OUGD404: Review of design process

Interrogation:

Did you analyse/ interpret the brief?

1. I wrote the brief out and then went straight to mind mapping the different directions I could take. To improve this in other projects I will concentrate more on the wording of the briefs and try to pick out exactly what the brief is asking for. This will ensure that I am able to explore every possible direction in which the brief could be taken and interpretation has not been taken wrong. 
2. For this brief, I spent more time interpreting the requirements and different considerations that I would need to make in order to respond in the most appropriate way. 

Did you think about the contexts of the brief?

1. Yes, I looked at other books that were sold in art shops or places of collectable books. I also looked in shops such as Urban Outfitters as they are popular with the particular target audience that the book design was aimed at. 
2. I could have focused more on other apps aimed at students, but yes I did consider the context and how the app would be used in the mornings so based the colour scheme on a sunrise.

Did you outline the problem?

1. The problem identified was that there is not an easy and aesthetically engaging publication on the history f decriminalisation of the lgbtq+ community, so the book needed to be designed with this particular style in mind. 
2. The problem was that there was not one singular platform in which all creative articles can be found, meaning that students and young designers find it hard and intimidating keeping up with all of the creative news that is published each day. The problem was that time was being wasted scrolling through social media each morning rather than a timeline of creative articles that could potentially inspire decisions throughout the day and generally set up a creative person in the morning rather than reading about other peoples nights out etc. 

Was your research thorough and meaningful?

1. The research focused a lot on existing publications published with this particular community of people in mind which was useful to see what was working and what wasn't. Research into the different production method was also meaningful, but maybe could have been a little more extensive and then there wouldn't have been any design problems at the end of the process with foiling. 
2. The analysis of existing news apps was thorough and the successful elements of these apps was taken and applied to the design of ‘creō’ to ensure that the content was accessible, fulfilling the purpose of the app to be a quick solution to keeping up to date with creative news. The research into the iOS human interface guides was meaningful as it ensured that the designs fit the intended devices and reacted to the user interaction. 

Did you arrive at some ideas through research?

1. Sans serif typeface was taken from research into existing lgbtq+ magazine and other publications. The perfect binding/squared spine was decided upon as it seemed to be the most popular in terms of aesthetics and also to achieve the high quality finish that the client wanted. 
2. The decision to use a white background came from research into existing news apps and creative websites, ensuring that the focus was on the content and not just the visuals. The typeface choices also were a result of research into magazine layouts, finding out the idea that there is often 3 typefaces used to ensure visual contrast and the ability to split the different parts such as titles and body text. 

Did you generate more than 1 conceptual idea?

1. The Initial idea generation stage showed the different routes I could have taken in terms of concept. To improve as a designer I need to focus less on how the final outcome will look and experiment more in the early stages, potentially resulting in stronger ideas conceptually. 
2. This part of the app design was explored in terms of layout and colour to portray different concepts. But could have been taken further initially in order to have more experimental concepts. 

Did you generate multiple visual/creative solutions?

1. There was a lot of idea generation throughout the whole process, it could have been enhanced by making each idea extremely different and more experimental rather than playing safe the whole way through
2. visually there were a number of solutions proposed at the beginning of the process, once again it is a personal weakness of mine by not initially being risky in terms of exploration.

Did you go through an iterative process of experimentation and improvement?

1. Yes, there was a very large number of improvements made throughout the design process. I designed and re-designed in response to feedback constantly until it was time to submit a final design in time for printing.
2. Yes, the feedback sessions in the studio helped me to see which parts fo the design did and din’t work. One of the biggest changes was to have the overall logo as a black typeface and then use the colours throughout the app to differentiate between the different sections. 

Did you propose a number of possible solutions as prototypes?

1. Experimentation with foiling was one of the most vital prototyping as it then resulted in a complete re-design of the front cover. If I was to approach a similar brief again then I would prototype a number of binding solutions to see which one worked the best. For the book i had never perfect bound before, so luckily the research into the process was effective or it could have wasted a lot of money and time. 
2. The prototyping of the app took place on Adobe XD and yes, the linking of each of the elements was initial proposed as a solution and had to be changed a number of times in order to have a finalised app that works together.

Did you leave enough time to ensure your final outcome was as good as it could be?

1. I could have started the final production process earlier, but I left more than enough time to complete the production of the book and it was finished to a high standard. To improve, I would have liked to have played around with stock variation more than I did. 
2. The animation of the app would have been the part in which I would have spent more time on if I was to re-visit this brief. As I had never used Adobe After Effects before, this meant that the animation process was longer than necessary and I wasn’t able to animate the whole app in use to a high quality. 

Books:
Creative process in graphic design 
From problem to solution 
An introduction to research methods in graphic design