Thursday 5th May 2011:

I decided that it would be a useful time for another informal peer review and so I spoke to my peers about my new logo, business card and letterhead designs as well as my digital poster designs. I felt that overall I got a good reaction and some useful feedback. I wanted to ask them if they thought that for the victim poster that ‘lost your voice?’ was better than ‘can’t speak up?’. They agreed that ‘lost your voice?’ worked well and that it was easy to understand as well as giving out a strong message. I therefore decided to keep it as ‘lost your voice?’ but to add ‘can’t speak up?’ at the top near my logo and tagline. I then also wanted to ask if they felt that the ‘photoshopped’ tears looked realistic or if an actual photo would work better. They seemed to think that it’s OK how it is. They also liked the idea of having a light behind the posters, the only comment was that perhaps the ‘lost your voice?’ part should come down slightly so that it was more in the place of the mouth rather than the nose. I agreed with this but I’m not sure if this will work visually as it’s balanced quite well as it is.

I then showed them my other digital poster designs, most of which they also liked, but they decided that my choice of the ‘lost your voice?’ and ‘calling me ugly won’t make you beautiful’ was right as these were the two best. However, they quite liked the ‘why do you bully?’ design as it stood out and made you look. It is quite hard to read though and so perhaps this is why it wouldn’t work too well as a final piece. They mentioned that at first glance they thought that the whole thing was a set of writing, eg: a story or a quote, and that this might also work quite nicely. My tutor then also saw these ideas and mentioned perhaps having the sentence ‘why do you bully?’ in colour and the different sentences not in colour instead of the other way around like I’d done it as then this would make it easier to read. This is a good idea which I may test out. She also suggested having the same idea but in the style of a ‘menu board’ where you can change the letters around, etc (like in a fish and chip shop), as this could relate also to schools and would look quite effective. Although it would be quite hard to create this and then take a photo, perhaps I could create this digitally to see what it looks like.

I also spoke to someone about getting my posters printed and what paper I could print on. He suggested semi-gloss and when I asked my peers about this they seemed to think that it would work quite well and also, it’s easy to cut into, and this would be useful for when I cut some of the words out.

I then asked for their opinions on my new logo design as well as my new letterhead and business card designs. They seemed to really like the logo (but suggested using my own handprint instead of an one from an image) and they had a few suggestions for the letterhead and business card designs. For example, combining some of the ideas to create a new idea and having a double-sided business card so that one side could be black (as this looks effective) with the logo, and then the other side white to include the important information (but not on black as this could be too intimidating). I then asked my tutor what she thought about my logo, etc, and she made a few suggestions (eg: having the writing going through the handprint to make it like a stop/’not allowed’ sign) to make it less busy and more integrated (the name and the image), and so I will carry out these ideas and decided from there what logo to choose. My tutor also gave me some really good ideas for my business card so I will take these into account when re-designing them.

I then updated my sketchbook with my digital designs and after doing this, I still feel that the ‘lost your voice?’ and ‘calling me ugly wont make you beautiful’ poster ideas work best.

Target for today: Talk about work so far with peers to hear their opinions and update sketchbook with digital designs, etc.

Target for tomorrow: Complete handprint piece inspired by prepped page, update annotations in sketchbook and create new business card and letterhead in response to peer review.