STUDIO BRIEF 04 - REFLECTIVE PRACTICE

I have experienced a lot during my first year of studies, and my brief stems from the evaluation of my peers more directly than myself. Focusing particularly on what might be useful to graphic design students starting their course. As we know not every student that started their course here came with the basics knowledge of adobe applications. Many students came from a fine art background for example, so their knowledge maybe limited. I wanted to produce a guidance that would help ease that transition for students who may feel their skills are inadequate coming into the course. 


The main deliverables for this brief to produce a publication that works well as a quick-tip manual for one of adobes applications, focusing on the content being informative, so it provides a genuine use for a student. The actual design process is secondary in this sense. 

CONTENT 

I had to imagine what it would be like to open an adobe application for the first time. What would be your first questions? What would intrigue you first? What is the fundamentals you need to understand the programme? The toolbar. If a student has a full understanding to the toolbar and all its uses then this is the real first step to understanding the fundamentals. I was not looking to go into a how to guide, as this brief would go on forever. My main concern was underlining the key basics to my audience. I want to explain every basic aspect briefly but also so the student leaves with the understanding of what each icon achieves. 

RESEARCH

I looked into other publication designs, to get some inspiration, the difficulty with producing this booklet is trying to make it visually/aesthetically pleasing, whilst still demonstrating all the content.

I want the icons and images to be simple screenshots of the actual icons, so it is clear as possible. However by doing this producing a working design template around this is difficult. Screenshots never coincide well with a publication. It does not blend well with the overall aesthetic.

This is the sort of design template I am looking for.  None complicated, simple use of shape to make the content more approachable, but the main facet here is the content, as illustrated, placement is organised and recurring. The overall design accommodates the content, an attribute I shall try to input in my design.

Front cover ideas:


I originally wanted to make it authentic, as if Adobe themselves had made the leaflet. So I was looking for it to be professional

This was more leaning towards th style I was looking for, really expressing the authenticity in my design. Do I like this particular design? No but it fits with the theme, simple friendly typeface, different levels of opacity patterned.  However I really did not like this style, of working, I had the colour palette, it perfectly visually represents the content, but the design is not personal to me and my style.  

 I thought the blue was not working, I wanted it to be more exciting design for a graphic design student, so I looked into Tetris design and Piet Mondrain, and tried to come up with a playful design, that would make it more colourful and interesting to read. I wanted to use Mondrains style however not as bold in it’s approach, more subtly. I preferred this concept, but did not like the visuals I was producing, as it is not just a front cover design, the front cover will depict the recurring theme in the document. 

Even though this design so much more simpler, I visually prefer it, it is minimal in it’s approach and feel much more satisfied with this style of design, as it is personal to me and representation of my style, I did not think ahead in doing this brief, I did not think how boring it would be for me to create. 

EXPERIMENTING WITH FORMAT

I found it difficult to find an appropriate way to arrange the text. It was hard to get the ‘feng shui’ correct. The main problem being each definition would range in size so the spacing in-between  would not be consistent. I needed to find a way to display my content in a way, that looks appealing, does not convey too much on one page, or too little. As it is definitions dominated, I think the most appropriate layout would be listing. It may be boring, but it will provide more visual satisfaction and order.

Heres an example of how I shall display my content. As you can see there is a lot of information, but I feel this is necessary so my audience understand the concepts. It is all well and good for a leaflet to look nice, but if the booklet is not informative and provides an actual use, the soul point of this brief would be lost. This is why I found it difficult to produce a visual concept for this brief.