Making and Experimenting With Mock-Ups

After coming up with four complete digital mock-ups, I am going to print them out and have them outsourced and ready for our class interim presentation tomorrow morning. Below, I have just given a brief description on the differences in my approach to each of the brochures. I was aiming to have four different stylistic approaches for these mock-ups, that way I can use these as initial concepts and then narrow down onto the one or two that I prefer, and then continue to work on them in the coming weeks. Each of the mock-up brochures don't have their actual 100 words of writing in them just yet, as I am still working on this and editing it, therefore I have just used 100 words from the Lorem Epsum generator online to give me a rough idea how it will look with text. I have used the spread from each brochure that is promoting the 'Red Rocks Reserve' scenic walk, out in Owhiro Bay, so I can compare the approaches more directly.

In this initial Mock-up, I focused on using one photo as the background, with the text over top. I was aiming to just get a basic template set out. Therefore, throughout the brochure, I have just used one of the best photos I took from each location (that seemed fitting for my intended composition), and then added text onto it. I wanted to have bold headings as well, and I was looking to play around with varying font sizes and thicknesses, such as the difference between the bold "rocks" and the light "red". I then placed the text below, although In each spread I tried to find either horizontal or vertical relationships between the heading and the text so that I could align them and get a more effective composition in place.

Below, was my second mock-up. For this one, I was looking at creating quite a consistent layout, and using shapes and text to promote each destination. I was looking to just use black and white for now (except for the colour photos) so that I could more focus on getting the composition and typography better. It's often found that if you get it looking good in black and white first, that you can focus on the compositional aspects first, and then the added colour will come as a bonus once the layout has been perfected. Throughout this brochure, I was just looking at the placement of the icons, heading and text, and keeping it relatively consistent throughout. The photos have been placed inside of two merged circles, with the circles giving the page more of a dynamic look, which is quite a neat contrast against the organised, symmetrical approach with the typographical layout.

As another experiment, in the mock-up screenshot below, I was curious to see how the brochure would look if I focused on using the heading as the most distinctive feature on the page, and using that as the focal point for the image. I also stuck to the black and white colour scheme, again to promarily focus on the composition aspects of my design. For each page, I created a sort of texture in the background, for example, in the image below I have created a rocky texture as a simple yet effective way of communicating part of the atmospheric and emotive qualities that Red Rocks Reserve provides. The text has again been aligned in terms of finding horizontal and vertical alignments and relationships. The icons have been used in the top right for each page, maintaining consistency of positioning to avoid confusing the viewer.

For my fourth mock-up, I tried out a new approach by using more of a collage style in the photos. I have again used reasonably bold headings, and have focused on aligning the respective text based on horizontal and vertical relationships. In the image below, The collage consists of four different images, all coming together to help communicate the emotive qualities, in a different way to the other mock-ups created. This uses actual photos, although they have been manipulated and scaled in order to convey different meanings. Again, icons have been used to symbolise some of the features, such as the fact that there are bike tracks, dogs allowed, and also public toilets at the beginning of the walk.

I'm quite happy with the variation between each of my approaches, and I feel that it will help in the long run by starting with a large range of concepts and ideas, and then slowly narrowing in on my preferred and most effective brochures. By trying a large range of ideas, it allows me to see what does and doesn't work, and then use this knowledge further down the design process, when it comes to creating my final brochure design.