Final Brochure

Today I went and got my final brochure printed out, and folded it all up into a booklet. Unfortunately, something went slightly wrong while folding up the booklet and one of the pages seems to stick out a bit too much when it's all folded up. However, I am really happy with the final design, and feel that it even came a long way in the past week! Following the critiques last week, I made quite a few big changes to my brochure, although I strongly feel they were all for the better. I have attached the final spreads below, as well as some snips of the grids I was using:

Below are the snippets of the poster and one of the spreads to show the grids:

Overall I have really enjoyed this paper, and am going to look into doing the 300 level progression of this paper, as I enjoy trying to make text very clear and visually appealing, without overdoing it with imagery etc. I quite like the simplistic approach, especially since it's actually a lot harder to make a simple design look good, which makes it more enjoyable! 

Test Print

On Friday I went and got my brochure printed our professionally at Ink Digital, just so I could get my head around both the InDesign document setup, and the folding and sticking together of the actual booklet. Once it was printed, I found a few small micro details that I wanted to change, so I had the intention of reprinting. However, I used this test print to practice the folding so I was prepared for the final output. It was a lot tougher than I had originally thought to fold it all up properly, and had a few problems with this. Once I make te few slight adjustments to my brochure I will get it reprinted for my final.

Week Five Critique

Today's class was the final class in which we could get a critique before printing for next week's hand-in on Tuesday. I came in to the class with a much more refined poster this week, having changed the background colour to grey, and began looking at the composition and scaling variation in more depth. However, during today's class, there were still quite a few things that needed changing, even within my brochure. Last week I didn't get too much feedback given to me on my brochure itself, only really the poster. However, it was good to get a whole bunch of feedback to work on over the next few days before printing. The annotations and feedback can be seen in my physical workbook, with annotations on each of my physical printouts. I have also attached some images of my current brochure and poster below.

Overall, I am really pleased with how my designs are coming along. Over the past week my poster has made extremely good process, and definitely looks much more refined. At the same time, there wasn't a lot of development on my brochure. Following today's critiques, I am very clear on what I need to change over the course of the next week before printing out and taking my final output to class on Tuesday. I feel like the extra changes I make from the critique will benefit my work nicely, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the final output turns out.

Week Four Critique

As per usual, we spent most of the class doing group critiques and getting feedback on our work. This week, I presented a brochure which has been refined quite a lot, and my first poster concept. As expected, there are only a few changes to make on the brochure, but a lot to make on the poster, since it was my first effort. I have attached the spreads and poster below:

Above, I decided to attach all of the spreads to the blog post as one big sheet, to give a fair idea of how it looks folded out and printed/stuck together at the full A2 scale. I have included most of the feedback of what I need to change in my physical workbook, on each printed spread/poster. By next week, I am hoping to have my brochure pretty much finished, to a point where there are only the most minor of tweaks to be made. With my poster, I would like to get it to a point where there are a few suggestions on what to change, although these also being pretty minor. Therefore for the next week I will work on these steadily to that I can have a much more refined output for our final critique before hand-in.

Week Three Critique

As per usual, today's classed was based around group critiques, and collecting feedback from both peers and teachers. Over the past week I had worked on my brochure a lot, and made quite a lot of improvements, nonetheless, I was hoping to get a lot of feedback to continue developing this brochure. I had Belinda come around and give me some feedback, all of which was very helpful (feedback can be seen in my physical workbook). 

I have attached my developed spreads below, along with my initial cover concept:

Next week we are having another class critique, although we are required to have a further refined brochure, along with an initial poster. This will give us two lessons of having our posters critiqued before our final hand-in. I'm looking forward to how the overall brochure/poster turn out, so am keen to get started on the poster nice and early over the next few days. I will aim to get a quite refined and well structured poster made up by next week's critique, since we only have two weeks of poster critiques, and it will allow me to have a refined version critiqued rather than an average quality mock up poster.

Initial Mock Ups and Critique

In today's class, we began with more discussion around grids, and the main dos and don'ts of design. We also revisited last semesters example booklets for some more inspiration. The class was again based around critiques of our first mock up concepts, where we gathered into small groups to give feedback to our peers. I am looking to keep the appearance and aesthetics of my brochure similar to my posters from assignment one, so they almost work with one another, and can be a collective group rather than individual forms of design.

