OUGD401: Context of Practice: Task 2

The Leeds College of Art Prospectus 2014/15- Critical review

Ok, so lets start with a simple beginning, clever concept with just a few hiccoughs in the execution. the inspiration for this publication clearly came from the college's logo- it's a tiled mosaic, the hexagonal shapes used throughout the prospectus represent these tiles. 

The font developed and produced was also inspired by our logo, they've taken the letterforms and used them to create an entire font purely for use in the prospectus. Both these design features are clearly meant to represent the college's great history and the time it's been around- historic and time withstanding institutions always comes with a side serving of formality and respect and this isn't a bad concept to play on. 

However my main issue comes with the collision of traditional and modernist design. The strong concept is one of history and yet the minimal modern shapes based on tiles are rather contradictory to this. Even ignoring the simplistic tiles if we take a look inside we can see a very clean and clear production of layout. Simple, minimal and completely at contrast with the font produced. 

It's difficult to attempt to convey the college's historic nature as well as it's modern forward thinking personality and with such a formal and stiff font contrasting with simple, flowing shapes and bright bold, fun mid spread it's all just a little confused. None of this styles are bad on their own but it's the combination of them that leaves me feeling a little confused. I do like the middle pink page on its own, but that luminous pink contrasts so heavily with the pastel colours used throughout that it just feels slightly out of place. And I do like the font, however when surrounded by slightly curved funky and fun shapes it just feels as though a san serif type would've been more appropriate.

There is one feature I do love about this publication though- running with the tile theme it seems that when you place together several copies of the prospectus you begin to produce a tile based pattern- this looks very lovely and ties back to the college's logo that inspired the whole design. It also gives a wonderful sense of uniqueness to each publication, I suppose like it's students and those applying for the university- we're all different but standing together and stepping back we create a mosaic of creativity. That may sound a little pretentious but I think it's wonderful.