Veganuary Booklet EvaluationCourtney Whittaker

PlanningPlanning was a very important part of the project, it helped me develop ideas and helped me prepare a sequence of performance so that I could manage time more efficiently. I could prepare ideas, such as the theme, style and content, and present them in a mood board and mind map before production. Doing this gave me a visual concept to start with, as I had experimented with different visual styles when planning.

Whilst planning for my booklet I looked at existing magazines for inspiration. I created a folder on Pinterest of different page layouts, which got my interest. I did this to get an understanding of how I can present my work in a style which will look more interesting then randomly dotting around text and images on a page.

On my mood board I tested different fonts to see which work well together, I created a colour scheme so that I could see what colours complement each other. I also looked at different styles of graphics to inspire me so that I could get an idea of how my graphic style would look, as I wanted my booklet to look consistent.

My production schedule helped me keep track of what I had created as I could tick off the list when I had completed a piece of work. It also helped me know what I was going to produce next. Therefore I wasn’t trying to think of an new idea once I started a new page I could just look back at my schedule to remind myself of the next part to produce.

My intensions Vs final productOne of my intensions for my booklet was that it would be based on how being Vegan impacts the animals but I decided to cover environmental and health impacts as it would give me a wider audience and would be able to give my audience more knowledge about the benefits of veganism.

AudienceMy booklet is aimed towards 16years to 30years. I chose to aim it toward a wide range of ages because my aim is to persuade lots of different people to become vegan. If I aim my booklet to a wide variety of people, hopefully more people will read it and learn about veganism. Veganuary are looking for more male participants in their programme. Therefore I kept my visual style aimed towards both males and females. I used non gender specific colours such as green, turquoise, white and black. I created my booklets so my images and other content appeals to all of my audience. My booklet was aimed towards non vegans as it was to enlighten my audience about being vegan and to persuade them to change their non vegan diet and try becoming vegan. My front cover is the first thing my audience will see. It is what will attract people to my booklet, the images on the front cover are of animals and vegan food. Therefore this booklet will interest people who love animals, who care about the environment, who take an interest in cuisine, or who might be interested in learning about being vegan.

Style• I used InDesign to help me structure how my text and images was going to be

presented on my multipage article.• I kept a triangular theme running through my images as I wanted to make my multipage

article look more interesting, without drawing you away from the text. So I decided a shape theme would look wacky and not mundane with just text on coloured background.

ContentFirstly I created a multipage article which I called “why should you consider being vegan?” this gave me an opportunity to cover lots of vegan benefits, and how It can impact both your health and the animals which is what my booklet mainly covered. I then created a fact file which explains why some celebrities chose to be vegan. I was quite surprised about how there are so many celebrities I didn’t realise were vegan. Therefore I thought this might enlighten others as lots of people are inspired by famous celebrities. I then created an infographic which covered environmental impacts. I used the Veganuary website to find facts I used. I also created a page of vegan alternatives as in my research I found out that lots of people won't become vegan due to finding it hard to give up animal based foods. I also created a page showing people that there are more vegan food out there then they might have expected. The page shows food people might not realise were vegan food which I found was interesting when I was researching veganism.I had a green and turquoise colour scheme run through my booklet. I chose these colours as they are not gender specific, and I am aiming my booklet to both males and females. I also had a triangle theme run through most of my pages as it kept my booklet looking consistent and visually appealing.

My development of skills• This project helped e develop skill using InDesign. I now know how to use the

grids and margins to help me present my text. I can also place an image in InDesign which I struggled with at the beginning of the project, as if you resize an image on InDesign in crops the image you must resize the image in Photoshop unless you fit content to frame.

• I also developed my Photoshop skills. After having repeatedly rotoscoping images over and over again became quite long and tedious. To shorten the time I learned some of the shortcuts on Photoshop such as layer via cut- Shift+Ctrl+J and layer via copy Ctrl+J.

Improvements• I think I should have created a short article about how being vegan impacts the

environment as there is less about the environment in my booklet. Or I could of created an article based on how Veganuary were making a big impact for the animals, rather than some of the pages about vegan food as I felt the information was a bit repetitive. A lot of my pages include similar information. Then I could expand my audience knowledge better.

• I felt that my font wasn’t consistent enough, and too many fonts were used. I didn’t think as carefully about the font choice as I did about other parts of my booklet, such as the colour scheme; which I tried to keep flowing through all of my booklet.

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Time Management• I rotoscoping some of my images on the vegan food pages. Some of the food would take

far too long to rotoscpe so I did try to use the cut-out filter in Photoshop so that the images would have a similar style. Although I felt it looked better to have all the images done in the same style. I decided to rotoscope all the images as I had already done some and I wanted to keep my images looking consistent. I took time in rotoscoping each piece of pasta so that it fit in well with my other images. This took up a lot of time but I believe the end product was worth it.

• I also spent a lot of time trying to shorten my text as there was too much information and I struggled to fit the text and images on the page in the style I wanted. Especially for my fact file as I had lots of information about each celebrity and only a small amount of space to write it.

Reviewing work in progress• I didn’t plan to have a visual theme run through my booklet but I decided to present a

triangle theme throughout my pages to give it an edgy look. As I felt there was something missing from some of my pages. A white background for my multiple page article looked boring, empty, and unfinished. Therefore I tried lots of different shapes to have in the background, starting with circles, but it made the article look too fun, the topic covered in the article were serious so I concluded with triangles; triangles can give me more variability as there is different triangles I could use on each page. The existing page layouts on Pinterest inspired me to try creating wacky visual images then just placing text and images with a mundane structure.

• I kept adjusting position and size of text, image and shapes till I felt they fit well with the size of the pages. This took me a while as on a lot of my pages there was too much content. Especially on the fact file page I had to cut bits of information out and resize and change font and sizes of the images. Till I felt it fit well on the page.

• I kept asking peers around me and my tutor to make sure my pages looked appealing and worked well with each other. I believe it is better to ask other peoples opinions as the booklet is made for persuading others to become vegan. I can then get insight from another's perspective.

Final Product• I saved all my images as a PSD file so I can go back and edit them if I

need to and I also saved a copy of them as a JPEG image, therefore I can place them in a PowerPoint for people to view in a digital format and give me their feedback and constructive criticism to help me improve my booklet further. Overall I am very happy with how my booklet concluded.