Reflection on the final refinement

After going to the first crit, I thought my cover could be improved, as people thought that my cover was quite biased (only showing the negative side of Brexit). As a result, my first solution to that was to change the content on the back, which was a quote by one of the authors. To make it less biased, I put multiple quotes by different authors from the book, so that it is a fair mixture of opinions. Also, one of my peers from the second crit which I went to suggested changing the flags as they were quite confusing. I listened to his opinion and edited the flags on the bags of the people so that it would make better sense, as my flags did not have any colour which led to the confusion.

For the inner pages, I looked at the overall structure and decided to change the length of the lines so that it wasn't so random. The length of the line underneath the author is now adjusted according to the length of the letters of the author. I also made sure each 'chapter' has the same system (no indent for the start of the chapter, but an indent for each new paragraph). The text size has also been changed to  so that it's not too small. (Cath thought my initial text size was for fairies haha!)

Final Crit Feedback and Evaluation

Most of the feedback for my cover are positive, mainly focusing on the use of black and white illustration. Personally, I think my cover did communicate the message, but I was worried that it might be displaying my opinion on Brexit. This layout of the title and the author could be adjusted in terms of line length and the text on the back of the cover could be less 'kerned'. Also, my peers suggested that I should follow the specifications accordingly, as I placed the Penguin in the corner with the wrong measurements.

I think I have gained a lot from this Typography project - although the text was difficult for me to understand due to my nationality and lack of knowledge of the British political systems, I feel that I have understood the importance of combining cultural insights in design as that acts as a cue for the viewers to understand. Following the 'rules of typography' also meant that I have become more aware of consistency, the grids and the arrangement of the text and image, which constitutes a great design outcome. Despite having a hard topic, I liked the challenge and the opportunity to design the layout of the main text.

If I could improve my design for the text content, I would make sure that I have the correct line space between the headings and the subheadings, in order to achieve consistency. The line which I use to divide the title and the main body text worked, but Cath suggested me to use the length of either the heading or the author so that it wouldn't be so 'random'. I would also be cautious of the alignment of the heading for the start of the chapter, as that would make the text more comfortable to read to the reader. 

Overall, I'm happy with what I have achieved so far as Typography has always been a subject that I have feared of.