crit

Today's crit:

I presented work from Magnetic Tape ('Music Zine'), The Kubrick Brief and the Les Morts brief. I wanted to get some advice on what I should do to bind the zine (staple, sew etc.) also, how to expand the kubrick brief, plus if I needed to tweak what was going on with it. Finally, the Les Morts stuff, I had a few proposed business card and compliments slip layouts and I wanted to know which one people thought was working most effectively.

The feedback I got from these questions was alright; consensus was to either bind with black thread or black staples, I'm inclined to go with black thread to avoid spending any more money, because this brief was supposed to be to produce as cheaply as possible. No one commented on the print problems with it, so perhaps I've built this up in my head a bit(?) I think a rough and ready DIY zine perhaps lends it's self to this.

The Les Morts stuff; Generally, people thought the layout where the details were aligned right and with compliments was aligned left was working most effectively. With the business card, the details aligned centrally (the one I prefer, and transposed directly to the compliments slip, got the most approval.) In terms of design for the fronts of these things (with the images) the images were a bit dark on the print and the quality of the laser print was poor, so it wasn't really a just representation. However, the suggested just having the words and removing the coffin, which I'm inclined to agree with. I may use the coffin for the branding guide and 'look-book' still though, because it's a larger space to work with and won't feel like I'm cramming everything in.

With the Kubrick stuff, it went down well. Joe who was supervising gave me some tips to improve it, the times on the posters aren't working well (see bottom photograph) they need to be a different weight and grided in a seperate column, and the space between one column of dates and the next needs to be bigger otherwise the eye is drawn from one to the other in a way that makes it less readable. Other than that though he was very positive about them. The books he say need some more info on the back to make them more believable as real book covers, publishing details etc.

In terms of general feedback, my blog seems fairly straightforward, and relatively up to date, I just need to keep on top of it and keep producing work apparently. I think I've been a bit slack of late and need to add some context research that I've been doing but haven't got round to yet.