OUGD405 Design Process- Self Evauluation

BA (Hons.) GRAPHIC DESIGN		LEVEL	04
Module Code	OUGD405
Module Title	DESIGN PROCESS

END OF MODULE SELF-EVALUATION

NAME	Harrison Park

1.  What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them? In this module I have developed my research skills by using alternative methods and sources which I then applied to my deception and punk research task. Without my newly found research skills my research would not be as strong. I also developed my photoshop and indesign skills thoroughly and put them into use for my postcard brief and the publication I created on pussy riot.
2. What approaches to/methods of design production have you developed and how have they informed your design development process? I have mainly worked in digital software throughout this module; creating infographics and illustrations in illustrator, editing photos by adding tints and masking images on photoshop and linking all these component together on indesign to create my publication. I have also used a whole range of research methods from interviews to questionnaires, these research methods have played a major role in my design development process because they allowed me to grasp a better understanding of the subject but also gave me content to apply to designs.
3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these? I believe the layout and structure is a real strong point in my work, working in grid systems helped me to achieve this. Another strength is the simplicity of my work, I have balance image and type as well as the surrounding empty space to create design that isn’t boring and empty, but also work that doesn’t seem cluttered and over crowded.
4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future?
Lack of experimentation with other print methods because I have solely used digital print throughout I think it’s holding my work back at times, however, my design aesthetics is more clean and crisp where as with screen print this look can’t always be achieved. Next time I will attempt more methods like screenprinting and foiling, these techniques will help add that final touch to my work especially foiling. My research quantity also isn’t up to scratch and could do with going into more depth next time round rather than skimming the edges.
5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these? 1.     Use more methods of research to give me stronger information and a better understanding on the subject at hand. 2.     Use alternative methods of primary research to gain better views and opinions. 3.     Experiment more with stock as opposed to selecting one and sticking with it throughout, this will give me a better judgement of what stock is best suited. 4.     Experiment with more methods of printing as opposed to digital print all the time, could use screen printing, foiling etc… This will give my work more depth and more texture. Manage my time more efficiently and fully utilise the time i've been given. This will allow me to reproduce more variations. 5.
6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas: (please indicate using an ‘x’)  5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor
	1	2	3	4	5
Attendance					x
Punctuality					x
Motivation				x
Commitment				x
Quantity of work produced			x
Quality of work produced				x
Contribution to the group			x
The evaluation of your work is an important part of the assessment criteria and represents a percentage of the overall grade. It is essential that you give yourself enough time to complete your written evaluation fully and with appropriate depth and level of self-reflection. If you have any questions relating to the self-evaluation process speak to a member of staff as soon as possible.

OUGD405 Design Process- Feedback to my Zine

The feedback from the crit for my pussy riot zine was mainly positive, the only suggestions were to experiment printing onto different stock because the bright white made it look like there was too much empty space. Another suggestion was to maybe add an image on the inside of my cover again to avoid a huge empty white space. In response to this feedback I added the front cover to the inside of the zine cover, I also printed on to 2 more stocks; antique white and off-white sugar paper.

Antique- The stock worked a lot better than the original bulky newsprint because it had more of a texture which meant the empty spaces were less boring, plus when you look back through Swiss modernist posters they usually appear to be on an off white as opposed to the clean crisp smooth textured stock I originally used.

This is how the zine appears to the public, by using an off white it makes it less formal like receiving a bill or important letter. Instead it appears more interesting and inviting causing intrigue.

This is the inside of the cover with an added image to make it all less white and boring and more welcoming. I believe doing this is a lot more successful than the plain background that I previously had. Also the thickness of the paper made it a lot more difficult to make the folded book because it was a lot more bulkier which also meant the pages were offset as I folded them.

However when the yellow photographs are printed onto the stock they seem a lot more saturated compared on the clean white this affects the clarity of the images and can sometimes be hard to see and understand. It's quite an important factor because the images play an important role within my designs.

Off-white sugar paper- Again the areas of white appeared more interesting but it did feel a lot cheaper because the sugar paper is a lot thicker and has quite a cheap texture to it. However it was a lot easier to fold even though the folds felt like they would rip and the zine became a lot more fragile because it was less rigid and more flimsy.

The black looks so much different on the off white sugar paper than on the bulky newsprint. When printed on the bulky news print the type is very clean and crisp even at small points because of the smoothness of the paper. But when its printed on the sugar paper the black is not true black for some unknown reason but the type gains more of a personality because of the grains and textures of the paper that add more depth.

Again the yellow photo is extremely saturated and really unclear, even more unclear than when printed on to the antique white. But the black type looks a lot more aesthetically pleasing as opposed to the plain white stock because it has that vintage/old look to it similar toSwiss modernist posters.

The big print of the front cover on the inside of the zine cover looks amazing on this stock because the large sections of black aren't true black, they're slightly saturated which gives it a weathered aesthetic, this saturated black make the yellow pop more because the contrast makes the yellow more vivid. However the fold marks on the black section has actually worn down to the stock underneath because the toner hasn't taken well to the paper because of it's thinness and texture, this massively affects the overall appearance of my zine and cover and kind of detracts from the cleanness I have tried hard to achieve.

