evaluation for veganuary booklet

1. Factual Writing Evaluation
Alice Rose

2. Planning
• What planning did you do before you started the project?
I first came up with ideas on what to put on each page of my booklet, which involved
pagination – making a physical copy of what my booklet was meant to look like. I created a
moodboard to help me decide on a colour scheme, style and fonts I may possibly use. This
helped me a lot as it created guidelines that I could follow the whole way through to ensure
I had a strong theme throughout, despite the pages being on completely different topics. I
also created a production log to help keep me on track to finish in time. I then chose
sources of where I would get the info for each page, going into each one and in some cases
(like the recipes) changing and formatting it to fit my audience better. I also had to research
facts to add into my factual journalism piece on why people should turn vegan, and write it
to fit my audience. This meant that when it came to production I could just copy and paste
the content into the file I was working on.

3. Did you stick to your planning?
One issue I did come across is that I didn’t plan for enough pages and I had to redo my
pagination to fit around the changes made. I ended up extending the vegan
alternatives to two pages instead of one, which was easy enough as there are lots of
alternatives to dairy and meat products. I also planned to do 3 social media
inforgraphics, however when constructing the 3rd, I felt as if it wouldn’t be the best
example of what I was capable of and as I already had 2 others to back up my grade.
Have your intentions been realised?
My intentions have been realised mostly; my booklet looks fairly similar to how I
imagined it. I ended up adding detail when I got feedback to make it more interesting
and hopefully higher in grade. I didn’t intend for two pages of vegan alternatives but it
was easy to change the order of the pages in order for the booklet to still flow.

4. Time Management
• What did you do to help you keep in good time with your project?
I created a production log which involved estimating how long each page would take
to make. This was effective enough but could have been improved. When I was
estimating how much time it would take to make each page, I didn’t factor in that
some pages might take longer than others and that I would need time to improve at
the end.
• Do you think you managed your time well, would you do anything differently?
I think I managed my time effectively as I finished in enough time to get feedback from
my tutor in order to improve my grade whilst also coping with the plaaning issues of
adding another page.

5. Reviewing your work in progress
• Did you review your work in progress and did you make any changes as you went along, if so what
were they?
I reviewed my work in progress to ensure that I had not made any mistakes, e.g spelling, grammar,
punctuality aswell as design errors such as making sure everything flowed through the page aswell as
being aligned and visually pleasing. For example, I realised whilst making a social media infographic that I
had read one of the facts wrong whilst sourcing my information. Wherever I then used that fact I had to go
back and change the number so I made sure I was accurate throughout my work. Also once I gathered
feedback I then changed my work to make the pages more appealing and interesting for my audience,
despite it being different to what I had planned. For example, the Hollywood Walk of Veganism started off
with the simple heading of ‘Celebrity factfile’ and it featured images of celebrities and quotes of their
reasons for changing their diet. This page was admittedly one of the most boring out of all of them, so I
then decided to change it by adding in a star which I designed that was based around the Hollywood Walk
of Fame. The theme of the page then changed accordingly with a different heading and I made it more
visually pleasing whilst still keeping the style throughout my booklet.

6. Technical competencies and creative
abilities
• Technical aspects
I used Photoshop to create my pages as they relied a lot more on the design than my article which I
used InDesign to create. I used a range of tools such as rotoscoping and shape manipulation, textures
and different layers styles to make my pages as visually pleasing as possible whilst improving my skills.
Simple things such as making sure everything is aligned by changing the space of a font or putting a
drop shadow on the text made a difference to the technical aspects of my pages. When creating my
infographic, I had to focus on how to accurately represent the text in image form whilst still making it
visually pleasing which is something that I feel that I achieved.
• How did you make your work interesting for the reader, what would you do differently if you were
to do it again?
I used a strong style throughout my booklet to show continuity despite the topic changing from page to
page and I added images of the things I was talking about to anchor the text. I used borders around my
pages to make the pages more aesthetically pleasing as then they are therefore more likely to be read, I
think I came up with suitable ideas for each page to make them each unique yet still all tie in together. I
would probably change my front and back cover to fit the style of the rest of my booklet if I could as I
think these two pages are the ones that let me down the most.

