Context of Practice: Studio Task 2

Criticism of the LCA 2012/13 Prospectus

At first I quite liked the cover of the prospectus because of the unconventional statement instead of simply having 'Leeds College of Art Prospectus' on the front - it is more intriguing and a modern slogan. However the actual design of the cover has issues in the paperstock & printing quality, as well as the alignment of the statement and letter kerning, causing the 'of' to look out of balance with the text. 

I don't think the inside of the prospectus fits with the outside design - I found it overly corporate & formal, with large chunks of text and sporadically placed, often generic & unrelated images. To me it doesn't effectively communicate 'Art College' and doesn't target a young creative audience. Although the design is modern and clean it ends up becoming clinical and uninspiring. I found the organisation of contents is hard to navigate, and the layout of individual pages lacked structure and consistency.

Five Successful//Unsuccessful Features

• Images used - they were sporadically placed, badly cropped and often irrelevant to the text. I think there could have been more obvious examples of students' work.
• Target audience - I don't think the prospectus effectively targets the right audience of young creatives. If I was looking at it I would not get the feel for LCA as an institution or the atmosphere of the college as I don't think this is communicated.
• Quality of printing - the paper inside is inconsistent, a mix between gloss and matt. The blue on the cover comes through the red type even though it has a satin finish.
• Choice of typeface - at first I thought that the typeface was relevant as it was different to a standard Helvetica, whilst remaining sans serif, clean & modern. However it does not work well in the different sizes and blocks of text. There were too many variations within it, to do with size & line weight which I think made it unclear which information was important and did not break up the text enough.
• Cover design (but not execution) - I like the idea behind the cover because it's different, modern & punchy. However I don't think it has been produced well and this takes away from its intended impact.