Rationale

15355579

Ryan Walker

For the brochure project, my topic was, best routes to drive in Wellington. My three tiers of information that i used in my collages were categorised from the most important, the type of route, the scenery and lastly the best time of day to drive said route. I incorporated these tiers into my collage in a way that looks like the three tiers have been singled out and placed in this order, in a way that suits my topic and keeps them cohesive. I used the circle idea as a “peephole” to give the viewer a small but big enough look into the individual places to get an idea of what they are like. From this project, i found myself hung up on trying to perfect my collages, this did set me back but in the end i was more happy with my results. Next time i would try to allocate a specific deadline for each task so i don’t spend too long on one aspect and not have enough time to thoroughly flesh out the rest.

Class Week 6 - Printing, Paper finishes and Final brochure

Before Monday i started research paper stocks for my brochure to be printed on. I realized when i was printing early test prints the shine from the black ink on standard 80gsm printer paper was too harsh, so after some research i am planning to go with 130gsm symbol matt plus, i feel this paper stock has idea thickness and the matt finish keeps the shine down.

Picture for comparison

On Monday i went to have one final critique with my tutor and unfortunately was shed some light on my black theme which as with poor design judgement i had no reason for.

So Monday was a rushed overhaul day for the brochure, played around with various arrangements and such and my final brochure ended up like so.

I'm happy with myself for trying for pushing my skills to create this publication. Although im disappointed in the final publication, to me, it feels unfinished, this is just down to poor communication on my part with tutors and responding to the relevant critique i had. Next time i would try to allocate my time and set up my documents better so that i could change things faster.

Front/Back Cover

For my my final spread i had to create a front and back cover that would be cohesive and would catch a viewers eye.

I played around with names for a while, a few ideas i had were:

• Driving in Wellington
• Crusing in Wellington
• The amazing drive

I ended up settling with "The Greater Wellington Road Trip"

I wanted to try use create a picture that covered both pages i ended up using one of the photos i took and after destroying the photo with different filters i used the find edges filter to get this similar look that was quite distinctive

Class Work Week 5 - Map Page, Sports and Rec Page

At the end of last week we went over our maps that we had made for critique.

Mine was very last minute i just needed work to show.

We started off with an exercise, where we had a minute to describe how we would get to each of destinations to a random person.

This exercise helped put what was necessary for the map into perspective. Showing where state highway 1 was most important, a general idea of map was a close second. I didn't need to much other information maybe just some simple place names.

From this information i created this map, (this is a later update, unable to find variation before) after talking to Mark, i added place names, and made the title state highway 1 a part of the route.
(the key is was made on InDesign later)

I also quickly played around with sub heading sizing on my map blurb page, but in the end decided against it.

I also detailed the majority of type in the brochure for rags, widows and orphans.

Lastly i worked on my Recreation and Sports page.

I started with same layout as my first variation, but chose to bring emphasise to a few different pieces of type, one of the key phrases in the text, and the sub heading on the stats and facts side.

After this the page was still a boring black page with little to no visual excitement, so to keep with theme i created a contoured version of wellington to act as a low visibility background, this worked really well, i only had to create black boxes behind the words to retain legibility.

Layout Spreads Developments

After finalising my collages i went through and recreated my layouts, i started with what i used for my week 4 critique as it worked well, then had to adjust for the new collages.

I had to move the length and details to the otherwise as i ran out of room with the bigger sided collages.

I wasn't very happy with this, i needed to fix the key as there was too much repetition of elements, for instance the key showed time of day and the information also showed it, this was unnecessary.

The type wasn't too good either it needed detailing.

First thing i did was fix the key, the cars were made bigger for legibility, and i got rid of the style of road it favour for speed limits as this is easily readable.

I then moved the information from the side back to the left and under the title and subheading, i also got rid of unnecessary details, eg time of day and speed limit.


The problem now was were to put the key, i tried a variety of locations.

In the end i settled for next to the details and as wide as the second column i feel this fits quite nicely.

