Studio Brief 4 - Communicate - Poster

This was the initial design for my poster because it uses the image that's on the front of my leaflet, which causes a direct link in your mind between the poster and the leaflet. I the above picture shows it printed in black and white, the contrast between the background and the text isn't high enough for my liking.

After printing it out another couple of times with different grey backgrounds to experiment with different contrasts between the background and the text, it took a few attempts due how the colours look different on screen to how it looks on paper.

This shows how it looks printed in colour. I was quite underwhelmed with this due to how the grey background was very grainy, so I decided to print it on some darker stock to hope for a better result.

After initially having problems with the stock and the printer, this is the result. I made the background of the file transparent to minimise ink consumption, which is appropriate in any context, but this also allowed me to have a more consistent background due to the paper being untouched. Printing black ink on the darker stock intensifies the black more as well, but unfortunately the green doesn't show up brilliantly.

Studio Brief 4 - Communication - Final Crit

This morning was my final crit for brief 4, in which I presented the small leaflet I produced. I was really happy with the feedback I was given, which was mainly that;

1. I had identified problems within the initial problem and considered them.
2. What I'd produced does solve the initial problem.
3. What I produced is appropriate to the target audience.

There were however a couple of things that were mentioned that I could definitely improve on.

1. The skull and crossbones on the front could be made using fish bones to make it more appropriate to the context of the leaflet.
2. There is more information on it than I initially intended, so it no longer is the sort of thing that could be read in a minute or so, and for this reason I'd need to produce a poster that creates a mental link to the leaflet so a customer will pick it up and take it home to read.
3. I spoke about how dark and dingy fish shops are generally, so it was suggested I could do something with UV ink via screen printing. 

All this is useful to me because it means doing something different from the planned poster and handout, as I was fearing that this brief could've ended up merging with brief 3. So  I will definitely be moving forward using the advice given to me today.

Below are the two styles of fish bones I did in Illustrator to replace the skull and crossbones.

I tried to develop it in a skull and crossbones shape, but this didn't work
as the fish skeleton was too wide in comparison to it's length.

So I stuck to a more basic skeleton shape.

It looks a lot more appropriate now.

Studio Brief 4 - Communicate - Flyer

Due to not really starting this brief very strongly, I've only been able to produce the flyer in time for the crit tomorrow.

I think it's quite clear that I stuck to the style of design used in Brief 3, and I'm glad this is the case, because I think it shows how relevant the designs for both briefs are. The two briefs are closely linked, and therefore it makes sense that the answers to the two briefs should have things in common. Whilst I believe that the middle pages and the back page are definitely suitable and appropriate, I have very slight doubts over the cover due to the feedback I've been given about it today, which is that it's too plain, doesn't fin in with the style of the rest of the leaflet, and it isn't immediately obvious that it's about fish. The reason I don't agree with this is because I don't believe the people who've given me feedback have taken into consideration the list of considerations listed at the bottom of this post. 

Personally I believe it's suitable for the following reasons

1. It's high contrast. It's necessary for the cover to be high contrast to give it as much chance as possible of attracting your eye in the place where it will be found, due to the likelihood that it will be somewhere with bad lighting.
2. Tone. It immediately suggests danger due to the connotations of the skull without being too heavily negative.
3. Placement. I don't understand the feedback that it isn't clear that it's about fish, arguably the first word you read on the page is fish. This combined with the fact that it will be in a fish shop makes it hard for me to believe it's not suitable.
4. Audience. The target audience aren't going to want to read the whole flyer, so the fact that it's clearly sectioned into the advice and the information makes it easy for the reader to only read as much or as little as they want to, whilst still being able to receive the necessary information.

The remainder of the flyer was fairly straight forward to design, due to the research I'd done in brief 2, which, in itself, provided some of the information for the flyer. The other information was found in the same place as one of the places I looked at for my research, which made it easy for me to answer the problem.

The was you could monitor if it's successful or not would be to see how many were picked up throughout the day. These are the sort of things that would be left at the entrance and on the counter at the shop, the idea being that they would see it initially and it would inform what they bought, and that they could pick one up at the counter. Simply by seeing how many were left at the end of the day would be a measure of success or failure.

Studio Brief 4 - Communicate

As discussed in my previous post, I knew roughly what my poster was going to look like in my head, but unfortunately it's not worked out how I wanted it too. Below is a screenshot of a stage of development I got too yesterday, and I was very underwhelmed. It's only just struck me now that it says "Are you buying you many fish?" rather than "too many fish".

It struck me that the possible reason for me not knowing what to do is that I didn't really know what to put on the poster. It's difficult to design something that's high impact but yet puts across the information well. To get around this I will start off by designing the flyers, as I can put information in the flyer and still make the cover eye-catching. I can then take the project from there. I will also be a lot more confident in my design for the flyer because of how it can be continuous in style from the spreads I designed for Brief 3, as I was really pleased with them and thought they were very suitable.

Study Task 4 - Communicate - Initial Poster Design

The reason I only did two initial designs is that in my head, there's a way of combining these 2 layouts in order to create the effect I want, assuming I can nail down what exactly the text should say. I didn't see it as necessary to sketch up this "third idea" as I believe it will be clear from my outcome that the idea is a mixture of these two.

I want my poster, flyer and handout to work as a set, and so I'll come up with designs for the other 2 after I've produced the poster, I believe this to be in the interest of my works continuity.