer checking someone’s ID, then trace over those photos to create my illustrations. This idea worked fairly well, and I’ve used the same technique in the past to great effect.

In the end, as I started to gather more photos as I went to more raves, photography would end up becoming the main focus of the book, mostly because my skills as a photographer greatly outweigh my skills as an illustrator and typographer. But while typography in the book would still be plentiful, as it complements the photography well, the illustrations just unfortunately felt out of place and, as a result, ended up being removed.

This wasn’t the only piece of removed content. I had a section talking about rave fashion that I decided to ditch because firstly, it didn’t fit the aesthetic of the rest of the book, and secondly, rave fashion varies so drastically by genre and I mainly focused on jungle and drum & bass, so there I didn’t really have enough content to cover it as in depth as I wanted to. Honestly I could make an entire book just on rave fashion alone, so I decided to skip that part.

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FMP - Rave 05 - 30/04/23 - Contact Sheets

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FMP - Artist Research - Martin Parr

The minimalistic stylisation and layouts of Martin Parr’s photo books lets the photography breathe and tell a story, with small amounts of type here and there to supplement the photos and add to the narrative. I want to bring this philosophy through into my own work.

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FMP - Artist Research - Caroline Dietl

Caroline Dietl is a designer from Germany who mainly focuses on making posters based off of music and pop culture references that she likes. She also does album covers etc. There’s a quality to her work that I’d love to bring to mine, that gritty scanner aesthetic. It’s not directly linked to rave, in fact it’s goth if anything, but the design principles can be brought through to other genres.