Rationale

My topic for the brochure was famous crime locations of Wellington. I wanted to create a historic, sinister feeling through my design, and I think I achieved this through the use of colour, iconography and symbology. I was fairly minimalistic in terms of colour, using burgundy, some greyish browns, and occasional mustard tones. My use of black and white and newspaper clippings hopefully communicates the historical aspects I was trying to convey. My designs break the grid in some ways, often crossing pages, but I think they have a good relationship with the body text, which does conform to the grid. I learnt that with my design ethic I sometimes need to go the extra mile. I think that I have good concepts in my head, but sometimes they don’t initially pan out. Through the process of making this brochure I have learnt to sometimes persist with a design if there is something there that I believe can work. Having said that, I believe it is also important to keep your options open, and not be bogged down in what you think is best. Basically, be patient with your ideas, but accept advice.

Week 6

As the deadline approaches, I have had to focus on fine tuning my spreads and creating my cover. Through help from the tutors I have made adjustments to my type, in terms of layout, leading and colour. The cover is something I have struggled with a bit, wanting to stay stylistically in line with the rest of the booklet, but also wanting it to be enticing. Hopefully what I have ended up with fits thematically but is also something a reader would want to pick up. Over all, I am fairly happy with how my brochure has turned out. I think it conveys the theme appropriately. My only concern is that the destination spreads aren't individual enough, but I worried about having a disjointed feel.

Week 5

The first lesson this week was the first since the holiday break, after which we were supposed to have basically finished our brochures for a cross class critique.  For the most part I had my brochure complete, except for the cover. It was interesting to see where others had gotten to in the process.

Something that was very helpful about this process was seeing the range of maps, and this made me realise how inadequate my map, design and layout wise was. It doesn't really give enough context, and is really just plonked into the middle of the page. Although, I do like the crime-board, thread aspects to the map. The cross class critique also made me realise my activity type page was fairly lacklustre and basic.