Collage Development Week 4

After critique i had quite a few ideas to go from, i fortunate to get some crucial feedback i found useful such as:

• Type needed to be detailed
• Widows and orphans across the board
• The key needed to changed it wasn't as understandable as i had hoped.
• Only 2 tiers of information was able to be seen, i knew this before hand and is one the reasons i wanted to change my collages.
• the colours of each page weren't able to be cohesive, this didn't help having a range of colours either
• Grid work was good, type possibly too small.
• Clear hierarchy 

Right after class i started looking for new ideas for my collage and layouts, i tried to tackle it together, although this could have worked quite well i just couldn't find anything that worked.

I really liked the flip city spread but didn't think my photos alone could do enough justice to satisfy the three element, this is something i would of tried more to do if i could do it again.

I was really excited to try work with isometric shapes again as i had done a project last year using that style and thought it would be right up my alley.

I was using google maps to try create simplified isometric versions of the city and was going to take that idea to the my other spread after creating the first building i tried duplicating it and moving around to get and idea almost instantly i knew this isn't what i wanted to do either.

I also had a quick play around with double exposing the photos onto the cars themselves but this unfortunately put the cars as the primary element instead of the route and place.

After finding some new inspiration from old styled car adverts like the Volts wagon

 I tried my own, i really liked how it fit my criteria i could literally show 3 elements, the route, the car and the city.

Unfortunately as you can see it almost looks like a direct copy of my inspiration, it didn't help i used the same colours but i couldn't use this.

I was starting to get frustrated by this point but after finding some new inspiration

This design really stood out for me, key things i liked about it were:

• one side showed the terrain, this was perfect for me 
• the other showed a photo representation of the place
• and the line it self, this could be used as a path, or in my case the route of the destination.
• i also was really interested in the texture that it had over it, i want to look into textures for my final brochure print, i think it will tie it all together really well.

Back to the drawing board again

This time i approached incorporating the three elements quite literally, i wanted the car, route, scene and time of day to evident. almost like it was pieced together.

My first attempt came out like this

At first i was going to add the car as another layer on top somehow, here i hadn't done that yet.

What i liked about this collage:

• i'm really liking how the terrain contours came out
• the dissolved photo to get rid of the hard edges
• using the route to break apart the two images

What i didn't like:

• how illegible the route was
• not having the car incorporated into the picture.
• including the type in the collage it was overkill

For this variation i included an overlay of a sunset over the circle which im really liking, and also included the car into into composition. 

Only things i wasn't liking was how it was still hard to interpret the route and also the bush essence.

This is my final for my composition. The changes i made was bringing back the colour to the scene and not the car as it wasn't my focus point, this brought back the bush essence with the greenery. I also added a thick stroke around the route this helped define the element and fitted it perfectly. The last change was too add a halftone line pattern to show water.

My final collages

 Im really happy with how all of these turned out, i kept the circle with x diagonal pattern consistent amongst each.

Class Work Week 4 - Critique and collage development

 For the start of the week we had to have at least two location spreads done, the map page and our category page (Recreation and Sports).

Using relevant photos that i took from last week, i started researching new collage designs, i wasn't happy with the one i had done for the bush spread.

I found some inspiration from a design i had made for myself earlier this year. This circle world idea really worked for me as it showed a peep sized view into a place, and i thought this would be perfect for my collage, some quick mock-up'd ideas later i had this.

 I realised i wanted to have something coming out of the image just like in the my bush collages where the road came out, i liked this idea as it brought the image out off the page, so i chose to make some key elements stick out.

The first one i worked on was my city spread, this isn't the fully finished version but i went through quite a few variations where the circle didn't cover the protruding elements but then i liked it more where it dimmed it, it also made the words easier to read, finally i lowered the opacity on the car as the route is more the focus rather than the car.

After i had completed the coast spread i wasn't very happy with this collage idea, i'd rather hand something in i was fully happy with and this wasn't it, i quickly put together a map and category page and called a night.