Creative Media Production 2013 1

Recipe Card Evaluation

Craig Cassidy

2

Producing Print Based Media

Visual LanguageHow have you chosen to set out your designs and why? (Reference layout, image/text ratio, busy/simplistic etc)

Overall I think that the layout of my recipe card is quite simple as I have the front of the card very clearly set out I choose to have the main image the whole size of the card so that the audience will immediately know what to expect from the recipe card I also choose to have the text in the centre as it makes it very easy to see what the product is called. In terms of the layout on the back of the recipe cards I tried to follow the same kind of style as have on the front I have kept all the text to borders/boxes one of the main things about my layout was that I wanted to choose a layout had all the essential information separated into different categories so the information doesn’t get mixed up and it’s then clear to see what box you would need to look to for what information. A bad point of my layout on the back is that it is quite “regimented” this means that it looks “clean” but it can also be quite boring as there isn’t that much of a creative aspect to the back. Secondly I will talk about the text to mage ratio. On the front of the card there is a lot more image than there is text Ithink that this is necessary as if I had more text than there was image on the first page then it would end up looking "unbalanced” and peopleprobably wouldn’t be as interested in the productbecause they would just think that there is going to be a lot of text of this product. On the back I have a lot more text than there is images as I only really have three images/graphics in total I did this because I thought it was necessary to just have the information as you don’t really need an image on the back as the person has already seen the product and I don’t think it was necessary to put another image as it would just consume space. Finally I think that my design is quite simplistic as on the front there isn’t really that much going on and on the back I have a simple layout accompanied by a very simple background texture.

I am now going to compare my layout to another recipe card to the card which you can see on the previous slide first of all the front of both the cards follow a similar layout as they both have a banner at the bottom and the name of the recipe in a banner the only difference is that my recipe card has the name of the recipe in the middle and this card has it at the top, I think that I prefer my layout as it has some form of originality to it rather than just having the title typically at the top. The backs of the cards are completely different as my card has everyone in boxes and all the boxes are the same width so its all the set in one column whereas this card has everything set into two columns giving it the end result of being a little bit less “regimented” also the information on the card to me seems to be a little but just thrown on there. Another difference between the layouts is that this cards layout allows for quite a lot of white space and looks quite “professional” whereas our card doesn’t really have a lot of white space which is something that I would of liked it to have had, so in future if I were to do this project again I would definitely include more white space. Also I think that both the front of the cards have a very similar text to ratio with the image ratio heavily outweighing the text ratio but on the back its very Different as on my card I have very little in terms of images because I have just graphics on the back butthis card has actual images which I personally isn’t very necessary I know it fills in space but its not necessary for the audience to see the product again,because if they wanted to see it they could just turn the card around and look at the front. Finally I think that both the cards have a very simple feeling to them this simple feeling is conveyed by quite simple layouts even though this card has abit more of a complicated layout its still not busy

Visual Language

I’m now going to talk about the final content of my cards:ImagesThroughout I tried to make sure that all the image I choose were of a high quality and were still quite simple so for example they didn’t really have a lot else going on in the image other than just purely showing what food the image is representing I choose images under this criteria as I think the image should be of a high quality as the image is going to be basically the main thing what will make people want to pick up your product and if it the image is of a low quality then people might come to the instant assumption that the recipe will be of a low quality aswel. I also choose very simple images as I wanted to give the cards a simple feeling as if the image was very complex and busy first of all it might be hard for a person to figure out what food it is the card is representing without reading the header, also if I had used busy images it might of given the cards a complex feeling and maybe unprofessional feeling.TextThere isn’t in my opinion too much text as I have made sure that I only put the information that I would deem necessary and I haven’t included any bits of text which aren’t essential such as the nutritional information even though I could of included some useful information I think that they card would of ended up looking too busy and also there wouldn’t have been enough space on the card for me to include all the useful information without lowering the font to a basically unreadable size. The headers are in a Mexican style font I thought that this would help make the overall theme of the cards stronger and easier to pick out, I have put the main body of text in an easily readable font, I did this because I thought the if I choose the font what I used for the headings then its might be quite difficult to read.GraphicI have used about three different graphics on the cards they are all on the back. One of the graphics is the cactus that we created we decided to create and use the cactus as it kind of gives the recipe card a fun spin on everything as its all very serious and the cactus will make it more user friendly. The other two graphics are just symbols which represent the cooking time we decided to use thesse as we just thought that it looked better then just writing the words.

Discuss the contents of your final cards and reflect upon decisions made. (Content used- image/text/graphic, use of colour, original or stock images. Compare to existing products.)

