01 The Idea

To make my kolloquium, the first thing I did was to make a list of the courses I took, chose which ones were relevant to be shown in my kolloquium and wrote down, with the help of my incom documentations, what were the challenges, difficulties, learnings and gains of each course.

After writing that down, I realized how my motivation had fluctuated semester after semester, and I realized that when I started, I had a hard time getting the motivation and strength to try harder.

My process during my studies was inevitably strongly related to the death of my father, which occurred at the beginning of my studies. That is why I decided to make my kolloquium about how that affected me during the semesters and how, semester after semester, I found again the desire to make an effort and the love for my studies, with the help of my dad's love.

From that reflection on how my father inspired and motivated me to achieve all that I have achieved and how after his death I found that motivation and passion for art in myself, came the title and main theme of my kolloquium: transferred love, acquired passion.

02 The Concept

I decided to represent my motivation, energy and my emotional state during the semesters with a gradient on the right side of the book. 

The gradient goes in correspondence with what I explain in the texts of the book, it begins with the story of what happened at the beginning of my studies, it starts with dull and sad colors, and semester after semester it becomes a little more intense and bigger, until in the fourth semester it is already very vivid and big, that's how my motivation and my desire to make more effort in my studies grew.

This gradient not only grows and becomes more intense, but it also works as an animation when turning the pages, which I thought was a nice and special detail because animation is one of the things I like to do the most, and also goes well with the concept.

03 Designing

The first thing I did was to write the texts, without having much idea of how I wanted to design my book. Once I had the texts, I introduced them in an indesign document and I added photos of my projects, to get an idea of how everything would look together. Little by little I refined that document, I changed the typographies, I fixed the texts, I adjusted the position of things and little by little it started taking shape.

Since the kolloquium is loaded with the visual information of each project, I decided to keep it simple, so there wouldn't be too many things going on at the same time and it wouldn't be too overwhelming. So I decided to work with white sheets and black text, so that the color would be in the photos of the projects and the gradient on the right side only.

I chose a strong typeface to highlight the titles, and a simple sans serif for the texts.

The typographies I used are Kare and Lato

04 Printing

I perfected the details as much as possible until I reached a point where I was quite satisfied with the results and I printed it.

My kolloquium was printed at ReproBerlin on Cc style 160gr paper and Biotop 250gr for the cover.

When printing I noticed that in some pages the colors were more opaque than in digital, which was probably my fault, but overall I am satisfied with the print.

05 Binding

I decided to make an adhesive binding with Swiss bruschure for my book, as I think it is a simple but elegant and eye-catching binding.

I did the binding myself at the university workshop. Binding it was a lot of fun and it was very exciting to start seeing what the final product will look like afterwards. I also like the feeling of doing the whole book myself with my own hands, since it is a very personal project.

06 Photoshoot

My friend Kari and I took pictures of my book. We decided to use a café set up, since we felt that would give a cozy, warm feeling to the pictures, which matches the subject of my kolloquium, because it talks about my personal situation, feelings and processes.

Doing the photoshoot was also a lot of fun and I love the feeling of seeing a project come to life, from the digital versions, to the printed version, to binded and then photographed.

07 AR Features

It was also a lot of fun to watch my AR projects come to life in my kolloquium.

08 The PDF

09 Conclusion

Doing this kolloquium was very challenging, I struggled with getting Ideas for a clear concept and for the visual part, however, making it was very fun and satisfying and it helped me realize which aesthetics I like more, what my style of design is and it mostly help me do a reflection on what it has been so far to study comunication design and on how my process was until now, considering my fathers passing.

I am very proud for the design of my kolloquium, I really like how it looks and it expresses and delivers what I intended it to. I think this book really expresses my feelings and really shows who I am as a person and as a future designer, so I am very happy with what came out.

I am very excited to continue with my studies at the FHP and i can't wait to keep learning and having fun. :).