Collaborative Practice - Save The Children: Evaluation

This brief has been interesting and challenging for several reasons. Firstly it has been the first collaboration project I have done with another student. I really enjoyed working with Vanessa and found that we worked well as a team and bounced ideas off each other well. We were on the same page when it came to deciding on a design aesthetic that we felt was appropriate for the brief and were able to establish quickly what we felt was important to include in the designs. However the first challenge arose when Vanessa fell badly ill with tonsillitis and she was out of action for 3 weeks. This considerably affected the work we were able to produce. We made sure we were in regular contact and discussed ideas continually through her illness so that I could continue with the practical side. I found it really useful having someone there to talk ideas through and weigh up limitations and the practicalities, it made the project far more enjoyable and interesting.

The project has pushed my design in a new direction by having to really consider the target audience and design with them in mind rather than my own preference. We wanted the design to be child-friendly but not childish to keep the child's attention but also work in favour of the Father. I have pushed myself in the use of illustrator as it has never been a piece of software that I have been comfortable with. However illustrating all 8 planets gave me the perfect opportunity to explore Illustrator and experiment with creating a range of designs that reflected the planets as well as all working in the same design style. At some points it has been really challenging but cutting the planets out of coloured card first helped to give a rough outline to follow as well as providing a colour palette.

Another challenge the project presented was to maintain the same design style across a range of products. After we decided on the concept and theme of space we were able to create a style guide which restricted our designs. Although it restricted them in one sense it actually meant that they all followed the same style keeping them in tune with each other and creating a stronger design aesthetic. We made a conscious decision to not use any black but rather work in a range of colours which suited the image we wanted to produce. Apart from the fact that it is free for public commercial use we chose to work in Futura as it was the first font on the moon! This was a nice tie in with the space theme.

Through Save the Children I have learnt so much about the value of reading especially to your children when they are younger. I found that by writing the book I absorbed a lot of interesting information which increased my passion to create a product which could be used and would also increase the fathers knowledge. Although I knew it was important before, I didn't know to what extent it affects the child's growth and chances later in life. This is exactly what I wanted the book to get across to fathers. I have enjoyed this project not only for what I have learnt about reading but also what I have learnt about space.

If I had more time I would have really liked to explore creating a broader range of posters. This would help to get the publics attention. I began to design an 'open up a world of opportunities' poster but time quickly ran out and my attention went on finishing off other work such as the book as this was a priority.

Designing the book probably took the longest as we had to decide on what sections we thought were most appropriate. I then had to gather all the information for the pages and reword it to make sense. Book layout is not something I have done a lot of in the past so I found myself making some stupid mistakes at the beginning. However I think the book works well as a finished product, it maintains the same style and uses the same grid throughout.

Practically if this project was to go to commercial print then we probably have used too many colours. It would be too costly to print all the products we have made in the range of colours we have used! We haven't kept within the design style of Save The Children because we wanted to use this opportunity to create something fun and visually interesting. In our research we couldn't find any reading campaigns that had been designed well. Using a dark blue coloured background throughout has reinforced the theme of space and has also provided a strong contrast between the colours of the illustrations. This gives the illustrations a stronger visual impact.

When it came to printing the project a few problems arose. The first one was that the two different printers that were used printed the colours out differently. Some work came out in a dark blue whilst others came out a lighter more purple colour. This has added some discrepancies to our work however it was out of our control. The majority of the issues were centred around the printing of the book. One of the ink rolls was dirty so it left us with a light blue line along the bottom of the book on every page. We ended up printing 5 books in an attempt to print correctly! The ink once folded as well tended to crack along the spine, this lowered the quality of the finished print, however you get an idea of how it could look if it was printed and bound professionally.

Overall I have thoroughly enjoyed this project and would like to work collaboratively in the future. There is a wide range of outcomes which have all been created to a high standard considering that there have been some issues that have restricted the project.