Reflective Summary 3 - Practical Outcomes

So after having created the 8 images, I needed to apply these to certain other formats to suggest how they could be displayed and distributed. I decided to go with a poster, publication and postcards.

I thought the poster would have been fairly easy to put together, but it turns out, due to page sizes not being bang on centimetres and having a somewhat weird amount to place on a poster (something I didn’t realise before) this took a lot longer than I expected it to. Due to their being 8, rather than say 9 symbols (where 3 by 3 works nicely) I had to work out a way to display 8 without ruining the effect of them being simple. I didn’t want to over-complicate the layout, especially because part of my research suggests that complicated layout implies the feeling of being lost, and for this reason, simplicity implies the feeling of being found. I asked a lot of people’s opinions while at Uni to see which they preferred, and unfortunately it was very 50/50 across two of them- which seems to happen to me a lot. I suppose this is probably a good thing, it could mean that I sometimes have more than one good idea. I eventually went with the one I preferred and I’m happy with my choice.

Both the poster and postcards were printed on matte paper in the digital print room and look really good. I’m very happy with them. However, something I’m not so happy with- the publication. As mentioned in my ‘Printing Issues’ post, I struggled to get a good print of my book. This technically wasn’t my fault, it was due to the printers, but it’s still really disappointing to have worked hard on something and not be able to see it at its best. I tried multiple time in multiple places to get it printed (digital print, various mac suites) but for some reason the colours were printing different to each other or with streaks, probably because there is a lot of block colour. I have provided an issuu document of what it should look like, so maybe look at that instead.

I also created some GIFs in order to push the images further and communicate how so much can be done with something so simple. Although I encountered a lot of problems when doing these- causing a lot of stress and frustration- I’m happy I did them, as it is a skill I needed to remember how to do in case I need it for the future. I have written a post about the struggles I faced in a blog post titled ‘GIF Struggles’.