End of module Self-Evaluation

What skills have you developed throughout this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?

• Indesign has helped do magazine layouts better and it has showed me that when working with type using indesign is much better than photoshop and illustrator
• My illustrator skills have improved A LOT, using it more and just getting better.
• Book binding skills and folding has improved did a few different variations of books this module.

What approaches to/methods of research have you developed and how have they informed your design and development process?

• Taking more photos has helped me always have at least some image to work with as a starting point.
• Getting statistics is always helpful cause u can make any info graphics images out of stats
• Using questionnaires has been helpful to back up my concepts especially and to have information i can then work with.

What strengths can you identify in your work and how will/have you capitalized on these:

• Working with Colour! finally managed to break through the wall of being scared of using colour and taking my work to a new more playful approach instead of just always designing for a serious professional audience. This will help me be a more diverse designer and i will be far more confident on briefs.
• Getting better at type and layout, im starting to be able to confidently do layouts they are starting to look a bit more professional as well.
• Using image has always been a problem due to my lack of drawing skills but illustrator has somehow helped me get my drawing back a bit, its improving and im now using illustrations in my work.

What weaknesses have you identified in your work and how will you adress these:

• Using my own drawings, not as good as i'd like to be but im getting better and finding my own style finally.
• Not as good as i'd like to be with magazine layouts and grids, going to practise this more to improve.
• My spelling is really bad, i need to spell check everything all the time.

Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?

1. Blog as i go along, this will help stop me do last minute blogging...
2. Screen print, when mass producing something. Will save money.
3. Keep my sketch book more neat so other people can understand it more clearly, The people who look at my work will be able to understand it better.
4. Document my work on illustrator better, i get really into my work and always forget to take screenshots, but i do usually note it down in my sketch book.
5. Do more big design sheets before moving into sketch book. 

Attendance: 5

Punctuality: 5

Motivation: 4

Commitment:4

Quantity: 3.5

Quality: 4

Contribution to group: 5

Stock problem

The stock seemed to rip at the spine after folding, which is a shame cause i really liked using it, the colour came out really well, but next time i would use a slightly more bendable stock or a thinner white card which will make my books last longer.

Final products for speaking from experience

If i had more time i would extend this project into an website or an interactive blog this style of design could easily be transfered to a website especially as i made it in illustrator. On this interactive blog i could get everyone to comment from my own year in graphics, i could also open a new updated version from where next years first years can write their own personal reviews for their peers as every year might have a slightly different taste, this would make this project even more relevant as it can be an ongoing process for next years first years to keep up.

i would also like to create a series of posters which take some of the key information from the book and highlights them, these could be put up around college. These posters would stand apart a lot in the college due to their colour schemes so you would be able to recognise them easily and have a quick reference about what to eat or where.

Speaking from experience Mailshot

The idea i had for producing something to distribute my books was based around how first year would be able to receive it, i decided the most logical approach would be to design for the pigeon holes all first years have. I had a few different ideas of making a box with them in but i decided against it and produced a more simple mailshot, this could be done easy and reproduced.

I decided to go against making the box because it was far to over complicated and over kill for 3 little books, i wanted to produce something more simple for the first years to just pick up out of their pigeon holes.

This is another version of a mailshot which i would put a lid over the bottom cover, but again i decided against this as it made it difficult to produce the front of it when i had to keep in mind half of it would be covered by a lid, and no matter how accurately i could design it, chances were it would never line up properly making my design look a bit weird.

two rough sketches from my scetch book before going onto illustrator, after being a bit stuck with my other over complicated design i started to try and think as simple as possible.

This idea i started building after my sketches in my sketch book but i soon realised that the lid would ruin my front design and no matter how accurate i make it when it gets folded it will be out a few millimeters so i decided to simplify my design even more.

new shaped... mailshots. These were much simpler and worked better as a set of 3, instead of trying to work out a compromised colour for just 1 mailshot.

Simple and effective.

Matt wishing he was an exited first year receiving his mailshot... 

Indesign

My partner is Ben Harwood from my interview i got a fair bit of information from him but what got me most interested is bens love for drama, i wanted to make him a really "elegant" double page spread mainly because his a man who loves looking good, i didn't want to fill the page with too much unnecessary stuff, i wanted it to focus on the image and then the text to work around it to make him the focal point.

i didnt like the text layout it felt really structured and mechanical 

These are some of the quick layouts i tried before finally getting to a finalish product.

This is my final product so far, i dont like how the bottom left image sticks out, if i could change anything id probably photoshop that image to reduce the lighting and grey background around him. 

A few quick layouts in my sketch book to give me some idea of what layouts to start on indesign with, by doing a few layouts it gave me some idea of spacing.

John workshop

Johns workshop came as a bit of a surprise, at first i was a bit sceptical about "thinking big" and not thinking what could go wrong. But as the sessions progressed i soon realised thinking big is really fun and half the things i think wont ever happen could well happen. 

I found it hard at first to think like john wanted us to but after the first session our group got really into it and i finally started to be able to "think big". 

Our idea was to basically make a massive sleep over in leeds where we would try and get everyone to come dressed in pajama's for a night and come together all over Leeds. We got into a lot of minor detail which looking back wasn't needed but i also realised with enough funding it could actually happen and i would go to this event without a doubt.  

3rd and final book redesign

After looking back at the brief and my concept boards i finally realised what i had to do. I basically just kept the dimensions and the content from the last book and basically changed everything. I decided to break up all the content from the book into different sections, the first book was already over crowded with information and it felt like there was too much for just one book. So i broke it up into Facts, Opinions and Reviews. I also colour coded each section with the colours i had from the 2nd book. This gave me 3 books with small bite sized amount of information you can quickly browse through.

My stock decision was based the idea that because i wasn't filling the paper with a lot of content white paper would make it stand out as obvious, i found that using off-white or antique white stock it breaks up the content and makes it feel less harsh against the images or the bold text.

There were some printing errors with the double sided printing but by extending the bleed i could fix the white lines on the bottom of my cover page.

everything laid out and semi cut to size.... really really really enjoy the colour scheme seems to fit together nicely. This colour scheme has and style of design gives a much happier and welcoming image which fits far better then my first initial range of brown colours.

Because i didnt strickly work off a grid it made my layout very unstructured which was pretty much the exact opposite to the last book, it gave the book a more light hearted and playful look about it. 

The style of layout is found throughout the three books with simular colour schemes and point sizes ect. 

There were a few spelling errors and printing errors but i got some friends to read through and circle out all the mistakes for me to fix. The book seems far more appropriate for the audience and now i can start developing a distribution package for the freshers.

The idea of why the books have been split up in 3 is basically the first years can choose which book to browse through at the appropriate time, for instance if they're in a hurry they can quickly pick a cafe from the reviews, but if they want to see what worked best for us they can look at opinions and if they wanted to know any handy facts the Facts book is helpful for those things which takes months to find out on your own.

a quick first evalaution upon print out, small changes had to be made for the 2nd batch to come out more accurately. for example some of the lines and titles had to be moves so it lined up properly or some of the text boxes were more visibly not lined up on the double pages.

These are the finished illustrator layouts, i decided to do it in illustrator cause im the most comfortable with this software and as i was making everything from scratch it seemed the most logical to be using. I didn't save any screen shots from initially building these books but all it needed to look completely different was a major font change, colour change and the using the direct selection tool a bit of reshaping and before you know it you have a completely different looking book. 

Printing and all its problems... Because i wasn't printing in Indesign i basically just referenced my booklet i looked at as research, took it apart and then numbered its pages. From those references i numbered my pages in illustrator and overlayed the double pages using 2 layers. Thankfully my kodak printer in my room seems to line up double sided printing as well as the printers in the digital dungeon so after some trial and error i got it accurate within a millimeter or 2.

type and grid with Lorenzo

This is the article i mainly worked on, it had a few images to work with and about 600 words as well, its a pretty low end magazine.

The problem with my layouts were i didnt use different weightings of black which lorenzo pointed out would help make different parts of the article pop instead in my case all of the layouts felt like they kind of moulded into one and sat back on the page.

You can clearly see on the bottom right M which had been coloured in around it, made it instantly pop out on the page and set it apart from all my other layouts.

The grid i used to help keep all my columns in some form of order, it helped keep everything looking a bit more organised and neat. The grid also helped me as a reference how big to layout my columns.