Final crit feedback

The final crit allowed me to get further feedback on the last few small design details that I needed further opinions on. The comments all confirmed that the concept was strong and that it was a unique approach to presenting the story of 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. It was thought to be a concept that held a lot of meaning and caused the audience to be curious about what it could represent, but successfully not giving away too much about the storyline of the novel.

Despite the concept being quite modern and minimal, I wanted to see if the orange/red background (fig. 1) positively added to the overall design or just added another visual element that didn't necessarily add anything to the concept. The feedback seemed to suggest that the red is overpowering and that by having the fonts in the colours of the palette is the most effective way to add the colour throughout the whole design. I agree with the feedback on the colour as I feel like by including it, it can appear as though I was too scared to leave it blank and fully accept the idea that it is a minimal piece of work.

In terms of general design decisions, I chose to accurately recreate the typeface that is present on the original 1930s Wrigley's chewing gum packet. The inclusion of the word 'by' before the authors name was seen to be too cluttered and that the design may improve if this was to be left out. Another improvement that could be made for the final design is to limit the colour scheme to only the orange and green as the red does look like it has been added in wrong. The only way it may work successfully is to change the red sections on the package design to the orange, but making it very slightly darker. 

The placement of the text on the back was something I had found difficult to decide on, wanting to stick with the minimalism that is on the front, but also not wanting it to look empty of wrongly positioned. Feedback suggested that the positioning of the text in fig.3 should only be like that if there is an image or something that is pushing it to the left. I t was suggested that the positioning of fig.2 was the most suitable. Having the blurb on the back centred wrks well, but the positioning still needs to be refined a little bit more. I think I will keep it centred, but change it so that it is the same width as the barcode at the bottom. Having it centred aligned rather than left works better as more closely represents the text on the chewing gum packet. To allow the back of the book to work alone, the text will need to be made the same width as the barcode and the font will be changed to 'PT Serif Caption' rather than 'Futura'.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

Final changes to be made:
- Removing the word 'by'
- Changing the packaging so that it only has the orange and green
- Centre the text on the back so that it is the same width as the barcode and fits within the same guides as the writing on the spine
- Change the blurb to 'PT Serif Caption' typeface, rather than 'Futura'
- Move the image of the chewing gum so that the bottom of the shadow is in line with the bottom of the barcode