Evaluation

Evaluation

In this project I began by analysing three of the different government videos relating to road safety to try and raise my understanding of what makes each one different, how the time in which it was created changes and influences the tone of voice and structure of the videos. I then created some initial design ideas thinking about how I could insure my content is engaging and understandable. Through creating a number of design ideas I feel I reached one I was confident with and knew had a wealth of interesting content to research into to inform my ideas. This idea being based on the book and film adaptations of ‘The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ written by Douglas Adams informing the viewer on ‘Road Safety on Earth’. I knew right from the beginning of this project I wanted to pick a subject I could immerse myself in and really push my designs through research and development work to try and create something engaging and fun!

I needed then to analyse my target market for my idea as this would form the basis of my content, design and tone of voice. I decided that if I was created a leaflet in the theme of ‘The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ that it if designed correctly it could be enjoyed by anyone even if they have no knowledge of the books and films. On top of that be even more engaging and exciting to fans of the books and films. Creating my designs with close analysis back and forth between my research into the 2005 films animations clips, design sketches and research into information design from the book ‘Information is beautiful’. then allowed me within my workings to successfully emulated the aesthetics, tone of voice and style of illustration that is shown animations in particular in ‘Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ This would there for be relevant and engaging to the given target market.

I then considered how existing information design had been effective and try to pin point exactly what it was that made them successful. Looking through the book ‘Information is beautiful’ I found that the simplest ideas worked best and that the attention to detail in choice of colour, the layout and hierarchy of information was what made the designs so engaging. Within my design these design techniques would be key to making this project enjoyable not only to the viewer but to me as the designer. As my workings and ideas developed through this project that my research was much more insightful and useful if it was informed by my designs and looking at similar design projects.

Feedback within this project is an aspect I feel I could have improved upon, even though when I spoke in group critiques about my work the comments were useful and helped formulate different aspects of my designs most of the time they had no knowledge of the context of my ideas and I found that talking with friends and peers with some knowledge into ‘The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ about my working one to one much more insightful and gave me much more competent and helpful feedback that then informed my design ideas. I feel talking about my designs with friends as an ongoing thing throughout the project helped me in understanding what they think would work considering the target audience and what wouldn’t, additionally looking at paper folding and paper stock choice asking a lot of questions about what they had done and if it worked or not assisted me in picking an appropriate fold and paper choice.

Looking at my design process and outcomes on the whole and how I would have improved upon them I think firstly some more research into existing government leaflets my have helped me analyse what makes the designs so uninstructive and dull and how I could avoid this. Additionally I would like to have tested out a few more of my initial design ideas to see how they would compare to my chosen designs. I also believe that when picking paper stocks I could have carried out more experimentation into some more varying stocks to insure I did pick the correct and most appropriate paper for my designs and target market. Lastly I feel that within the text content of my leaflet there was an opportunity to really push the writing to be much more descriptive and even further push this elaborate tone of voice I identified that is used throughout ‘The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’.

On the contrary to this I have identified a few aspects of this project that I think is definitely improved my design practice within graphic design and can really help me push my design process for this and future projects. Firstly I found creating a large amount of drawings an ideas on paper,testing how the hierarchy of information is seen and how it translates to the physical copy very useful this allowed me to adjust my designs relative to how it is read and interacted with. On top of this I found that printing out my designs throughout design process while working on the computer extremely useful and allowed me to make design considerations and changes that I would have never done if I hadn’t done this. Moving forward in design I think my understanding of experimentation has greatly improved not only in creating a lot of ideas to find the most appropriate one but testing the ideas in the context and physical copy to get a more informed final outcome. Finally I think how I approach each project has changed within this design process, at first I was extremely tentative about the brief and thought it would be uninspiring and something I might not enjoyed designing, but I realised that with work like this it is up to the designer to make it engaging and inspiring, taking influences from things that we do find interesting and translating this into something that is much more enjoyable.

Considering my aspirations within this project to create an engaging publication that related to ‘The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ I think I have successfully interpreted the brief to suit my way of working and what inspires me. I have tried to implement what I learnt from my research throughout this project to create more informed and planned out design decisions that are particularly relevant to my target market.

Overall I am pleased with not only my quality of outcomes but the way in which I have come to these decisions I think my designs are successful in created an engaging and understandable leaflet formulated from experimentation and conscious design decisions.