Use of colourIn general there isn’t really a lot of use of colour on our recipe cards other than in the images and the background. We decided that as we wanted to give the recipe card a simplistic feel to it that if we were to put block colours on the page they would look out of place, also I think that the images that we have used convoy enough colour to make the cards appealing enough. We could have gone for a Mexican kind of colour scheme but I don’t think that it would have worked to well as like I have said before using block colours in the cards would have made it look bad.Original or stock imagesWe decided to use stock images for our cards as that first of all with neither of us having that much cooking knowledge some of the recipe might have been abit complicated to make and also none of us have that much experience in food photography so the images wouldn’t have probably come out at the high quality standard that we wanted from them. So we decided to source our images as it saves time. One downfall of us sourcing our images is that the images don’t really have a set theme across them so in the end they didn’t all come out looking like a constant set of images which I would have liked them to.Comparing our recipe cards with an existing product ImagesWe have used quite similar style of images because they both look very clean and professional and like my cards the images doesn’t really have too much going in it. On the card below all the images they have used in the set of recipe cards are very clean and incorporate quite a lot of white in the image and on some of our images I feel that they could have abit more white space in them just to make them look cleaner and more professional.TextOn the card to the left they have used a very simple and clean font like we have used on our own recipe cards the only real difference between our cards and the card on the right in terms of text is that we have decided to use a different font for our headings but we thought that was necessary to carry on a theme, but it wouldn’t be so necessary with this card as they aren’t really trying to create a theme as we were with our cards but I still think that it would benice to have a different font for the headings just so they stand out more.GraphicsUnlike our cards they haven’t used many graphics at all apart from the graphic on the banner at the bottom of the first page and then the little graphic on the bottom of the back page but all the graphics on the card are to represent a brand rather than having a particular useful purpose like our graphics do, I think that it is essential that the graphics to actual represent something as other wise people might not pay that much attention to them.

Use of colourUnlike our cards the card below has actually used some colour in it other than the colours which are in the images and the backgrounds, they haven’t used that much as there is still a lot of white space where the have made use of block colours are only really in the banner. I think that on this card it is necessary as without the banners in the red colour they would have been a lot of white on the page. Now when I look back at our cards I wish that we could have used a white background on the back of our cards and used banners like they have here instead of just using a wood texture to try and add some colour to the cards.Finally I think that unlike our cards where the images are sourced from the internet for these recipe cards they will have got a professional in to take the images for the cards. I think that its fair enough if you are producing the cards to be sold and used by a large market that you should pay someone to take the photos for you because you can get exactly what you want out of the images rather than sourcing the images from the internet because you might not be able to find the right kind of image that you want for your cards.

Visual LanguageDiscuss the semiotics and connotations created from the content you have included. (What meaning or suggestions are created from the images/colours/designs you have used? You could reference how they were used in products you looked at during the project.)

The meanings or suggestions that are created in my work are as follows:ImagesI tried to create some suggestions by the images I used on my recipe cards. The suggestions I tried to create where:By using high quality images I thought that it would suggest something about the whole product in general and that it would all be of a high quality. Also having a high quality image where the food looks really nice would also suggest to my audience that the recipe would be of a high quality and potentially give them the false impression that they would be able to create some food what looked exactly like the food on the front cover even though this is not the case always.GraphicsOne thing which I defiantly used to create a meaning for was the cactus graphic, I used this because what more can suggest something being Mexican than a cactus wearing a sombrero? So I basically used it to give the card a more Mexican feeling and suggest a stronger Mexican theme as I thought I was kind of lacking in a strong Mexican representation.ColoursIn terms of colours there isn’t any intentional meanings or suggestions that I have created other than by using a wood texture on the background of the back of cards I tried to suggest that everything was clean and professional.Designs

AudiencesCreate an audience profile of your chosen demographic(Age, gender, psychographic, geodemographic, NRS Social Grade, hobbies, sexuality [if appropriate] etc)

I did initially create an audience profile which was based upon the results that I got from questionnaire, but now I have completed my product I’m going to create a new audience profile for my actual product, my audience profile will have more than likely changed as now I have developed the product there are some changes to my initial plan.My initial audience profile was:• Predominately male but some females• Aged between 25-35• Mainly vegetarian, the one’s who aren't vegetarian are still willing to use vegetarian recipe cards• Concerned over health and ethical issues• 78.8% enjoy eating vegetarian food• 25% wont make use a recipe card• Looking for a sleek and modern design, high quality photos, simple font, technical details and a traditional recipe• Don’t enjoy quorn or nut roast• Willing to spend 35-45 mins cooking• Like a diverse range of vegetarian food.

I am now going to create a more in-depth audience profile based on what my final product has came out like and also justify why I think the audience profile should be the way it is.• 50/50 split between male and female, before it was based on a survey but now I have designed the product it is

definitely not tailored towards a certain gender as there are no really appealing features to just one singular gender.