Below are just a few errors that occurred during the printing process;

OUGD405 Design Process- Final zine print

This is the spread for my folded zine printed on bulky news print. The print looks really clean and crisp upon the stock which I think suits the modernist style I chose to go with. Before it's even folded I think it looks pretty good as a print because it gives an overview of the full zine which is something you never really see also because it's equally balanced with colour, photos, illustrations and type. 

This is just a quick shot to document the folding of the book, it also illustrates the structure of the book and how it's made with the slit down the middle.

This is what the finished folded zine looks like on the centre page. I really like this technique of book making because it binds the book solely on folds as opposed to stitching, glue or staples meaning its a lot stronger and durable but also has a seamless appearance.

However one downfall is that folds are always slightly off because the front and back page have to fold around the entire book meaning they fall short of the edge because of the bulk inside it.

This is my staple bound zine, it has the exact same content but instead is printed double sided and bound with staples instead of being folded because. The reason I created this staple bound book is because I doubted the folded zine would turn out well because the bulky print is quite thick I worried that the paper folds would be quite untidy, uneven, just bulky and unsightly. 

This is what the spine looks like when it has been bound with staples, the staples detract from the clean aesthetics I tried so hard to maintain inside the zine, however it does make the the zine less bulky and untidy at the edges. The zine feels a lot lighter and much more pleasant to read. But I have decided to go with the folded zine because it ties in more with the zine cover, it's a lot more durable compared to staples that always seem to fall out or rip the page, but it also enables me to maybe an A2 print to the other side of the spread that is visible only when the zine is unfolded.

(Insert print image)

These are the folded zine covers printed out onto A3 bulky news print, i've done two different versions; one with fold lines and one without just so I compare the two. Even though the one with the fold lines fits the modernist style and the layout of the type, the one without them looks seamless, clean because of the use of white space and the balance between the empty space and content. 

The problem was that the prints/cover was too small because when folded it has diagonal edges instead of corners therefore I had to cut slits so that the corner of the zines could pop out, however this will be rectified and I shall print a bigger print/cover.

This is how the Zine would appear to customers/public, it has the basic information on the outside with a balaclava sticker on it. I haven't added what is inside the cover or what it is about because I wanted to provoke thoughts and curiosity of whats actually inside. I'm unsure whether it would cause intrigue or just lead to people ignoring it without an example on show, but to me it causes intrigue because it has the dates, location, participants and arrests. This information accompanied with the image on the back instantly makes me want to know whats inside.

As you unfold the cover more and more is revealed, so now the viewer now knows it's about Pussy riot. I think this is probably the best part of the cover because more information is revealed in steps as you unfold each section, my only issue with this is the 'K' gets covered up by one of the folds which doesn't affect it too much but it's just one of them small attentions to detail that annoys me.

Once you unfold the packaging you reveal the zine which is placed in the middle of the sheet. I'm torn between having the large white empty space in the background and having an image, each one bring something to the table; the large empty white space puts all focus and attention to the zine, however because the zine is so small compared to the white sea behind it I have been told people focused more on that than the zine. An image will obviously get rid of the mass white space but will it become confusing with the zine laid on top and detract from the zine? 

I have decided to leave it as a mass white sea for now and sea what feedback I receive from the crit then react to suggestions.

This is just the sticker sheet I produced to hold down flaps of the cover, I did originally create two designs but because of the mass amount of white I decided that only the striped ones on the right would suit my cover because of the limited white. I also think they look more like balaclavas than the stickers on the right, they resemble a ghost instead of balaclava .

OUGD405 Design Process- Zine development

Before I started any designs I first set out to decide what kind binding technique I will use for my zine, using my knowledge of book binding from previous projects I quickly went through the positives and negatives of simple binding techniques. Each technique had negatives but I found the simple fold bind was most suited to what I wanted to produce because it enabled me to print on to one single sheet thus saving money on print, it provided rigidity and durability because it wasn't weakened in order to bind and finally it is limited to 8 pages which is perfect because I only want to create a small informative zine and not to go into too much detail.

Even though I had my heart pretty much set on using the folded book I still created the other two so I had a better idea of what the final zine could potentially look like.

Concertina

Folded

Stapled

I have thrown the concertina technique out of the window and it's now between the folded book and stapled. The reason I have re added staple bound to my ideas is because when i created the folded book it was really untidy around the edges and i'm worried the designs for the pages will be offset when folded. Therefore I intend on creating both because it won't actually take any more time to design, once printed I can then decide which is most suited.

These are just some quick sketches of ideas that were floating around in my head, I've gone for a more simplistic modernist design as opposed to punk because I want it to be a juxtapose to the style of punk the same way pussy riot are a juxtapose of Russian society. I particularly like the image in the centre of the second row, the simple words Pussy riot and the balaclava don't give too much away about the content and will cause more intrigue to know what is inside. On the bottom of the sheet are just simple balaclava designs that will be used throughout my design as; stickers, front covers, information graphics etc...

