For this last assignment, as an extention of the Singapore Design Week poster we did previously, we are to design a brochure to promote the event. To start off, these are the five designers I have chosen to include in my brochure:

1. Yah-Leng Yu

Foreign Policy Design Group

createYU is the creative persona of Yah-Leng Yu.
Her day job is the Ambassador of Design at Foreign Policy Design Group. During her off-work hours, she gets quite involved in public art, art exhibitions and non-digital photography.

Yah-Leng was formally trained at the Art Institute of Boston before moving to New York City where her creative career blossomed. Her years in the digital design industry mostly serving high end luxury fashion and life-style clients, have provided her the in-depth and rich experience in the design and development of interactive media for sizeable upscale brands. Her specialty includes creative & digital strategy consultancy, creative & art direction, design & typography.

“We wanted to build a design practice that different from the bigger international agencies that were the main players in Singapore during that time. We started with two and today we are about 12. The name Foreign Policy is really a reminder to ourselves that we should keep a more global perspective and diversity when we approach design.”

http://www.vanschneider.com/design-in-singapore-featuring-foreign-policy

 

2. Melvin Ong

Desinere

3. Gabriel Tan

Outofstock

Gabriel Tan graduated from the National University of Singapore with a Bachelor of Industrial Design in 2007. Prior to forming Outofstock, he won the Electrolux Design Lab Award, Bombay Saphire Designer Glass Asia Award, and an IDEA Bronze Award. Between 2010 to 2014,  Gabriel has lectured at Lasalle College of the Arts, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, and the University of Oregon. In 2014, he was invited to serve as a jury member of the Product Design Lions Award at Cannes Lions in France.

Gabriel Tan is a co-founders of design quartet, Outofstock, which was formed in 2006 with Gustavo Maggio and Sebastián Alberdi after meeting at Electrolux Design Lab a year earlier. The studio has received multiple awards, including the President’s Design Award 2010 (Design of The Year for the ‘Black Forest’ table) and Rising Talent of 2015 in Maison et Objet Asia.

4. Jeanne Gang

Gang Studio

Architect and MacArthur Fellow Jeanne Gang, FAIA, Int. FRIBA, is the founding principal of Studio Gang. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Chevalier de l’Ordre national de la Légion d’honneur, Jeanne is internationally renowned for a design process that foregrounds the relationships between individuals, communities, and environments. Her diverse body of work spans scales and typologies, expanding beyond architecture’s conventional boundaries to pursuits ranging from the development of stronger materials to fostering stronger communities. Her approach has resulted in some of today’s most compelling architecture, including Aqua Tower, the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, and Writers Theatre. She is currently designing major projects throughout the Americas and Europe, including the Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; a unified campus for the California College of the Arts in San Francisco; and the new United States Embassy in Brasilia, Brazil.

5. Moshe Safdie

Safdie Architects

Moshe Safdie is an architect, urban planner, educator, theorist, and author. Over a celebrated 50-year career, Safdie has explored the essential principles of socially responsible design with a distinct visual language. A citizen of Israel, Canada and the United States, Moshe Safdie graduated from McGill University. After apprenticing with Louis I. Kahn in Philadelphia, Safdie returned to Montréal to oversee the master plan for the 1967 World Exhibition. In 1964 he established his own firm to realize Habitat ’67, an adaptation of his undergraduate thesis and a turning point in modern architecture.

Author of four books and a frequent essayist and lecturer, Safdie’s global practice includes projects in North and South America, the Middle East, the developing world and throughout Asia and Australia. Projects span a wide range of typologies, including airports, museums, performing arts, libraries, housing, mixed use and entire cities. His honors include the Companion of the Order of Canada, the Gold Medal from both the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and the American Institute of Architects, la Medaille du Merité from the Order of Architects of Québec, Canada, and Israel’s Rechter Prize. The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum awarded Mr. Safdie the National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2016.

Visual Research and Design Exploration:

Moving on to the brochure itself, here are three types of brochures that caught my eye:

This brochure has a simple accordion fold, but with a few die-cuts across each crease, it makes it look more three-dimensional than it already was. The way the lines crosses nearly the full length of the brochure serves as a good way to lead the eye from one page to the next. In comparison to my poster design, the geometric forms be treated with such die-cuts to create depth on a flat piece of paper.

When folded, this brochure allows for the reader to tug at two corners of it to fully open it, twisting the paper open as it unfolds. Because of this action, the content hidden inside has the potential to seemingly burst out, the center diamond quickly capturing the reader’s attention, especially so if the colours have high contrast. With this fold, I was planning to have the organic forms I used in my poster as the outer-most image, and when the brochure is opened, it may seem as though the coloured blobs are dispersing/exploding, revealing the content in the middle of the page.

This last fold is my favourite of the three. It has an interesting triangular-accordion-ish fold, and when it is left open, it retains a geometric form that is still flexible and manipulable. When folded, it can also function like a book; the folded pages have the freedom to be flipped like book pages. It adds dimension to a flat piece of paper and provides interesting, triangular panels to work with. It would work well with the elements I used in my previous design, as they are both geometric and can create a bigger emphasis together.

Mock-up Folds:

With reference to the brochures above, I was able to make three mock-up folds.

The effect was nice, and folds back quite nicely. But the die-cut areas were much more fragile and had the tendency of bending easily.

 

The way this fold enlarges as you open it is really interesting. However, it was a little difficult to close. Not to mention, the panels on the front and back are hard to match up in terms of alignment (the back text will not be parallel to the front ones when it opens up if on the diamond back).

 

Definitely picking this one. It folds back quite easily compared to the previous one, but still retains the interesting square/triangular panels.

 

Design Refinement:

Front page:

Back page:

Comments: The designer images can be shifted around more to create rhythm. There are quite a few panels that are blank. Suggestion: remove a column or two and rearrange the content. The title seems to have to compete for attention with the other graphic elements within the same panel. Maybe increase the size a little. The texts need wider margins along the edges and maybe reduce the text a little. Use colours to create rhythm / give emphasis to the text. Maybe give images accents among the edges to make each designer stand out from the page. Overall, resolve the blank spaces by reducing the amount of panels.