InDesign - semi-final outcome

 

For the time being this is going ot have to be my final resolution for the InDesign brief. I'm full aware of how I have not replaced the placeholder text with real text yet, due to a lack of time management on my behalf. I've kept it very simple and I'm not overly sure how happy I am with it, but it is a layout, at the end of the day. 

InDesign - the making of.

First drafts of my InDesign layout. I quite like the more formal, less wacky stylings when it comes to magazine design...I might introduce one colour somewhere but I'm not sure yet. I'm not just doing it black and white because it's cheap. I genuinely think it looks nice black and white.
Excuse the black boarders on the image above, when printed the page would end where the white stops. Also the quality is fairly low in these images, due to the way that InDesign works. Obviously when printed it would completed to a much higher quality. And the text is filled with placeholder text, I'll fix that up aswell. It's not wacky and overly original, but it is simple and effective. And that's what I like, sometimes.

InDesign Layout ideas.

 

Just a few thumbnail scribbles, inspired by various magazine layouts. Some from a good issue of Computer Arts that got nicked from me. Anyway after some consultation with peers it was decided that the bottom left thumbnail was the most appealing. At this stage anyway. I like using colours. 

InDesign - Main Header type work

I started getting into proper nice, swirly type recently, like, nice and calligraphic as such. So I thought it might be cool to hand render a nice bit of type for this InDesign brief. I started out with this font called Edwardian Script ITC, here it is:

 

mmmmm nice and swirly. I would get a lot more technical when I try and describe this, but as per usual I've left a lot of things to the last minute. So using this font and a bit of my own creativity, I started to develop the header for my article. I'm no genius, and so of course I have little or no idea of how people would like themselves to be perceived, but I felt this kind of type will go a little of the way to showing my impression of Kirsty. 

 

 

 

 

 Here they are. It's still a bit rough but I can't find a fineliner any smaller than 0.1mm, and my hand just isn't steady enough to get it crisp. I could go about vectoring it, but I'd rather keep that as a last resort, as in my opinion a lot of the qualities are lost. 

Here's a better picture after being scanned in:

 

yeeeeeeaahhhhhh

Speaking from Experience - final flowchart.

I asked a number of out-of-towners (my mates) if they'd have a look at my blog and see which flowchart they find most appealing. I thought this would give me a better overview of what looks good, I mean I can't exactly predict the future and guess who might be a first year GD student next year. So I thought some of my mates might be the best bet. I got the best response towards the soft yellow one. So here it is:

 

I still couldn't tell you if I really think it's that visually engaging or not. But I'm more going for a Form Follows Function approach. I'm not trying to be some kind of artist with this. 

What really made me choose this one was that my mate Luke told me he wants one on his wall, and he also put it as his desktop background. He chose this one. And so because of that, I'm going to have to go against the advice given to me in the crit, and rely on the judgment of a 'non-designer'; which at the end of the day is going to be the most effective solution...as most of next year's first years will be like I was a year ago - a 'non-designer'. Bang.

Fun Shop.

Two-day workshop hosted by John Watters, a man who I rapidly gained a lot of respect for. Two days as in, on Thursdays for two weeks consecutively. Essentially, I saw this as a sort of 'break', not in the sense of relaxation but in the sense of diverting your mind's attention from the current task to carrying out a task more informal and fun, hence 'Fun Shop'. It was a collaborative ideas-based brief, involving the creation of a concept for an event in Leeds, Summer 2012.

The basic idea that the brief outlined was to create some kind of event that could effectively re-create the same kind of ethos and atmosphere that Woodstock offered; the sense of a tight-knit community-driven festival, for anyone and everyone. You know what I mean.

Also quite important to mention (in my opinion...), I was elected as a team leader. Not the sort of role I would opt for in collaborative situations, but actually I quite enjoyed it. I feel as though I performed fairly well, particularly on the first morning. 

'The Big Day Off' main concept board. Outlines our idea on the most basic level.

 

 

 

Concept boards outlining each of the sub-ideas. Go big or go home. John advised us that at this stage in any situation, it is always worth taking your ideas to the absolute extremes, regardless of budget or anything like that. So yeah, we came up with some fairly wacky ideas, something just a little different to your average. Perhaps maybe it wouldn't go so far as to re-create that Woodstock kind of effect, but it's the sort of thing that would still unite people.

Anyway we presented our ideas successfully and got a good response. The main thing I learnt from these sessions, and in fact from John himself, was that anything can be made possible - if you've got the idea, there will be someone who can make it happen.

Speaking from Experience - colour scheme

 

In response to comments in the crit about the flowchart not being visually engaging enough, I decided to give it a test run using a colour scheme, just sort of traffic light colours, as they seem logical for flowchart progression. Thinking about it now, I actually quite like it, as long as it sort of stays informal and doesn't start to look like some hospital illness flowchart or something depressing like that. I'll ask around and see what people have to say about it. 

There's still a couple of arrows and lines which could do with a sorting out, just to make everything a little more spacious and breathable if you get me, so I'll get onto those in a bit.

Speaking from Experience - Final crit 20/5

Will upload a copy of the crit sheet given to me, but for now here's some of the main points that need addressing:

- Wider range of outcomes would have been perhaps more appealing.
- Perhaps try and view the work as more of a journey rather than focusing on outcomes
- Include more information on the clubs themselves
- Work could be more visually exciting/engaging
- Complexity of the design is maybe slightly overpowering.
- Explore a few more different visual outcomes

 

mmmmmm same again but on a nice soft yellow background. Not sure if it looks as good as on plain white, but I'm going to investigate what happens if I print on various stocks, could be nice. Plain flat white generally looks fairly cheap. Might try out a few other colours on screen aswell.

