Studio Brief 2: Final Crit

The final crit allowed us to present our developed ideas and get enough feedback so that the last few changes that we make will enhance the idea to its optimum potential. 

I took a mockup of my idea to the crit so that it was easier to explain rather than having it still on the computer. Having it like this also allowed me to directly draw onto the mock up so that I could easily narrate the changes that needed to be made. 

One thing to develop was the clinical aesthetic, something that is important for the modern interpretation, but the cassettes age needs to be reflected in a subtle way. It was suggested that the scanning in of paper could work well to add texture to the surface of the card, rather than the block colour. 
When discussing ways in which the different themes can be easily shown without changing the whole design each time, colour was decided to be the most effective thing to manipulate. Research into the colours and what they represent will help me to decide on the suitable colours for each of the genres. The sections of colour that will be changed will be the back of the cards, the 'grid' lines that are behind the writing and the details on the spine. 
The kerning of the sentences needs to be adjusted slightly so that it is a little less overpowering. Spacing the kerning out a little bit will make it fit in with the modern aesthetic and also easier to read. The idea behind it having the characteristics of an audio book is that it is a lot shorter and easier than reading the whole book. This means that the overall design style needs to avoid being complicated or misleading. Legibility is one element that will make the purpose of it being easily read well illustrated.
Trying to think of a suitable visually engaging bak page and overall theme for the design was proving hard as all of the novels are very different, so no particular theme could be focused on. The patterns of book bindings could form interesting patterns for the back of the cards. I need to develop a pattern that uses only two colours, the line work being in either black or white and then the background changing to suit the particular theme it is representing. I could also look at the patterns that I had developed using Microsoft word to see if any would be suitable for this concept. 

Final developments:
- off white paper
- different paper textures
- coloured lines to represent the particular genres
- wider kerning 
- pattern development
bound books as the pattern? or Microsoft word artwork? the pattern is the same throughout and it is the colour that now shows the different genres that are in the pack
- "why listen to the book when I can read short sentences?" relating to media and purpose of why it is aimed at the particular target audience 
- cards against humanity  - cards against literature, crime, classics, fiction etc.