Beautiful Brochures

Shidler College of Business Brochure

This brochure stood out because of it's visual design.

First, the colors used flow well together. The colors also aren't bold or bright, making the black text hard to read. Different shades of blue consume the outside, but the dark blue is balanced out by the white set beside it. The use of reverse text is used on top of the dark blue, and usually reverse text can be distracting and harsh on the eyes, yet because the use of it is minimal, it catches the viewer's attention.

The colors chosen for the inside weren't chosen at random. The yellow, used on the back of the brochure, is the same yellow used on the outer left flap (shown on the right in the top picture) in  the "B.B.A in Marketing" text.  The lime green color on the flap presented to the left, was chosen from the green trees in the picture (and if it's not from the trees, it's very similar to the green in the trees!)

This is where repetition starts occurring, where you see similar colors and objects throughout the piece. We see this, not only with the colors, but with the company's icon as well. The torch is seen on every page of the brochure, not only as a symbol for the company but as a decoration as well (especially on the information pages where the torch accompanies the subheads.) The repetition of colors and pictures/icons unifies the brochure because there's consistency. It wouldn't make sense to have random little pictures, it would look tacky and confusing to the viewer. Because this is for a company, the company must be represented throughout the entire brochure.

Another object that is repeated throughout the brochure is the soft, curvy lines. Although it's faint, the curved lines from the front of the brochure, is again shown on the inside, horizontally spread across the three pages. This is done tastefully, where it's neither tacky or distracting.

The text is spaced out well, leaving plenty of white space, making this a clean layout. There is organization shown through the use of bullet points and staying within, what looks like, half inch margins. The fonts were chosen well, making the content easy to read. The subheads have a clean, professional font that isn't distracting and is appropriate for a business.

Overall, the design hierarchy was executed well. There's organization, white space, proper use of images and their size, and consistency throughout the brochure to properly represent the company, making this design successful.

ILI Brochure

This is another example of a well designed brochure.

First, the colors. The yellow puzzle piece is vibrant, so it catches the attention of the viewer immediately. The grey and dark red give a more professional look, whereas the light blue goes well with the yellow in attracting attention.

There is repetition throughout the entire piece, primarily in color. The light blue background is presented on every page, unifying the piece. The dark red is seen again on the inside page in a diagram, and also seen as the color of the subheads on each page. The puzzle piece from the front cover is seen again on the back, on top of the same grey to black background that is shown on the front (except for the puzzle piece design on the front, which is not presented on the back.)  The harsh curved lines on the front page are faint, but presented, on all of the other pages, which is also another example of repetition in the brochure.

The text was presented in an organized way. The fonts were easy to read and there is appropriate spacing so not everything is all bunched together making the page look overwhelming. 

Overall, the brochure is minimal. But, the choice to put a diagram in place of a paragraph was a good idea because it presents the information creatively. If the diagram was a paragraph instead, there would have been too much text and not enough image. This way, both an image and text were displayed appropriately. What look like sponsors or, lets call them, company representations (just to be safe), were presented on the front, which usually they're presented on the back, but they sit well on the brochure in this circumstance (due to the wave design of the red on the front.) Without them, the page would've look unbalanced and the bottom would have looked empty.

This brochure isn't designed as well as the one mentioned above, but it clearly shows how an informational brochure should be presented. The organization, color scheme, and the use of a graph instead of another paragraph, makes this design successful.

Postcards and Posters

Postcard (The box in the middle isn't supposed to be there.There's supposed to be a line dividing the two sections. Unfortunately it decided not to show up.)

Poster

While making the poster and postcard, I used three programs: Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator. This assignment was an essential exercise in design communication because it made me use and experiment with different programs and incorporates them onto one platform. Using these three programs was essential to these projects because things such as postcards, posters, and many more, aren’t designed using only one program. There are specific programs for different things, such as Photoshop for image editing, InDesign for publication and layout, and Illustrator for creating things such as shapes, backgrounds, designs, and more. Using all three allowed me to be creative with what I was making, and all together make a well-designed product.

The use of colors was a very important decision to make. On my poster, which focused on bullying, was more serious than the postcard that was about me. The colors should reflect the topic of your design. So, I used black and white for the bullying poster, and used red sparsely as emphasis. Two contrasting colors, to represent the seriousness of the topic, with red, that makes anything POP, which could be dangerous if it isn’t used properly. I never would have put a color such as yellow on a poster that was trying to make a sad, depressing statement, because yellow doesn’t come off as a serious color. BUT, where in my postcard that’s about me, I did use yellow! The calmer dark blue and pale yellow looked very elegant together, and with the white text, everything looked crisp. That’s what you want when choosing colors, don’t just choose ‘em because you like ‘em, but choose colors that blend nicely together that won’t exhaust your eyes (no neons!) and doesn’t clash making your work look tacky.

For the postcard I used a font called “Dazzling Divas” and “A little sunshine” that I downloaded for free from dafont.com. “Dazzling Divas” was what I used for my name (header) to give it more of a fancy, hand signature look. The rest of the text (subhead and paragraph text), I used “A little sunshine” to give, again, a handwritten look that was more easily legible than the header font. I figured that it should reflect the way I write because the postcard is about me.

For the poster, I used “Baby Blocks” and a more serious, “Century Gothic” font. Of course, the baby blocks were cutesy but what they spelled out was impactful so it counter acted the cutesy feel the blocks would’ve given off. Century Gothic is naturally a little wide and a little bold so this serif font gave a serious, straightforward feel to the text (as it should!)

Using design hierarchy was a little tricky when you have so much information to present, yet want to give a clean, organized look. With the poster, I tried balancing the top and the bottom, as well as the left and the right sides of the paper, so the poster wouldn’t look heavy on one side. Allowing a fair amount of white space and organization of information and images are key. So having one photo to the left of the page, and another set to the right, balanced it out. Same with the text at the top and bottom of the page. Things that wouldn’t follow the design hierarchy would be clustered information, more than 2 fonts, an overwhelming amount of images or graphics, and poor layout of information (such as making your paragraph font size larger than then header) and such.
I did the same with the postcard, allowing text to sit on both the left and right side of the page to create balance and placing images and graphics on each side of the postcard with a middle header and design (the line that’s vertical in the middle).

Overall, I enjoyed making these two projects because I got to work with the programs more. I used InDesign as my main program where I laid out the text and images from the other programs. I used Photoshop to silhouette, re-size, and recolor the images. Illustrator was used to make borders (such as the one on the postcard), lines (the line in the middle of the postcard), and shapes (such as the banner around my name on the postcard).

I am satisfied with the results of my postcard and poster, but of course there’s always room for improvements. Practice makes perfect, so working with these programs more will do nothing but teach me new skills and provide me with more design opportunities in the future.