Yearbook - Surface Pattern Initial Concept

Prior to our meeting with the Surface Patten tutors this morning, yesterday Charlotte Ian and I decided to mock up a selection of spreads and cover ideas that build on their comments from the last meeting. We sat down and worked out a list of things we should produce, with Ian and Charlotte working on spreads (including work pages, section pages) and myself producing some initial type treatments and designs for the cover itself. 
Whilst Ian was putting together initial spreads we discussed serif type choices with heading and book/body weights as this is what I would be using  as a basis for the type on cover:

Having agreed on a typeface Ian and Charlotte set about designing some layouts. In our previous meeting the Surface Pattern tutors they mentioned that they would like to use documentary photography within the book to add variety and provide the reader with visual elements that sum up the 'essence' of the degree.  Using photos gathered from marketing we Ian and Charlotte came up with some variations to choose from.

Ian - Abstract / Documentary photo spread mocks:

Colour pages created by eye dropping the adjacent photo to unify the spread.

Personally I prefer the double page spread images and the spreads where the image crosses the gutter fold with the block colour a third of the spread. The full page colour blocks look a bit too overbearing.

Ian - Student Profile spread mocks:

As with the documentary photography pages, the student name has been eye-dropped from the photo of their work - this creates an individual page for each student profile. These are a handful of the layouts Ian came up with (variations in information plaement, boarder etc).    

Charlotte - Student Profile spread mocks:

A couple of spreads (more than shown, couple chosen). I particularly like the full bleed pages using the close up photography rather than the 'set-up' shots. I also really like the eye-dropped bounding box for the type on the bottom spread.

Whilst my comrades were beavering away on the spread ideas, I attempted to design some custom type for the cover of the year book. 

Thinking that using the course name for the title of the book was too long we asked the tutors to come up with a word or phrase to use as the title. They came up with 'Draw, Process, Design' and 'Colour, Texture, Pattern'. Both of which we thought were lacking the dynamics that they had previously mentioned. For this reason I set about building on the given titles to get something a bit more interesting. Here's my list of alternatives:

After discussing it with Ian and Charlotte we decided that we liked Handiwork, Craft & Form and Pattern & Process the best because they sum up the course a bit more poetically than the tutors suggestions. Armed with this and our chosen header typeface (ITC Caslon 224 Black) I designed some initial custom type treatments for the cover - adding bulbous serifs to add a subtle softness to the type and developing ligatures / special details:

Cover mocks:

Designed to be plain with typographic details so when the book is opened there is an explosion of colour and pattern.

Here are photos of all of the selected spreads and cover mocks printed for feedback in the meeting today. It was all printed on cartridge to imitate the uncoated stock we would be using in the book.

Selected Abstracts / Documentary spreads:

Selected student profile spreads:

Mock covers designs: