OUGD504 - Design Production: Design For Print and Web Crit (With Industry Professional)

Today I ended up having a discussion with my boyfriend who currently works for Sony as a Character Artist, and therefore the feedback I received from him was extremely valid as he works in a creative environment working alongside graphic designers with experience in what I am currently doing. 

Firstly, I explained my concept for print. I brought the following ideas up in the discussion:

• Using leaves to create ink
• Making the pack reusable
• The possibility of using leaves as a way of illustrating some processes (laser cut)
• The concept of 'take a leaf out of my book' or 'turn over a new leaf'
• My initial idea of having an information pack for students, which has progressed in to the idea of the audience being children and their parents (families) since the crit with Phil
• The purpose of the pack to create something which would encourage designers to be more eco-friendly, which then changed in to a pack which would engage youngsters and their families in the different print processes (after the crit with Phil)
• The idea of including seeds to plant in the pack so that the recipient could grow their own ink essentially 

Once I had explained all of these ideas out loud it became apparent to me that I wasn't completely satisfied myself with how the idea has progressed since my crit. I hadn't found the previous crit as useful as it could have been which is perhaps what has led me to this confusion.

The questions I was asked as a result:

Why it is necessary to use leaves for your brief? Why not use vegetables as well? 

This is something I had considered, but at the same time I hadn't really put it in to practice because I am still at the stage where I am trying to thicken my ink using binder. This also made me consider whether people would actually want to make their own ink themselves and whether they would actually bother with it or not. Perhaps it is all getting a bit too fiddly.

The feedback if this was aimed at designers:

Designers may not necessarily be interested in actually making their own ink, they would perhaps just rather be made aware of the print possibilities which printing places have to offer.

The feedback if this was aimed at families:

The children wouldn't understand the concept of being more eco-friendly necessarily at their age, and as a result it would remove the quality of the concept 'turn over a new leaf'. Another issue would be that vegetable ink is only one small area within printing and by providing them with the seeds would perhaps limit the content I could include. I also feel as though a lot of the emphasis and energy has been going in to the concept a bit too much, when I should really be considering the content a bit more, as this will inform my decisions more successfully.

Why would you use laser cut leaves in your pack? Isn't this unnecessary and hard to reproduce? Consider this brief as if it was a live brief.

The reasoning I had to answer this question wasn't really as strong as it should have been. This is something I simply wanted to experiment with initially, and something I may not actually use for my final resolution to this brief.

When I was told to consider this brief as a live brief, it seemed much more professional instantly. This would mean that I couldn't use things such as leaves to laser cut, unless I was going to photograph them, because the info pack itself is becoming too crafty, especially when the underlying concept it to simply make people aware and open their eyes to environmentally friendly processes where print is concerned.

Why not create something which is compact to encourage small businesses to use the greener option when contacting printing places to produce their work for them?

This was a suggestion which really gave me a positive feeling. I think this could definitely work and is very applicable to my idea. Rather than it being so hand crafted and perhaps a bit hand made looking, it would be better for it to have more of a corporate feel with a serious underlying message.

I feel as though receiving this feedback has given me an incentive to really nail down my idea and make sure that I know exactly what I need to produce and include. I am really pleased with the outcome of this crit though because I know that it is much more suited to the real world and producing it in a different format, perhaps by creating a mailshot, it is instantly much easier to reproduce and distribute this way, as opposed to it being a box with books inside. To save the environment as well, I would reuse the envelope in some way and I would also present the information inside on a concertina format.