I have attached my presented concepts below. The below concepts don't follow the same horizontal alignments, as I was looking to play around with a few different options so I could decide which style I liked best and continue to develop that. Each of the images below have been attached as JPEGs in the form of spreads, so each is actually two pages side by side:

After receiving feedback and critiques from peers, teachers, and individually critiquing my own work, found out what was working and what wasn't working in each concept. The first one has quite a nice set up, which would be good for continuing and creating horizontal relationships across all of the pages, there are some changes as well such as moving everything on the right hand page across to the right hand margin, so it's a similar layout to page one's layout. The second spread has too much negative space at the top. Apart from that, I really like how the text has been lay out, along with the inclusion of a graph/statistics alongside some body copy. The third spread is quite busy, although with a few adjustments such as making the circles/symbols smaller, it would help to create more negative space in between themselves and the body copy. I have analysed what needs changing on each spread in more depth in my physical workbook, with annotations highlighting what needs to be changed or considered in a different way.

Overall, there are aspects of each design which I like, and I'm glad I've come up with a few different ideas early on in the project, so I can straight away get onto the development process over the next 5 weeks. I'm looking forward to the development of this project, and seeing how I can continue to refine it over the course of the term. By next week, I will look at developing all three of these spreads, and making sure each of them share horizontal relationships, while also looking at creating the cover and back page of my brochure. The cover and back page will also share horizontal alignments with the inside spreads. 

Introduction to Assignment Two

Today in class we were introduced to our next assignment, following the two week study break. Our next assignment deals with more of a three dimensional form, which will be interesting in terms of creating all of the horizontal and vertical alignments and relationships across all of the pages. We are required to create a brochure, which can fold out into a large A2 poster. I am really excited about this project, particularly because it is dealing with a lot more type, and will require very careful placement of type and icons etc., as well as the fact that it will be more of a challenge creating a consistent hierarchy throughout.

During class we made a mini mock-up so we could get our head around how to fold the brochure and expand it into a poster. We also analysed the information, and began working out how we would like to ideally group certain lots of information with one another, and deciding roughly what pages we were likely to do so. By next week, we have been asked to bring along a mock-up with all of the type etc placed into the booklet as a basic initial concept/layout. 

Final Posters

Since the final critiques on Tuesday, I have working on making the few small changes to my posters, before going and getting them printed. Today, I headed down to Ink Digital on Marion Street to get each poster professionally printed at full A2 scale, so that they will be ready for Tuesday's class. Below, I have attached JPEGs of my final posters:

Above, is poster one, which I only needed to make a few slight changes to. In this poster (as well as Posters 2 and 3, I made the top horizontal bar graphs the same width as the bar graphs below, in order to keep them consistent. I also changed the title of the bottom section so 'School of Design' was first, and did the same in the key below it. The text inside the donut graphs were made slightly smaller, while the y-axis labels on the bar graph were altered so that they are the same font size as the x-axis labels.

In this poster, there were a few minor changes to make, which didn't take too long at all. I changed the colour of the stripes in the top horizontal bar graphs, so that they are more easily identifiable with their respective sections, and can be differentiated from one another. I also left justified the heading for the larger bar graph to fit in with the left justification of my other headings. In the bottom section, I swapped the order of the small graphs, so that the Design graph was before the Art graph, again to follow with my posters consistency. I also changed the text colour of the donut graph labels to black, rather than having them coloured differently which was creating an unnecessary hierarchy amongst the text.

In the above poster, poster three, I again made a few slight changes. I altered the stripe pattern, making it thinner stripes, so that it still tied in with Poster Two, but it is easy to differentiated between the two of them. Therefore the smaller stripes replaced the larger stripes in every graph. In order to fill in some of the negative space in the middle section, I added in a small map of New Zealand, making sure it still followed the grid system I had been applying all along, and coloured in the Wellington region with the striped pattern to show where the College of Creative Arts campus is in New Zealand.

Overall I am extremely happy with the outcome of my posters, and I feel like they look really clean and crisp, especially once professionally printed out in A2. I will bring these to Tuesday's class, and I am also looking forward to seeing how everyone else's posters turn out, and then looking at what we will be doing next term. I have really enjoyed this paper, as it has been extremely helpful in getting us to practice making things easily communicate certain stats, without over complicating the design. Printing out in full scale on a regular basis has definitely helped with the steady development of my designs, and it's interesting to see just how much my designs have developed from the initial critique to the final critique.

Week 5: Final Class Critique

Today's class was again focused on doing class critiques on everyone's developed posters. In terms of my own design, I am very pleased with how it is developing, and I have been making sure to consistently work on refining it so that it was at a near-finished stage for today's critique, so there are only a small number of minor adjustments needed before printing. It was quite surprising actually to see the number of people who hadn't actually completed all three posters yet, or were yet to place in grid systems or print in A2, considering there is only one week til the final hand-in.

