Today we had a critique with Phil following on from last weeks peer feedback, this was slightly more structured and a tad more formal than last week. As much as last week helped we did digress quite a lot so having Phil helped keep things on topic more and he also raised more questions for us to think about.
We had a choice of proposing either our print or web concept and development, I decided on the print brief because it's something concept wise I was unsure about since the feedback session last week. I proposed my new and improved print manual with a theme which I have decided to stick with to develop and strengthen it. I informed the group and Phil of my 'Elements of print' concept and how all the books come together to form a larger pack but work on their own and their different formats etc...
I mainly received all of my feedback off Phil and was all nearly focused on how I was going to interlink my tone of voice with both the concept of science, the technical language used and the target audience of people with a basic existing knowledge of print but who would like to use the manual as a reference, on going development through the info pack. He suggested using technical language to fit in with the theme but then I don't particularly want to completely lose people through terminology, but then again it could be the opposite end of the scale and patronise them. It was suggested to me that I should use quite a technical terminology but break it down so that it's understandable and easy to follow.
I've never really considered this point when developing this concept and actually thinking about it now it is actually a key component in the final info pack. It's completely pointless creating something themed around the sciences and print without using words used in both industries, if I created the info pack with only bearing my audience in my tone of voice it could turn out very bad because it would just appear stupid; that there is this chemistry themed print book but the text inside is completely different to the design... I really need to go away and have a longer think about what it is that I'm going to do, selecting a theme takes full commitment in all areas, not just the design. I need to think of something creative that will break down and explain words other than a glossary. Lorraine gave me the idea of breaking down words into their separate individual meanings (elements) and how two seperate things can come together to form a word (compound) such as thermo-chromatic which broken down means; heat and colour.
I then went away with Sam and had a quick discussion about the whole concept of words coming together and breaking them down in a science themed way. I looked at the way how compounds are drawn and how I can illustrate a compound with the different elements which would be the separate words with a small definition. I came up with this which I quickly drew up, each title page would have this illustration as a way of breaking down and briefly explaining the subject in a manner in which the audience will understand.