7. The image on the left is an example of another infographic I found on the environmental
impacts of eating meat. They have a good text to image ratio and they have gone for a more
complicated style. I had to keep everything relatively the same throughout my booklet and I
also had to use data provided solely by Veganuary. However despite all these factors at first
glance they to almost the same standard. The found infographic uses headings to organise
the page into sections which is something that I could have done to help set out my page in
a more methodical manor. This would have meant that I could have made the text smaller
on mine as there would have been larger headings to support it. They have also used a
bigger variety of ways to communicate percentages which would also have benefitted the
aesthetics of my infographic rather than just re-using the same ideas. Both these
infographics include a lot of text which is therefore anchored with images, this heavily relies
on the topic as some may require more explaining than others.

8. Audience
• I decided to focus manly on the female audience of the ages between 18-
35 as these are the people that are most likely to try veganism. I reflected
this by including a page on cruelty-free make up brands as this is a key
element many women would consider when turning vegan. I used
stereotypical colours to point out that this page is feminine. Cooking,
baking and celebrities are also all things that women enjoy stereotypically
and that is why I’ve also included these pages. I chose an image of a cute
cow to put on the front cover and also a boy holding a lamb on the back to
attract women as it is conventional for them to think that the animals are
cute and then they are drawn in.

9. On the left is a professional image and on the right is the one that I
made. They both feature bunnies which are associated with cruelty free
brands because of the leaping bunny stamp, which is something
companies put on products to show that it was not tested on animals.
They are also quite cute animals which would stereotypically appeal to
my female target market. We have both featured some of the same
brands, however the ones I chose were brands that were available in the
UK as it made more sense to aim it at a British audience, whereas the
professional piece also features brands from the US.

10. Content
• I personally think that the content of my work is both informative and persuasive –
to fit the purpose of this leaflet. When answering my survey, 100% of the
participants also agreed with me. My spelling, punctuation and grammar is
consistent throughout and I use quite informal language in order to relate to my
audience. I have provided a “who, what, how and why” in order to be as
persuasive as possible and with the idea that I leave the audience with no
questions once they have finished the booklet. I chose to base my infographic
solely on the environmental impacts of eating meat as I felt that this topic was the
most serious as if it is left, it could have dire consequences for the everyone –
rather than just focusing on animals or health benefits. When creating the vegan
alternatives pages, I chose images of the raw product (which is unconventional
when designing a food-based topic) because it then acted more as a universal list
that could be applied to everything that vegans could re-use whenever they are
cooking anything. If I had chose images of each product in a dish, the audience
would then link that ingredient solely with that dish and maybe not try it in
anything else.

11. Style
• I have kept the same colour scheme throughout in order to tie in all the different
themes together. I also achieved this by using the same fonts throughout, with
different layer styles depending on what fit better with the page. However I feel
like these two elements tie everything together enough for me to show a strong
enough style. I chose themes for each of my pages to fit the style of whatever it
was talking about. For example, when it came to making a page with a recipe on
how to make chilli I chose a Mexican theme to differentiate from the rest of the
pages and add interest to the booklet. I achieved a Mexican theme by making a
border and adding maracas aswell as using the same colour scheme as my booklet
but incorporating an orange colour to fit more with the theme. For the coconut
brownie recipe, I chose a tropical theme to match with the coconuts, which then
also allowed me to add interest to my booklet but yet still keeping the same colour
scheme. Participants from my survey also agreed, with 100% of the people that
answered said that I had a strong style.

12. Skills
• This project involved me using InDesign which was software I wasn’t that familiar with until now. It
differs from Photoshop as it is more of a text based program, which came in handy for my article as
it allowed me to manipulate text easier. This allowed me to align a text-based page in a visually
pleasing manor with columns, images and pull quotes to appeal to my audience. I quickly became
competent with this program and made an article I am happy with. During this project I also
became more confident with adding different fonts downloaded from the internet in my work and I
learned that the process is a lot simpler than I thought. I also became more confident at adding
textures to my work by changing the opacity and selecting the inverse of what I want to wrap the
texture around. For example I used this to create the piece of sticky tape for my polaroid elements
and to create the Hollywood Walk of Veganism star.

13. Areas for improvement
• If you were to restart this project or had more time to improve,
what would you change?
I would probably change my front and back cover because I think they
aren’t a good indication of my grade as I ran out of ideas toward the
end as to the way they should look and therefore made simple
versions. With development I could make the front cover especially
more appealing as that is the first thing that my audience would see
and therefore is in some ways the most important part of an
information booklet. I would probably change the font on my recipe
pages as when it would be printed out I think it would be hard to read.