OUGD504: Brief 1- Critique

Design shown at critique: 

There were several negative comments made about my design as a whole which included the overall aura simply "not working". The group didn't like the fold that I had used and felt as though the combination of the fonts and illustration didn't work well together as it was contrasting styles. They also felt that the colours didn't work well because they thought they seemed too "girly" and "princessy". So on the whole the critique was incredibly negative and I need to re-look at my design from the beginning really and consider how I want to express my own personal process in a different way. 

After receiving the feedback from the critique I wanted to completely change my design in terms of the concept and style. So therefore I began to rethink the reasons why I picked the fold- which was to show how I see my process as a whole. But perhaps It would be better to show the process as a form of timeline or in order.

 I looked at how I could make the eight sections into 6 or less and so I looked at using a hexagon to fold into one to show the segments which are part of the process. However I found that through using complex folds it was difficult to get them to line up correctly. 

Therefore I thought about how I think of my own personal design process as a form of narrative much like a book. I wanted to make sure that the pages folded out so that the different stages are shown together. So a concertina fold of 5 would be excellent as I played around with a mock up.

Mock up of concertina: 

Tried to fit all 8 sections onto the concertina but I didn't think it looked correct because it has to be folded one way and then the other rather than being a continuous line: 

So therefore I cut the sections into 5 as I found as I looked at my previous design before the crit I could simplify the titles rather than having too much information. 

(concertina books)

In terms of a style I love history and I think that often impacts my own design choices. From the feedback I realised that I hadn't stuck to one particular style so I wanted to fix that by completing my design with one set style only. I love fonts from other eras and the idea of a process reminded me of a book as the final critique is the last chapter of the book. Therefore I began to look at the design with fairytales and also the designs of books within Medieval England. 

http://38.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lg8g3rY1Te1qzrkblo1_1280.jpg

These beautiful and intricate designs within old fashioned fairytales definitely remind me of previous work I have done for context of practise based on William Morris. 

Context of Practice 1: 

http://m-morris1316-dc.blogspot.co.uk

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXiS5X6mt-gbRFJw9JVi9y8cohybT7PI5gdtYE_sLUwFd05wEfhpLDNKU2j1C1D4cA_vPIGIyONtEwXy2A67v-PFDHddWIO_pR9IlDBOsK7fbrz4WDn45RA-_ooMa7RH-3EH2zNczoBZM/s1600/Medieval+Books.jpg

http://jimsbikeblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/medieval-book-page.jpg

http://www.imaginepublishing.com.au/images/oldbook1.jpg

http://merryfarmer.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/medieval-book.jpg

I love the designs within these books as it is beautiful in its craft, the use of borders and parts of colour is simply stunning as it all links together beautifully. Within my own design I am going to create my own simplistic floral borders along with using a similar style of font to transform my design process into a form of story told in the form of a fairytale and old fashioned style. 

I began trying a font which looks quite old style:

Screen printing worked incredibly well within my context of practice brief and I enjoyed the whole process of creating screens and using pigmented colours. However with limited time during this brief I will have to create mine on the computer. Therefore I tea stained paper and scanned it in to create a background to make the stock appear old. 

Experimentation: 

I found that this was too light so I scanned it in and added a vignette of dark brown in photoshop, I also experimented with "curves" of contrasts within photoshop to see what it looks like with dark and light contrasts and I was really pleased with the result. However I'm not sure that the bold and uppercase font I have used works. 

However I didn't feel that it worked at all because it is too bold and the design I want to portray is delicate and feminine. 

Font choices/options in context with the type I want to use:

I asked for some feedback as to which font would suit my intentions and I have decided to go with the bottom font which has flourishes in the first letters which definitely matches the designs I have been looking at and also my intentions with making my process into a concertina style leaflet. 

The fonts on their own looked incredibly plain and quite empty especially when looking at my inspiration from Medieval books and fairytales. So therefore I drew and scanned in some borders using black and put the opacity to 30% so that the text stood out most. 

After adding a few different variations of borders I re-looked at the design inspiration and found that they used beautiful colours to decorate so therefore I have chosen a few colours from the designs:

I have chosen to show these patterns in this format because I think that the final outcome should be the most simplistic due to being the idea which is developed and the initial research to be the most complex pattern as it shows the amount of ideas. 

The designs in photoshop seem too bright and the contrast with white doesn't work at all, the background definitely need to be much more off white and the colours more muted. 

I have chosen quite cool colours from the inspiration designs because it will contrast with the warmth of the paper. I tried using a yellow and orange below but found they just simply disappeared into the background. 

Here is an example of how trying a yellow/ orange colour simply does not contrast against the tea stained background because it is within the same colour segment on the colour wheel so therefore I decided to use a light shade of blue than the first panel. 

Inside:

Front cover and back (with bleed). 

I decided against using colour on the front of the leaflet because it might make it cluttered and as I have used different colours inside using a combination of those five colours would look ridiculous as I want it to simplistic on the front. 

Stock choices:

For the older look I am aiming for it would have been better to screen print or letterpress my designs however as the critique was friday I had to change my design idea quite swiftly for monday to be able to print. So therefore to book and screen print or letterpress would have been virtually impossible. So therefore I had a look at stock ideas to try and see what would work best as I think white would simply be too harsh. I printed onto papers called off white and antique which worked wonderfully as they are fairly thin and matte. You can see in the picture above that white would simply be too harsh for the historical and medieval inspiration I looked at. 

I printed the design three times to ensure I had enough incase the folding didn't quite work. 

I found with using two different stocks that the colour was slightly different on each for the background: 

The print on the right is different as the colour is much richer and darker than the one on the left and I think that the darker colour works much better because it matches the darker colours of paper used in my research.