Mollo's Graphic works [feedback is highly appreciated]

[Mollocephalus]

Good morning FFR fellas, besides stepmania graphics i also made some other projects and i would like to share them with you. I haven't studied graphic design at all (i should probably look up some stuff as soon as i have the time) so everything that is here was made entirely from trial and error experience i got these years. I realized that if i want to make a living out of this, i might as well start getting good at it. Suggestions and feedback are highly encouraged, as i know there are people here with better qualifications and more experience than me

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Photographic book of Ethiopia and Eritrea [2013]



download the low-res book here (PDF - 46.4 MB)

This one was one hell of a project. Hundreds of 40+ years old, beaten up, washed out and full of scratches and dust photos taken in Africa's horn by a dude who had the luck to go work there with Rome's bank when they opened a business down there in Addis Abeba. It was 1968. Then one day, in 1974, there was a rebellion and the government was shutdown and replaced by a communist dictatorship, which basically forced all foreigners (who brought money and progress) to leave the country.

Notes: The book has been made with the intent of being shared with a closed group of friends, therefore it will be a private publishing.

Concerns: Although i wasn't very happy about this, my employer asked me to include photos that aren't his and for the sake of historical accuracy and completion, we actually needed them. I used some filters and actions to make them as different as possible from the originals, but still. What would your course of action be in a situation like this?

AD posters for italian ITG tournaments [2011/2013]





The italian ITG scene is very active, and we actually have a registered amateur sports association. If you register, for a very small amount per year you have discounts at tournament registrations and you even have health insurance for anything that could happen when you play ITG. Tournaments are being held every two or three months throughout the northeast of Italy, although starting last year we had an unofficial tournament here in the south too, and it's probably going to get official in 2014.

Notes: i am doing these for free :'(

[Ohaider]

i'd be willing to buy a logo for my soundcloud via paypal or something haha, your retro style is cool as sheeit

[L.B.D.D]

that rodeo tournament one is sic

[Sgt. Traveler]

Dude those posters are really good, especially the second one. I thought you got paid for them until I read the small disclaimer on the bottom :c

I couldn't say much. They're all really neat, except that my nitpicky me probably complained about this cut at the first poster:



You could make it so that the cut is hidden behind the black part, but it's just me really.

(Also I noticed you used the same cabinet vector on both posters, only mirrored, lol)

Originally Posted by Mollocephalus

Concerns: Although i wasn't very happy about this, my employer asked me to include photos that aren't his and for the sake of historical accuracy and completion, we actually needed them. I used some filters and actions to make them as different as possible from the originals, but still. What would your course of action be in a situation like this?

It's probably a risky move to do them, especially with the additions of filters and stuff. I'm not an expert on it, but I suppose that eventhough it's a private publishing you still aren't allowed to alter the pics anyway? Just be sure to look at the source's licenses whenever you can.

[Mollocephalus]

Yeah, no way i can contact the author for them all. However, the books are being given as presents to people inside his circle, since he isn't making any profit from them i thought it wasn't as bad. Fortunately, they are no more than a dozen in a book which contains several hundreds of photos

[Spenner]

These are all very nice looking. The critique would most would for sure have to do mostly with the established hierarchy of information. When reading the titles I find my eyes being pulled away instinctively, before I have a chance to actually read/register the headlines, so the effectiveness of the titles have been lost. However it's good that my eyes are instead just drawn to more visually interesting things, that might demonstrate what the poster's intent is regardless (like the cool red ITG machine).

In the first poster, I think the top portion is suffocating a bit. A lot of the elements simply don't have enough space around them to be properly registered by the eye. Reading "Final Tournament" is difficult from left to right, because of the big sweeping pixel rainbow thing that my eyes are drawn to, instead of the next line. A better way to do it would've been smaller, less distracting elements around the main headline (to the point where it is moreso a background element than a foreground element), "Final" to be much bigger, "Tournament" to be more aligned with the word Final above it. "2013" also requires more contrast for it to stand out, perhaps a hit of a highlighting stroke/inner shadow that is white (but done tastefully) would fix that, if it were in behind the red stroke that's around it.

So yeah, things to pay attention to are mostly just a matter of making sure the things that need to be seen, are SEEN. But more importantly, that they are also absorbed.

I won't say too much for the 2nd poster, I really like it aside from the yellow/green (not sure lol) text in the headline and the texture in behind. I think something with the colour scheme of that background texture, but with the subtlety of the paper texture below, would've been better. Maybe a tad grittier, but ya know, just less distracting.

There's my $2 keep it up.

[MixMasterLar]

The italian ITG scene is very active, and we actually have a registered amateur sports association. If you register, for a very small amount per year you have discounts at tournament registrations and you even have health insurance for anything that could happen when you play ITG. Tournaments are being held every two or three months throughout the northeast of Italy, although starting last year we had an unofficial tournament here in the south too, and it's probably going to get official in 2014.

=O

[Gundam-Dude]

Your screenshot was small, so it's a little hard to see this well.