I was very happy with the critique of my poster, there were only a small number of adjustments to make, such as changing the dashes to 'en dashes', changing the colour of certain text/percentages etc, and adding a map of New Zealand or other subtle feature into the negative space on poster 3. Overall the teachers seemed extremely happy with how my posters have been consistently developing and improving each week.

For the last 45 minutes of the class, once most of the critiques were finished, I began working on these changes and got most of them finished. There are only a few small changes to make before I head in to get my posters properly printed for hand-in. Once I make these changes, I will first print out a mock-up A2 version (just 2x A3's each) so that I can make sure everything is perfectly refined before going to get it printed. I will update my blog again once all of the necessary adjustments have been made to my poster.

Poster Developments

Over the past few days, since Tuesday's class critique, I have been working on developing each one of my three posters. A lot of the changes that were suggested at the class critique I have changed, as well as making a few compositional changes to my posters. Along with these changes, I have focused more on getting horizontal relationships between the three posters, while working with an identical grid system on each individual poster. I also began working on some micro details like the tracking of the text, leading, and the individual kerning of certain letter froms. I have attached the three developed posters below:

For the above poster, I made quite a lot of significant changes, which are quite obvious, with the main one being to the overall composition of the page. Instead of opting for one large donut graph and two medium sized bar graphs, I changed the sizing of the graphs and visually interpreted the data slightly different, so that it would create a more appealing, asymmetrical layout. The layout of this poster has a whole lot of horizontal relationships with the other two posters as well. 

The main changes I have made to poster two, involve switching the placement of the donut and bar graph, as well as playing around with the scale of the graphs, in order to more effectively utilize the negative space. Instead of using a green colour in the top horizontal bar graphs, I have opted for a striped pattern, which makes it easier to realise that it is representing a combination of School of Art and the School of Design.

Poster three has a similar appearance in terms of layout, although I played around with the scale of the main donut graph, as well as adding in a horizontal bar chart at the top of the poster to create more distinctive relationships with the other two partnering posters. Again, I have traded the green colour for the striped pattern, which helps tie together the School of Art and the School of Design and visually represent the College of Creative Arts.

Overall, there have been quite a lot of significant adjustments following Tuesday's class critique, and I have been working steadily to continue refining each macro and micro aspect of the poster set. Later tonight, I am going to print each poster out at A2 size, so that I can see how they will look in full scale, and this will make it easier to see what needs changing, as it looks a lot different blown up to full scale in comparison to on a laptop screen. Overall I'm really happy with how these posters are developing, and I feel that I am making steady progress towards a quality final outcome. I'll continue to update my blog with further developments and critiques.

Week 4 Critique

In today's class, we were required to pin up our set of three posters at A2 size (each poster two A3's stuck together) in order to get another critique on our developmental shifts from last week. Personally, I think my posters have come a long way since last week, as I have begun focusing on colour coding, using grid systems, and playing around with hierarchies. However, there are still lots of changes to be made. I have attached the three posters below, followed by some annotations (more in-depth annotations and critiques have been drawn onto the print-outs inside of my physical workbook):

Following the critique from peers, I had extra time to speak with just the teachers about my posters, and get down to all of the finest of details on which to improve and develop. Some of the major changes were based around utilising negative space, and decreasing the scale of some of my graphs and text, as they all turned out quite large. It's crazy how much different all of the spaces look once printed at A2 compared to being on the screen. Small changes like removing the slight gradient in the donut graphs are needed, as it slightly distorts the information, and they're not actually necessary. On poster three, I'm going to play around with changing the greenish tints to grey tints (except for the bold creative arts green), to really make that pop. One of the suggestions from Belinda was to try out a gradient from yellow to blue (as used on poster 2) in place of the bright green on poster 3, as this might be easier for the viewers to realise that it's symbolising a combination of the two. There is still some annotations missing out, such as the titles of the donut graphs which I need to put in, and other minor adjustments like that. On top of this, I'm going to look at changing the scale of a lot of the content, and once it has been scaled down I will reposition it to make sure it still follows my intended grid system. I am going to look at creating visual hierarchies between the headings and subheadings, rather than all being the same size font. I will also continue to work on developing horizontal relationships across the posters. More annotations have been included in my physical workbook.

