Distribution of Flashcard 'HOW TO...'

'How to understand the UK regional accents of people in our year on our Graphic Design course'

Once we had printed out our final designs, we took photos for our powerpoint that illustrated to the audience how our flashcards would be distributed. We felt this was important as it gave a context to our solution.

We particularly wanted a solution to our problem that would be accessible to students, we achieved this by selceting a size (A6) that could easily be fitted into back pockets and by tying the flashcards together with string which could perhaps be worn around the neck.

Layout Development 'HOW TO...'

'How to understand the UK regional accents of people in our year on our Graphic Design course'

When designing the layout for our set of flashcards, we were particularly inspired by the retro design of children's alphabet flashcards. We wanted to encorparate the retro style into our own designs as we felt it the simplistic design would work well with the style of illustration we chose, whilst also conveying the humourous tone of voice to the target audience.

http://inmyblessednest.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/leightons-room-lately.html

After experimenting with several layout ideas, chose to keep our design simple as we did not want to 'overcrowd' the card with information as we felt it would not appeal to the target audience. We placed the slang phrases at the top of each design, to draw attention to them, as they are the key information that will inform and educate the audience. We also chose to use a different bright colour for each of the flashcards as, again, we wanted them to have an authentic 'flashcard' feel. We found through research that bright colours are commonly used in flashcards as the original target market was children.

Once we had finished and printed our final designs, we were able to present the solution to our problem to another group in our Graphic Design class. As a group, we found the group critique useful we were able to hear feedback on how well we had analysed the problem and on the overall design itself from the intended taget market for our product.

 

One of the main suggestions we had from the feedback session was, the point size of the type was too small. As we felt the type was the main source of information for the audience on our design, we developed our original ideas by changing the orrientation of the card to landscape which gave us more space for the type.

Character Design 'HOW TO...'

'How to understand the UK regional accents of people in our year on our Graphic Design course'

From the common stereotypes we brainstormed as part of our research, we were able to design characters that included these stereotypes to be included on the flashcard of each region. For the characters we designed, we wanted a simplistic style of illustration that kept a focus on educating the audience through the slang words and definitions which would also appear on the final flashcard.

For our illustrations we were particularly inspired by the style of fromer Graphic Design student Dean Gray. Gray's illustrations have an simplistic style to them, as he uses several basic shapes to create one image. We felt this style was appropriate for our designs as, again, if kept the focus on the slang and it has a 'childish' feel to it which works with the flashcard style which chose for our final designs.

http://www.letsmakestuff.co.uk/

HOW TO...