Presentation of Introductory Brief

Here you can see the final product of our weeks work on the student employment campaign. Overall I'm happy with the result, especially the content; there was a lot of research went into this piece, and I feel it's paid off, I really do believe that's it's not that far away from being a genuine informative product. In terms of design, I think there's room for improvement. For me it's still not quite slick enough, but it does the job.

I had the idea to design and print some posters, 5 in total, with an inspirational quote about employment on each. They turned out pretty well I think, especially considering they only took about 20 minutes to design and print; they really added to the fuller body of work.

Again above you can see how our body of work has evolved through design changes, crit recommendations, and group decisions. In terms of our actual presentation I think it went well, I always end up over thinking these things, but generally calm down once they get going. I'm proud of us all as a group, we've overcame differences of opinion to find a mutual design solution that fits what we set out to do.

This is a little random, but I ended up transforming one of my fortune teller prototypes into a snake, and I think he's really cool. I had the idea that perhaps if we were to give these paper fortune tellers out, and it was a legitimate campaign, then I could design a little piece to go inside that gives the user directions on how to recycle their fortune teller into a snake like mine. It's kind of gimmicky, but it's fun, and it compliments the interactive theme we set out to achieve. If we were given more time on this project, I think I'd probably take it in that direction.

Student Employment Development Work

For the past couple of days we've been continuing with our group project on student employment promotional material, I've already posted drafts and prototypes for our 'paper fortune teller', but we've really kicked off with it today. There is now a functional printed version, and other mock ups & prototypes. I'm pleased to see we've stuck to our original design concept.

Part of my tasks today have included redesigning some of the information going into our flyer/poster, I suggested pie charts, because I think especially at the moment info-graphics are really cool within the contemporary graphic design community. Above are 4 different takes on the pie chart we proposed, because it's always nice to have options. Together we've decided on the bottom-right chart, so that should make the final cut of our campaign.

Another piece of research I've done today is into font pairings, I've briefly looked into it before as I feel it's an absolutely essential piece of knowledge. It's really important to know which fonts work with which others, and what kind of tone it sets for the rest of the work. I had always assumed that a lot of the time, designers judge it by eye using only instinct, but it's interesting to find how so much more is taken into account. For example: Kerning, it's important that the two fonts letter spacings are in a similar quantity. These things make the difference, even if we only understand them on a sub-conscious level and assume things are more aesthetically pleasing because of it.

I also have a few books on loan at the moment, some for personal use, and others to directly assist this project. I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to learn more on editorial design, as it would strongly improve our informative poster/flyer. To understand layout, grid systems and type working together with a more attuned knowledge is key to making successful design. The books I feel will specifically aid our project are:

Zappaterra, Y. (2008) Editorial Design. Germany, Stiebner Verlag Gmbh.

Balius, A. (2003) Type at Work: The Use of Type in Editorial Design. England, Gingko Press.

(2004) Proud 2 be a flyer: the historical roots of a design revolution. England, Happy Books.