Brochure - Critique Welcome

[Mr. D]

Hi!

Here is my latest design. It has already been printed, so I can't make any changes, but any recomendations or critiques are welcome for future use!

http://www.mountjoystudios.net/images/Content%20Images/litcobroch1%20-%20sm.png
http://www.mountjoystudios.net/images/Content%20Images/litcobroch2%20-%20sm.png

You can see higher-rez images and a description of the project here (http://www.mountjoystudios.net/litcobrochure.html).

Thanks,

~D-Man

[budafist]

I love the overall feeling of this design. Very rustic and earthy.

The only thing I would have changed is the script font doesn't quite go with the epic serif font you have. I would have chosen a font that had that old world feeling. Something that evokes treasures and quality a little more.

[Kevined]

I love the texturing on this brochure. The old world feel comes off quite well in my opinion. The use of faded out info like fax/tele are readable and not distractable.

Critiques I have are technicle things. The left panel on the first image says "Reaching Beyond" twice. It's the only faded panel that repeats so it is a bit awkward. The inside pamplet just has a few spacing and river issues. Some of the gaps between words are a bit too large. Unless they are set on the copy being used, I would either add or change a few of the words so the spacing becomes less noticable.
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/852/2fishbluefishmm3.th.jpg (http://img187.imageshack.us/my.php?image=2fishbluefishmm3.jpg)

[Mr. D]

Thanks - I'm glad you like it!

I was pretty happy with how the contact info came out. When I sat down to incorporate the contact info, I thought "How in the world am I going to make this look right and go with the rest of the brochure?!" I tried justifying titles ("Fax," "Phone," etc.) left, info right, other way around, both left, both right, both centered, but it just didn't work. Then I thought of doing it randomly, which kind of worked, but I just couldn't get the titles to look right. Then I thought of putting them behind like I did with paragraph titles elsewhere and it really popped! My only concern is that, on the printed version, the titles will be to visible and distract, or not visible enough and people won't know which is the fax and which is the phone number. :) I'll be looking at a proof first, thought, so I'll know if I need to fix it BEFORE I sign off on the final run.

There is one thing that was really annoying me, though. indenting and justification info applied to a linked text box in Illy is applied to all text boxes. I needed to apply it to just the first one in each group on this brochure, and I couldn't figure out how to make it work. I ended up just using spaces! Any suggestions (other than "Get InDesign")?

[budafist]

How did you set this multi page document up in Illy if you don't mind me asking? Layers? A new document per page or spread?

[PrintDriver]

Looks like a tri-fold to me. In Illy usually that's two separate files. Front and back.
I really like the background and the layout. I don't like the floating highly photographic images that break the borders for no real artistic reason other than to do it.

[Mr. D]

Budafist: had as two separate files, a front and a back. On the few occations when I do need a multi-page document, I use one of two techniques. For small docs (just a few pages), I create each page in it's own file, and place them into one master file that is wide enough to accomodate all of the pages side-by-side. Then I change tiling to "tile full pages" and turn "show page tiling" on. If it has a lot of pages, I still make a separate file for each page, but I Export as Tiffs and assemble in MS Publisher. I HATE Publisher, BTW. Just for assemling everything and printing it out it's bearable, but for any kind of layout design it's terrible. Thankfully, the only many-paged doc I had to create was back when I was working for a different company as in-house graphic design, and we were printing everything on our own printer. If a client needed the same thing now, I'd probably just bite the bullet and buy InDesign.

PrintDriver: Good point. I was trying to keep things from looking to regular and stale, but I may have gone overboard by breaking borders like you said. However, client liked it that way. :) Yes, it is tri-fold.

[Tea]

Does have a nice overall look to it. The read marks are to indicate the spacing issues...is that correct?

[Kevined]

Yes, the red lines indicate the spacing issues I saw. Unfortunately there are quite a handful of lengthy descriptive words, so it's going to be hard to fix.

[mojoprime]

i think that's very sharp.

the background is really well put together. definitely get that old-world feel.