Studio Brief 1: Design For Print Final Crit and Self Evaluation

For the Final Crit, we had to have physical examples of what we had been doing, showing layouts, content and prototypes of the work.

Work to Present for Crit

We had to put our work out and leave the room for the other Group to Crit, then visa versa so that we would all get anonymous feedback regarding our work. Amongst what we left out were some questions that we wanted feedback on, giving the crit person something to work form as well as giving you the feedback you want. These were my questions:

1. How can I make the poster designs more consistent/ connected with the newspaper style?
2. Can you recommend a 80gsm newsprint stock or where I could get some from?
3. Does the publication work succinctly? Would it hold interest?
4. Reading the articles, is the Tone of Voice appropriate?
5. Are there any other areas I could cover within the Newspaper?
6. Would the images and newspaper work having a red colour filter on the images or just kept as they are?

We were then able to read the feedback that was left for us from other people to take on board. This was my feedback:

Feedback from Crit

For me, personally, I felt that I got a mixed quality of Feedback from the 3 sources that I had.

One person's feedback was incredibly helpful in regards to answering my questions and providing me with feedback in general. I was provided with a website which I could use to print off my newspaper onto newsprint. I would find this incredibly helpful as it would give me an outlet to use if I can't print it outside college, especially as it has been recommended from a fellow student. It was suggested that I perhaps try out the visual effect of having as filter as it would be cheaper to produce than having a 4 colour process yet they felt that the images are fine as they are. A point of consideration that was mentioned was how I would get people to keep the newspaper, making it more desirable as newspapers are seen as disposable. Also, they suggested that I change the layout of one of my pages so that it fits in with the rest of the paper due to the column amounts. To make the posters succinct, they mentioned about making the colour scheme the main feature to connect it, suggesting having a bellyband or plastic magazine packaging to keep it all together. This gave me the idea of perhaps using rope if I was to print a couple so it is like a genuine amount. This feedback has given me a lot to think about and has helped clear up some of the questions, especially the one about the newsprint.

The second piece of feedback gave me a couple of things to work with, suggesting that I look into traditional newspaper layouts where text is to the left and work in columns with centred imagery. They like how the images look now and say it is experimental and consistent.

The last piece of feedback I felt wasn't helpful as I was accused of plagiarism, giving me the comment of liking the idea of a red filter but 'it would be better if they were my own images'. All of the images ARE my own images and I found this quite offensive. They said the illustration was out of place and I needed to combine it all together but didn't suggest how and said the logo has too many details in the prints so they don't work favourably. I can understand that this is due to the A5 size of the prints that are being shown so this would be different on the larger scale that it is intended for.

I found the crit was helpful just for the invaluable feedback from the first person as this information has helped me out in regards to production of my work. I think this Crit didn't work in the sense that the people who were giving feedback didn't know the full story of the work but in a sense, this makes sure that your work an speak for itself and hold its own and I think it managed to do that.

Self- Evaluation:

• How did you approach the brief? - I  was a bit worried about this brief because i knew that there would be a lot of content and research that would be going into it. Despite that, i knew it would be good because it would mean that I would be learning as the brief went on. 
• What was your thought-process behind the brief? - My thought-process for this was based on the context of my presentation/ concept of the brief idea and I focused on that approach.
• What worked?/What was Good? - What was good was the primary research I undertook during the brief as it meant that I managed to try some new processes that I had never done before meaning that I was learning new skills all the time. This has given me a bigger appreciation for printed ephemera because I know the amount of effort that is put into it. The amount of things that I learnt about print during the brief was good as it means that I understand better about stock and print processes.
• What didn't work?/ What was Bad? - What was bad about the Brief was that I never really connected to the brief. I found it very hard going in regards to producing the work and the subject matter. I just couldn't get my head around it so I found it difficult to get on with. My time management wasn't very good for this brief either which didn't help.
• What would you change?- If I was to change it, I would change my approach to the brief and I would improve on my time management. I have learnt from this and plan to work on this in the next module. Also, I would produce a screen printed poster rather than a digital poster so as to get the physical aspects of print across to the audience. I would also have the newspaper itself screen printed, however, in regards to time and actual production, this would be very time consuming and couldn't be achieved in real life.