Week 5

Monday 23/3, session 8

This morning's lectorial was on MAPS, MAPPING, MAP MAKING.

So it follows when we returned to our studio we began a mapping exercise.
We were given an a4 page (the size of our double page spread) and asked to roughly with just a pencil, create a map that locates all of our destinations in relation to each other.
I found this quite difficult as my four locations are spread across the wider Wellington region and I didn't really have much of an idea of what a map of Wellington looks like. We then had a feedback session on our maps in which it was clear that a lot of us were in the same predicament of looking at a birdseye view and marking our spots. I am thinking for mine I might do a watercolour shape of Wellington and then mark each location with a heart shape that is filled with a photograph of the location/activity.
From there we moved onto doing peer reviews of our brochures.
I paired with Hannah, Alfred, and Finn. We had some really good discussions!
Here are my notes from the discussions about my work:
On my picnic spread it was suggested that I raise everything so that it's not so base heavy. And soften the edge cuts to eliminate the prison vibe that they saw.
In terms of my map - Finn came up with a really epic suggestion of doing a drawing of the map as the creases in a palm - I am going to attempt this but I still have my watercolour back up.
The group read the title of my brochure and didn't feel like it fitted with my imagery/style. Finn said that as a guy, on his own, he would never pick up a brochure like mine - especially with all the pink. But if he was out with his girlfriend and they saw it, together - they would pick it up as it definitely successfully portrays a coupley vibe. So I am not going to be gender specific about who the brochure is for.
They said I needed wider margins to allow users to grip the brochure.
They said my most successful spread was the movies one. Reasons being; the image was framing and interacting with the text which gave a holistic feel and the crossing of the centre line felt very deliberate.
The points they gave me to improve on were; margins, an interesting font for headings, using less text sizes, make the image and type work together.

Fay and Matt were then calling each of us up individually to see our brochures/where we were at/ and give us some feedback/advice.

The first thing I took away from this was aligning all the spreads.
The second thing was less is more with the different type sizes.
Third I need a few things that were more eye-catching/bold.

From there I redesigned the spreads to all look like this:

I made the change in heading font as during my peer review my peers didn't like the mix of a Univer heading and Garamond body text. I added the lines under the main heading and under the Tips heading.

In passing, Fay said she didn't like the main heading font change and that for now I should go back to Univer. She liked the improvement of the underlined heading and right alignment of the sub heading. She wanted my Tips heading more dramatic and wanted me to try the thick black line with the text reversed out and so I came up with redesigned spreads that looked like this:

I agreed with Fay that the Tips heading now has a lot more impact and looks WAY better.
Her next step for me was to inject some colour somewhere in the type.

I tried it in 2 different ways:

I decided I liked the first one better - having the underline and subheading pink.

Later, I decided to sort out my infographics.
I wanted to use a scale system as when I'd gone to my locations I had a used a scale of 1-5 to rate it.
I also liked the idea of it being simple, pink, and maybe using the heart symbol again.
This is what I came up with:

I was really happy with this idea as I think it quite clearly illustrates what I'm trying to tell them. So I have added it into each spread.