Evaluation

Producing Print Based Media

Visual Language: Composition How have you chosen to set out your designs and why? The final design idea that we decided to go with was a fairly simple way made up using basic shapes, slight morphing and beginner Photoshop techniques such as gradient and colour overlays. The final outcome however looked very professional by using a massive amount of layers containing text, images and basic shapes. By placing these nicely around the page we were able to come up with a design that remained simplistic and did not become cluttered. We used some of the custom shapes that are available as Photoshop pre-sets such as banners and stamp images and used them in a way that allowed us to add text over the top to look as if they were coming off of the page. This was made possible using blending options such as stroke and drop shadow. As you can see from the recipe cards final design each are of text was essentially given its own shape or area without it looking cluttered. The nutritional information was set out in a series of colour alternate rectangles in the bottom right. The ingredients that would be needed were listed in a large stamp shape in the top right corner. We gave a tip or hint for each meal in the bottom left on the back of the card in a little circle. These are the kinds of things that we wanted to do to identify the cards as a set. Despite the changing colour scheme in almost every card it is very apparent that the cards are as a part of a set. The overall design remained simplistic which is definitely what we were going for as our recipe cards were made for students and we wanted to make it very apparent that the meals would be quick and easy to make so it appealed to them. Image Construction Discuss the contents of your final images and reflect upon decisions made. The images that we ended up using were sourced images. This I feel was not really a problem as it made our work the best that it could be. We did attempt to create you own set of images by creating one of our meals and taking photos of it. Sadly the meal did not go well and despite the images being of a very good quality the meal could not really be used as a professional recipe card. Here is an example of the card we made using our own images. Using sourced images also freed up a lot of time to create a design layout that was of a more professional quality as overall we felt that the people who assigned us the brief would rather have a professional quality card with sourced images than great images with a bad looking recipe card.

Representation Discuss the semiotics and connotations created from the content you have included. When we started coming up with the design ideas for our project we knew almost straight away that we wanted to try and stick to a green colour palette. This was due to the semiotics and connotations that the colour green shows nature and health. However we eventually decided to branch out and using other colours that may also have positive outcomes. We expanded our colour palette to a much wider range and stated including colours such as blue and yellow. Both of these are relaxing colours and the blue in different shades can show relaxation and calm. One thing that we tried to do was associate a colour with the recipe that was involved on specific cards. For example one of our recipes was broccoli pasta bake. As the first word you see is broccoli and the main colour that you can see on the image is green we decided to use a green colour scheme for this card. Using 2 different shades of the same colour, in this case, green we were able to create an interesting gradient. This helped to add some depth to the card rather than it just being a plain colour on the back of it which would have left it looking boring.

Audiences:

Create an audience profile of your chosen demographic Age: 16-21 Gender: Male/Female Geo-demographic: Britain Education: College and university students, A Level & Vocational etc. Race: All races. Culture: All cultures.

I feel that this is the appropriate age range for my product as this is the general age that people are considered students. Whether those students are finishing school, starting at college or moving on to university. The recipe cards allow quick and easy meals that require little effort to cook which is perfect based on the stereotype of students being lazy and unwilling to do anything that requires effort. I feel that I chose to target males and females as to target one without the other would be very unfair. Both male and female students cook, especially in things like shared accommodation, where boys and girls will presumably take turns at cooking meals to ensure that everything is split fairly.

Physiographic: Has an interest in music, socialising with friends, television and other social media, video games etc. We would categorize this generation as a Emulator due to their strong aspiration to achieve and their ability to seek prestige for their work. This shows their desire to become an achiever NRS Social Grade: ABC1 (Is likely to be able to afford to buy basic food and ingredients, in full time/part time education and attends college/university etc.) I feel that this is the appropriate social grade as these people are attending Universities so they are seen as in the higher part of the social grade. Chances are that when they pick up the recipe cards they will already know that they will be able to easily obtain the ingredients that they need to prepare the meals.

How have you constructed your work to appeal to this audience? We constructed our work to appeal to our audience in a number of different ways. The first noticeable things are the primarily bright, eye-catching colours. This will appeal to students as they will notice it over other possibilities that will be out there that may not have the same colour appeal as ours. The title is very bold and has the words for students written in large, bold font. This is to catch the eye of students as they are passing by. The word students would technically make us the producers of a niche piece of media as it would only really appeal to students. With that being said students will see it and appreciate the fact that someone has created something just for them and would be more likely to pick up the recipe cards based on this. We used a QR code generator to ensure that our recipe cards were as suitable for students as possible. The QR code that we generated would allow owners of the card to scan the code with their smart phone and that would open up a youtube video on their phone which will be a tutorial on how to create the meal from scratch allowing them to learn as they cook.

Historical and Cultural Context: What did you use as your design influences and why were they chosen? The inspirations that we chose to use were very wide and were taken from numerous different product areas, not only food. We decided to use a variety of shapes and colours in interesting ways to ensure that our product looked unique and would catch the eye of those who were walking past. Originally we were going to use an entirely green colour palette to create our work. After some deliberation we decided against that as only using certain shades of green left our work looking very dull, in a way everyone expects vegetarian food or recipes to have the colour green somewhere so it was nice to be able to stray away from what may be considered the norm in this sense. The choice to use an image of happy people looking involved with the food was something we decided to use. This is a positive reinforcement method and is supposed to make the brain believe if people on the card look like they are enjoying making it, maybe I will enjoy making it too. It is the same method that adverts have been using for a long time, many brands, not limited to food, will show smiling, attractive women showcasing their products as a sort of reinforcement that if they enjoy maybe you will and you could one day look like them.

Do vegetarian products have a specific design aesthetic and how does your project reflect/contrast this? Why? I feel that in a sense vegetarian meals definitely have the colour green attached to them due to the green representing health, happiness etc. This is something that we were very aware of when creating our work and as I previously stated we were originally planning on an all green colour palette for our work. However, due to the expectation that our work would involve lots of greens we decided to attempt to use other soft colours as well. We did create a couple of cards that were primarily green however mostly we used other lighter contrasts of reds, yellows and blues, this allowed us greater creative boundaries and really allowed us to stretch our ideas out and come up with the best product that we could.

Finished Products: Does your finished product reflect your initial plans? How? If there are any differences, describe why changes were made. The finished product of my work definitely is a vast improvement on the work that I had come up with at the start. At the beginning my ideas were very basic and had a simple layout that left very little room for imagination or content. By the end of the project my work had progressed massively, with a stylish layout, great colour scheme and enough content on the page to allow the person creating the meal to have a detailed step-by-step guide on how to make the meal.

Does your finished product match what you were set in the brief? How? I feel that our finished product did match the brief very well. The brief stated that most of their products feature a picture or pictures on the front page, with the logo and a tagline containing brand information. We successfully got two images onto the front of each card, one of the food and one of students. We also used the logo in the bottom corner of the card. We didnt use a tagline however the reasoning for this was that it was not an essential part of the brief and it made our work look a little obscure as the layout was set in stone and adding things like that changed the general layout of the card. We attempted to diversify our food as much as possible by bringing in recipes that could be made very quickly that were from other cultures. This let us bring together numerous different cultures by including recipes from around the world. This is a great thing as people have very different tastes and allowing people to explore different culinary areas and possibly branch out on the normal foods that they like.

How did the use of peer feedback help you in your production? Peer feedback allowed us to change certain aspects of our work to ensure that we were as relevant as possible to our target audience. We used a website called survey monkey to allow us to create a survey with a number of questions about our recipe cards which would allow us to create the correct recipe card that would be most relevant to our target audience. Using a variety of open and closed questions we were able to gather very useful information from people who were around the age of our target audience. We did this by sharing our survey link on popular social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter; We obtained over 100 responses which allowed us to get a variety of answers that ranged from each end of the spectrum of the answers that were possible.

Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of your final product regarding its technical and aesthetical qualities. I feel that overall the product was definitely way more than what I expected it to become after my original designs. We used a large variety of colours which allowed our work to stand out from other designs that we had seen. The overall layout and the way we used the shapes that we used was very creative and left us with a very sleek and stylish design that still allowed us to include a massive amount of information about the dish in question. The steps that we included to create each dish were very informative and explained in great detail how to complete each step. If this was too confusing for some the inclusion of a QR code which linked to a YouTube tutorial on how to create the meal as some people would prefer to watch someone else cook it opposing to reading the recipe.

What skills/knowledge have you gained/developed in this project? How could these be applied in future practice? I have become a lot more competent when using Photoshop to create something from scratch. Before this project I was ok using Photoshop for image editing and some basic techniques in touching up images. During this project I learnt how to create something from scratch which was a completely alien area to me. Using basic shapes, and basic tools I was able to create a set of recipe cards from a blank canvas which felt very rewarding to see when they were all finished. I feel that I can use these skills in the future not only for college work but in my free time. I really enjoyed creating these and learning all of the new techniques which would allow to some design work in my free time.

Production Processes Do you believe your work is creative and technically competent? Why? I feel that the work we created was very creative and technically competent. We decided against putting more cost into the possibility of hiring a graphic designer to create the cards and instead decided that we would create them ourselves. Both me and my partner have used Photoshop a lot over the course of the last year due to the nature of the course and we hastily came up with some pretty interesting ideas and I feel that our competency in the program shines through to our finished products. Whilst the techniques that we implicated may not have been the most advanced using enough simple ideas like colour overlays, strokes, gradients and slight image editing we were able to create what we feel were near professional quality recipe cards. (Insert Images) How effectively did you manage your time? I feel that the time was used very effectively in most places however there were a couple of moments when things could have been handled a little bit better. When we set out to make the original recipe cards getting our finalised idea down took a little bit longer than we had allowed for in our planning section. This time was however, quickly made up for as when we had the design template finalised the other 7 cards didnt take anywhere near the same amount of time. Had we planned our time a little better I feel that maybe we could have made the meals ourselves which would have looked more prestigious when sending off to the client. This was I feel the only downside to our time management but I dont feel like it was a real negative, just something that could be changed if a similar project occurs in the future. If you could repeat the process what would you do differently? There isnt much that I would change if I were to do this project again, I was overall very happy with the final outcome of the recipe cards. There are 2 key things that I would do differently if I were to be given the chance to do the project again. Firstly I would have planned a little better so that I could have afforded and had the time to create the meals from scratch myself. Whilst I am not an expert in cooking I would have enjoyed learning how to make the meals as I went and it would have been very rewarding to see the products finished. Secondly, had I created the meals myself that would have given a chance to capture our own images rather than using sourced images. This would have not only looked better when sending the work off to the client but it would also reduce the cost of possible copyright issues with the

sourced images.

Working to a Brief in the Creative Media Industries

Constraints Experienced: What constraints did you encounter and how did you consider/avoid them? Legal Constraints The only legal constraints that we would have come up against would be the use of stock images from Google or other similar search engines/ image sites. There are a number of ways around this. For example if we were to edit the image the work would then become our own and could be used, even if the difference is only very subtle. We could also contact the owner of the copyright and discuss possible payment or credit for the use of the images.

Regulatory Constraints Regulatory constraints are with a project like this are very small. The main kind of regulatory constraint would be that we ensure that the food is vegetarian, as we cannot state that a food would be suitable for a vegetarian if it would not. This also applies for vegan food, we must ensure that only vegan ingredients o into the meals that are stated as being suitable for vegans. We must also ensure that all of our nutritional information is correct as to not mislead anyone when talking about the content of our products.

Financial Constraints The financial constraints for this task were pretty minimal however if we had opted to create all of our own food from scratch then the cost would have dramatically increased. We didnt have to pay for any kind of graphic design work as we did it ourselves and there was no need to do anything like hiring a chef to cook the food as we sourced the images. As previously mentioned our only real cost would be the possible cost of using a sourced image from the internet.

Management: How did you work as part of a group? I definitely felt that working as a part of a group was a great idea for this task. It allowed for a much larger variety in the ideas that we had to use and ultimately was the deciding factor in why our work was so good. There were certain moments of the project an aspects of the card that I led the way with however there were also times when my partner would also lead. It was definitely a team based project without anyone taking over the entire project. We both discussed anything that we wanted to do and came to decisions based on whether the ideas would be totally beneficial to our work. If it was, we would use it, if not, we would see if there was anyway that we could tweak things to make it usable for our project.

How important is communication when working in a group? I feel that communication was definitely the most important aspect of working in a group. Using proper communication is definitely what led us to have the work that we have. When we came up with ideas we would tell each other and then we would discuss whether we did or didnt like the ideas and whether or not there were any tweaks that could be made to different areas of the cards. It was also vital when deciding on the recipes that we were going to use. Luckily we both had pretty similar ideas so there was no need for much negotiating however im sure if it came to it we would have manage fine coming to a rational decision.

What have you learnt about working in a group and how will you apply this to future practice? I really enjoyed working as a part of a 2 person team. As much as I normally enjoy getting on with a task on my own as it allows the ideas to flow much better as there are no other opinions to take on bored. I felt that having a partner helped me to create the work that I created. We came up with ideas, created mock up designs and then started brainstorming ideas containing the best elements from both of our works. It was also very helpful to have a partner in case anyone was to lose momentum the other person would be there to encourage them and help come up with new ideas to help keep the work exciting. I feel that I was much more comfortable working in a small group and could definitely incorporate some of the skills I used into working in a group in the future. However, I do not feel that I would like a group of more than 2 as there may be too many disputes over ideas.

What have you learnt about working in to a brief and how will you apply this to future practice? I have learnt that it is quite difficult working to a brief however; I definitely enjoyed having a goal to work towards. The brief was strict on certain aspects like the way things had to be set out for example the way measurements were listed etc. However the brief was pretty flexible and left us to come up with the majority of the design work only leaving small pointers on colour schemes and making sure the cards are obviously a part of a set. I feel that I could apply a lot of things learnt here into future brief work. I enjoyed being given an idea and having to brainstorm my own ideas to create the best possible work that I could. I also enjoyed working to a deadline.