Strengths
Header Typeface is unique and still legible despite the 'sliced' appearance. This also helps to brand your booklets.
Body Text is easy to read and looks good in the selected grid.
Could you use duotone images in your work to link to the colour scheme.
Illustrations are very clear, line drawings are more than easy enough to understand.
Contemporary design but the grid allows for easy reading.
Legibility of the type is appropriate and the header is intriguing.
The layout is really modernist and clear. Easy to understand and visually appealing to look at. Don't think it's too contemporary because its still easy to read in a good structure and format.
Amazing Time Management. Have a lot of research and designs in this stage so this is good to give you time to work on perfecting it!
Areas For Improvement
You might consider putting some colour in the images because you will need them when talking about colour. And you want to keep the all the books consistent.
You might want to find a way to categorise or mark pages so this might be easier to find quickly for reference.
Could be a bit more text or image because there is a lot of white space.
Considerations
Add more content or image to fill white space and create a more 'manual' look.
Consider putting a clear explanation about the print process next to the images.
Body-copy depends on the difficulty of the topic. As long as it's enough o understand then it's fine. Too much is too intimidating!
Comments on Feedback
Overall I am happy with this feedback. I now know that the overall aesthetic and layout of my manuals are relevant to the content and this is the general direction that I can take.
My illustrations, I was worried if they were too simple to understand but the overall reaction seems to be like they are simple but easier to understand than overcomplicated ones they had seen. I realise that the simple the better when it comes to books that I am reading so this is definetely the direction I want to keep with for my designs.
The layout, I'm quite pleased with. The 'sliced' type idea was a favourite with the critiques so this is something i will not change.
However, I do need to sort out the colour of my publication. Initially, I wanted it to be B&W with the Spot colour for each book but I realised that this will jeopardise my content when it comes to talking about colour. I will have to try to use colour imagery within my layouts to see how it works.
Action Plan
- Carry on getting the basic Illustrations and Layout of all three books as well as dropping in all of my content.
- Focus on colour in the books. Try and incorporate a four colour process.
- Work on categorising the sections better.
- Try and incorporate more text and/or image into layouts.
- Crack on with it!
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