These are some slightly more developed ideas that are influenced from the previous sheet, after holding a small crit with my peers everybody seemed to favour the top right hand corner design because it had the image, the title and a small body of text. This they believed would work the best for people who knew nothing on the subject. From this information I received I instantly set about creating the design and came up with these 3 below.

These are 3 different colour designs I quickly produced, the colour on the balaclavas represents the 3 females that were arrested wearing brightly coloured balaclavas, however i'm unsure to as which colours were arrested a part from yellow. The yellow provides the best contrast on the black background anyways because of the tonal values. Simple below the images are the title pussy riot in Helvetica to go with the modernist aesthetics I strive to achieve, and a small quote taken from the judge that sentenced the ladies. It reads 'Crudely undermining social order?' I turned it into a question because I want the viewer to have their own opinions once they've read the zine, therefore, it's asking what do you think? I added Russian on the other half of the page because I want it to reach a Russian audience as well seen as it is to do with them and it happening in their country at this moment in time.

These are just cut out versions so you can get a greater understanding of the final designs with the slim white border around the edge.

I then placed the front cover design onto the folded book net to create a mini prototype of what the design would look like on the front of a zine.

For my zine I'm going to create some bar charts to visually represent my primary research I have collected. Below are just some different variations of the bars.

I think the best one most suite to my design is either the top or bottom one, I think the % isn't really necessary because it just makes the bar charts look over cluttered and detracts from the modernist style. The other two are just down to a matter of taste because they're the exact same, just the number are aligned differently. Personally I prefer the ones aligned to the right, I don;t know why, I just feel it read a lot easier because when the number ends, the bar chart does too.

When type is applied

Below are two examples of how I have applied the balaclava from my front cover into info graphics, it's hard to notice what the image looks like because of the grid I was using but also because I was working in fast quality mode which turns placed vectors into grey boxes. But they are a good example of showing the process of achieving a clean precise and detailed info graphics for my zine.

Above is the printed version of one of the info graphics further above, they are the same page explaining who pussy riot was but I was uncertain whether to use a photograph of the group or to illustrate the number of group member with balaclavas. After a short discussion with peers we decided on using the info graphic because not only does it tie in with the front cover it also states in the brief to visual represent research through info graphics.

Below is the spread for my complete zine minus the front cover, it was pretty straight forward to create because I already had the information to insert from my research it was just a cause of information graphics, images and most importantly the layout. To achieve the minimalist modernist aesthetic I spent many hours on the layout so it all was align and fit into a grid system, however, because I translated into Russian as well the body copy was mostly longer than English. This meant it was hard to use the same grid throughout therefore the widths of body copy aren't the same throughout.

This is a scaled down prototype of the book I created just to check if the layout was correct and it worked once folded.

Cover design

I received a prospectus in the post a few years back from UCLAN and it was packaged in a folded envelope and I wanted to recreate it, however I struggled to find the same design online and unfortunately I threw out the prospectus. Therefore I had to create the cover from memory meaning there is insufficient research on the process. However for future reference I did create a digital net so I always have it incase I need it for future projects.

This is the cover folded up

Digital net

Once I had created the cover I unfolded it and created the net on indesign, it was a pretty simple process of just drawing lines where the fold lines are. By creating a digital version it allowed me to experiment with placing image and type on the cover. From the image above to the one below was just a process of adding an image of the group and information of the event that got them arrested. I chose yellow to tie in with the rest of the zine.

When folded up it looks like the image below, only showing the text on the front and on the back is the image of the group. the Pussy riot is revealed when the flaps are unfolded. The only issue is because the image is rectangular the corners of the photo have folded round to be on the front of the cover, this is simply resolved by just cutting the corners of the image of the image off on photoshop and reprinting.

Sticker development

I did different variations of the balaclava design on circles with and without text to see which worked as a sticker. The most simplest of designs worked best because it suited my sine and package design best. But i'm torn between two designs, the plain balaclava and the striped balaclava. Therefore I am going to print both out and decide then because the colour will be different and I will be able to place both on my package to see which one looks best.

OUGD405 Design Process- Postcards

Below are my 5 final postcards, I ended up using the photo of the air vent grid because it was the best quality photo but also I felt it was the best visual representation of my shape (cross). For each image I added a black and white filter and applied a gradient to it. I then masked right angled triangles and changed the opacity to get the three dimensional effect by creating different tones.

They're a pretty simple set of postcards but because they all have similar qualities and alike that they actually work perfectly together as opposed to 5 different photos that all depict a different cross.

Below are the backs of the postcards, i've kept it a simple as possible trying to incorporate a cross in it where I can. They're all pretty self explanatory, but I do have my favourites. The vertical line with the x on top works well together but it feels like it's missing a certain component what I can't seem to put my finger on. And then the other option is the large cross the horizontal lines intersecting it, this one works the best because it fills the whole space instead of leaving large areas of white.

Final postcards