• Aged at 18-30, I have basically kept the age range the same apart from I lowered it abit I did this as I have included a few things which might only appeal to a younger person such as the cactus also I initially decided to some complex recipes which is why the age range was higher but after looking at my recipes I’ve realised that the recipes are quite simple so I think that younger people who might not have had that much experience at cooking will be able to do the recipes.

• In terms of demographics I would say that they are likely to live in a city for example York, I would say this because on the recipes there are some not very common ingredients that you wouldn’t be able to get at small shops that they might have out a city also with a city having a more diverse range of people in it there is more than likely to be a person of the nationality the recipe card is tailored to who might have opened a shop which sell these hard to get ingredients.

• C2 for the NRS social grade I would say this because I think that to go out and buy these ingredients you must have to have some form of disposable income which people in the C2 working class will have. Also if you are a skilled manual worker then you are likely to have shift work so you might be working 9-5 so they will have enough time to create the food on these recipe cards.

• In terms if hobbies I would say that they might have some form of cooking as a hobby because I think that first of all to go pick up a recipe card is more than likely because you have an interest in cooking because if you weren't interested in it then why would you want to learn to cook something new.

• I think that a lot of the people who will use the card will be vegetarian but not everyone because Mexican is a quite popular international food and people who want to eat Mexican food might see it as the “healthier option”.

• I think the audience will definitely be someone who has a good social life and maybe a family as the majority of the recipes are for multiple people so the person can cook it for their family or maybe their friends.

Audience profile/why I think that the audience profile is the way it is

AudiencesHow have you constructed your work to appeal to this audience?

I think that I have constructed my work to appeal to my audience as on the previous slide I have explained why my product is tailored towards the audience profile I have created. AnOne reason that I have constructed it to appeal to my audience is that I have specified that the social grade of my audience will be around the C2 area I have constructed my product to appeal to this social grade as first of all they are likely to have some disposable income so they can afford to buy all these ingredients that they might not have in there house to cook a meal that they might not have cooked before which could go completely wrong. Also with a job that is in the C2 area you are more than likely very stereotypically to go for some higher class products so we decided to make our products appeal to this stereotype by using high quality images and making the card look very nice and clean.Another reason why my product is tailored to my product which I haven’t already stated is that on my product I have included a cactus and my audience profile says that they are interested in cooking/eating vegetarian foods so we thought of a way that we could make the card look like it was Mexican themed, we firstly made the headings in a Mexican style font to make the audience be able to recognise that it was Mexican themed and then on the back we included a cactus which if anyone say it they would be immediately able to recognise that the product was Mexican and would attract any interested in Mexican foods.In my profile I have talked about the person being a family person/ having friends who they can cook for I have made my product in occurrence to this by making all of the recipes for a minimum of around 3 people which is what I would consider your average family size to be at home.I constructed my work to appeal to 18-30 year olds as you can get a lot of students or people coming out of education at this age who might not want to spend a lot of time cooking due to having a very active social life so I made sure that on my products none of the recipes will actually take that long to cook.

The serves sectionsfits my family man profile as the recipe is for 4 people

High quality images would give the audience the impression that it’s a high quality product therefore appealing to a higher class audience (C2)

I’ve said about the audience living in a citydue to some of the ingredients wouldn’t be availablein smaller places. You can see some unfamiliar ingredients inon this card

The cooking procedure tells me that person might have cooking as hobby as some ofthe procedures can be quitecomplicated.

The cactus is associated with Mexico and therefore would attract people who are interested in international Foods, because the would see the cactus on a recipe card and immediately think international.

The banners give it a nice sleek feeling once again Appealing to the professional look my target Audience are looking for.

Cultural contextWhat did you use as your design influences and why were they chosen?(What existing media products influenced the final look of your work?)

My main inspiration for my recipe cards were actually mainly the cards which you can find on the Vegetarian society’s website, you can see one of the examples that I used to help influence my work in bottom right hand side corner of the slide. I used the front cover for a lot of inspiration as you can see from mine I choose a full size image originally with the header and the footer both set out exactly the same until I thought I would just adapt the card you can see beneath and put the header into the middle. I also used the layout as a kind of inspiration as it isn't too complex and its quite easy to understand one thing which I took from looking at the series of cards on their websites was that I didn’t really like the text being split into two columns and that is why I decided to have mine all the in one row. Another way in which I used it for inspiration was that when I started out I wasn’t really too sure for how much content I should be putting on my card in general, so after looking through so I decided that I would follow the same kind of style that and just include all the essential information and leave all the useful but unnecessary buts as they would just clutter up the card in my opinion. Finally another way in which existing products have influenced our product was from the recipe cards from the Tesco real food website because when were looking for a way to represent how many people it serves and how long it takes to cook in logos we stumbled upon the logos on the website and used then to help design the logos we then used on our product. As there was a lack of other really good recipe cards on the internet the rest of my inspiration just really came from trailing out different methods etc….

Cultural contextDo vegetarian products have a specific design aesthetic and how does your project reflect/contrast this? Why?

In general I would say that vegetarian products don’t really typically have that much of a specific design aesthetic to them as there are now so many different vegetarian products out there that will incorporate so many different designs. But if we were to get stereotypical about vegetarian products the things what would come to mind about vegetarian products for me would be bright colours especially greens etc.. And also a very appealing design to look at aswel, I think that typically you would associate it with having a very appealing design to look at because right now there are still a lot less vegetarians than there are meat eaters so you would of thought they would be trying to promote vegetarian food by first of all making the design nice and eye catching. I personally don’t think that my design does really fit any of these criteria as they isn't really any green or bright colours and the design to me isn't that nice to look at as it is very simple and some might even consider it boring, so I would say that it contrasts it more than anything, but I think that this is a good thing because if everyone designed something with the same specific design the world would be a very boring place as there would be no variety and other products wouldn't stand out over others.

Finished productsDoes your finished product reflect your initial plans? How? If there are any differences, describe why changes were made.(You can use visual examples of flat plans and finished products to illustrate this

I would say that overall no my product doesn't really reflect any of the initial plans that I made in the first place, there is one flat plan that has managed to look kind of close to what the final product has turned out to look like but its still not a great representation. I think that my flat plans didn’t really look like my finished products because of the following reasons:Firstly I think that it would be extremely hard in the first place to create a flan plan without starting any of the production work what would be an accurate representation of what the recipe card will look like because its all very well creating plans but until you get your images and copy in there, your not going to be too sure what the final product will end up looking like as it might end up looking too busySecondly I think that another reason why my designs didn’t represent my flat plans that well was purely because, in my flat plans I didn’t leave any borders really and I had all the boxes for the relevant information all going up to the edges of the page and after discussing the product we found out that it looked unprofessional with the all the copy crammed in to all corners and also it wasn’t practical because we are supposed to theoretically producing these cards to be printed and we were told that you would have to allow some space at the edges of the page as sometimes the printer might not print right to the edge so you will have to allow some space.

As you can see to the right of this text are all my flat plans of what I thought my products might end up looking like at the start of the production I created all these templates and started filling them in just to see what they would look like the first and the third one I didn’t like at all as on the first one the image looked ridiculously small on the front and on the third one the same. This is were I decided that I needed to have the image bigger on the front page so I used flat plan two but decided to change it just a little bit so I moved the header and then put a footer in it’s place and the back page is basically exactly the same apart from I have put more of a border around the boxes and changed the nutritional information to just information. You can kind of see how flat plan number two was the closest representation to what my final product actually looked like.

Finished productsDoes your finished product match what you were set in the brief? How?

I would say that yes my final product does almost exactly match the brief for what it said to include and how to present certain information etc… As in the brief it says that you should include how many it serves, the preparation and cooking time, I have also listed all the ingredients on separate new line so my card so far complies with all the briefs requirements. Also it says on the brief that you should use spoon measurements which I have used and also use the abbreviations “tsp” & also “tbsp.” which changed on basically all the recipes, one thing which it didn’t say on the brief is that the measurements need to be all in an English format because a lot of my recipes were American so the measurement of “cup” was used a lot so I converted al the ingredients. The final way in which I made it all comply with the brief is that I left out the degrees symbol and the term mark when referring to what temperature or setting things should be cooked at. You can see in the diagram below evidence of my compliance with the brief.

Included the veg society logo

Included cooking and preparation time

Numbered the methods but not ingredients

Used tsp & tbsp and I have alos not left a space between the number and the grams symbol

Finished productsHow did the use of peer feedback help you in your production?(Reference specific examples and their final outcome in finished product)

Peer feedback to me is a huge part of helping you in your production wether it be from a student or from a tutor and without my product wouldn’t be the product that it is now. I think that it is so important because its always good to get an outside perspective on what people think of your product because when your working on something and you design your more than likely bound to like it as you have created and you might not be able to see any errors that a fresh pairs of eyes who are looking at the product for the first time will be able to see.For example when I first started making all the fronts of the cards I had the text just plonked on top of the image with no borders or anything until I got some feedback on it as I felt that I was kind of at a loss with it and didn’t really know which direction I could take it in, so someone said for my feedback why don’t you put it in boxes with background set the same as the background image but just change the opacity a little bit, so that the text will stand out a lot more and also you will be able to tell straight away what the product is.Another case where we acted upon feedback was when we weren't trying to come to a conclusion of what the back of the card could look like so between our group we thought rather than creating an idea between us it would be better to create lots of basic ideas and then come to a conclusion after we created about two ideas each we then received peer feedback and the feedback told us to incorporate the two designs together so we did and then we had the back created.Finally the last piece of feedback which affected our product was the feedback which we received, which helped us make the logos to represent the cooking time and also how many people it serves because when we thought we had finished the product we received some feedback of Ben and he suggested that we should use logos for the final product as the box looked pretty empty with just the text inside it.Without our feedback the product would have not looked the same as it does now.

