EXAMPLE OF A PRODUCT REPORT

Bringing together my fold out brochure took a lot of trail and error and decision making in its design. Initially I chose the theme ‘Street Art’ because I personally felt it suited me better compared to the other given themes as it allowed me to play with colour. Colour was an element that I was most drawn towards because I feel that it’s more important to grab the audiences’ attention than to initially bombard them with a lot of information. However in regards to what the fold out brochure has to offer, the purpose of its creation is to draw people’s attention towards the difference between legitimate street art and the criminal acts of graffiti.

 Despite having to cater to community users already given, I tried not to just limit myself to them. For example, I chose Teachers as a community user because aside from aiming this brochure towards the general audience of just adult teachers, I could consider the facts that they are able to ascend this knowledge or information from the brochure to younger and less knowledgeable audiences.

In considering this, breaking down the given raw information became easier as a main priority of the brochure was to educate the user strongly about the difference between street art and graffiti. I basically decided to use the main headings from the raw content like “political and social concerns” and transformed that into headings with humour or elements of rhyme and pun. The language I chose to use did not stray too much from the raw content. I simplified some of the sentence structures and language to be able to match the intellect of my younger target audience. “The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components” (Zinsser 1998) so I aimed for the information to be simple and straightforward and to the point.

Again I didn’t want to just push blocks of textual information onto the readers, to I draw statistics from the raw content and collected accurate statistics from trusted sites to be put into my brochure stylistically. I set them out on my second last informative page (not including back cover) just to give the user a break from the previous pages of information. I also incorporated colour into my statistics just for the audience to take a break from the simple black and white of the pages.

I was felt a little creative with the format and size of my brochure as I found it challenging to work in the amount of information onto such a small space. However Lank says “confrontation and the struggling between different approaches and areas is conducive or even necessary for creativity”. Text and font wise, I limited myself to three types of font for the entire brochure to minimalize the possibility of my product looking messy and over done. The fonts I selected to make up my brochure Minion Pro for the title and statistics, Kozuka Gothic for the body paragraphs, Hand of Sean for headings and pull out quotes. I structured the information in block paragraphs because it would be a lot more easily read compared to playing with paragraphs shapes. I had to consider the flow of the eye and what would be the most convenient to follow. Because the size of my brochure is quite compact and small, I did allow myself to use a smaller font size (8 pt) for the block content. However, 8 pt was the smallest I would allow myself to go because if I did make the text any smaller, it would become difficult to read, especially if the information product is to be photo copied or resized over time. In doing so, the font size and size of my brochure also contributes to my decision on making the background a plain white with black font. I stuck towards contrasting shades and colours to enforce clarity and legibility.

The graphics I used for the product is suitably contemporary. Apart from the street art depicted on the back of the brochure; I used a simple man figure for the statistics just to add on to the simplicity in a way that it aesthetically stylised.

I chose not to put in the story from the raw content because I found that irrelevant to what I was trying to portray with my information product. In doing so, this began my thoughts on my layout and colour. Stylistically, I intended to create a smaller product in physical size – something the audience is just able to conveniently carry around and distribute. Due to the copious information I could use from the raw content, I decided to set the brochure on the length of an A2 sheet (2 landscape A4) and have it folded zigzag into a smaller size to satisfy convenience.

After the decision on the size, I began hatching ideas on what I wanted on the brochure. I initially wanted to break each of the squares (pages) folded to consecutive picture and information, but because it folded out into a long strip, I found that too messy and hectic to keep up.

I decided to make the entire outside of the brochure a picture depicting Street Art. I wanted to make this brochure something more than just a page of information. Not only did I think this would capture the audiences’ attention more, but it appeared to me to be more aesthetically pleasing with the power of vibrant colours. The purpose of a brochure will be defeated if it was full of informative content if nobody is going to care to read it. This enforces the fact that this evokes genuine curiosity from the audience if the product doesn’t give away too much. Also, the user can keep this information product and use the artwork image as a poster or and item for enlightenment. So in a way, it has a level of interactivity as the user is can now use this information product as the brochure at the same time as promoting the information portrays a promotion for street.