Print Design Critique #4: Teleflora Floral Guide brochure

The audience intended for this brochure are newly-engaged women planning a wedding, wedding planners, and event coordinators.  The design rules are applied very nicely in this brochure.  There are a lot of colorful pictures of the floral arrangements that they offer and it shows a great variety of color throughout the piece.  Teleflora does a great job aligning all of the fonts flush-left.  The first page of the brochure is center-aligned but it creates the right amount of contrast against the other pages.  They do a great job with proximity.  The front page is of a white bouquet and is not too busy.  It allows your eye to see the wording clearly, yet gives you an idea of what the brochure is all about.  The repetition is the Teleflora logo and the fonts used in the brochure.  Contrast is used nicely; there are hard lines throughout the pages and plenty of white space that the text is on.  The font is just the right size - not too small and not too overwhelmingly big.  It does look like a unified document because of the alignment, fonts, pictures, and repetitive use of fonts.  Personally, I like the design.  It is peaceful on the eyes and make me want to open it and see what other floral arrangements Teleflora offers.  

Print Design Critique #3: Sprint brochure

The design audience for the Sprint brochure is professionals, businesses, and adults who are looking for the most direct approach.  They don't need colorful graphics and fancy fonts for this brochure to appeal to them.  Proximity is used very nicely in this brochure.  There is white space that brings contrast throughout the wording and the tables.  All of the alignment is flush-left, which creates a nice, clean edge throughout the design.  It causes your eye to naturally move from line to line, and you don't have to search for the next piece of information.  The repetition seen in the brochure are the  colors used (black, gray and yellow); there are also two graphs that mirror each other so that you can compare the two very easily.  The words "Any mobile anytime" is repeated twice (on the second page and the last page), as well as the Sprint logo.  There is nice contrast.  Some of the text is worded on a gray text box which makes it stand out.  On the front page, There is a lot of great contrast: the large image, a yellow diagonal line along the left side, and a bold horizontal line along the top.  The piece is very unified, and the design elements do a great job tying it all together.  The design would not make every person stop and stare, but for its audience it fits perfectly.  I would not pick it up to read unless I just wanted statistics and to check out comparison among other cellphone service companies.  I do not think that I would change anything in this piece.  It is unified, professional, stands out, and is very clean.   

Print Design Critique #2: Saxon Woods Newsletter

Welcome to Saxon Woods, a self-proclaimed oasis from the cookie-cutter suburban standard found in McKinney, Texas. The towering stone walls of the complex scream pomp, power and prestige to those who happen to step on their cobbled driveway.
If only their newsletter mirrored that type of perfection. Saxon Woods has a plethora of various tenants ranging from teenagers fresh out of high school to senior citizens reluctant to check into a retirement home. The newsletter attempts to target the entire spectrum, but hardly does a job worth blinking at. As far as white space is concerned, Saxon Woods believes that fun, cartoon clip art should inhabit the area created for absence of activity. The only alignment visible is the infamous center-alignment. Saxon Woods does a royal job of butchering a seemingly harmless alignment. Without a congruent sense of flush-left or flush-right, the entire newsletter is bound to be kindling for the next fire in the family fireplace. There is one sign of cohesiveness and uniformity: the 70's-inspired flowers framing the staff list. To save the overall direction of the newsletter, more repetition could be the saving grace, alas there is hardly any to be found. There is no contrast in this document. The pages are a white blur of confusion and monotony; the main title of the document desires to remain silent.
Overall, the document has no uniformity that ties the piece together. An array of fonts and monochromatic pictures don't give the design a focused appearance. If I were to arrange the newsletter to my liking, I would keep the basic content of the newsletter, but create a sense of professionalism by giving the newsletter contrast, changing the alignment, and adding subtle repetition. This document screams for a direct theme and message, and in return, your audience will appreciate the textual sanity.

Print Design Critique #1: Place to Be Newsletter

As I walked into the musty, wood-stained office of Place to Be, my eyes scanned the scene, looking for something, anything that would be seen hanging from the door posts of the tenants for this month.  There, in all its glory, sat the bright orange newsletter glowing brilliantly against the mahogany desk that cradled the paper.  Gingerly, I picked it up, surveyed the room and quickly made my great escape through the towering door frame that was much too grand for any leasing office.  The targeted audience for this particular newsletter was a younger adult, primarily a college student.  Proximity is used in this piece, but not very efficiently.  There are multiple boxed texts are spaced without rhyme or reason.  The various pictures were strewn on the page like a lazy afterthought that was supposed to add pizzazz, but only cluttered the page.  There is no clear alignment seen to the naked eye, or any eye for that matter.  The main title, "September SPECIALS", was center-aligned (naturally), as well as every piece of text within the individual text boxes.   This document could use some sort of uniform alignment that made it appear more organized and thought-out.  The design incorporates some tacky repetition.  There are black stars found on the document in various places and the text is boxed in repeatedly.  The additional graphics used in the piece are a bit too much, causing your mind to spin and your eyes to cross.  In regards to contrast,  there are no particular texts or symbols that cause your eye to focus in one thing.  The document is so busy that the reader doesn't get a clear picture of what the message is.  The design elements help unify the document, but do not do it in a prestigious, classy way by any means.  How is a annoyingly big smiley face pointing to "Big Sale!" supposed to encourage you to rent from Place to Be?  The title words, "September SPECIALS" do not encourage you to take a second glance and you quickly lose interest.  The use of the repetitive stars do allow the reader to gather that the document is unified, yet crafted by an 8-year-old.  I argue that a simple sample of clip art does not justify all that was clearly missing or poorly constructed.  Ever heard of Microsoft Word vomit?  Other than the color of paper it was printed on, I would not have cast a second glance at this newsletter, and will refuse to do so in the future. 

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