Module Evaluation

In this Final Major Project modul, I feel I have made another step in the right sort of direction. I think that my professionalism has gone up a level and I generally feel like I have got to the point where I can be doing this to put stuff out into the world.

Each brief has gone decently, however, I am also aware that I should have completely exploited them for all they were worth. The one brief that I feel is nearing this is the DIY brief. I am not a great packager but feel that this creates the aesthetic that i love. the greyboard case is not up to scratch but I plan to practice my packaging design for future potential.

Overall, I am happiest with DIY. The zines came out just I had initially intended, except for the printing of one zine per A4 sheet. Instead i printed colour variations of each DPS. This is not a real issue, just annoyed me slightly. The badges (not included in the box produced because i gave them all to testspace leeds for retail in conjunction with an exhibition.

The colour coding works really well and i plan to continue the idea until i cant think of any other topics.

Imbalance was also a visual step up for me. I have not, however, produced tags as i planned to, seemingly out of laziness. The full potential of the brief was definitely not reached. The designs could be printed on absolutely anything and i should have experimented a little bit more.

This can be a continuation after uni, simply for my website.

Also, I was annoyed at how poorly i mixed my screen printing ink in comparison to the digitally printed postcards and badges. I was trying to avoid a flamboyant pink as a means of not stereotyping too much.

Overall, i think that the pack does look relatively professional, if a little bit thrown together.

I really like the panoptic posters brief too. It is the first time i have tried two coloured screen printing and it was a bit iffy in places but i am really happy with how well the series worked together. One issue is definitely the legibility of the type - something that has happened due to my trying to not use my normal bubble writing style.

The booklet is simple in its layout, much like most of my other designs.

P.S. I love You was the most extravagant. I havent really tried anything like it before so it was very experiemental and i was quite happy with the results. It got exhibited and i gave out a few business cards so all in all, bit of a result. I produced the booklet after the event which is a shame but I wanted to do something else to help the brief. It was a bit of a nightmare to crop because of the lack of bleed and how thick the damn thing ended up being. I should have taken it even further with my own poster designs and flyers.

Really happy with the formats of everything in the module. Lots of squares for some reason, I guess Fred's rants about A-format sank in a bit.

Yeah, its been a decent module. I've been up and down the productive scale, as per usual, but I am really happy with my final resolutions and feel that that answer each brief but do not really exploit the potential.

DIY, Don't Pay Some Guy

B learning to play the guitar with the help of my zine. This one stands out a bit from the series of three because the lighting isn't great. i was rushing for a print slot.

A-M with vegetables. Bloody Vegans. I really like the composition though. Cant really crop the image because of it though - kinda need the veg, the zine and A-M's head to fully communicate the image.

Ahh, in context. Look at me. In the household. With a zine. And a hammer. possibly able to crop out the hammer.

Should have RGB'd the order of the posters. bit more layout griddy this layout though.

All the products all spread out, product shot innit. Check out the RGB layout. Got hte household one the wrong way round though.

Band 2 was cropped a bit for the final product. Check out my package!

Band 1 - Thinnest. More like a surface design pattern. Works ok. Maybe too small to be recognisable as the icons?

Band 2 - Standard! Possibly too much extra space above and below the logo.

Same as about with continuous lines! Not inkeeping with the series of booklets tho.

left align? Perfectly in series with booklet except for bold individual title text that appears on them.

ooh, open up that box!

Beautiful products.

Posters in series.

Close up of the posters in series.

I really like the negative ones. They are in series with the booklets but also separate.

Promo poster designs for the pack. I like the simplicity but the veggie icon is shorter than the other two and this kind of takes it out of the series. slightly disappointing. Having it more in the space doesnt really work either.

Basic ideas for promotional badges! Just using the logo for each booklet (these are the original colour schemes and original ideas. Activism (cyan placard) will be scrapped in favour of fashion (which has no logo as of yet). I just think that, although this is less "me", more people will be interested in making their own fashion items.

