Throughout my project I considered a lot of extra pieces to add in order to create a more robust amount of work.

At one point when talking to Padraic about the project he suggested the potential for creating an entire advertising campaign, and as much as I liked the idea I knew I wouldn’t have had the time to create an advertising campaign on top of the core brochure. The only remnant of this talk is a series of posters I quickly created one night not long after this talk.

Another consideration I had was to separate the brochure out into a series of individual brochures, each concentrating on one section of the initial brochure for example, the first section which talks about culture as a single brochure, a Kanto brochure, a Hokkaido brochure, etc. I had kept this idea in the back of my head throughout the entirety of the project and hoped to implement it if I had time, but unfortunately I didn’t have the time needed to create it.

I really wished I would have had the extra time to implement some of these ideas but I knew from very early on that I shouldn’t put too much pressure on myself to create more, I would rather create one quality piece rather than a lot of half-baked ideas.

The final product is finally done.

I’m pretty happy with how the whole thing turned out. I really wanted a different box and to get it professionally printed but I wasn’t able to afford it/get it printed in time which was disappointing but what I have is fit for purpose.

I was forced to sort the box out myself and the foil on the top isn’t well done, which is completely my own fault and down to the inexperience of working with foil.

I’m really happy with how the final brochure has turned out, although the gold end papers weren’t exactly the ones that I wanted they still look good and I’m still happy with the outcome.

Below is a series of photographs of the final outcome you can also find a digital copy of the brochure here.

This week we had another progress presentations. Although I didn’t get picked to present I would have shown the progress that I had made with the brochure cover and the laser cutting and engraving.

Other than that I hadn’t much other progress to show until the brochure is ready for print with all the images inserted and the type finalised.

You can find a copy of my progress presentation here.

This weekend I went over to visit my sister in Birmingham, which has been the first chill weekend I’ve had in a while. I was a little worried about missing out on a weekend of writing but I worked a good bit longer on it during the week and managed to get the last three sections done. I was still anxious about the laser cutting at this point.

I also got some more feedback on the design of the brochure from Padraic and I think I have it all pretty much sorted, the only thing I have left to do is add the rest of the images and replace the place holder images in the Kanto section.

I also got to go to the Fab Lab this week and got the cover design laser engraved, I had initially thought about laser cutting it but as I tested it in the Fab Lab the engrave looked a lot better and so I decided to go for that instead.

Before the Easter break I got some feedback from Padraic on the initial mock-up, I’ve changed some minor things to do with the design but for the majority this fortnight I’ve just been building content.

I’ve managed to finish the Tohoku, Intro, Chubu and Kansai sections, I’ve also started on the Chugoku section as I begin to move into the final phase of the brochure creation.

I’ve also managed to book a slot into the Fab Lab for the 29th so I can laser cut the brochure cover.

I finally got my hands on some MDF board to try and make a mock-up of the cover with fabric wrap and the binding.

I had managed to finish an initial mock-up of the Kanto section and roughly printed it at home in order to give a better idea of how the sections will look when in the brochure, as the pages are much longer than you would expect in order to accommodate the spine.

Other than the mock-up I’ve still been writing more of the sections, finishing the Hokkaido and half the Tohoku sections.

This week I spent a lot of time on the content for the brochure and working on a first section mock-up. I ordered some kimono fabric and it arrived this week so I can start making the mock-up of the cover as well.

Other than that I haven’t worked on much else in regards to development. I need to get a move on with the content and get more of the writing done before I can move on to other things.

This week we did more progress presentations and the dreaded moment happened and I had to present.

The presentation didn’t go as bad as I thought but it could have gone better I think. I don’t think I had enough sorted out yet for the questions I was asked.

It really gave the motivation to be able to answer all those questions, most of which were related to the wooden cover. So this weekend after the presentation I spent time talking to my brother and dad about the wood cover and tried to iron out all the details of the cover.

This weekend I also started working on the content for the brochure, so far I have almost 5 pages about Tokyo. This is probably the longest section so most other sections will be shorter.

You can find a copy of this weeks presentation here.

This week we did a quick 24 hour typography exercise, to establish a typographic style for our projects.

I’ve had a pretty solid idea of what type of typeface I wanted but this exercise really forced me to sit down and pick specific fonts.

The hardest one to find was a font for the Japanese text, except for the planned calligraphy. I did eventually find a Japanese font which i liked, worked well with the English typeface and had a broad array of font weights.

The rest of week I spent doing work on my essay, which is going very slowly and making minimal progress.