Rationale

This brochure provides information for dog owners about locations around Wellington that allow dogs. Visitors are often unfamiliar with dog friendly places and even locals are sometimes unaware. Therefore, I’m using illustrations, graphic photographs and colourful shapes to present this information. The relaxed, gestural drawings provide insight of each experience through the dog’s behaviour and what sort of objects are found there. I chose this illustration style so that the dog breed is indistinguishable, and the reader can easily imagine their own dog in place of the drawing. Similarly, the photographic element helps to locate the reader by showing part of the location. The shapes and patterns display the energy and the feeling of each place. Yellow dominates the brochure as it is Wellington’s colour, and this furthermore reinforces the location. Each design element contributes to presenting the three locations for dog owners and what to expect, without words.

Reflection

Overall I am happy with the work I have submitted and I really feel like I have learned a lot these past six weeks. I taught myself how to do digital illustrations from scratch which is a valuable skill that I am very interested in expanding. My understanding of the intangible elements that make up a good design has grown rapidly; now I can see these elements in other designers work, whether it is an advertisement for a brand, or an illustrator I've found on instagram. The intangible is the most important in my opinion as it seems to be the part that really gives life to the design.

In spite of this, I can see that there are so many things that I need to improve on. My hierarchy of elements and visual flow needs improving as this was something that I really needed to work on and change at the end of this process. It was also something that I didn't notice myself until someone else pointed it out to me. I need to learn to pay more attention to this in my design as it could save me so much time by not designing something that needs to be completely reworked.

I could also do with implementing stronger intangible elements, although this was my first conscious attempt at this so I don't think I did too badly. I think I have a pretty good understanding of typographic elements such as widows, orphans and rags but there is always room for improvement in this area as well.

At the end of the day, I enjoyed this assignment although I am happy it is out of my hands now.

Week Six: Monday

Since we had no class today I utilised the extra time to complete my brochure. This meant implementing all the changes that Matt had suggested last Thursday. I actually found it quite challenging to change the layout of all the spreads and it took me a good couple of days to get them to a place I am happy with.

I am pleased with the result of these changes as the visual flow of each spread has improved dramatically in my opinion. Now it is much simpler to see what is most important on each spread and the title is the first thing to capture the attention. I didn't change the illustrations very much at all, apart from downsizing the stools on the Golding's Bar spread as this was problematic in terms of hierarchy. I also took away a few of the stools so there were less of them and moved them off to the side so they stopped dominating the entire page. This also left me more room to play around with layout and where to put the break out quote.

My next steps:

- write the rationale
- organise a time to meet up with my buddy
- package indesign files
- get my workbook/blog up to date with all my work I have done since the previous class

Workbook

At Matt's suggestion I had a go at colouring the dogs. I started with the sports and recreation page since it was the one that I disliked. I went through a number of differing iterations of making the dog more colourful but there were honestly none that I liked.

I ended up removing the dog from this spread altogether, and decided to put other little illustrations in like a tennis ball etc. I also decided not to try colouring the dogs in the other spreads because, 1: of how badly this attempt went, and 2: I didn't think they needed colour anyway.


Like I said, the most challenging part of all of this was changing the layout, and again I went through a number of different iterations most of which are pictured below. The goal at the end of this was to have a better visual flow and a clear hierarchy of elements, so therefore I was changing the location of the title and the body copy and also doing something about the stools so that they weren't so eye catching. The yellow rectangle was also something to try differently as well.

Amongst all of this I also completely changed my table, I drew two more little icons and made the table vertical instead of horizontal. The resulting table is way better in terms of not taking away from the hierarchy and also easier to read.

I almost went with the above design here. I was tossing up for ages between this one and the one I chose in the end. The reason I didn't choose this one is because I felt like the yellow rectangle was the dominant feature and it's where my eye went first. This was distracting to the design.

The last image here is the layout I decided to go with. Throughout all of my iterations I did consider completely removing the yellow rectangle from the left page but I felt as though it needed that pop of colour to keep it connected with the right page. Looking at this now I can see that I need to move the yellow rectangle up slightly so that it is optically aligned with the body copy. On the grid it is aligned but the overrules make the body copy seem just that slight bit taller than the yellow. 

The spreads at this stage

At first I did take Matt's advice about aligning the body copy on both sides of the map spread so they had the same flow lines but this meant that my map had to be very small, and the text on the left page had to change column widths. I ended up going with this layout because I didn't want the column widths to change, otherwise they would be different to all the other ones in the rest of the brochure, and when you do this it usually means the information written there is different. Looking at this now I can see a few widows that I need to resolve.

The illustrations I added in on Matt's suggestion do really help to locate the viewer in my opinion. It is also a nice addition that builds up on what I already had to make it even stronger. 

Although I am happy with the spreads, if I had more time to work on my brochure I would like to come up with a better way to put text on top of visual elements because I do feel as though the white boxes are out of place. Unfortunately at this point it is the best I can do. I would also come up with some sort of way to make this layout work more with the dog park spread. This is the only one that looks sort of weird since the illustrations and text are on opposite pages. I considered changing the alignment so that the text was on the left side but I weighed up the options and I think leaving it as is, is the best option.

I also went back through the spreads and moved each of the coloured rectangles up one notch so that they look to be optically aligned with the text and overrules now. 

Week Five: Thursday

Today's class was the second interim presentation. I found the online presentation so much more useful than the first interim presentation because I received way more feedback today. As well as this, I got feedback from Matt which was doubly useful because usually my feedback is from Fay and it was nice to have a new set of eyes viewing my work.

