COP Practical- Evaluation

I have really enjoyed this years COP, I think it has defiantly broadened my knowledge of new media, Internet, social media and publication. I did enjoy writing the essay, as it was something I am interested in and I think my practical relates back to my essay well.

For my practical at first I was unsure of what to do and went through various ideas with people before the crit. My first idea when writing my essay is to turn something completely digital into something printed, but I just didn’t know what. As there was a lot of topics in my essay there was a lot of outcomes that could be produced for my practical. My two main ideas before going to the crit was a social media campaign focusing on how much time we waste on social media. The campaign would be aimed at young people and look at how people can fake their life on social medias and create the ‘perfect life’. I looked at this because from my primary research from everyone that took my survey everyone owned a smartphone with over 60% of people having 3 or more social media apps on it. My other idea I took to the crit was an idea to have a publication of newspapers as I think one day news papers are going to fade away and there is going to be no need for them as people won’t buy news as they can get a much more up to date version through apps or the internet. I took both of these ideas to the crit and explained how lost I was and how I needed some help, after much discussion with my peers and tutors I got a lot more feedback and guidance. I looked through my notes that I made within the crit and decided to turn something completely digital into print and that would be Behance. I thought Behance would be the perfect example as there is currently nothing around that shows of each week/day’s featured project and I think it would work nicely as a printed publication relating back to my essay, proving how print and web can complement each other.

I started to research for my practical by looking at websites that have good printed publications to complement them such as It’s Nice That and Printed Pages and computer arts. I looked at different publications for inspiration, looking at Topshop newspaper style publications, The City Talking and various other zines. Looking at books such as ‘Making and breaking the grid’ really helped with my layout. Before I started my publication I sketched out a few layouts to help me figure out where text and image should go. I wanted my publication to be image heavy much like Behance itself.

Before starting my publication I needed to get all of my content together. I wanted my content to be a mixture of students and professionals work. I also planned to do a couple of interviews inside of the publication. I contacted people on Behance and asked if I could use their work within the publication and contacted people of my course to use theirs. Once I got all of my content together in separate files I started to get it all into the publication. I chose bright colours to make the publication stand out. The colours that were chosen were blue (for Behance) and two clashing colors to go with it pink and red. For the type I wanted something quite hand done so I decided to go with a hand drawn paintbrush style of font that could be used throughout the publication. For the body copy I decided to go with Edmondsans a font in two weights to be used as subtitles and body copy. Putting the publication together and sorting out the layout took a lot longer than I expected, I wanted each page to have at least a little bit of colour on the page in the background to make the publication have a consistent theme through out.

In terms of printing the publication I only wanted to print it on thin stock as the publication would be distributed as a free publication to university’s and creative practices to let them know what is featured within Behance at that moment. I did a couple of test prints to test if images were blurry, colour and whether the type was the right size. Test printing was also useful to make mistakes when binding and cutting down.

Overall I am really happy with my outcome for COP, I defiantly think I have learnt more about layout and layout skills, as this is an area I needed to improve on. The publication has printed a lot better than I thought and I think it represents Behance well. The target audience for this publication would be creatives with the purpose to have a publication to collect and appreciate printed work more. I think the my practical side of COP relates well to my essay showing how the internet, new media and print can work together to complement each other.