Overall, the feedback from Annette and Belinda was extremely helpful, and having the one on one time to discuss each poster in depth and possible changes to improve the design was very important, and I feel like this is going to help me improve the posters greatly, and also clarified exactly what they are looking for in a poster, all of the macro and micro aspects. After spending an hour or two going around and listening to Annette and Belinda critique each set of posters, I drew a whole lot of valuable information to use over the course of this paper, as hearing feedback to others work and answers to their questions helped clarify anything I may have not been completely sure of, or hearing the feedback for ideas that I may have been considering trying. The final hour was spent making adjustments and refinements to our posters, based on the prior critiques. By next week, we have been asked to have these posters even more refined, considering it will be the final lesson before hand-in in Week 6. I'm feeling quite happy with the progress of my posters so far, as they have come along way even in the last week, and I am confident that they'll only continue to improve a great deal over the next two weeks. I'm looking forward to seeing how these turn out, and will continue to update my blog as these ideas are developed. I am hoping to get them to a stage, by next week, where I feel there will mainly only be micro/minor changes and adjustments to make, rather than needing to change compositions, hierarchies and all of those larger macro aspects of the information design posters.

Working With Grids: Development

Over the past few days I have been working on developing my set of three posters, in order to refine them for Tuesday's next critique. I have taken the feedback on board, as well as my own self-critiques, and have been working on improving each poster. Last week at the critique I presented three posters, although they lacked effective and consistent grid systems.

However, I applied grids to each of my posters, and have been using these to create more dynamic, visually appealing information design posters. I have been basing each composition off of a 5 column grid. I have also been playing around with colour coding across the three posters, and trying to get some balance with the colours, while making sure they're still recognisable and not confused with other similar tints/shades in other graphs. I have attached some snips below:

Above, are some screenshots showing the grid structure I have used. I used 5 columns, and then have used a lot of smaller horizontal sections, which will allow me to create some horizontal relationships across the posters. I will continue to refine each of these posters and then will present them during Tuesday's critique. On Tuesday, I will upload JPEGs of each poster onto my blog. They can also be seen printed out in my physical workbook.

Week Three Critique

Today in class we had another critique session in small groups, where we went through and pointed out what was working and what wasn't working so well. It was quite helpful seeing how people had approached all three posters, with everyone having a lot of different ideas.

In terms of my posters, as shown in my most recent blog post, I hadn't really looked at adding all of the colour coding just yet, as I was looking to get a basic structure working. One of the pieces of feedback I recieved on my poster was to make sure there is the exact same grid structure which runs across all three of the posters. With this in mind, I will go back into InDesign and set up a grid and duplicate it across to each of the posters, and begin working to craft them to work with the grid composition. There were a few other small bits of feedback, such as working with my yellow horizontal lines, making them extend and fit to a grid composition, and I was also given the recommendation to remove the Massey University logo, because apparently both of the teachers think it's not a very good logo!! On poster one, I will also look to replace the paintbrush logo with another icon that more or less suits Fine Arts and Design, rather than just Fine Arts, as the teacher quite liked this idea.

I found it helpful that we went around the class and analysing a whole range of posters, as it was a good way of the class sharing their ideas with one another, and also ways to learn from others mistakes and feedback they were given on their work. I find that the class critiques are quite an effective way to develop your work, as you not only learn from your own work, but also from the work of others. We had a whole group discussion on general things that the whole class needs to consider when they develop their posters, which involved things such as clear grid structures, precise colour coding, and the use of hierarchy and typography in an organised manner.

I'll continue to work on and improve my posters over the next week, and aim to get a better grid structure across all three of them. I will also look at brainstorming on a few more icons that I could possibly use, and will also look at various other ways I could plot the data, especially the data on Poster Two and Three, since this is the most recent data I have been working with, and am most unfamiliar with. In class I came up with a few ideas on how to plot these sets of data, so I will give these ideas a go when developing my posters. I will keep my blog updated over the course of the next week with each of my refinements.

First Set of Three Posters

Over the past few days, I have been working on coming up with my first set of all three posters. Poster One, a refined version of my initial concepts, while creating my initial concepts for Poster's Two and Three. I have attached my most recent attempts at the posters to this blog post below:

Some individual critiquing I have for my own posters is that they don't really have a grid structure that stretches across all three posters, each sort of has their own grid. In terms of Poster 3, I didn't spend much time on that, I was just looking at some basic ways of visualizing these newer sets of data. The data on the third poster is more suited to Pie Graphs or the use of icons, rather than Bar Charts, as each of the sets of data has been given in percentages rather than whole numbers. I will take these posters to the critiquie on Tuesday and get some more feedback, and then I can continue to develop each of these posters to a more refined stage. 

