For this module I have learnt many skills, a lot of which I had never explored before, such as web design; I feel a lot more confident in designing something on screen after this brief and it has made me look at web design in a more positive light, as it doesn’t have to involve coding like I thought before. I have also improved in my screen printing abilities and am a lot more fluent in the process now, whereas before I would make mistakes a lot more causing the printing to run over time. I have also strengthened my binding skills as I have learnt to be patient with it.
For research I mainly looked for inspiration all around me, such as taking pictures in book stores, researching online looking at successful examples of graphic design which appealed to me. I was often influenced by things that weren’t necessarily specific to graphic design, such as the colours from a photograph of a building, or from a colour scheme on fabric. However I also looked in to things which related very closely to my project, such as existing successful logos, photography publications, and current album release websites.
The strengths which I have had in this brief are the designs on screen, for example the website and the logo. This surprised me as I have always preferred designing something which you can hold, however I feel that this time round the designs I created on screen look a lot more refined and professional. This may be due to the fact it’s only on screen, therefore it doesn’t have the chance to be folded / binded / printed etc, which is where a lot of problems can occur. However I still feel these were my strongest outcomes as I enjoyed thinking of the concepts behind them and conveying them through the designs.
Weaknesses I have had in this module is the print element. I think the book in which I created lacked a professional feel, this was due to not taking in to consideration certain aspects I needed to in terms of the pagination and setting up the document for print. The binding method I had chosen needed to have a gutter on each individual page so that no extra of the page was cut off, however after realising this it was too late. Another weakness was not taking in to consideration the relationship between the colour of stock and ink for the leaflet. This meant I had to make a lot of adaptions at the end which ate in to my time. As well as this I feel I could have engaged the viewer more successfully through an interactive element for the website. All of these areas for improvement can be solved by better and more effective time management, leaving enough time to go over mistakes as even though everything can look as if it’s going to plan problems or improvements will always crop up.
In terms of design production, the fact that the problem of not bright enough colours arose after digitally printing the leaflet was tackled by re printing the leaflet through a different method to achieve brighter colours, through screen printing. This meant the size of the leaflet had to change, as the size initially was A5, meaning that the text was 8 point. This is a very tricky type size to screen print as you run the risk of the ink not coming through, as the weight of line may have been too thin for the screen to expose properly. Due to this I scaled up the leaflet to A4, making the type 12 point, this worked successfully.
As this module was the first module back I feel I didn’t organise my time effectively, with studio brief 2 and 4 I set myself small deadlines to ensure I had certain parts of it finished which was beneficial, however with studio brief 3 I felt that I dragged the project out for too long, which resulted me in not enjoying the brief anymore. I will solve this next time by setting myself smaller deadline like I did with some of the briefs but next time with all of them, resulting in hopefully a much smoother and well planned hand in.
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