This brochure asks people to save the rainforest. I had a hard time with this assignment because I felt a overwhelmed with all the choices I had. Our professor provided us with photos, logos, and text from the website that we could use, and I had to decide what was important based on the assignment description.
". . . design a brochure for 'Protect Amazon Rainforest,' a company seeking to protect rainforest from development by buying land and paying land owners not to develop the land. Supporters buy "certificates" to protect a parcel of land for a specified time. The brochure should inform readers about this issue and move them to action. It need not push the sale of certificates directly, as long as it sends readers to the PAR web site, to be hosted at protectamazonrainforest.org."
The first decision I made was to decide what kind of brochure to create. We learned how to design a teeny tiny brochure, a peekaboo brochure, a wrap-around brochure, a step-up brochure, and a story-style brochure. I decided on a story-style brochure because I wanted to feature photos of the rainforest in something different from the typical tri-fold brochure and I wanted to lead the reader step-by-step.
I took a chance with the cover. The typical route is to put a picture of a beautiful, thriving rainforest on the cover to attract the reader. But that's boring: we're all used to seeing these pictures on travel brochures and the like. I wanted to shock the audience and tell them why the rainforest is important, putting them in a panic about saving it. Then I tell them how to save it. See what I did there?
For the colors for the rest of the brochure, I decided to go with a "green" theme. We are talking about the rainforest after all.
The main problem was the lack of contrast. Everything just melded together. You couldn't really tell where to look because everything was the same. Plus, the logo was folded and hard to see when you open the brochure. I liked the shocking cover but realized it didn't tell readers anything about what they're going to read.
Of course, I don't have to mention that the font is awful.
What my professor told me I needed was contrast. I also wanted to include more pictures of the healthy rainforest. (I want to spur people to action, not make them so depressed that they go into shock and wallow in helplessness.)
I put the logo on the front and used greens from the pictures and different colored fonts to add life. I also realized that a serif font would be better for the information as it contrasts with the sans serif fonts on the cover, so I changed it from Arial to Impressum.
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Though this wasn't my favorite project, it was the project that finally taught me the power and uber importance of layers. While revising, I finally figured out how to select the right layers to edit the way I wanted to. Before, I had just haphazardly clicked everywhere in hopes that I was doing the right thing. Thanks to this project and advice from my professor, I was able to understand GIMP more.
Hopefully, this is the kind of brochure that people desperately try to show their neighbors.