Lesson Two - Poster One Critique

Following what I had read in the brief, and hearing about our homework over the last week, I had prepared 4 full scale A2 posters (each printed as 2x A3 sheets) for today's presentation. However, once arriving in class, it seemed that a lot of the class hadn't even looked at mocking up a proper poster digitally, and had more focussed on printing out a few graphs on their own. With this being said, it didn't bother me too much as I had quite a few concepts printed out that I was able to get valuable feedback on. I have included the images, along with annotations, below:

The above poster was my initial design, which was more just looking at getting some graphs on the page and look at creating some sense of hierachy between the text and graphs. I quite like getting an asymmetrical feel within the page, which can't be done to the full extent with only two graphs, so as I create more concepts I will definitely have a minimum of three graphs, that way you can create a more visually effective poster. In terms of the graphs, I would be better off to use the same style of graph to directly compare the School of Design with the School of Art, as it's difficult to tell with a pie chart vs a bar graph.

In the graph above, I added a third graph, and made sure I directly compared the same style of graph for the Art vs Design. I also tried adding a picture frame icon to add a bit of interest, although it didn't turn out quite as effective as I had planned, although still did add some intrigue to the design. With this in mind, I'll definitely continue to experiment with some infographics etc in order to 'spice up' the page, while still keeping it both simple and visually appealing to the audience and viewers.

My third initial idea for the poster layout has been attached above. It is reasonably similar to the second idea, although I removed the picture frame icon, and played around with the gold lines being placed on top of the text to create divisions rather than alongside them. This gives the lines more of a functional purpose as well, rather than being an addition just for aesthetic purposes. I quite like the layout and hierachy I've created within this poster layout, with the three graphs creating more of an asymmetrical feel. After hearing feedback from the teachers, I will look to change the top pie chart graph, as although the teachers thought it looked quite nice, it may be seen as slightly distorting the information (as 2014 might appear to have far more people in comparison to 2010). With the feedback I received, I will be able to continue to make changes and develop my ideas by next week.

My final idea consisted of playing around with some infographics to create a more aesthetically interesting poster. I really like this layout, and I was complimented on the hierachy of the text down the left hand side. One thing I need to consider will be which information I want to stand out, and which I want to be secondary, as at the moment 2014 seems super important due to it's scale in the "School of Art" division. I will look at changing the graphics as well, as the camera hints that the School of Art is all about Photography, while the lower third implies that the School of Design is based on film making, so I need to find graphics which apply to all fields of art and design respectively.

After the feedback in today's class, and also seeing some feedback that a few other students got for their graphs they printed, I have a few more ideas on how to develop and refine this poster. By next week, I am aiming to have a far more refined Poster One, and also a basic Poster Two and Poster Three at the very least. By having all three, even if the second and third are quite basic at this point, it will allow me to negotiate and manage horizontal relationships of grids and compositions across all three posters. I really enjoyed last week, creating the posters and playing around with various graphing tools, and I'. looking forward to having all three posters printed out in full scale A2 for next weeks critique.

Creating Symbols and Data Visualization

Over the past few days, I have been creating a whole bunch of icons and symbols which I would be able to use in my graphs, as a way of presenting and visualizing various forms of data. These can be seen in my physical workbook, which I am using hand in hand with this online blog.

I have also been looking at ways of playing around with the graphs and plotting data, while trying to familiarize myself with the graphing tools made available to us on Adobe Illustrator, which I wasn't too familiar with before hand. However, I have been playing around with it and have come to terms with how to plot all of the data efficiently, and how to edit certain variables on the graphs such as column widths etc.

Over the next couple of days, before class on Tuesday, I will create a couple of posters for Poster One, which will allow me to get an early critique and some valuable feedback. Although it will still only be week two, the earlier I get feedback the better, and I can then use the next week to make a lot of developmental shifts and refinements before the next critique. The earlier I get some concepts printed out in full scale the better, especially since I only have this class once a week, it allows me to make the most of the time I have with both Annette and Belinda.

Introduction to 222.248 Information Design

Today's session consisted of being introduced to the brief, having some small discussions on what we think 'Information Design' is and consists of, and then continued to have some small discussions in groups of 4 in order to try and come up with certain symbols that we could use to represent or visualize data in a simpler form.

To me, the brief seems really interesting, and I feel like this project will be a massive help in the future, learning to use infographics and other useful ways to represent statistics in a more exciting yet simple way. We were shown examples of the projects towards the end of class, and it was good to see the brief in action, which helped us visualize roughly what we are required to do. I'm quite looking forward to the fact that we need to create three posters which are related and have horizontal working relationships between them, which al combine to represent a larger set of data.

We also had a sneak peek at what we will be doing for assessment two, next term, which was a book with is capable of folding out into a large A2 poster, which I can't wait to do, it looks so cool! By next week, I will continue with my research, look at developing symbols, themes, ideas and other ways to visualize sets of data, and create a few conceptual posters to take to class on Tuesday.