AO4 - Evaluation

I thoroughly enjoyed unit 17 as I felt the near-industry process allowed for me to create almost professional looking products that are fit for audience viewing. The unit allowed for me to show my design skills and express my ideas in a way that the industry would expect and accept.

Firstly, I think all three of my products are fit for release due to their professional look and the popular trend in artist design that they follow.  I like the idea that the house style used upon all three of my products link and establish this era in Sandra Bashful's career. I took inspiration from linking products from Lady Gaga's promotional designs for her latest album and tour, "Born This Way" and "Born This Way Ball" and similarly in the promotional designs for Michael Jackson's post-houmous campaign for his album and film "This is It". By using techniques that the general public are familiar with and not alienating her current fans, I think that my products and Digipack in particular are suitable for all ages, genders and audiences, if not, appealing for all audiences. Sandra Bashful, the fictional character I created for this unit is supposed to represent strong, independent women and has a large following of fans through her confident and extrovert behaviour and I feel that I have represented this well in my products and will appeal to her current audience as well as pulling in new audiences which I think I have succeeded well in. I knew that the promotional flyer for a concert had to be non-audience specific to appeal to a larger group of people and by using themes that Sandra's fans are 'used to', and combining that with a simplistic poster I feel that I have enabled this to occur.

 

First of all, to begin establishing Sandra's new identity in this era of her career, as requested in the brief, I chose a particular colour scheme of bright yellows and oranges along with contrasting blues and purples - a possible metaphor of Sandra's bright and vibrant personality and style and I think I executed the colour schemes and making them suit in the products well. I particularly like the use of the colours in the programme. To further establish Sandra and make her comeback explosive and stylish, I used explosive and sci-fi looking images to add character to the products and I really like what's happened, especially flyer.

In order to create a professional and industry standard looking product, I used industry used equipment to make sure that the designs were good looking and didn't look rushed. Photoshop was my primary design software, using that to create patterns, effects, edit images of Sandra and I included photographs that I took and mixed them with images on royalty websites such as Getty Images and Istock.  By using such professional companies, I was only able to enhance the professional look of the designs. I think in this unit, I made improvements with my abilities in Photoshop and I think it's reflected in the finished products when compared to original creations in earlier units. In terms of hardware, I used an SLR camera to produce high quality images. Admittedly, I did make a mistake in where I took the photograph, using natural lighting instead of professional photographic lighting and I think this can be seen in the product, and had I had more time I would have corrected. This is one of the very few parts of my designs that I am unhappy with. One definite improvement I would make learning from the mistakes of this unit would be to allow extra time to correct bigger parts of the production such as photography and would encourage others to use set up lighting rather than natural to save impacting on the quality of the work.

By using Photoshop, I was also able to create a 'logo' that could be recognised in all of Sandra's products. The title of "Sandra Bashful" appears, on all three products, in the same font. I think that helps to maintain continuity between the products but also further define this part of her career. The chosen font also enhances the science-fiction feel of the product and the 'out there' persona that Sandra maintains.

I think my response to client matches that of the industry, quickly creating schedules and managing to keep to deadlines that I have set myself. I took on board the advice of the client's representative and followed the trends in recent products like that of Michael Jackson's "This is It", and the promotional campaign of Jessie J's "Nice to Meet You" tour, where they both use a set house style for all official graphics in that section of their career. An example of this is below...

Jessie J's "Nice to Meet You" Poster

Jessie J's "Who You Are" Album Cover

If I was to do the unit again, I would correct and change a number of different things with the products. As said previously, I would take the photographs again with a professional lighting set up to improve upon the already professional-looking product. I would also spend more time with the backgrounds and images used on the products as I felt towards the end of the production, when it came to the programme, I was just quickly adding images without editing or manipulating the images. I would also completely change the look of the programme - in hindsight, it is probably too small to be a programme, contains very little detail and looks rushed so would not be sold as said in the unit for around £3. That is my biggest regret of unit 17.