Brief
“You have been asked to design a leaflet for an organisation, inviting people to to
volunteer for a task. (You can choose the task for example, school governor, fundraising
or building a community garden). In addition to a title the information has been broken
down into four chunks each of about 120 words. You will also need to leave space for
contact and address details.
Working with a sheet of A4 paper or larger if you
prefer, and ignoring the actual words and subheadings, explore the different formats for leaflets
that are possible. Consider and experiment with
options for final size and types of paper as part of
your visualisation”
Learning Log/ Sketchbook Brainstorm
Reflection
After my last exercise, I decided that I wanted to find a better way to structure my thought and design process, 1 reason being that I would find a way to spend less time on fewer priority tasks and therefore have more time to spend actually designing the product, 2nd reason to create a more fluid and smooth way to gather information and finally choose what design (fold) I would use for what I thought was the most practical leaflet and why. For this exercise, I was asked to explore different methods that a leaflet could be folded. To give me a better understanding of what fold I would go for I thought it would be best to build up a persona for whom I was creating the leaflet.
To start my visual journey for this exercise, with the structure in mind, I first split this exercise into problems. Using spider diagrams I decided to look at my options, now the brief mentions that I was to design a leaflet for an organisation inviting people to volunteer for a task. Brainstorming ideas I decided to focus on subjects that I was most interested in, after completing the diagram I was at this point stuck as I liked all of them so I narrowed it down to 2 – Volunteers for a life modelling class or a climate change charity promoting the need for people to volunteer to plant trees on a certain day at a certain time. As hard as it was to choose between the 2 I went for ‘Tree Planting’, the reason I went for this is that I thought it would be cool to use eco-friendly, recycled paper because that promotes the company being very in tune with what their overall message is.
Problem 2 I used to explore different types of paper and again found recycled to be the best fit for my leaflet.
Problem 3 was the weight of the paper that I would use for the leaflet, and I decided to go with 300/350 as I thought because of the higher gsm my leaflet would be stiffer for a firmer fold but still bendy. In my sketchbook a couple of pages later I decided to explore further for my paper weight decision and realised that if I went for a lower gsm this would have a better effect on the environment, even though the leaflet would be thinner and more fragile, the value of the company would still present itself as being eco-friendly with a sustainable leaflet. At the end of the exercise, I was stuck between 2 leaflets and because I chose a lighter gsm one of my leaflet wouldn’t work properly because part of the fold would be too flimsy and fall over, I’ll get more into that later.
The 4th problem I was faced with was the folds, I researched on google how many times an a4 page could be folded and the total of 7 came back, I then decided to sketch down a few different folds, I extended this in the design process later on. I also took this time to explore google to find out what different leaflet folds were out there in the world.
Problem 5 was leaflet distribution and I decided to go for door to door and hand to hand because this was a great way to get the message across and build report with each person. If I was to leave the leaflet in a rack, it may just get missed and If I was to put the leaflet inside a magazine, perhaps would be targeting the wrong people, at least going door to door and hand to hand, the person could be greeted with a lot of joy and passion.
Problem 6 I had to choose what way I would visualise my thinking and for that, I chose to sketch first, move onto photoshop and then print for my final design.
Problem 7 I brought it all together and walah, I had all my problems resolved for my leaflet, except, the most crucial part, the folds. Before moving onto folds I broke down my problems, even more, to try and understand what fold I would choose. I used the What, Why and How strategy from the first exercise of part 2 from this course.
I left the folds until last because I thought If I figured out who the leaflet was for and what it’s purpose was, would give me more of an understanding of what fold I would go for that would clearly get across the leaflets message and purpose.
After researching the internet and playing around with a few different leaflets I found in the post and in shops, I decided to pick up some card and try a few folds for myself.
After experimenting, I decided to then use my sketchbook and using thumbnails I played around with a few different ways that I could produce 4 chunks of 120 words and a section for contact details.
