OUGD504 - SB01 - Evaluation

OUGD504 

SB01 

Evaluation

This brief aimed to offer experience of working with a client as well as gaining insight to their ideas and their opinions on design. However, during this brief I had very little communication with my partner due to their lack of attendance. This made considering their design opinions and opportunities for critical feedback very difficult. This being said, their brief did help outline the audience and positioning of the publication, students and young adults moving to Manchester from the South. The client proposed the price-point for the product as being very low. This became the main factor in all design decisions. The printing method, number of colours used, binding method and finishes were all justified against the cost of production. For example, a dust cover and higher quality paper were considered throughout the design process but rejected due to budget restrictions. The price-point was justified by target audience.

Trial and error was used to isolate scale and typeface combination. Making physical examples of the products formats and layouts to compare helped with this process. It was important to consider access to resources during this brief. On a commercial level, screen printing would not be appropriate, lithography would be the most cost effective method. However, considering access, the methods used, screen printing and laser worked for a once off production. Another consideration would be using spot colours. Commercially, a spot colour would be used to get the exact International Klein Blue used throughout the booklet as the colour on the screen and the same colour printed are not an identical match. Using a spot colour would avoid this discrepancy.

Designing for print had many unique challenges which had to be overcome. The majority of these problems had to be resolved in InDesign. For example, crop marks and creep. If this publication was to be produced by out of house printers crop marks would be essential. Creep was avoided by considering how many spreads were used in the booklet and in the binding process.

The overall finish of the publication could have been improved, further research into appropriate materials would have helped with this. For example, the thick mount board used to reinforce the cover was chosen for its colour and robust qualities, although it gave a rough overall finish. Another issue was the quality of the screen print on the front cover. The exposure of the screen was poor and this resulted in a patchy outcome. This result can be justified as the added texture reflects the ‘gritty’ North. A crisp finish would have also worked.