Design Board Workshop

The Workshop.
Small Crit.
After the module briefing we all went around in our group of 6 to discuss our design boards and the topics that we have chosen. Finding out that for this brief 'Product, Range, and Distribution' we have to have one primary focus and one secondary focus from Publishing and Editorial, Information and Way Finding, Branding and Identity, Product and Packaging, and Retail and Promotion, meant that after going through my boards I had to start thinking about what I can going to do for this brief.

The feedback I received from doing this was that I could go into looking at product and packaging, this is because I am wanting to look into doing an adoption pack. Doing product and packaging means that I will have a brand going through my products, which means my secondary focus would be Branding and Identity. Although because I will be having information packs, this means that it would include Information and Way Finding, I will also be showing where I will be selling the adoption packs, which will include Retail and Promotion, the product I will be making will also be a publication, therefore Publication and Editorial will also be included. Although we have to choose one main focus, I think that a lot of things will include many of the different ways to create design.
Design Boards.
Design boards are very important and are a good thing to be able to get right, sometimes clients just ask for design boards, therefore they need to stand out and communicate your design and ideas effectively.

What no to have on design boards.

• Initial sketches.
• Anything written in first person.
• Spelling mistakes.
• Stains.
• Printing marks.
• Print quality need to be high, not low on ink.
• Print resolution images.
• Readable text.
• Too much text.
• Too little text.

What to include on boards.

• Board numbers.
• Name labels.
• Module codes.
• Titles of each page.
• Your work.
• Only have good photos
• Dimensions.
• Useful information.
• Keep all the boards consistent.

After establishing these lists as a large group, we went through all of our design boards from our last module hand in of all of the briefs we had. We swapped design boards with someone else so that they could look through them all, pointing out all of the different mistakes or identifying what works well with the boards. After doing this we them swapped our boards with more people so that we could have an even broader view of how different people see our boards. This was a good exercise to do, as it allowed me to see things on my boards that could be improved, also it shows me what people are looking for and how I should design my boards in the future.

We then went through all of our design boards we made from the research we collected about our topic, we did this so that we could see them, and improve them.

Feedback.

• When I printed out my boards, my printer inks needed cleaner, therefore the print quality was great, this is something that people mentioned when looking through my boards.
• The layout of my type and image was well presented and had a good grid system.
• Could have included and introduction on the front page to let people know what I am wanting to do.
• Some of the images I put on my boards were pixelated, this is something I need to consider more when I am designing to print. Even though it looks ok on screen, it may not print to the same quality.
• There is a good balance between the image and text on the page.
• Could have included some primary research on my boards.
• They don't have number on the boards, so if they go out of order no one would know.
• Could have included more information about the animals and WWF on the animals page.
• Make the labels, 'OUGD505' 'Daisy Sunshine Conway', a lot smaller, they don't need to be that large.
• Check some of the grammar and spelling mistakes that have been made.

This workshop has been very constructive and helped me learn what should go on my design boards when I am producing them. Even though discussing as a group all of the different things that should and shouldn't go on the design boards helped me learn what I should be doing, I found that going through everyone else's boards showed me more and helped me more to learn what I should and shouldn't be doing when designing my boards.