I reverted back to problem 4 where I researched the different ways that a leaflet could be folded and chose 3 to play with and an added page in my sketchbook for random designs as I thought it would be fun to go against the grain and use my imagination to come up with different folds for a leaflet design.
My 1st design didn’t have any folds at all as I just wanted to keep it simple at first and learn to walk before running, so I created a few thumbnails for text placement and images. I thought it would be better to explore all angles of the flyer so I split each page of my design process into portrait and horizontal.
The 2nd design I decided to play around ‘Roll Fold’, this has 3 folds where the outer pages close in on one another, I still split my page into portrait and horizontal but this time broke each design into inside and outside as I thought this was more accurate than calling them front and back, I personally found this easier to understand and then on some designs I even experimented with what each page resembled i.e page, front and back or 2nd, 3rd and 4th.
My 3rd design, I went for the most popular leaflet fold – Concertina. After carrying out my research I found Concertina to be the most popular, the classic zig-zag leaflet, I thought with this leaflet I would have more space to add my 4 chunks of 120 words and especially for portrait where the leaflet, after being picked up would collapse downwards and the person would have a beautiful display of writing and images. The landscape version would also be interesting as it would leave more to the imagination as the person would have to physically open up the flyer and being slightly flimsy from being a low gsm, might not produce a great user experience in comparison to the portrait leaflet.
It didn’t stop there, I thought it would be fun to try some random ideas and thought it would be cool to have a cutout design of a tree so came up with 3 concept ideas.
In the end, after coming up with different ideas in my sketchbook I narrowed down my choices to 2 – Concertina and random, but if I was to give ‘random’ a name I reckon it would be classed as a roll fold as the 2 side pages roll into the middle, my first choice was also roll fold so I obviously like this design but after testing using card I decided that because the leaflet would be printed on a low gsm, that the tree in the middle would be too flimsy and fall down and in return give a bad user experience.
So with that, I decided that concertina would be my leaflet fold of choice in a portrait style. I thought that with a lower gsm the flyer would be picked up with ease and the pages would drop down giving a beautiful image of a tree with writing on each side. The front of the leaflet is quite obvious because the creases between each page would stick out towards the person. One reason I decided to distribute this leaflet door to door and hand to hand is that if I was to put it in racks, it would be difficult to see as most leaflets you see on racks are horizontal so they stick up really nicely were as if they were portrait they would lay flat on the rack making them harder to see.
The leaflet is for an organisation that promotes better climate change and they asked me to create a leaflet that would ask for volunteers to plant a tree on a certain day at a certain time, so I thought by designing a tree that sits right in the middle would straight away give an idea that the design is to do with trees. When the leaflet is handed to someone at their door or in the street it would be closed with only the tree appearing on the top page and because of curiosity the person would straight away want to know what the picture is and what it is about. The leaflet then would collapse showing a beautiful design and a beautiful leaflet.
Final Design (still need to upload printed mockup)
(add printed mock up here )
Tools Used
Illustrator
Sketchbook
Tutor Feedback
This project explored how to quickly visualise ideas through thumbnails, mood
board, mock-ups and prototypes. You were asked to explore different ways you can fold paper to make a leaflet for a voluntary organisation. Your design
process is explicit here; especially strong is your sketchbook work showing
your design thinking through some wonderful thumbnail drawings of paper
folds and ideas for layout. Keep going with this way of working.
Your brainstorms are also good and visualise your thinking clearly, they are
also useful to help you to generate a range of diverse ideas.
You have started to create mock-ups, this is a natural progression from your
thumbnails and allows you, the designer, to explore this 3D structure from a
readers perspective. getting a feel for how your design will work is an
essential part of the design process: mock ups really help you to explore how
different weights of paper respond to being folded: 300g paper for instance
will probably need to be scored first and a lighter paper may not support itself.
Continue to use mock-ups in your work to test out your ideas. They are also
an essential way to present an idea in context, this way we can see how the
text and image works with the folds.
Good work Stephen, keep visualising your work: )
Stephen Furber 