OUGD403 (Introduction Brief) 'How to...'

This week we were split into our groups, and the title of the group brief given was 'How To...'
Taking the refined problems from the previous week, each group was given a separate problem which we were asked to resolve by visually communicating to our target audience, the first year students living in Leeds. Within our group, we were asked to provide a solution/solutions on how to 'Keep Fit and Healthy on a Budget.'

Within our group we split this issue in to three main categories, these consisted of:

• Keeping fit
• Budgeting
• Healthy eating

Within our group we decided to split into pairs for our initial research, so Aimee and I focused on keeping fit. The research for our project was very thorough, as we needed to make sure we included the key elements of each category we chose.

The target audience we are communicating to are the students of Leeds, specifically the fresher's, so we intended to find very helpful and well researched information however we agreed to keep our response informal as we do not want to set a patriotic tone whilst communicating with our audience.

A few significant points about keeping fit we wanted to highlight when informing the audience consisted of:

• Simple exercise plans
• The best gyms and how much
• Useful iPhone apps
• Calorie counters

The group then assessed each others research, and we came to the conclusion that we had a very large content of information. Therefore we discussed possible ways of communicating the information collected, so we decided that a small booklet would be the best possible solution. We thought that the pocket size handbook we were all given was a good example to use, as this inspired every one of us in the group. We found that it was a very successful product, which we are aiming for our finished product to be.

Below shows a double page spread of this booklet the 'Creative Notebook':

We found this information booklet very useful, as it is compact and visually pleasing.



When discussing the content of what will go in our handbook, we depicted the research and agreed on the most significant and essential information that should be included within the final product.

Once the key points had been finalised, we then started to develop ideas how the handbook would look. The group agreed that an informal, hand drawn stylized booklet would be visually pleasing to the target audience - taking influence from the 'Creative Notebook.'

We chose the font Brain Flower to use as our main headings and sub-headings, as this sticks with the hand drawn, notebook style, and a simple sans serif typeface such as Calibri for the body copy.

Below shows our initial design sheet for the page layouts, using this we were able to plan how we would divide all of our information: