Finished First Draft

I opted to continue working on the first draft that I had received, as I had little time before the hand-in to implement all the changes that the client required and had to have a polished and finalised (as much as possible) document to meet the university deadline.

Even though this design will not be used in its current state, it will be useful to have as a first draft to show the client the art direction that I have taken and how the new copy will be formatted in the report. All in all, it is not a bad thing that I didn't receive the full report until after this design was almost completed, as I now have a month or more to complete the project with the design already in place, and just need to copy in the new text and source new photographs or create new infographics.

Here is the first draft of the report, ready to meet the university deadline:
Front Cover
 The front cover has remained unchanged since the redesign following the client meeting. Although I haven't received feedback on this style, it is a development of a previous design which they reacted positively to, with elements added that were suggested in the meeting. It is bright and cheerful, with the colours reflected the title of 'Our Happy Place', and also representing the diverse nature of the people involved in the scheme.
Inside Cover and Contents
The inside cover continues the theme of the front cover, adding a graphical representation of the River Severn as this is one of the city's main landmarks and also creates a more balanced and less overpowering look.

The contents page in contrast is clean and clear, and introduces a two-tone blue colour scheme that continues throughout the report. The iconographic style of the houses continues too, used as page numbers and a footer for the whole document.
Foreword and Introduction
 The 'Foreword' page introduces the style that is used for the wordier sections of the report, with a two column layout. I made some changes to this page at this late stage, as I found that the final text on this page was easily added in, and made the layout clearer to me. However, as the text all fits nicely in one column, I had to make the room for the photograph and signature a lot bigger, and included the logo of the organisation that the Chair represents.

The page opposite has remained untouched, except to bring it in line with the blue colour scheme and adapt one of the icons to make it bolder and more noticeable. These icons are reused later on in the report as page headers for the Local Priorities section.
The Local Picture and Graphs
 This spread deals mainly with the start of the graphical elements which follow on from the iconographic style of the previous page.

On the 'Local Picture' section, I placed the text in the second column and filled the space in the first with a graphical representation, a style which was reused in the report. When I received a map of the areas dealt with in the report I was able to adapt it to my style, adding continuity to the visuals and showing the information more clearly. There was too much space on the page to leave blank so I created my own title for the map, although the client may ask for that to be removed.

The sections on 'Income' and 'Education' include infographics which were designed to represent the information in a 'bespoke' fashion, for example using houses and mortarboards.
Health, Young People and Crime
This was one of the last spreads I finished, as I struggled with ideas for the style of some of the 'Health' icons, and the layout of the opposite page which looked too cramped in places and sparse in others.

I came across the idea of representing good health with a plus in a heart, with the size denoting the percentage, and a cross for bad health. Below this I used a slightly different style to show the data for 'Existing Problems' and 'Future Problems' as I couldn't decide on unique icons, and instead used  different sized bubbles.

I spread out the images on the 'Crime' section to fill the page. I was worried it would look too spaced out but I feel it still works within the context of the other pages.
Partnership and Local Priorities
 After a lot of attempts to find a layout design for the 'Partnership' page, I found that a simple layout with two banks of photographs and simple captions with logos below each one worked, and would look professional once the official photographs are included.

As I mentioned earlier in this post, the icons used for the 'Local Priorities' page are very similar to those used at the beginning of the report, and are also used for each Priority sub-heading. The sub-headings themselves use the same size and colour as the sub-heading on the foreword.
Priorities

Priorities

Priorities
 These pages on 'Local Priorities' are very different in the final report, and in the draft that I worked from are missing a lot of information so it was difficult to find an appropriate layout, and unfortunately one of the priorities continues overleaf. I will try to avoid this in the final report.

I like the elements that I added to the 'Priority 7' page, though these aren't present in the final report. The speech bubble element at the bottom gives a nice effect, and I would hope to reuse that when I continue the project.
Conclusion
 The conclusion wasn't too difficult to typeset as it follows the style of many previous pages. Again, there is only enough text to fill one side of the page, and I have left room for a photographic element to complete it. Below this are the logos of the organisations that have contributed to the 'Our Happy Place' project, which took a while to group together in a neat format.

The back inside cover is the same as the back cover, but includes the Council contact details.
Back Cover

No comments:

Post a Comment