Final Crit & Colour choice for calendar

Final Crit & Color choice for calendar

Printed out a few different color selections to help decide what color combination I will use for the front cover and the calendar pages. I will present all these forward in the final crit to help me decide on what color combination to chose, Im wanting to achieve a high impact in terms of the overall appearance as it needs to stand out within the studio space but I still need to maintain readability & legibility of the type and lettering. 

Love the vibrance of this orange, still maintains readability and legibility but the tonal contrast between this shade of orange and the black type is quite minimal so readability isn't perfect. Do like the combination of the bright vibrant tone and the grey newsprint paper stock. 

Not as vibrant in terms of impact but a great amount of readability through a strong contrast of tone between type and image, doesn't contrast as much with the paper stock  for the calendar sheets but they work well along side each other wich is just as important.

Like the color but the blue isn't that high impact an the similar tonal levels create minimal contrast causing difficult legibility of the glyphs and numbering on the background image. 

The darker tone here maintains a constant tonal range between the week sheers and the front cover, this works together but again the legibility and readability is an issue due to minimal contrasting colors of type and background. 

Very vibrant, love how much impact this has and how it contrasts with the grey paper stock for the week sheets. They work great together, the vibrance is a little too much tho, the contrast of type and the background works creating good readability but once you look at the design for a period of time it starts to hurt your eyes a little. 

This green isn't very high impact due to its pastel shade but I like the dulled down chromatic value of the grey stock and green cover. Out of all the selections they work alongside each other the best not relying on contrast. There more complimentary. 

Trying out different color stock for the calendar pages. The crispness and cleanness of the white doesn't work with this pastel tone, a strong contrast but not in an effective way. 

Very very strong contrast here with the vibrant red tone and the bright white week sheets, strong contrast of hue and tone combined. 

The white stock creates a nice contrast but still doesn't help the readability and legibility of the glyphs on the background. 

The white stock creates a nice contrast but still doesn't help the readability and legibility of the glyphs on the background. 

Like the red a very strong contrast of tone and hue, works well with this paper stock the same as the grey stock.

Like the red a very strong contrast of tone and hue, works well with this paper stock the same as the grey stock.

Crit Feedback and color choice

After putting forward the presentation of how the pages will look with the selection of possible front covers I received alot of positive and helpful feedback to help me take forward the calendar to completion. 

I wasn't fully ready for the crit in terms of a finished outcome, all the basics were there in terms of content and design elements I just needed to chose a paper stock and color for the front cover and the calendar pages and how it would be bound together. 

I presented forward the problem of time management I wanted to solve by creating a calendar and to do list system. I explained how the visuals and lettering were inspired by the structure of the room, the letterforms especially inspired by the narrow window frames, Simon liked this small little detail. 

The group was impressed with the idea and visuals I presented forward and all agreed how helpful it would have been for us to have something like this when we first started and a comment Rosalyn made backed my idea of it benefiting the group as whole rather than just individual people. She said it would bring the group together a little more which during a nerve racking few first weeks is never a bad thing. 

In terms of feedback helping me make choices I needed to decide on a binding method, I wanted it to fit in with the aesthetics of the room, something quite industrial or simple and robust. A simple ring bind was suggested for the robust bind. 

Looking at Daria book I liked the elastic band she used so this sort of bind might be good but its more aesthetically pleasing rather than fitting in with the industrial feel, an idea I thought of was to use some of the linen cloth we use when doing a perfect bind in the binding workshop down at vernon street. I could create staple bind and cover the crude staple with this linen cloth, or create an industrial looking effect with linen cloth with some screws or bolts holding the pages together. 

Color choice everyone said orange and yellow front covers worked best with the grey stock. 

Whats next

I will try the ring binding idea and the bolt idea, go forward with the yellow front cover idea and add the full calendar within the calendar pages maybe at the back of the front cover or on a front page. This would allow me to scrap the sticker idea I had to highlight important dates with a color coding system making things simpler and cheaper, now I can just show all important dates on this year overview and maybe add the brief breakdown that I was going to create for individuals and instead just include it in the calendar system as all thee group will be accessing it anyway. 

Other changes I want to make are based on my own analysis and peer feedback, Elliot mentioned having lines would allow guidance for people to write on, I wanted to leave the space clean and negative but it would be hard to write neat without lines.

Also I noticed the "To-do" could do with been smaller, doesn't need to stand out so much within the negative space its only a subtle subhead, the height of the black box containing the week days could be more subtle and thinner too, the height of the gap between "SEP" "SMTWTFS" and the date numbers needs to be consistent too. these elements would all create a cleaner aesthetic, better structure and a more balanced feel of used space.