Sunday, January 23, 2011

Questions to ask case studies.

OK, so before I get in touch with the various studios and printers I've been looking at, I thought it would be important to at least plan out what information I want from getting in touch with them directly:


Workshop

There's a few things I'm interested in terms of their practice in relation to mine, firstly, and this has a lot of crossover with ppd, is about being a relatively new practice and how they attract clients from various parts of the culture industry, or how they had clients. I also want to know a lot about the fonts they use, whether they make them themselves, whether they do this using fonts they have the rights for, or whether they make them from scratch. This would be useful both as part of my practice and would apply specifically to the 'copyright, copytype' brief that I want to begin working on fairly soon. It's probably emailing them at first to ask whether it's ok to either visit or ask some questions in relation to this case study.


Music

Music's work is so varied, and their part of a team, I guess there's some significant questions to the collaborative element of their practice. There's a few collaborative briefs I want to go for this module, such as the year book and pitching for the publication that Gary Barker wants to produce about his work. Both of those are live briefs, so there are a lot of questions; How do you define roles when collaborating? This kind of covers, collaborating with similar roles, where every element is coordinated between the two, three, four or however many in the collaboration. It also covers collaborating when there's very clearly defined roles. In terms of managing finances, do you have an accountant for the firm who works it out and you consult them? is one person in charge of the budget? There's also questions about project management, etc. to deal with. Again the best policy is just to email them about coming to see them for a visit, although I think there is a possibility they're coming up as a visiting professional to do a lecture. Either way, it's important to try and arrange to see them with a view to asking them about the specific of their collaborative practice.


Build

I think the important thing about build's practice, and whilst it's not really a focus in my rationale, is that they work a lot with print finishes, a long with quite high profile clients that demand quite unique print and finish techniques, so this could be something significant to ask about. Their 'not for commercial use' collaboration with generation press is a good example of the relationships and community in the design industry, so some primary research about this could come in handy for my 'copyright, copytype' brief (a brief that is essentially about the design community) in terms of the visual language and tone it uses.

'not for commercial use'.

Sagmeister
Sagmeister are a huge studio, and the size of what they do is a little intimidating. In terms of approaching them and the information I can extract from them, I think significantly, it's best to ask about their practice when it comes to publication design, perhaps suggesting asking questions about specific briefs. The 'made you look' book is one I particularly admire, a long with the annual books they did for Columbia University; 'Abstract'. So asking about the briefs they got, why they made certain design decisions etc. as well as the general process that makes up their design practice.

Consult
The consult are local, the man contact with universit, Alex, is likely to be coming in again at somepoint soon, even so, it would be nice to get in touch before this and ask about how the studio works as the 4 of them. Do they collaborate on briefs? Do they take individual briefs each? How do they get some of their culture industry clientele?


Generation Press

with generation Press, I think the things of significance are my interest in print finish, and their collaboration with build. I think the best thing is to get in touch with them with a view to visiting them to gain more understanding about print finish, how you specify certain finishes, etc. and hope that they get back in touch and say it's OK.

Team Impression
Team Impression are a simmilarly high spec printers to generation press, so organising a visit and understanding the print finish process would be an important part of talking to them. It would inform my design practice once leaving this course and be highly applicable to the design practice of my final major project.

Given that it's Sunday today, I think the best option is to contact them over the course of tomorrow.

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