Matt's main feedback was to do with the positioning of all my elements on the pages. He found that there was a lot of empty space that wasn't being used dynamically. To resolve this I am going to move things around on each of the spreads until I get alignments and placements which really solidify the FDP's. Matt also suggested I add in a few little doodles onto each spread to reinforce the location, such as adding a pint glass and a water bowl into the Goldings Bar spread. This will help to use up some of that empty space too.

My Feedback:

- could draw a pint glass and dog bowl to reinforce location, these drawings would go by the type
- table too close together, have it vertical instead of horizontal
- table is at the top of the hierarchy in the Goldings spread because of the red block colour
- bring colour and title up to better utilise space
- play with the colours of the breakout quotes
- change colours of dogs
- move map up so words align
- yellow rectangle distracts from the dogs on the title page
- back page copy too big

Workbook

Cover Page Iterations

Throughout all of these iterations I was trying to stick to the same theme in the brochure of having one page in block colour and then a ribbon of that colour spilling out onto the opposite white page.

Trying a different approach of colouring the dog so that it stands out on the white background but really don't like the look of it. This was before Matt suggested colouring the dogs.

Attempting at putting the yellow ribbon on the back page. I don't like the look of the back page but I think the front page with the block yellow is actually alright. I might revisit this idea later.

This was the cover spread that Fay suggested looked too predatory.

Attempting to make the cover more joyful by placing balls, bright colours and playing dogs.

Decided to cut down on the amount of balls because I found them too distracting but looking back now maybe it wasn't actually that bad. 

My next steps with the cover spread is to make the dogs stand out way more, maybe the do need to be coloured. Also to get rid of the yellow rectangle, probably by having the cover page block yellow. I will also play with the placement, maybe move the breakout quote around and change the colour of it. The dogs could be black.

Updated spreads based on Fay's feedback

 

This is the updated map spread where I put the title and the key into the map, as well as removing the black line around the rectangle and around the white land in the map. I also fixed the rags of the text.

Here I aligned the headings of the facts to the text instead of to the bullet points. I also changed the text so that all the headings are now one sentence long instead of two - this looks way better and more uniform. I still haven't managed to get the illustrations to a place that I am happy with.

Week Five: Monday

Today's class was the first proper online experience we have had. I think the organisation around this has been really good, I like the buddy system and I think the workgroups will be useful too. It was also nice to zoom with everyone at the start before we split into smaller groups. It just sort of made me remember that everyone is in this together.

My buddy zoom with Fay and Lily was really helpful in determining my next steps for my project. I had already had a go at the cover page which I'm glad I had because Fay was able to give me feedback on this. To get my brochure ready for the second interim presentation on Thursday, I will be fixing up minor details and also changing the illustrations of my title page so that they reflect a friendly, more joyful experience.

This was my submitted attempt at a cover page. Because of the breed of dog and the harsh shapes, Fay said that this looked unfriendly and even predatory. It seems like a dystopian future when wolves are all over the city. I agreed with what she said and I therefore changed the cover page.

Fay said it was alright to recycle an image from other spreads so I chose the illustration of the two dogs playing because that best shows what the brochure is about. It also makes it seem more friendly and inviting with the balls and the bright colours.

My Feedback:

- cover is menacing/predatory

- recycle the image of the dogs playing so it looks more joyful

- smaller font size for cover works best

- put title and key on the map so they don't look disjointed

- black keyline of the map not needed

- rags on map spread need adjusting

- sports and rec spread headlines need fixing

- dogs foot on sports and rec spread looks trapped/broken, need to redraw the foot

- facts on the sports and recs spread should line up with the copy

- play with the table so that the gaps in between each section aren't too big

- change the yellow tint of the locations on each location spread so that the yellow is easier to read on the white background

What I want to change:

- I really don't like the sports and rec spread, maybe because of the colours or the illustrations so I need to change this and get it to a place where I am happy with it

- create a dog pictogram for my table

Questions to ask next class:

- Do we need a table on the sports and rec spread outlining what the tables on the location spreads means?

- Do we need the 'Absolutely Positively Wellington' logo on the back page of the cover?

Workbook

Where my spreads are at

Creating a pictogram

These were two images that I sourced online to use as a base on Illustrator to create a pictogram for my table.

I made these into vectors on Illustrator so that I could scale them down a lot. I ended up going with the one of the dog walking because the dog sitting got too hard to see when it was tiny.

I also had a go at making a little warning sign to show restrictions but I'm not sure if I will use this yet.

Here you can see the pictogram in my table. It looks way better than just the smiley face emoji I had before. Although now I'm not even sure what it represents. I definitely need to redo the purpose of the table somewhat.

Week Four: Thursday

I found the lecture on maps very useful as it showed a variety of different looking maps, which had been done in different illustration styles. It discussed how the map still has to match the design style of the brochure, and also about how much actually needs to be on the map. For example, the London Underground maps were helpful in showing that sometimes information is much clearer when there is less detail. This makes me think about my own map, and wonder exactly how much I can cut away from it to still keep it clear and obviously Wellington.

This idea was reinforced by the little map activity where we had 5 minutes to draw a map on a post it note showing where we live and the route we take to uni. It was interesting to see that some people's maps were really clear mainly because they used landmarks to orientate us. I drew my first map using a side on view, for the sole reason of emphasising a hill, but later discovered that this view is not as affective as birds eye because it was a lot harder to show all the surrounding roads.

My spreads are nearly done, I have a few details to sort out, as well as writing my body copy, but my main task for the weekend is to create my map as well as get started on the cover page.

Workbook

This was the brochure that I found and brought into class

This is a map example that I like because of the simplicity and ease of following the directions. I would like my map to be clean cut and clear to read like this one.