Unit Evaluation
Throughout this unit I feel my design decisions were influenced by a number of factors, particularly the illustrations. In order to maintain a style and feel to the magazine, I needed a consistent style of illustrations. This was also reflected in the consistent type handling. I therefore felt that my visual research largely inspired my design decisions, along with the content of the interviews that I was working with.
I found starting the FMP very difficult as I struggled to narrow down what I wanted to focus my project on. Despite having the same issue last year, and making lists of my interests, I felt it took me a while to properly start the project as I spent a lot of time changing my mind and doing unnecessary research. That being said, I eventually went with the overheard conversations concept, which then evolved into storytelling. Due to this delay in finding my topic, I felt I could have managed my time a bit better over the first half of the project, potentially creating more experiments to help speed up the process. Having said that, I felt I managed my time well when I knew what I was doing, ensuring I gathered stories, illustrated them, and created the magazine in time for hand in.
As I received feedback in the tutorials over the weeks, I felt I responded to feedback well, experimenting with the playfulness of the illustrations and their compositions on the spreads. While staying true to my preferred design elements and decisions, I made tweaks and changes in response to the feedback to improve my spreads, also constantly responding to visual research that inspired me.
Over this unit I have learnt to just go with my gut and try to stop holding back and worrying about things. Design wise, I have learnt more about what should be considered when designing a magazine, considering elements such as the cover, contents, introduction and types of spreads. I found it was also a bit like branding, as I had to think of a name, concept, tone of voice, and consider how the magazine could be continued across many editions.
Overall, I found this unit both daunting and exciting, both due to the amount of freedom we had. Although there are things I am not entirely happy with and wish I did differently, I am happy with my outcome. I am particularly happy with the way it came together and I could imagine how it would work in real life with the little details, like the quote on the back cover and reaching out to readers for their stories for following issues. I wish I had gone with a slightly more sophisticated style of illustration, as I felt they were quite cartoony, although they did express the humour and facial expressions well which helped to narrate the stories. I also could have experimented with different typefaces.