Finished productDiscuss the strengths and weaknesses of your final product regarding its technical qualities.Use box below for text or page space to include an annotated copy of your work to help illustrate how you have done this.Reference what you like and dislike about the work with consistent reference to correct terminology of tools/effects used. Reference existing products.

I am now going to discuss all the strengths and the weaknesses that I think my final product has.I'm just going to use one of the recipe cards as an example seeing they are all basically a constant set.I will first of all talk about the weaknesses that I think my work has.WeaknessesFirst of all I think that one obvious weaknesses that my product has is that the title on the front of card might be hard to read in some cases, even though we changed the opacity so it was easier to see it can still be quite difficult to read in some cases, especially if they were to be printed and read from a distance.

Another weaknesses which I think my card has is that in some of the boxes where the information is, they can be a lot of white space at the edges, I know some white space is a good thing but in some cases, the white space can just look like the box is too big for the information which we had to put into it.Furthermore another weakness which I can see on my card is now when I look at I wished that I had left a bigger margin at the bottom the card, to provide some weight to it so its easy to tell where the bottom is essentially.Another weaknesses which I can see on my card is that because we were told to produce a constant set of cards and in some cases some of the boxes on the back are all different sizes, so I see this as a disadvantage because they look like less of a constant set.

Finished productAnother weakness of my product is that I realised now on some of the ingredients I could have benefited from making the font a little bit smaller and then spacing out the ingredients because as you read them especially when you will be trying to find the ingredients you could get lost easily as the list is very long, another way which I could of got around this rather making the text that much smaller was to put the ingredients into two columns and this would of allowed to space out all the ingredients. Another weakness which I can see from looking at the text is from the example on the bottom left had corner where in the methods you can see that it all appears so cramped, we tried to solve this problem by reducing so of what we thought was unnecessary information in the product but there is only a certain amount of information that you can take out until you wouldn’t be able to follow the recipe, so I wished now we had just made the box bigger or make the text smaller just so it would all just look a lot less cramped.

Cramped text

Cramped ingredients

Finished productFinally the last weakness which I'm going to talk about for my product is the fact that aesthetically when you put all the cards together, they don’t look all the same. We were told on the brief that the cards should look the same as a constant set so even though they do look pretty consistent for example they have the same style of picture on the front with the same amount of boxes everywhere aswel, but to make them look like a more consistent set aesthetically I would of liked to have the boxes on the back of the page the same size, because to me this was the only inconsistent feature as everywhere else was pretty much the same. Even though it would have been harder to get all the boxes the same size and still fit in the text because all the text was different in length, I could of just lowered the font size on some of them, to make them all look basically perfectly consistent. You can see below how the boxes differ quite a lot in size in the four examples I have provided underneath of the backs of my cards.

Now to discuss the strengths of my products.StrengthsFirst of all I will talk about the strengths of the front of my cards.The first strength I think is on the front of my card is that I have chosen good high quality images to go in the front. This a strength because it gives the card a good face to it and will also make the card a lot more appealing and attractive to people who look at the product, I think the high quality images will make it more attractive because when someone looks at the card the first thing that they are bound to look at is the image on the front of the card and I've tried to make this image as appealing as possible by choosing nice clean images with a lot of colour in them. Furthermore another reason why having a card with a high quality image on the front of is a strength is because it might encourage people to want to actually make the recipe because they will be under the impression that they will be able to create this very nice meal on the picture on the front of the card, even if in most cases the end product will more than likely not look like the product in the image.

Examples of high quality images on the frontof my cards, which are clean and also quitevibrant in colour

Finished productI will now discuss the strengths which I think there are on the back of my recipe cards.The first strength is that I think that all the text is very easy to read and is a easily readable size. I think this because its in a very nice a simple san serif font so you don’t get the problem that you can get of not being able to read the text if the font used involved too many flicks etc… Another reason why I think that the font is very easy to read is that it is in an appropriatesize so that it is very easy to read this a strength as you don’t want to be trying to follow a recipe very closely and be struggling to even read the font. Another strength about the text on the back of the card is that the font that I used for the headings on the back of the card is very easy to read, so this makes it easy for the person using the card to find what section he needs to look for (even though there are only three sections so they might not have too much trouble), also another reason why the font I used for the headings plays as one of the cards strength is that it stands out quite as its quite a bold font and it still carries on the Mexican theme.

