OUGD405: Brief 1- Final Designs & Crit

Experiments with paper stock and problems with inks:

I had several problems with the colour purple and pale yellow I had worked with and I found that what worked on screen looked very different once printed. I was highly disappointed with the outcome but felt the better result was when it was printed onto a thick sketchbook paper (for watercolour). This was a problem I found when working with RGB and CMYK- and therefore must remember in the future when working for print to always work in CMYK.

These are my final designs printed before the final crit onto thicker stock (sketchbook paper) this is because the paper is less shiny and incredibly matte, this also suits my target audience as printing onto thicker paper would be more expensive and contains connotations of wealth. The critique was written and therefore I created three questions to direct my feedback, these included: 

1. From looking at these designs what stores could you see/imagine these to be sold in?

2. In conjunction with the previous question who do you think the target audience is?

3. In terms of the final piece do you think these are successful?

Feedback:

1. Shops mentioned: debenhams, bhs, tk maxx, Laura Ashely (or other high end homeward store), M&S, John Lewis, Paperchase. 

2. Target audience: middle aged women, eccentric and like colour.

Middle aged women who like decorative things, middle aged (female), young people/children/teenagers. 

3. Successful?

- Not successful because the colour scheme doesn't work, alignment of text needs to change.

- Not successful: the type is hard to read and over flourished. Colour scheme does not go and composition needs to be changed.

-The dimensions aren't mentioned and it is unclear what is being sold, the patterns aren't consistent and the text is not readable. 

- Could be successful if another colour was used around the text. Try white?

- Designs are visually interesting and could catch someones eye- maybe more depth to the design would make people want to buy it more.

- I'm not going to lie they would not be successful at all, the colours clash terribly and the font is difficult to read.

- I would like to know who the target audience is because I don't see it appealing to many?

- They don't contain the necessary info and the style seems fairly cheap. I don't think they are successful. 

As the rest of my class are not the intended audience I knew their feedback would be slightly biased to what they as designers love. My intended audience was for wealthier female middle class, to which they understood and wrote in the feedback, therefore I think that is how my designs are successful- they reflect what that audience would want. What I have taken from this feedback is that I will experiment with the idea of white instead of the gold tones and change the composition of the text on the 8x6 backing paper. However I will not be changing my font of choice as I personally don't find it unreadable, and the size was needed within the design- I have included this however I have written it with type instead of numbers. However the crit did also confirm my disappointment in how the purple and gold/pale yellow tones transferred to print, therefore I will take the purple out of the background.

I will also experiment with using the same pattern within the backgrounds and also fade this out by using a lower opacity and this may help with the readability and legibility of the typography. 

I feel that these are far more successful now through removing the purple and choosing one design to keep them consistent within the backgrounds. However I am going to remove the design from the top right (see below straight on view) I found from looking at the design the top right was too distracting and the typography needed negative space due to its complexity. 

FINAL DESIGNS