This is my wok. It is a tracing for the stir fry section.

This is a soup pot. It is for the soup recipe.

A shelf diagram. It shows you how to screw.

Traced diagram of how to wire a 3 pin plug.

Diagram of how to bleed a radiator.

How to restring a guitar! This is the most important thing in the world that no one ever considers.

Photos for vector tracing! (see above)

The 3rd of A4 issue is solved relatively easily. A5 double page spread in indesign with the three different booklets on anyway. boom!

I decided that i wanted to experiment with unusual paper formats. A4 sheet, landscape, split into 3 rows, separated and then folded in half to create the double page spreads. When one A4 sheet is double sided i can make a 12 page booklet out of it. Not too shabby for a non-standard paper format and pretty efficient use of paper as well!

Sticking to the 3's i used a 6 column grid. This meant some differentiation was possible but it kept the layout in series.

HOWEVER. I ran into small problem here. I designed the indesign document to be a double spread of 1 third of an A4 page. This seemed like a good idea but i quickly realised that printing it would waste 2 thirds of the A4 sheet.

This kind of defeats the entire logic behind my idea of using this format.

Notation, scales and fingering! the hand diagram is necessary so that people know which finger to use in scales and chords. It is naff, i know. but it is more necessary than naff. Also, the scales and notation are visualised in the same way as the chords structures.

I also drew up the diagrams of some open strings chords. 9 might seem like a weird number but they all come in useful. I plan to include info about which chords run well together as well.

Since guitar is one of the few things i feel i have a forte in, i figured it was a good place to start contents-wise. I decided people might need a diagram of the instrument with labels so i simply traced a product shot off the internet in illustrator and added pointing lines to name each part of the instrument.

Trying out a few different colours for each idea. I think the top 3 are the ones that i am going to use for the final series. RGB is a pretty decent colour scheme for a series set, riiight? or is just a little too cliche? i dont know why im asking you. i'm gonna do it like that anyway.

JUST TO REMIND MYSELF, the codes for the colours i have chosen are as follows:

Red = C: 20%, M: 100%, Y: 100%, K: 0%

Green = C: 75%, M: 0%, Y: 100%, K: 0%

Blue = C: 87%, M: 67%, Y: 0%, K: 0%

Some initial title design ideas. the icons are all very straight forward but i like them all and think that they visualise each title quite well - weird how i made the designer left handed tho.

This is in Futura STD because i am going through a Futura STD stage. its just so flexible with all the different weights and condensities (that is now a real and official typographic word). So let's just call it a design decision and not wonder why i havent seen what it would look like in comic sans or papyrus.

Just be glad its not courier again.

potential layouts for A-format. They should as consistent as possible, but this may not be that easy to achieve since the information to be presented varies so much.

The format of the cover has a few different possibilities. the icon chosen for each booklet should probably be smaller than some of these ideas suggests.

After a few different ideas, i decided that a series of booklets would be more effective. guitar info, household tasks and vegetarian recipes are the 3 parts of the series. I also want to have a little icon that visualises what each booklet is about.

Chord diagrams and numbered fingers.

Step by step for putting the string on. Would need to be better organised and formatted.

Restringing a guitar is something that not many people do quite right. The little diagram in the box is hugely important but no one really acknowledges it.

Cup of tea is similarly not money saving, its just something that everyone HAS TO GET RIGHT. may be hard to include the idea of how different people like their tea.

Visualising the tasks in a step by step manner with a scruffy cartoony aesthetic. Tying a tie is not really the best example of "DIY not pay some guy" since there's no payment involved, however it is a great example of step by step instructional graphics.

My initial idea was a single booklet/publication/zine that gives the reader the knowledge of how to do various day to day tasks around the house that they would generally call in someone else to do for them at great expense. I started by listing some examples of such tasks and thinking about basic layouts and formats.