Studio Brief 3 - Layout - Final Design Summaries

Having only been taught the very very basics of Adobe InDesign on Thursday afternoon, I'm really quite pleased with my layouts. I'm also very pleased with the way I based the layouts around the content, rather than having every page based around the more generic idea of fish, which has admittedly come a long way from cartons, such was the initial word I was assigned. The brief didn't state weather or not the 5 spreads were meant to show continuity, nor did it make it particularly clear if each spread was meant to have only facts or only photographs etc, or that I couldn't use more than 20 of each. These were important factors for me to consider, because had I stuck to doing a spread for each type of information then naturally the words page would be a lot less visually pleasing than the photographs page. I also decided to add in numerous extra facts that I came across in my research that didn't necessarily fit into my presentation, as this meant I didn't have to rely on placeholder text to fill my spreads.

The re-design of this page is based around the feedback I was given in and after the crit. This was firstly after Simon's general comments on everyones work was that our layouts needed to be more informed by the content of the page. After re-visiting the feedback I was given in the crit I realised that a lot of the feedback said I needed to make the images more prominent in my layout because of their attractive bright colours. The fact that their is a lot of colour on the page meant I tried to separate it somewhat to avoid having too much contrast between the colours. I also wanted the text to look fairly free-flowing in a similar manner to the colours, hence why the outline of the text curves.

This layout it based around the fact that the Kissing Gouramis are not actually kissing, hence why the image is spread across the two pages, creating the impression that they are in fact apart. I've backed this up by having the fact related to Kissing Gouramis as the only fact on that page compared to the three on the opposite page, further backing up the idea of separation. I have slightly changed this layout since the previous blog post it was in, the box giving the fact about the Kissing Gourami has been lowered so that some of the opinions don't intrude on the row of the grid used for the page title.

I produced another double page spread. The photo's used in this spread all have in common that they have the potential to be very chaotic things, so the concept behind this page is to use a very obvious and organised grid system in an attempt to contain the potential chaos. You may notice that this spread has opinions encroaching on the row used for the title whereas the previous spread didn't. Their were two factors which meant that I chose to allow this to happen. The first is that the rows of text aren't very continuous unlike in the previous spread, so it is no-where near as noticable. The second sort of leads on from the first in that going against the grid system (to an admittedly mild extent) is a form of chaos within the design.  

This spread is based around encroachment of the page, as it matches the mould growing on the ornaments and fake plants in images.  I have also broken what has been, up to now a 2 column grid system, allowing for me to put a smaller image next to a column of text in an attempt to show the mould taking over. I've also used the skull symbol for poison next to the text where the poisons (Ammonia, Nitrate and Nitrite) are mentioned, and more of it is showing on the right side of the page than the left to try and suggest the problem can grow over a short period of time.

I chose to lay out this spread this way because I believe it reflects the cold hard nature of statistics. This is matched by the blue which is stereotypically a cold colour, as well as using a sans-serif font. I chose Futura because it's quite delicate compared to other fonts such as Helvetica, which reflects the nature of fish. I changed the colour again to a more greeny-blue that is more ascociated with the colour of the sea, as the previous change wasn't as blatant a move away from the connotations of Facebook as I'd have liked. I also added another bar chart to the right page, which was a chart I created from the statistics I gathered. I added this in because it gave me something else to write about on the page as I was struggling, but I also think it looks quite minimalistic and goes nicely with the choice of font. 

I re-designed this page to fit the style that the other 4 were produced in, if for no other reason than to submit as an extra to show how it would look if all 5 spreads had to be for the same book or magazine. The reason I'm submitting it as extra rather than instead of the other is that I don't feel that the layout of this page is as appropriate as the previous attempt, as it doesn't really reflect statistics. The left page is meant to separate the UK statistics form the US statistics in the most obvious way possible, so as to reflect the differences in the statistics themselves. The left page is more based around the pie charts, I tried to shape the text to look like a slice of pie, but I really think this has been quite unsuccessful. I would've done something different on this page, but I was really struggling for ideas.