7152QCA - Week 8 Activity 

The week 8 activity requires us to create a presentation board for a project that Paul Bardini and David Harris are working on. It is a real art/design project and hence an example of creative visualisation being used for a real life/industry purpose (as opposed to just as a uni exercise). 

The requirements for this task include:

- Use Indesign

- The presentation board must be A2 landscape

- Must have 3mm bleed & 20mm margins

- Ensure all images are 300ppi

- Use a grid (in Indesign) for the layout

- Incorporate a hero image

- Use the text and images supplied with the brief

- Create 'pull out text' using a sample of the provided text

I begin by opening the image files provided in Photoshop to see what the PPI is set as for each image. I realise most (if not all, I can't remember) of the images are not set at 300ppi. After last week's activity, whereupon I felt using only the images that were supplied at 300ppi was a bit restricting and did not create an outcome that was as eye-catching as it could be, I decide to manipulate some of the images in Photoshop to increase their ppi to 300 so they can be suitable for use for this activity. 

Once I have my images, I create a new document in Indesign with the necessary settings as per the brief. I experiment with different layouts, and again, after last week's class/activity, I try to think a bit differently so I experiment using an image as the background (instead of just laying out the images and text on a white background). One of the images supplied with the brief is a photo of a blue sky with scattered clouds, which I feel ties in with the project well (as opposed to some of the other images supplied), so I use that as the background for the presentation board. I also experiment with a night sky photo (courtesy of Unsplash) on a duplicate page in Indesign (so I can explore different concepts/ideas and compare what works and what doesn't between the two pages).

I adjust the letter spacing in the heading to create an interesting yet subtle effect (and as a way to incorporate some of what was covered in this week's Indesign learning videos/resources). I think both the blue sky and night sky backgrounds work quite well, but I realise after producing the above that I haven't created any 'pull out text' as specified in the brief, so I go back to the drawing board.

I'm still pretty happy with my layout so I don't want to change that too much, so I tweak the existing two layouts I have in order to incorporate the 'pull out text'. I take one of the stand-alone sentences of the body of text and make it bigger and italic (inspired by what I have seen in magazines in regards to pull out text and quotes). I arrange the pull out text so it sits on top of the existing images, but in a way that does not hide the text or make it hard to read.

I'm happy with my final outcomes (I decide to keep both day and night options so the client can pick which one they prefer, I find that clients, and people in general like to have options) as I feel they fit the brief and effectively present Paul and David's project.