Another strength of my card is that aesthetically on the back I have incorporated labels on the some graphics onto the card, such as the cactus and then the logos at the bottom for cooking time and how many people it serves. This plays as one of the cards strengths as first of all it makes the card look abit “funnier” as the front is very serious and the back adds kind of a twist I think that the fun side will appeal to the majority of people and maybe suggest that cooking can be fun?Another reason why having the graphics on the back on the card plays as one of its strengths is because it stops the back of the card from being just solely text and being pretty “boring” to be honest as when you look at something which is just purely text it can be quite off putting and we don’t want our recipe cards to be off putting for our audience.

Finished productsWhat skills/knowledge have you gained/developed in this project? How could these be applied in future practice?

Well first off the first skill which I have gained is the actual skill to be able competently produce a recipe card, because obviously before wasn’t even that familiar with recipes let alone designing one so I had quite abit to learn. The skills I learnt from designing a recipe card where how to put a recipe card together so that it looks appealing to look at, what images to you use on the card and also what information that you should and shouldn't put on a recipe card. I could now obviously if I needed to in the future feel quite confident with designing a recipe card.Another skill which I have managed to develop by completing this project is something that I have developed as a skill even further, I have been basically been developing this skill since the start of the year and that skill is the skill of tailoring something to a very specific audience, I already had this skill from previous projects such as the graphic novels unit but in this unit were given a very specific audience from the brief and also created our own audience profile which we had to tailor our cards to. I a feel a lot more confident with the skill of tailor something to a specific audience or market now.Another skill which I have gained which I had never really done before, is the skill of creating a questionnaire for the purpose of market research, I had never done this before but now I know what kind of questions you should be asking if you want to find out a specific thing about your audience and also what questions aren’t that necessary when researching a target market. I could reapply this skill if I were to ever need to research a market for a product again as I would know how to very basically do it.Furthermore another skill which I have learnt which is completely new to me before I started this project was the skill of being able to use InDesign, I had never even heard of InDesign before this project. I don’t feel as if I can use InDesign that well though as we only did very basic things on InDesign but I have still learnt how to create basic things. The basic skills which I have used could be applied to future practice if I was ever given the task of designing layouts for something.

Fourthly another skill which I have developed are my skills when using Photoshop. I already felt quite confident when using Photoshop from all the previous projects so it was just basically slightly a case of doing what I already know, but I fell more confident with creating clean logo’s now which can be seen in my recipe cards as the logos which represent the time it takes to make the recipe and also the graphic we created for how many people the actual recipe can serve. If I needed to in the future I could use the skills I developed to create and graphics in the future if I needed to and also if I needed to design something in Photoshop again I could do if it required of me.Finally another skill which I developed from this project was the skill of dealing with feedback because I felt on the other project that we received feedback once the project was complete so it was difficult to act upon any of the feedback as we had already completed everything. But on this project I had to receive a lot of feedback when we were in the production stage on basically how other people though we could improve the look of the cards and I acted upon a lot of this feedback aswel as a lot of feedback basically contributed to how my recipe card looks today.

Production processDo you believe your work is creative and technically competent? Why?(Reference specific examples (use images if this will help) of where you believe your work is particularly visually or technically impressive. Reference professionally produced work and compare your products to them)

I would say that yes my work is creative and technically competent because:First of all how I think that it is creativeI think that it is a fairly creative idea as first of all in my opinion the front of the card looks pretty creative as you can see in the example I think that the banners with a lowered opacity make the front of the card look very creative as I could of quite simplyjust put the text on the page with no banner around it at all. Also I just think that the having the banner in the centre of the page is a creative idea because looking at otherexamples of recipe cards you will usually see the banner at the top or the bottom and usually on a plain background on a single colour like you can see on the card below my example which has the banner in the usual place and just on a block coloured background, so putting in the middle is what I would deem a creative idea as it’s not what you would usually see and in my opinion it works quite well aswel.

Production processDo you believe your work is creative and technically competent? Why?(Reference specific examples (use images if this will help) of where you believe your work is particularly visually or technically impressive. Reference professionally produced work and compare your products to them)

I would also say that the back of my card is creative aswel as firstly you don’t really see any products out there which incorporate a texture on the background like our cards do, in my opinion this is creative because its not something you would usually see and also it complements the clean look of the front of the card aswel as you always consider a wood texture like the one we have used on my card to be really “clean” and it makes it look more professional in my opinion aswel. Compared to a normal white background like the one that is being used on the example below our card which I don’t really deem to be that creative as its just a simple white background even though it works well I still don’t that its creative idea really.One aspect where I feel that we could have been more creative on the back of our cards is the fact that we have just used very simple boxes for the information to go in which is nothing out of ordinary really, so comparing to the card that I have used an example of “professionally” produced work I would say that, that card is more creative in how they have laded out there information because there is kind on visible borders so to speak.

