Evaluation

Context

For my context side of things, I created a visual mood board which allowed me to get a visual idea about what I wanted to create. I planned out my idea and project by filling out the statement of intent and project proposal. This gave me an initial understanding of what I was going for and allowed me to expand upon my idea and see what my goal was for the end. I presented my pitch and got feedback from my tutor which enabled me to understand what I needed to take into consideration the most during my project which was time management. This was because I had the ambitious goal of creating a poetry book with poems and photographs reflecting the words. I also needed to focus on time was because I wanted to print my project at the end which again takes time and meant I needed to finish my book two weeks prior to the deadline, just in case if something went wrong with printing. Looking back, I am glad I did this because I ended up printing my book twice. The reason I decided to print twice is because there was a few things I wanted to change and you can't tell what something will truly look like until it's printed. The first time I printed one copy of the book and the second time around I printed two so I had one for myself and one to hand in. I also created a digital version of the book just incase somebody could not access the hardback copy, this is presented on the FMP 2021 page of my website at the bottom. Another thing I did during my context side of my FMP was a rough layout of a two page spread which I wanted my inside pages to look like. I am again happy I did this as it gave me a foundation and allowed me to understand better what I liked and didn't like on the spread and what I would use for my future spreads. 

Research

For my research side of things I created an infographic from my primary research. This allowed me to present my data visually. The way I gathered most of my primary research was via instagram polls and questions which I then also presented in a visual manner using Adobe after effects. I also sent out a visual survey to my target audience asking about layout and covers. This gave me an insight into what draws teenagers into a book and what layout they would prefer to look at and read. For my secondary research I looked into 2 poetry book: 

-Violet bent over backwards
-Light filters in poems

I also analysed and looked into a poetry/story magazine. Looking into other peoples layouts, designs, poetry, book covers and ideas really helped me shape mine because it allowed me to understand what I like in other people's designs and how I could try incorporate that in mine and expand, also allowing me to see what I don't particularly like and noting it down.  

Another thing I researched was printing and printing companies. This allowed me to see who was cheaper, who was more expensive, who did express delivery, who didn't and looking at the reviews. Doing this I found my printing company called Dox Direct, from all my research I did they were the most suitable for me and the cheapest I could find. I am happy I chose them as my printing company because I didn't have any problems with them despite the 2nd time them being slower at delivery than the first. However, it did fall on bank holiday Monday which for future I should consider. 

Audio and QR codes was part of my research by the end of the research section too. This was because I wanted to create a audio book alongside a printed as I thought that would be more appealing to an audience as it gives people two options on how to approach the book. For this I needed to research how to create QR codes and changing the colours and design of the code. I also needed to research sites where I could upload my audio, I chose Soundcloud in the end. 

Researching all of these really helped me gain a better understanding on what I needed to do and how to approach things when I reached my production phase.

Experimentation

For my experimentation I pre-planned and laid out most of my pages for the inside pages of my book which really helped me in the long run. I tried different styles and layouts and ended up going through with most of them for my final design, analysing them and understanding my designs. I put a picture alongside a poem on most of my pages and created some illustrations. This allowed me to get a brief understanding on what I wanted the inside pages to be and how I wanted them to be laid out. I also understood more of my idea and concept behind my book doing this because more ideas came to me, for example understanding how I wanted the poems to be read. I wanted it to be free-flow reading and seem like free-flow writing to again show the personal, raw feel of the girl's diary and process, hence why there are no page numbers or a contents page. This is why only the end poem and on the boys perspective poems at the start they have full stops once the poems finish because they are showing that they are the ending of the chapter. I liked this idea because it's slightly different to other people's designs as most poetry books have page numbers and full stops however, in mine I really wanted to emphasise the free-flow to show it's a ongoing story, not several stories written via poetry. 

Production

For production I included:

- Problem solving
-Planning
-Production

This section allowed me to focus on all areas of my production and things which I struggled with i.e problem solving and how I overcame them. Planning allowed me to understand what I had left to do and things I needed to complete and focus on asap. I included things such as my book cover which was something I needed to focus on mainly as my inside pages were all mostly finished, I am happy with the book cover I created because I felt like it represented the title of the book well and the meaning. 'The Multi Colours Of Her Soul' represented by a sunset because sunsets are full of different colours and souls can be represented as being in the sky or clouds, especially when someone has passed.  

Overall, my production went to plan however something which I will need to focus on in the future is printing and page size as that was a problem I stumbled upon. I originally created the Adobe Indesign page document in the wrong page format - A4 so I had to change it to A5 once I had already finished and resize everything. I also created my audio version of my book during production, firstly decided what order I wanted all the spreads to be in then recorded the poems separately and used Adobe Premiere Pro to edit the audio clips in the order I wanted and made some louder or quieter depending on how they sounded, I wanted to make sure they were clear. Throughout this process of creating my audio and uploading it to Soundcloud and creating the QR code I stumbled upon a problem which my tutor pointed out to me. One of the poems cut out too early, this meant I needed to change the QR code and re edit and re record certain audio clips. This taught me to check and check again everything when creating something because it's very easy to miss out small mistakes. In the end I am happy that happened as I preferred the QR code design I picked for my final design as it looked better on the back cover of the book. I created my QR codes on Adobe Indesign and also tried a QR generator I found on google. All of these designs are presented in my production section of my website. 

Peer Feedback

For another part of my evaluation I decided to get some feedback from my target audience - teenagers. I showed some of my close friends my book and they all said they think it's really good. One really liked the front cover and said it looks very colourful and matches the theme of the book well. Another one of my best friends said that they are so proud of me and that it looks amazing. Overall my response from my friends and family has been extremely positive. They all enjoyed the fact they could actually hold the book and it wasn't all digital as it gave them a better feel to the poems and said it was more touching seeing it and reading it physically rather than through a screen. Hopefully in the future if I decide to do so I can try and self publish the book. 

In conclusion, I am very proud of myself and happy with how my project turned out.