Studio Brief 3 - Experimental Stock

When I visited Fred Aldous in Manchester I stumbled across this stock (below). As you can also see from the image below, the texture of the paper was sort of a criss-cross pattern that was slightly raised on one side but was smooth on the other. The moment I saw the paper, it felt contemporary and modern. I proceeded to print a mock up onto the stock to see how reliable it was as the main problem I had was that the ink might transfer through due to the little scoring marks.

I printed two double page spreads. One was my old layout choice and the other my new layout choice. The results are also below

Cut down into an A4 sheet.

As you can see from this image, the marking made on the paper. On side was smooth and the other reminded my off Braille.

This is how the image turned out of my old layout choice. Comparing it to the new layout choice, this only further confirmed to me that i made the right choice to come up with a new layout system. The images just seemed to big and all aspects on the page seem unreasonably over sized. However the printing inks came out fine. None of the ink transferred onto the other side of the page.

This is what the out come was for my new layout choice. When i saw it i loved it. The combination of the red duo tone, layout grid and stock, reminded me of a contemporary museum I went to in Berlin, called the 'topography of terror'. 

However even though I loved the look and feel of the stock, there was still a problem. First of there wasn't a justifiable reason for me to use the stock. I didn't relate to my publication or Berlin. Simon agreed with me on this and said it could be used and a feature to easily tear photos out of the publication as the paper would be easily tearable due tot the meshed marking. But my book wouldn't be formatting in that way, so i would have to redo my whole layout to fit this concept, which i wasn't prepared to do.

Lastly, the side I printed on was the smooth side and I had not yet printed on the raised part of the paper. I went down to James in the print room and asked if the raised marking could jolt the paper or ink, making it some what wobbly and not a clean finish. James suggested that it could indeed do that but wouldn't know until you actually find out. After speaking to James, i came to the conclusion to abandon the textured paper. If there isn't no solid design decision as to why I chose that stock then it could come across as unprofessional and could throw the whole theme off with a lot of people asking "what's the reasoning behind the choice of stock?" and i wouldn't want people debating my decision.