Graphic Design Evaluation

My Design

I’m comparing my app to Tinder. Tinder and I have similar designs with only the background and one asset taking up most of the space. We both felt that text doesn’t work on app icons and that the simple bolder approach is the best one. Tinder’s flame asset takes up more space on the side to fill out the background more which the Achilles icon doesn’t have plus the white and red colours work better than the Achilles one does.

I’m comparing my web ad to the web ads of an app called ‘Wanderlust’. Both Wanderlust and I wanted to create the modern ad look which consists of high quality images, vector art, perfect composition and bold colours. The first thing you can notice is the 3 iPhone screens which we both share, I thought this was important as 2 screens looks odd and it allows you to showcase your game more with repetition. The next thing is the background, both Wanderlust and I have solid matt colours as backgrounds to bring out the iPhones - Wanderlust have added on top of their background by adding a border round their ad.

I’m comparing my wallpaper to a wallpaper made for the game Animal Crossing. Both wallpapers are repeating patterns and both are made up of assets - the animal crossing wallpaper has a textured background of leaves where as I just have a solid colour. The textured background fills up gaps and it means you can have less assets, have bigger gaps and still have a nice wallpaper. I can see a similarity between the two, the maroon helmet on my wallpaper is positioned in the same place as the big green leaf in the Animal Crossing one - if you get the corners structured first it means you can concentrate on the other assets.

Comparison Other Graphics

My Design Suggested Improvements..

1) During the drafts of my first image I gained some feedback on my original helmet, it looked too simple and empty - I took this information and applied it to the app icon template which I then changed it a few times until I got my final helmet vector.

2) There’s a lot of empty space around the side of the helmet, either resize the helmet, edit it again or add another asset.

1) During the drafts of my first attempt on the ad banner, I had some feedback relating towards what was shown on the iPhone screens. I have two characters on either screen with the cream background you can see on the first screen - this looked misleading as it looked like a ‘iPhone background’ ad instead of a game ad.

2) A suggested improvement which I was quite indecisive about was weather to include the app store icon or to keep the “Available on the App Store” writing below the slogan - in the end we went with the icon as our target market could relate towards it better.

1) During the drafts of my first attempt on the wallpaper I gained more feedback than normal as it wasn’t a process I was familiar with and needed help. The first bit of feedback I got was to change the background colour - I had set it white at first as I didn’t think it would matter but it did in the end as it complements the colours of the assets.

2) Midway through designing this graphic I was told to fill up the empty gaps with more assets and to be more experimental. Filling the gaps made the whole wallpaper cluttered and there was no composition to it.

Transformations

Heres an example on the changes I made from my feedback. You can see my first design was too similar throughout, from the background colour being the same as the phone screens and the assets on the phone not showing anything from the game. I have 3 main colours I use in Achilles - maroon, grey and cream. The grey is only used the in games but the cream and maroon are used in the icon and the text; I used the maroon for the background and adjusted the text for it, added a slogan and the app store icon for more like ability.

This is a great example of feedback and then change in my graphic design process. I used a darker shade of my cream background which was used on an old app icon background - this colour and the fact the the assets are not places well and there is a rock asset places which doesn’t fit the background well makes the whole wallpaper look bad. The feedback is simple, just simplify the amount of assets and change the background colour to complement the assets better. Also I thought if I made it smaller to have a bigger repeating pattern it would make it better.

Materials, Software & Peripherals Used

Illustrator was the first program I used when it came to creating my first piece of graphics which was the app. I came to use it at first due to the fact it allowed me to make my icon a vector so I could resize it easily without it getting pixelated. On top of this, the original reason why I wanted to use it was to redesign my helmet so it worked with the app icon template - the pen tool allowed to create my own helmet and adjust it to the template. The other reason Illustrator was the main program I used was because it allowed me to create my wallpaper on it, the wallpaper had to be a vector so I could resize it for different screens and even an iPhone background. Overall, Illustrator was the best program to use as it was moderately simple, I felt comfortable using it and it allowed me to resize my images on other softwares. 4/5 Stars.

Photoshop didn’t play a big part in my graphic designs as I only used it to make half of my wallpaper. Once I had made the basic square in which I wanted to repeat across my screen I saved it as a psd file and imported it into photoshop. Photoshop allowed me to save that square as a pattern which I could then repeat on a 1024 by 1280 file - also I could resize my square depending on how big I wanted my assets on the screen. I am more comfortable with Photoshop than Illustrator but as it doesn’t create vector images I had to switch programs but I came back to use it in the end as it is a great program! 4/5 Stars.

This program is now as well known as the other two are, this is iDraw. iDraw is a program I came across when looking for an alternative for Illustrator - Adobe have brought out a monthly payment system for all their programs and myself wanting to work on these designs from home I didn’t want to commit myself to that. iDraw’s ratings and feedback were very good, graphic designers had switched to the program after Adobe’s monthly plan and said it was just as powerful. I used iDraw to create my web banners, I thought it would take me a while at first to get used to it but I picked it up straight away as it’s like Illustrator but it has a more simple layout containing only the main tools plus it creates vector graphics which I was very happy about. For being an underdog program and impressing me so much with a price of £18 this gets my rating. 5/5 Stars!

Fitness For Purpose

You can see to the right the Achilles background in context, I took a screen shot of it on my desktop. When you enlarge it and put it next to all the other software icons it loses its glare a bit but it’s still an eye catching design and as it’s free for my target market then who wouldn't want one.

To the left is the Achilles ad displayed in steams spotlight spot. The ad displayed on this website would be looking to gain attention from the slightly older half of the Achilles target market. The colours stand out, it isn’t to much to concentrate on so it makes it effective.