Overview
The aim of this document is to summarize the pieces that led up to this website.
Aside from the website there is a
- Poster
- Two-sided Give Away
- Flier
Project Goal
The goal of this project was to create teasers for a mock literary journal under the name The Tainted Sun. Documents have been designed to be flashy, with the primary focus of drawing readers to this website.
The flier and the business card/give away are intended to be mailed out to schools and organizations who might be interested in submitting to a literary journal. Recipients of these documents would find them packaged together in a brown envelope. Upon opening the document the recipient would see both the flashy flier and the editors contact information.
The poster is meant to act in a similar way as the flier/give away combination. It has both the flash of the flier and the information of the business card.
Due to the fact that this mock literary journal does not currently have any submissions, content is fairly bare in all of these documents. The goal here was to be sweet and to the point, while using fairly interesting designs that grab your attention.
My Feelings about my Documents
Considering that I did not have my personal computer at any point during this project, I am very happy with what I have put together. I was hoping more from the website, but the process of editing Wordpress blogs is sort of trial/error and without a PC with both Photoshop and an FTP client, I was at a loss. Had I been able to do more, I would have made the banner of the site appear more in synch with the flier and poster.
While I was presenting my documents I realized that my flier used the name A Tainted Sun, which apparently was my original idea, but I made some unconscious decision and changed it during the document process. I have not decided which would be more appropriate.
Aside from a few areas for improvement, my project improved greatly from draft to the final piece. On this site there are images of older designs and I believe that my final design choices were, by far, the better ones.
What I Learned
First and foremost, I learned that outsourcing projects is tough. I had chosen to have my documents printed at Staples and I ended up doing all the grunt work behind the counter to get them printed. Secondly, I learned that Photoshop is much easy to design in than Word. I retain my previous opinion that Word should not be taught as a document creation application. There are better options that should be taught, as they are more intuitive and professional. I know that Photoshop is also not the best, but I believe that people who work with technology shouldn’t be afraid of training on new technology (otherwise, what good are they as employees in today’s age). If I were to recommend software for someone to create professional documents on, I would undoubtedly choose something like Illustrator. For those that are not as tech savvy, I believe that Word and a complex design tool can be used in conjunction to allow for the best possible learning experience.
Other then that, I learned the importance of drafting work and getting other’s feedback. I felt that I received a lot of helpful tips on my work from not only the peers in my class, but from others who looked at my designs. Also, through the different drafts and iterations of my pieces, I saw how they can improve if they are given time to breathe.