Essentially when you're typesetting in a box aligned left, you have to pay attention to the ragged right as it often creates a lot of huge blocks of space (as shown by the red boxes). One of my profs uses the amusing analogy of, "if it looks like a truck rammed into your text, then you have a problem." Of course, you can't get this absolutely perfect looking, so it's more or less trying to reduce the number of times something like this occurs. There is a typesetting option in InDesign that assigns rules for just how many words and characters to allow on a line, but it can only help in creating a skeleton which in the end needs to be readjusted manually. This is mostly why people choose to justify, but I'll explain shortly why that option is even worse and more work inducing, rofl.

Assuming you set this in InDesign, you can manually control how each sentence ends off by placing a soft-return at the end by hitting Shift+Enter (or Shift+Return for Mac)—use very sparsely as it can get very sloppy quickly when abused. If you run into the situation where you absolutely have no choice but to leave it, the general rule of thumb is to make line lengths roughly follow a pattern of shorter to longer repeatedly—this creates optimally the best reading text as it's much easier to identify where each individual line is and it'll looked much more balanced.

Also as a final note, your block of text ends with a widow—I'll get to what exactly that is shortly as well.


Now I saw that the rest of the book is justified left, which may look nicer, but now you have an issue called rivers. As shown with the various number of red boxes, the spacing between the words on each line gets royally fucked, which creates an illusion of a river stream flowing through your text, breaking up all the words. You have a better view of just how bad your text becomes when you hit that justify button, go into your InDesign Preferences and click the Composition category where you can check the box called H&J Violations and continue. If you see yellow highlights, those are all your river issues.

A quick solution to this problem is if you highlight all of your text and go into your Paragraph window and go into the contextual sub-menu, there's an option called Justification. By default it has some bullshit numbers and variables set, in which you'll have to change. If you copy your settings exactly as the screenshot below, you'll produce a finer looking justification:


You'll probably still have some issues remaining, which will require manual touch up via kerning and tracking. To make this clear though, the largest rivers come from text wrapping around images (like in your screenshot), and typesetting in columns—because the rest of the book is typeset in 1 solid box, you'll have very few errors that will require touch up, especially if you did the justification trick above.

And this is exactly why I personally don't like to justify, because I usually typeset in columns, rofl. In the end though, both ragged rights and justification are time consuming touch up work to get it looking just right.



What's highlighted in red are typographic sins called widows. Good typesetting should never have the presence of widows and orphans—a widow is a word that sits on a line by itself at the end of a paragraph (like in your image), while an orphan is the last line of a paragraph that sits alone at the top of a column or page (e.g. Microsoft Word does this all the time). InDesign has another function in it's Paragraph contextual sub-menu called Keep Options which will give you better control of your paragraphs to minimize orphan occurrence, but ultimately the best control over this is to adjust it manually with numpad enters/returns or even hard-returns at times. As far as widows go, the only way to avoid them is to adjust tracking slightly, if not then doing the soft-return trick that was aforementioned. You'd want to shoot for at least 2 words on a new line, but I personally shoot for 3 or more to make it look cleaner.


Spenner already made excellent points for your posters, so I'll keep my comments short, lol.


Check that kerning out. F is too close to INAL and the spacing between INAL and 2013 should be equal for a cleaner look. T is too close to OURNAMEN while the last T shouldn't overlap with the N—If you're going to overlap type like this, do it to the rest of the letters for consistency, or don't do it at all. The special exception is if you're using a serif typeface in which you're encouraged to overlap the serifs to create ligatures. The spacing between FINAL and TOURNAMENT should be equal to the spacing between both and 2013 for a balanced look. Finally, some major kerning work on 2013.

Those are just my personal nitpicks as someone that spends a lot of time with typesetting, especially with headlines—you don't have to follow exactly what I say, they're just mere suggestions, lol.


Another nitpick of mine is that QUANDO...2013 is spaced further apart from the rest of the information. If the hierarchy and point sizes are the same for all the text, wouldn't it make sense to at least space it the same? The grey and red translucent boxes are the exact same size as a note. Sgt. Traveler made a very good point about the bottom black lines which can be cleaned up.

For the second poster, my only comment is that because you've used the exact same typeface and weight for the entire thing, it's rather monotonous when it comes to contrast—when paired up with your strong visuals, the type becomes drowned out a bit. The typeface in itself doesn't have a light or bold weight in its family, which is its ultimate downside.

And that's pretty much all the commentary I have time to write! I procrastinated from creating some interactive forms for work by Monday, but my boss hasn't texted me back yet to let me know what's going down for that and I'm waiting for the client's missing files, rofl. Hope this helps, Marco, keep it up

[Mollocephalus]

That is all excellent advice GD, thank you so much! i'll definitely use these tips and pay more attention to spacing and type neatness. Also, i really liked spenner's insight on the visual hierarchy. I knew there would be things to learn from you guys <3

Sgt. Traveler: yeah, that was on purpose but it looks more like a mistake lol, i'll keep it in mind if i do similar things.

Ohaider: hit me up with a pm, i'm definitely up for it