Assignment 3 Final: Get well card

The final designs for assignment 3 are as below:

front_oss
Front of card
back_os
Back of card
img20161107122131
Front detail of card with die-cut
img20161107122156
Front detail (2)
img20161107122143
Back detail with die cut
img20161107122138
Interior of card

There were certain challenges that I faced along the way which I feel helped me grow as a designer. Some of the challenges and solutions are as below:

  1. Designing the folds before imagery. Also thinking that folds had to be extremely elaborate for it to look nice which isn’t the case. A simple one fold can still look good. The thing that has to match and be considered is the combination of card fold and design. How does the design relate to the fold? How does the viewer interact with the card? How do they approach the card and what visual cues can we give them for a better experience on their side? These user-oriented questions would be better instead of self-oriented questions.
  2. Clarity of design. We need to ensure that the potential viewers understand what they are looking at before we can call the design a success. One good way of gauging is to show a mock up to people of the same age group as your potential client. They will be able to give indicators if the design is working.
  3. Pushing your design is needed. When you have an idea and it’s working out fine, what we can do next is how can we further push the design?
  4. Printing! This was a major problem because the alignment between both sides of the card had to be precise, which it wasn’t. I had to go back to the printer’s a second time after editing the design at home and check the alignment on the spot again. Upon seeing that there was still a small margin of error, I came up with a blue gradient on the outside of the design so that it would not look like it was a mistake. Also when printing, considering the card weight is important too.

I did learn quite a lot from the assignment and hoped that I would continue adding on to the knowledge as I continue on with my studies!