Sales Material: Philippines tourism brochure- Cebu

Sales Material: Philippines tourism brochure- Cebu

I collected some brochure of Philippines diving sites form the Diving exhibition, most of them are well designed expect this one for Cebu.

It is difference from others, it uses bright colour as a theme to give readers a holiday mood, I guess, but there are too many colours used in the brochure and caused it lost the focus point. This brochure is an ‘impressers’ brochure, but it does not give readers a clam and relaxing feel of the beautiful islands. The brochure does not come across a right message to readers. Impressers follow up and reinforce the message at the last crucial phase before decision has been made. (Parker, 1990)

The text body is not kept in consistent margins, borders. Like the 2 yellow colour pages and the green colour pages. They have different size of borders. The purple colour page does not leave a border at bottom. One of the brochure design considerations is ‘consistent margins, borders and graphic accents.’ (Parker, 1990)

In overall, the brochure has provided wide information, but it lacks of design consideration. The high quality of impresser brochures reflects the quality of the product or services.

Reference
Parker, RC, 1990, ‘ Being observations’, Looking good in print: a guide to basic design for desktop publishing, 2nd edn, Ventara Press, Chspel Hill NC, Chapter 11, pp.269

Corporation website-CUH2A

Website: CUH2A
http://www.cuh2a.com/#

Today I visited an architect firm website. This site gave me a headache trying to find the logic behind the navigation.

Those circles are Mystery Meat Navigation. It’s more like an online game rather like a corporation website. It stinks as an information resource. It’s important that you make the web easy for readers to see, at a glance, what topics are covered. (Parker, 2003) Luckily, they have a real menu at the top that suffers from poor contrast, but clicking on a link of this flash menu brings up a whole bunch of other links that have even less contrast.

Clicking on these submenu links doesn't give you consistent results. You may get new links that are Mystery Meat, or a new set of "regular links," or you may get content. It should be made easy for readers to jump ahead o the topics covered following a subhead. (Parker, 2003)
Design and architecture firms just don't know how to distill the selling points. It maybe is a kind of creative but it is overly complex navigation.

Reference

Parker, RC, 2003, ‘Designing documents for web distribution’, Looking good in print, 5th edn, Paraglyph Press, Scottsdale AZ, Chapter 14, pp.278

Personal website-Fred Frap and His Imaginary Friends

Website: Fred Frap and His Imaginary Friends
http://www.fredfrap.com/intro%20page%208.29.02.htm

As always, colour should be used with restraint in web design. It is easier to make a strong impression using black plus one or two colour than it is to make an impression by using every colour of the rainbow. Here is a web that even uses rainbow colour as a background.

Readers may hurt their eyes once they open the page. There are two strong rainbow colour square graphic background with a blue colour heading. The background colour is much stronger than the heading. The image on the main page is so small that disappeared into the very strong colour background. And a sentence says ‘Click image to enter the award winning website’ which I doubt so. If it is an award winning website that might be ‘super colourful web design award’. Large areas of bright colours distract readers, creating hard to look at ‘hot spots’ on screen. (Parker, 2003) Rainbow background design for every page is not consistency as well.

The author fills the screen with the text. A lack of onscreen white space presents a very ‘bloated’, hard-to-read image. (Parker, 2003) Instead, white space should be built into both sides of the page.

Reference

Parker, RC, 2003, ‘Designing documents for web distribution’, Looking good in print, 5th edn, Paraglyph Press, Scottsdale AZ, Chapter 14, pp.273-279

Magazine article- Turkish star

Article: Turkish star

Magazine: Men’s folio (Singapore)

Issue: May June, 2008

Here is another article from a well known stylish magazine called Men’s folio. Men’s folio has high standard on page design and high quality on the printing. But this particular article ‘Turkish star’ disappointed me.

In 2nd and 3rd page, author seems that trying hard to squeeze as many pictures as possible. The pictures are overlapped, especially 3rd page, the image of chair is very large and covered the main picture below. The small blown up ceiling light image is sudden appears on top of the main image. Therefore, readers are not be able to know which image is focus point and what message the author wants to be delivered. Graphic should be judged on its ability to help the reader quickly and easily understand your message. (Parker, 1990)

There is a paragraph of text on the left corner of the main image on 3rd page which is failed to be presented with contrast. Contrast provides dynamic interest. (Parker, 1990)

In overall, author fails to design a document in a pleasant layout to attract the readers to focus on the contents provided in the article.

Reference

Parker, RC, 1990, ‘ Being observations’, Looking good in print: a guide to basic design for desktop publishing, 2nd edn, Ventara Press, Chspel Hill NC, Chapter 1, pp.7 & 12

Magazine article- The colourful life

Article: The colourful life

Magazine: Home Concepts (Singapore)

Issue: June, 2007

I was flipping through one of my collected magazines, there is an article about my project which is not well designed.

Cover page of the article layout is un-balance, as the image takes most space of the page. Page balance refers to having comparable visual ‘weight’ on both sides of a page. (Reep, 2006) Half of the title of the article is placed on the image and the colour is blended into the image. Thus, the tile is not eye-catching enough. Choose colours that reinforce your message and appeal specifically to your intended audience. (Reep, 2006) The short description next to images on 2nd page uses script typeface. It appears very difficult to read and easy to miss out the information. Typeface should be appropriate to readers and purpose. (Reep, 2006) The small column of text on every image is too small to notice. Some are not clear as they are blended in with the background image. Layout is not consistent as well, as there is no white space below the image on 4th page.

In overall, the 1st impression of the articles in this magazine is not attractive and appearing.

Reference

Reep, DC 2006, ‘Document design’, Technical writing: principles, strategies and readings, 6th edn, Person/ Longman, New York, Chapter, pp.135-160