Speaking from Experience - continuation

 

I got rid of the black background in the destination boxes, I think that it is now much clearer where to start and where the end points are. I could add a colour scheme but to be honest, I'm quite enjoying keeping it straight black and white. 

Speaking from Experience - reversing out colours inc. title

 

Same again but reversing out the text at the bottom of the poster. I'm quite liking this one.

Speaking from Experience - reversing out colours

 

Got rid of the black background to see how it might look, one of Amber's suggestions. I quite like it, seems as though it gives the flowchart much more room to breathe, if you see what I mean. It'll probably look quite fresh once it's printed. I still rekon I could use some sort of colour scheme so that it is more clearly identifiable what direction to take, maybe using different colours to fill the boxes or something. Who knows.

Speaking from Experience - larging up lines and stuff.

 

Oh my god, this is starting to look like a professional made it. haha. sorry.

Anyway I fattened up a few of the lines to make it more obvious which directions to take around the flowchart. Definitely easier to see where the six main categories are, maybe I could fatten them up even more though...

Speaking from Experience - text again

 

I realised that it's not possible to read the text from the last post. So I scanned in a print and upped it again. Click to enlarge.. kept it fairly light-hearted to fit in with the overall tone of the poster.

Speaking from Experience - text

 

Used InDesign so I could write some stuff using the grids. How very crafty. 

Speaking from Experience

 

Got rid of the arrows and text at the bottom, looks much crisper now. I mean it's fairly obvious that you should start in the middle.

 

I'm a big fan of yellow and black, so I thought I'd see what it looks like. It's alright. Sort of a bit more night-like. I'll print one and see how it looks in the flesh...

But to be honest whilst I carry on improving it I'm just going to keep it black and white and worry about this sort of thing later on.

Speaking from Experience - Progress crit 13/5

 

Notes from my crit.  

Summarised:

- More clarity. It's not so obvious what directions to take.

- Potentially reverse colours. 

- Add some text.

- Put something on the back - to be honest yeah, I did have this idea to e-mail some shop owners and see if they'd like to put a small advert on the back perhaps. Maybe this is a slight cop-out..but then again, I could definitely leave these out in college for the first years, maybe it's not such a silly idea. I'd charge a small fee and that way I could make a bit of money off the back of it. Quite literally. haha. Maybe it'd be something to pursue as a summer project.

Speaking from Experience - further flowchart development

 Further development of my flowchart. Getting started was quite a pain but once I'd created all the elements - arrows, lines, boxes etc...the rest was a breeze. Absolutely powered through it.

 

Initial categories, quite vague but they do generally encompass the majority of going out-ers, particularly from my experience of the people on this course. 

 

Subcategories etc etc. I hadn't really thought that much about the layout but I was pretty happy with a symmetrical sort of feel.

 

Detail

 

Nearly there.

 

This is the stage I brought it to for my crit on Friday. See, you can pin it up on your wall in your kitchen or something, so when you're in your first few weeks you won't end up looking like total idiot because you've rocked up to Evo in your Adidas trainers, or you've ended up in Vox Warehouse wearing a low cut All-saints top. Magic, I'd have definitely gone for one of these if I were to do it all again. 

Speaking from Experience - creating the flowchart...part one.

I thought I'd attempt a mock up of how the flowchart poster might look, whilst I wait for the research results to come in. I started doing it on quite a vague and very general level, something which would accommodate a large audience. However once I have more facts and opinions, I'll be able to alter it accordingly.

 

This was a basic layout drawn up from my plans earlier. Of course it looks incredibly plain right now, I'm just going to keep it black and white for the crit tomorrow, just as to not complicate any feedback with issues about colour schemes and other stuff like that. 

 

A few ideas for the title of the poster...I was looking for something bold and informative, obviously. I tried them out below, oh, and I reversed the colours, as I think it looks more attractive that way, and stands out further.

 

Telegrafico: I quite liked this typeface at first, but upon staring at them at length to the point where they became shapes and not meaningful objects, I kind of started hating it. Seems like it's trying too hard.  

 

US 1.0.1.: Good, just not as loud as the next one. 

 

League Gothic: Old faithful, I love it and I know quite a few others who love it, it's big, bold, shouty, hard, you know, it carries the connotations of going out quite well. I think. Obviously I'm going to have to pick up some feedback tomorrow, and also try out a few more typefaces, and sizes etc.

 

Creating some arrows to use around the flowchart.

 

 

 Starting to put together some of the main titles and stuff.

 

After messing around for a fair while with titles and arrows and whatnot, it's beginning to shape up a little like this. It's primitive and flawed at the moment, but it's a start. I could picture it up on the wall of a first years' kitchen perhaps...

Speaking from Experience - a general idea

 

My good friend Mitchell thought that an flowchart of some form would be a great idea. Luckily, I also thought this was a great idea. So I drew up a vague and incredibly rough prototype as such. You can see what I've done, it's not that hard, and may be incredibly useful. Most importantly, I've never seen one before, so it fills a gap as such. I haven't yet actually put any names of places, I've still got to do a fair amount of research for it. 

But you can see the general direction I'm heading in, you know, what type of thing you're looking for, and it'll go beyond that....like, who are you going with? How far do you want to travel, or spend? Is money an object, or (much like myself) are moths flying out of your wallet every time you open it?

I figure this could go hand in hand with a crisply designed book, giving a number of reviews on various locations. You could use the poster to reach a potential night out idea, then look in the book to see what's what.

Speaking from Experience - notes

 

five W's and an H

 

i.e. less time and money wasted.

 

Basically, no flyers. I got sick of them very quickly, and found very few of any use...

 

The essential outlines of this project.