May 15th:: Project 3 Synopsis

As with all projects, Project 3 had its challenges that I needed to work through. In terms of the subject matter, a booklet wouldn't work or be economical for a park to reproduce and print for people to interact with and use. Due to this, I readjusted to a pamphlet format and adjusted again due to the size the pamphlet turned out to be for the critique.

Creating a new map for the project proved to be a challenge in itself. I definitely have some appreciation for those designers. I'm still not quite happy with the map, but it gets the point across in a (hopefully) clear manner. I took a good handful of the critiques into account in my redesign of the pamphlet, including color changes, typeface changes, typeface weights, section call-outs etc. One of the few (I don't want to say ignore, but) I chose to overlook was the comment about too many pictures. One of my main goals from the beginning was to show many images of the lake and the different activities that could be done there, so that if theoretically someone would pick up the pamphlet, they would be interested enough by the pictures to open it up fully.

I feel much more comfortable with the color palette I picked in the revamp, as it's much more vibrant and colorful, being pleasing to the eye of an adult and a child alike. Using two different typefaces for contrast I felt was very helpful as well. The actual layout was just playing with color blocking in different places, and creating 'guides' of sorts with the colored lines. They provide visual interest as well as helping guide the viewer's eye through the booklet.

Overall, I enjoyed working on this project. It was fun to take multiple pictures so I had lots of material to draw from for the final layout. I'm not entirely sure I'm satisfied with the typographical treatments (I may still be doing some of my tendencies of blocking things off) but I definitely feel much better about this layout than my previous two, in all aspects.

May 15th:: P3 Final Spreads

May 12th:: Project 3 Revised + Final Crit Comments

These are the layout changes I made after the mini critique:

Critique Comments:

- Add margin to inside right of pamphlet

- More Hiearchy in type; vary color/weight to make it more child/family friendly

- Brighter/different colors so edge of the map doesn't get lose

- Add margin at the bottom of the pamphlet so bottom matches top

- Call things out with hiearchy (larger) to appeal to kids, smaller more detailed information for adults

- Scale down everything, size, type size, picture size

- Represent amenities with icons on map

- Brighten Color

- Remove white background from Des Moines logo (or remove logo completely)

- Smaller/less pictures

- Typo in Amenities section (useage > usage)

- Use a stronger image for the cover

- Pick 3/4 images to use rather than all

- Check for widows/orphans and uppercase in lists

- Title for events?

- Don't stretch image across 2 panels

- Make categories more clearly grouped together

I'm not sure if I'll be using all these comments but I'll certainly consider them.

May 12th:: P3 Project Draft

Initial draft/layout play, many things were/are placeholders while I was trying to figure out how to organize all the information. I decided to change the layout from a booklet form into a pamphlet after the small group critique.

A few pointers from that crit:

- Colors look nice
- Pictures should all be alligned
- Some information repetitive and redundant
- Some information not necessary (such as directions, table of contents etc)

April 30:: P3 Graphic System & Information

P3 Project Elements:

- Redo of Gray's Lake Map complete with Key

- Reformat of Gray's Lake text & interesting features

- Photography of the Lake w/people engaged in various activities

- Footer and/or Header elements repeated on every page

- Page # placement addressed to be on all pages

- Color Scheme

- Booklet Size

- Binding (by Staples)

- Font Choices + Size

April 30:: P4 Project Synopsis

I personally find group work more challenging than normal projects. Everyone has their own style/way of designing that differs from others, and sometimes it's difficult to get your 'design spoon' in the mix per se. On this project, I was mostly background/concept oriented. On the first day when we were deciding on what fonts to use, what layout etc, I directed the group towards Univers initially. It was decided we would use Frutiger, which was a similar font to Univers. I initially played with the google version of Powerpoint only to find that it didn't have Frutiger or Univers, so I suggested using Droid Sans either instead of Frutiger or in tandem with it. In the end, I believe we used both fonts, Droid being mostly used for the powerpoint presentation.

I also provided Droid Sans in the google drive for everyone to use, with some initial image ideas as well as border ideas. We didn't end up using any of them, besides a graphic I made specifically for what the Law Team asked for in the last week or so of designing. Colors were mostly decided by Taylor, as well as header/footer bits. The colors were tweaked upon request of the Law Team. The initial photos we were provided were of lower quality, so I made sure we received the larger, higher quality files for the presentations. I also assisted with the proofreading & checking for design hiccups in the layouts. I didn't end up getting to do a whole lot with the text besides asking the law teams how they would want it formatted and such. Kudos to Taylor who took the reigns big time on this one. I did however attempt to comb through the document provided to us by the law teams several times, to remove excess spacing and minor errors so the text could be dropped into the design document without formatting.

Overall, the project was challenging. Not particularly because it was difficult, but because there wasn't a ton of work to do, even less so when split between 5 different people. This is why I was mostly conceptual on this particular project, as well as experimental with different graphics & colors. I would have liked to help with the final document formatting besides checking for design mishaps, 'widows' or spelling errors, but with so many people working on a single project it was finished much faster than I anticipated.

April 27:: P4 Final Project Presentation

Brief Overview of some elements:

Cover Page (Taylor's Graphics)

Rebecca's Graphics 

Powerpoint Slides worked on my Meghan

House graphic created by me in request of the Law Team

Sample Slides of overall project: