OUGD504 – Extra Feedback

After the crit which I had, I felt very lost and quite confused about what to do. I felt that the feedback I had been given was in some senses helpful but also left me with an idea which I felt didn't fit the brief which I had been given. I therefore sought extra feedback from one of the other tutors to see if it would help me makes sense of what I need to do.

Feedback:

• Look at using layers for the combinations to make it more interesting than the original flat design. 
• Could look at using different papers and colours to represent taste. 
• Still could look at using the 3 layered flip book but find a way that the combinations layer rather than allow them to move around the flavours meaning they once again have to pick their own. 

• Informative at the beginning of the book like the original idea but with suggestive aspects of design that can be used to represent these things in the combinations that come later in the publication – this could allow it to be a bit more abstract maybe?
• Play with the shapes of the bottles to make them more suggestive rather than using the branded label.
• Could still use fever tree colours but just not with the logo so that its less about the brand and more about what the colour represents. 
• The brief could be altered in some way. Although it was originally specific to a certain pub the brief could allow for the book to be used by anyone who is interested in gin.

The extra feedback which I got really helped my to think about my design ideas and how I could make the publication more interesting but keeping it classy and neat. It also allowed me to be a little bit more relaxed about my ideas as I wasn't necessarily having to just design the book with a specific pub in mind. By expanding my audience to anyone who is interested in gin it allowed the way that the book was designed to be less focussed on aspects of the pub and more on the gins, tonics and recommended combinations. 

The design idea for the first section which I came up with after the feedback can be seen above. I was looking at the bottle shapes and noticed that all the different gins do have quite distinct bottle shapes. I decided that I could write the information about the gins that needs to be in the publication inside of the shapes of the bottles. This would make it obvious what gin it is without having to use the brand allowing the reader to connect each gin to the shape of each bottle.

I then thought about the fever tree colours and how I can use them but in a less obvious manor than using the logo. I therefore thought I could do a full bleed of strong colour over half of a page which would be cut down to the half with what fever tree flavour the colour represents written on the layer underneath. 

Finally for the fruits, I want to have the illustrations printed over a full bleed page of scented paper. This would mean than the reader would have to use the illustrations and their sense of smell to know what fruits there are. 

For the combinations, I would then use the aspects of design which I had used for the informative section. Each combination would combine 3 separate sheets of paper. The first would be a cut out of the shape of one of the gin bottles. Layered underneath that would then be the half page of colours representing the tonic and finally the third layer would be the full bleed illustrations of the fruits. By using this layer system you would be able to see all of the combinations together through the bottle cut out when they are all layered together. The picture below demonstrates how it should look.

The reasoning for the layering in this order is because when thinking of the design I thought about how people order and choose their drinks. First you would pick what the alcoholic drink it that you want – top layer = gin. Then you would pick the tonic that goes with the gin and finally you would add the slight extra detail to the flavour which is the fruit layer.