Design Critiques: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Good Design Critiques

1) Business Card

One reason this business card is effective is the color scheme that is used. The sleek black matches up well with the lime green on the bottom. The simplicity of the card is also something that helps to make the card effective. There isn't any unnecessary information or graphics to detour you from the main main elements of the card, the person's contact information and the company they work for. The card's information is also balanced very well and doesn't appear to have too much information on it, which helps all information to be legible and easy to navigate through.

2) Brochure

One reason this brochure is well designed is because of how it is able to display all of that information and still remain balanced and symmetric. All the information and graphics are spaced very well and they do a strong job of using all of the space on the page and not wasting any space. The images of cars are also very important in showing potential consumers what exactly they specialize in, just in case the front page and name weren't effective. The color scheme used is also effective as it remains consistent throughout and allows all written information to be clear and readable. 

3) Flyer

One of the strongest elements of this flyer are the images used. The images are extremely effective in adding a strong visual element to go along with the written text part of the flyer. Also, like the brochure, I think this creator of this flyer was successful in trying to get a bunch of information on one flyer in a way that allows it to appear balanced and symmetric. They did a great job of being concise with their wording so that everything was short and easy to read but also still very informative. Lastly, the designer of this flyer did a great job of using larger fonts and different color fonts to help emphasize certain words and messages. All of the essential information was clear, legible, and also very easy to navigate through. 

Bad Design Critiques

1) Business Card

This business card does not effectively utilize all of the space given. The front of the card does have a neat looking font and is readable but it takes up entirely too much space and doesn't give enough information. All you get is the name and occupation. That is just not good use of the available space. Another issue is that the card does not give off any useful information and doesn't help to establish the individuals credibility. It gives a website to visit or email to contact but does nothing to entice someone to want to visit the site or contact the person.

2) Brochure

One main glaring problem with this brochure is that fact that text is essentially illegible.  The designer used red font on top of a reddish-orange image that covers the entire background, which makes it incredibly tough to read the information. The main contact information also can't be read, due to the fact that they used a blue colored font on top of the water and sand. Also, the written information appears to be all clumped together, which makes it tough to distinguish when one sentence end and another starts.

3) Flyer

This flyer here should be used to show student's exactly what not to do when designing a flyer. This flyer used far to many font types, colors, and images that it makes it difficult to decipher what exactly is happening at this event. There is absolutely no balance or symmetry used, and everything is just clumped together and thrown in there with no method or reason behind it. It seems as though this designer was adding information just for the sake of adding information. The whole bottom half of the flyer is just a mess which makes it tough to even read any of the information. There is far too much going on in the background image which makes some of the font and information illegible.