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.
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