I am now going to talk about how I think my work is technically competent by comparing it to a professional product which I would consider to be very technically competent.I think my work is technically competent as the card on the right has a very high quality image which is very technically competent and so does my card.Furthermore I think that my card is technically competent as it has a very clean layout as its not over complicated I think that this adds to the technical competence as if it was a very complicated layout which didn’t really look that clean it wouldn’t be very technically competent. The layout is different to the other card which I have used an example which is also what I would consider to technically competent but I don’t think my layout is any worse.Another technically competent element of my work in my opinion is the cactus graphic on my work I think this adds to the technical competence of work as it’s a nice and clean graphic, the other example has nice and clean graphics but in the form of logos mainly. I don’t think our card would of worked that well with logos on it as the cactus just carrys on the Mexican theme aswel as looking professional.One way in which I could of made my design more technically competent would be to make better use of space which is blank on the card, like I have quite a lot of space on the back on some of the other cards we produced. The professional card on the right makes much better use of the space in my opinion as it makes the card look more professional and on my card it just makes the box look way too big for the information. Finally the last technical competence aspect of my work which is the use of text I have used text well to compliment the clean design by keeping it the minimum just like the professional example has, as that has kept the use of text to just the essentials.

Production processHow effectively did you manage your time? (Could you have used time more wisely? Did a particular aspect of the project take longer than expected? Did you complete everything on schedule?)

In my opinion we all managed our time very well because ;We have met all the deadlines for all the tasks before hand and we even managed to finish our recipe card a day before the deadline which definitely shows good time management skills as we wouldn't of finished as early if we hadn’t really managed our time. So I don’t really think that we could have managed our time a lot better to be honest as there wasn’t really any time that we weren’t working towards getting the final project completed.Another way in which me managed our time wisely was mainly due to the schedule which we created and stuck to, as we created the schedule so that we would have plenty of time to complete each job to a high enough standard.One aspect that took longer than I expected it to complete was actually making the recipe card because I though that it would just be a pretty straight forward procedure but as we found out, it wasn’t because its quite hard to get all the information on the page that you need and to make it look good at the same time, we seemed to spend the most time on trailing different designs for the back of the cards as we it took us ages to find what design we liked and also suited the style of the front cover. But overall I don’t think that any of the tasks took a lot longer than what we expected them to do.

Production processIf you could repeat the process what would you do differently?

If were to do the whole process over again the things which I would od differently are:I would take the images for the front of the cards myself, even though this would mean that we would have to cook the food ourselves but I'm sure we would be able to do it, the main reason why I would want to take the images of the food our self is so that we could get a set theme across the images on the front of the card, because one part of the brief stated that all the cards should look like a consistent set and if we had got all the photos in the same style then it would of just made them all look more consistent.Another thing which I would do again if we were do the whole project again, is I would make sure all the boxes on the back of the cards which hold all the information were the same size as like my previous point it would of made them look a more consistent set again, even though this would have been hard to do because a lot of the methods and ingredients were different lengths so there might have been a lot of white space on some of the boxes but we could of worked around this by making some of the recipes longer or putting spaces in between everything.Furthermore another thing which I would change on my cards if I were to do the project again would be that I would change the background on the back of the cards because even though I like the wood texture I think that it just doesn’t quite fit with the front of the cards. I would of liked to have done the same image on the front but zoomed in and the apply some blur to the image as the background of the cards now that I have seen the final outcome of the cards.Finally the last thing which I would of done differently would be to that I would of liked to have made the Mexican theme a lot stronger throughout my cards, as even though you can tell that they are supposed to Mexican themed, I think just adding small details like a Mexican pattern around the boxes on the back etc.. or more of a Mexican colour scheme aswel would of just carried on the theme throughout.

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Working to a brief

ConstraintsWhat constraints did you encounter and how did you consider/avoid them?

Legal:The first legal constraint which I encountered was the Copyright act of 1988, specifically the design and patents legislation. This act basically states that your design should be of some form of originality and not be a direct copy of others people. There are multiple things on our work which could have breached this act the first of which being the design which we had to make sure was basically not a direct replication of someone else’s design. Secondly the graphics on our design could have been a copyright breach as they were graphics which we took originally from someone else’s work but we then created our own adaptations of the graphics to avoid the copyright law. One thing which we would have to consider if we were going to follow through with this project and make lots of copies for the public would be that we would have to make sure the images on the cards were copyright free and we would do this by either taking the images ourselves or buying rights to the images.Finally another legal act which we encountered and avoided was the Offensive publications act of 1964, we encountered this as when producing something from a certain country you need to make sure that it is compliance of that country's culture or people who live there could deem it as offensive.

Regulatory:There are some regulations which we could of encountered whilst making the recipe cards and they are:We had to make sure that our card wasn’t offensive in any way, there are a few ways in which it could have been made offensive in my eyes and that would of be that if we had used some typical Mexican stereotypes on the card that people would of just seen as us making fun of the Mexicans. We avoided this problem by making sure that we still gave it a Mexican theme but not too strong of a Mexican theme that it started becoming offensive as were heavily stereotyping Mexican culture too much.Another regulation which we encountered was the

Financial:In terms of financial constraints which we encountered, there wasn't any really but if we were to encounter anyone I would expect them to be some of the following:Not having enough money to print the cards, we would have avoided this by making sure we had plenty of printing credit on our cards, or had access to plenty of printing creditsNot being able to cover traveling costs, I would have then got the bus to college if I didn’t have enough money to get to college in my card.Not having enough money to buy the right materials etc…. I would of then tried to get them through a tutor.

ManagementHow did you work as part of a group? (Did you lead the project? What parts of the project did you take charge of? Did you enjoy working as part of a group? Why?)

I didn’t really think that anyone in our group lead the project really, as we both devised up a schedule and agreed on what we would do as we thought this was the fairest way to do things rather than having a leader as when you have a leader it can feel like one person is doing more work than the other but with a schedule with all the different jobs shared out equally it doesn’t seem like one person does more work than the others like for example, I designed the front of the cards and the other person designed the back of the cards that way we saw it as fair.The parts of the project I took charge of, meaning those were the jobs that I did was that I was responsible for finding all the images and then designing the front cover and then placing the images on the front cover, then I also designed the graphic for how many people it serves and also the cooking time aswel, whilst my partner did the back and then designed another graphic for the card.Overall I would like to say that yes I liked working as a part of a group, because I think that it worked well in small groups as if there is a conflict of opinion you can usually come to some median rather than if it was a large group there might be a huge conflict of opinion and then it would be difficult to come to a decision. Another reason why I liked working in a group was because it does lift some of the work load for you, as if one person had to complete the recipe cards then it would of taken a while longer as with two people you can more than work done than by yourself more than likely. One disadvantage that I can see of and a reason why I might not have liked working in a group, is that if you had a massive conflict of opinion and you couldn’t come to a decision over it you might of ended up coming to abit of a stalemate.

ManagementHow important is communication when working in a group? (Use specific examples from working in a group on this project)

Communication is a vital part of working in a group because:Firstly if you don’t communicate to your partner then you might ending up doing work that the other person is doing or work that isn't necessarySecondly it is important as it will just help the overall outcome of the project as two head are better than one? Because if you come to a place in the project where your not really sure what else you can do with your project if you just communicate with the people in your group then they might be able to help you.Its also important as a method of feedback and our project proved to me how important feedback is, as in my opinion our card would of looked completely different without feedback.An example of how communication is important when working in a group is when we were trying to get the cards looking consistent and to do this we had to make sure that the borders and gaps on the back were the same size, so through communication as we were both working on the backs of the cards ensured that all the cards came out looking like a consistent set that they are now.Furthermore another reason why communication is so important in groups is that it helps you avoid wasting time as you might be doing a job that has already been done and therefore wasting time, but if you communicate in your group than you will now what jobs need to be done and what jobs have been done to avoid this problem.Finally another reason why communication is important and an example from working on the project was when we came to do the audience profile for the project and on this we decided to combine the audience profile seeing that we were both making the cards we thought that it would just be right to combine our audience research aswel. So through communicating we managed to build a combined audience profile for our cards aswel.

ManagementWhat have you learnt about working in a group and how will you apply this to future practice?

The things which I have learnt about working in a group are:First of all that good communication is key between everyone in the group as it just keeps everyone in the loop so everyone knows exactly what they should be doing. I will apply my knowledge of good communication within a group to future practice by when I work in a group making sure that everyone is involved, everyone knows exactly what they are doing.Another thing which I learnt about working in a group is that it is important for you to listen to everyone's opinion in the group, or there is really no point of you working in a group if you only listen to your own opinion, you may aswel just work by yourself. I will apply this to future practice by when we come to an issue in the group I will ask everyone their opinion on it and how we could solve it, and then we will come to some sort of mutual decision.I have also learnt by working in a group that it can cut down the time it takes to produce something by a great deal. I found this out by how long it took us to actually complete our recipe card which wasn’t very ling at all really, because when you work in a group its nice to be able o split down all the production tasks between the group rather than having to do all the work by yourself. I will apply this knowledge to future practice for production tasks as now I know how much easier it can make everything for yourself if you split the jobs correctly.Finally I have also learnt by working in a group that, I probably prefer working by myself to be honest, as its just my personal preference as I find it easier to organise everything for my myself rather than having to worry about what the group should be doing, or if everyone is pulling their weight.