So this is my last redesign. It is a pamphlet for the Safe Ride service at Tech that is still being utilized today. I have to admit, with all of the resources bestowed upon Tech that this is flat out embarrassing. Its problems are copious and obvious. For starters, it looks like a colored-in coloring book. Hell, in the QnA section they, for some odd and inappropriate reason, chose to capitalize every letter "o" like this, "what dO yOu mean by 'shuttle'?" If that's not the most unbecoming of a Tech pamphlet I have seen then I'll be darned. So this process began difficultly because I knew I would have to start completely from scratch. The colors are bad, the contrast is just overwhelming, and there are distracting elements everywhere.
So where I started was with my own layout. So I eliminated the cheesy graphics and chose red and black as my primary colors because of our university. To utilize the powerzone, which I have chosen to abuse this semester because it really is an easy way to make things look nice, I made a top bar and chose a picture where the focus (the seal) is on the left. (So the seal in the photo and the top bar makes up the powerzone)Inside the top bar, I displayed some contrast by putting the main points of the document, each phone number, in different colors: one in white and one in red. I knew that most students knew the numbers, so seeing them displayed on a pamphlet would be an instant attraction for information-seekers. Also, I knew that there should be something to even more helpful to attract the students to use the service, and being a college student, I know that the word "free" is magnetic to our eyes. So I created somewhat of an eye-capturing award type shape and put "free taxi." Not only did the symbol attract eyes because it was bright yellow, but it was also an exercise of rhetoric. It was almost like I wanted to say "dont forget about this service you pay for" but without those exact words.
The sequence of information that was put into the original document was also very distracting. It gives these snake like arrows that take your eyes to the right or the left rather than simply down, where the information lies. I made sure to trash that concept. What I thought was most conducive to attracting college students was putting as little distractions as I can and only including graphics that were relative, so for each informative page I put two columns worth of information with a graphic above for some extra rhetoric and symbolization.Lastly, my emphasis was on creating a decent amount of white space and grouping(proximity) so that there was no straying of the eyes from the focal points of my revised document. All relative information is under relative questions with plenty of white around so that all of the information does not look overbearing to read. The simplicity and short quality of my writing was also aligned perfectly for both pages thanks to inDesign.
In the end, the only real thing I recycled from the original was the entirety of the last page. I realized that it actually looked like a solo graphic so when I placed it on the page it looked like a suitable logo that was representative of the document's goal.The Redesign
Photo Credits:
From freedigitalphotos.net,
Andy Newson-confused girl, page 1
Exsodus- moon, page 2
