Watershed Report Card

[Element_13]

Hi everyone,

I am looking for a critique on the following piece. Thanks for any help.

The brief for the project is as follows:

2007 Niagara Watershed Report Card

11" x 17" flat-folded to 8.5" x 11", 2 Panel Brochure printed in 4 colour process
Client is a local Conservation Authority.
They requested that I do not use browns or oranges, place the logos across the front with the websites below, make 2007 not very obvious in the title on the cover, no illustrations and they wanted the cover to have a "WOW effect" and to use photos of the local watersheds.

Cover (http://element13.ca/images/others/NPCA_2007_report_card_cover.jpg)
Inner Spread (http://element13.ca/images/others/NPCA_2007_report_card_inner_spread.jpg)
Back Page (http://element13.ca/images/others/NPCA_2007_report_card_back_page.jpg)

[Craig B]

COVER

• get rid of all double spaces before sentences.
• first in "First" report card shouldn't be capitalized in upper paragraph.
• your date, time, location of event gets a little lost since it's the same font, size and color as the upper paragraph
• all in all, cover looks nice. Nice colors, nice overall look.
• This is just me, but ":00" is unnecessary when showing times.
• your "w" and "a" in watershed for the main heading could probably be kerned tighter to match the other letter spacing.

INNER SPREAD

• the first paragraph mentions theme areas outlined above ... where are they? They're not above.
• towards the upper right side I'd fix the orphan, "erosion". it appears to be easily fixed.
• The left/right arrow for no change is a little odd, why would it go backwards? If anything you could probably get away with a simple right arrow showing that it's simply progressing as is with no fluctuation.
• The URL for boil water advisories isn't following the other URLs styles.
• Region of niagara's website doesn't have the "http", but all the others do. I'd make them consistent (personally I'd drop all the "http"s.)
• Indicator species line should read, "In 2007, the indicator abundance score was 3.7, a score of poor. In comparison, an excellent score would be between 9 and 12." Right now it's missing a lot of needed punctuation.
• The groundwater quality sentence should end in a period.
• flooding advisories should have a comma between " ... trend was given" and "as the number of ..."
• beach postings sentence: St. Catherine's is misspelled. "loss 20.6%" should read "20.6% loss"
• use of protected natural areas: lose the semicolon
• overall, once again, nice and clean design. I generally like the icons except for the previously mentioned left/right arrow.

BACK PAGE

• your bullets aren't lined up properly. Neither the bullets of the left aligned copy following them.
• 3rd bullet: wherever is one word.
• the map they provided is awful because it really detracts from the overall consistency and cleanness of your design. If time/money weren't an issue I'd redraw it to make it more clean and clear.

That's my 2 cents. I hope it helps.

[Craig B]

I take back the "St. Catharines" misspelling. Generally St. Catherine's is with an "e"

[Danger_Mouse]

Kudos on the design, color choice and overall layout. I really like it, Especially the cover.

I think it just needs fine tuning as Craig has mentioned some things. And I didn't look at it typographically with much scrutiny. But I really like the layout and design work.

Well done.

[Riefnu]

The map on the back page looks a little cluttered. Do you need the heavy black stroked areas (municpals? What are they in Canada).

Also some of them appear to have their duplicates in small print marking them again. Fort Eire and Port Colborne both have the thick black stroke and the tiny town markers.

The map legend also is hard to read. Especially the road signs and how they are shaped. The road signs on the map itself are also harder to read at their current size.

[Element_13]

Wow. Good catch all of those things Craig B. Just to clear myself of the majority of the text issues, I did not write the text nor have I gone through and editted it as of yet. Thanks for doing that for me! As for the map, that was provided to me and I have asked the client for access to the Illustrator file so I can make some changes. Thanks for the critique so far.

[tZ]

Agree with Danger_Mouse

Your palette is especially well done.

nice work