- Maker: Aidan Rivas
- Genre: Multi-Page Document
- Level: Graduate
- Program: Composition, Rhetoric, and Digital Media
- Course: WRIT 5800: Editing, Layout, and Design
- Instructor: Dr. Eric Mason
- Semester Created: Winter 2020
Description:
A 10-page document filled with information and tips on the new Nintendo Switch release Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I’ve been enjoying the game recently, and was violently surprised by the amount of information you could learn to optimize how to play such a cutesy game, so I used this project to make a small equally cute booklet explaining some of it.
Reflection:
This is the first project that I did not plan ahead of time on paper. I did the entire project digitally, including the planning phase. It is strange and honestly it felt the same as going in blind.
Going through the design process for a project where I came up with the idea, and have no client to serve is a much more relaxing process. There is no stage in it where I receive feedback that I disagree with and would need to change anything, and because of that it feels less like work and more like I’m making something for fun.
However, something that will forever scare me when doing layout design is the phase before completion where the text is in, but it hasn’t been formatted yet. When everything is black text on white and the document looks like it will never be done. For example, this page from when I was halfway done:
It’s also my favorite part to look at it afterwards. It feels like a beauteous makeover from a 2001 rom-com. Utilizing design principles like hierarchy and replacing default fonts with the fun ones that are consistent in the document is an absolute pleasure. It’s like listening to music resolve. That said, working on this was much more productive for me when I broke it up into different tasks for the day. Some days I worked only on writing the content, and others, only on the design. In the end, I’m happy with how it came out, even if I felt like I could have included more information.
