The document summarizes the student's process in creating recipe cards for a vegetarian oriental theme. It discusses choosing the design layout as folding cards, using a red, yellow, and black color scheme. Images were collected online due to time constraints. The dragon background image was chosen to match the theme. Peer feedback suggested making text bolder but the student felt the design was effective as is. Overall, the student believes the finished product met the brief requirements of vegetarian recipes and oriental theme. Time management was an area for improvement.

1. Evaluation
Producing Print Based Media
Composition: How have you chosen to set out your designs and why?
After I had decided what theme I would be using, I then went on to decide how I would layout my
recipe cards. I eventually decided that I was going to produce a recipe that folds into two; I decided
this because I wanted to make my recipe card as practical as possible, and by choosing this design it
could stand up, making them easier to using whilst preparing food. As I chose an Oriental theme, I
decided to use a red, yellow and black colour scheme, because I thought it was relevant to the
theme. I think the way I have placed my text and images throughout my card is very effective; the
card does not look too cramped on the pages (with the exception of a couple) and the images I had
used on the front of the recipe cards are spaced out evenly and are all the same shape, giving it a
professional look. I also used an image on the back of the recipe card, this image was of the actual
product itself, and it is placed exactly in the centre.
Image Construction: Discuss the contents of your final images and reflect upon the decisions made.
Unfortunately, I did plan to take my own photographs of each product, but did not have enough
time as the production got cut back by a week. As an alternative to this I decided to collect images
from the internet that matched the recipes I had chosen; most of the images were very high quality
but I would have preferred to have taken my own so that all the photographs had a matching house
style. Unfortunately, I could not find any images that were all taken in the same style, so all Once I
had collected all the images that were appropriate to my recipes, I then went on to decide what the
background of my recipe card would be; I knew when I began looking for an image for the
background that I wanted to use an oriental dragon, as I thought this would look very appealing on
the card, especially if I used a red hue to go with my colour scheme, which I did and the outcome
was very satisfying, I thought it made the card look professional, and it was a huge transition to the
original design for my card, which admittedly was not very good in the slightest. For the text I used a
font that would typically be seen in most Chinese or any other oriental menus, and changed the font
colour, so that it was a fairly dark yellow, I did this because I also thought this would go with my
colour scheme, and it was very effective against the red background.
Representation: Discuss the semiotics and connotations created from the content you have
included.
I think it is quite plain to see from recipe cards that they are an oriental theme, and this is exactly
how I intended them to be. I purposely used a colour scheme, font and images that if you saw them
from a far then you would more than likely be able to tell that they had an oriental theme. I used
red, yellow and black colour scheme because I feel like this a colour scheme most commonly used
for anything oriental themed, they are also very bright and eye catching making them appealing to
my target audience. You could also tell that the cards are oriental themed because of the font I have
used; I used a typical oriental style font, as I felt that if I used a font that was not appropriate to the
theme, the cards would look unprofessional. The images I have within the recipe cards are also very
appropriate to the theme, as I have used images of typical Chinese/Thai food to give anyone that
saw the cards an idea of what food the may be preparing if they bought the cards, just in case they

2. couldn’t figure it out by looking at cards itself. I also used a Chinese dragon as the background as it
makes the card look even more oriental, and it gives the consumers a huge hint at what food they
would be preparing.
Audiences: Create an audience profile of your chosen demographic
The audience I am aiming my products at are mid-teens and students that have chosen a vegetarian
lifestyle, and have specific attitudes about the consumption of meat and/or do not like meat on a
whole. My target audience does not need to have any specific hobbies, although they could possibly
have different kinds of cultural interests, but this is not essential, and they do need to be a specific
sexuality.
Audiences: How have you constructed your work to appeal to this audience?
As I am aiming my product at mid-teens and students, I have chosen an oriental theme, as I know;
being a mid-teen and student myself, that young adults enjoy takeaway food but may not always
have enough money to buy them as much as they would like, there also is not much choice for
vegetarians in takeaways, so I have chosen a variety of meals, that are rarely found in such places. By
creating my recipe cards I feel I have made an appealing product, using bright colours and
interesting fonts that would attract a younger audience. The recipes I have chosen are very easy to
make, as I know that not many younger people have the time or the money to make certain meals,
this is also why all the ingredients I have chosen are reasonably cheap, and could be bought under a
budget.
Historical and Cultural Content: What did you use as your design influences and why were they
chosen?
I feel that most of work that I did on my recipe cards was original, but I did get a few influences of
what I might do whilst gathering images and looking for ideas on the internet. The idea of using a
Chinese dragon in the background of my recipe card was influenced from menus I had seen in
restaurants, and I chose to use this design because I thought of it as traditional to my oriental
theme. The reason I chose the red, yellow, and black colour scheme was that I have always thought
of these colours as traditional oriental colours as they are the colour of the Chinese flag, although I
did use other recipes from different cultures in my recipe cards. When placing text and images on
my recipe cards, I felt that they all just fell into place; in fact, I would say that the way everything is
places is quite self explanatory as I don’t feel you would expect them to be placed anywhere else on
the card. The idea of using three images on the front of the recipe card was completely original, I did
not plan it but I thought that the front of the card look quite bare without any images of the front. I
decided to put the same three images on all of my recipe cards so that I had a set house style and
when looking at them you could see that they are a set.
Historical and Cultural Content: Do vegetarian products have a specific design aesthetic and how
does your project reflect/contrast this? Why?
Yes. Most vegetarian products have a green layout, this is done because the colour green is related
to vegetables, therefore associated with vegetarianism. My recipe cards are completely different to
this. I have used the colours red and yellow to match my oriental theme, as these are the colours
typically used on oriental products and I wanted you to be able to tell what cuisine I had chosen to

3. use. I chose not to use the colour green in my product, as I did not feel that it would match my
theme. I am pleased that I did this as I feel that if I did use it then you would not be able to tell what
cuisine I had chosen to base my recipes on, which was not what I wanted.
Finished Products: Does your finished product reflect your initial plans? How? If there are any
differences, describe why changes were made.
Admittedly my initial designs were extremely poor, although I tried my up most to make them look
as professional as possible, but unfortunately I had completely forgotten how to use Photoshop, and
this made designing my recipe cards extremely hard, the first design I tried to create was made on
Microsoft PowerPoint, and I only used block colours, which made my cards look extremely
unprofessional. After I while I got used to using Photoshop again, and began creating a whole new
design. After finishing my final recipe cards, I realised how much I had improved them and was very
pleased with how professional they looked. Other than the actual shape of my card I do not think
that my final design reflected my original design at all, I do not feel this is a problem though, I am in
fact very pleased with everything I changed.
Finished Products: Does your finished product match what you were set in the brief? How?
I believe that I met all of requirements set in the brief, all of my recipe cards look exactly identical
and they are all based on the same theme; all of the recipes are vegetarian, which was the main
requirement set in the brief. I did this by firstly deciding what theme I would be using, I had come
up with two different ideas, one being Oriental and the other being Caribbean. After some
deliberation I decided to choose the Oriental theme; I did this because there is a much wider variety
of vegetarian food than the Caribbean theme would have done. I then went on to deciding what my
recipe cards would look like, the first design that I made was admittedly very poor, but after some
help I came up with a final design that I felt looked very professional. When choosing what recipes I
wanted to use I decided to use four main courses, and four desserts, so that if my recipe cards where
meant to go into shops for people to buy they would have more variety of foods.
Finished Products: How did the use of peer feedback help you in your production?
I found all of my feedback very helpful, and took all of into consideration. In one piece of my
feedback I found that one of my peers had said that I could make the font slightly bolder within the
recipe card; Unfortunately, I could not make the text physically bolder, as it would not fit onto the
page, but instead I chose to make the font brighter to make it stand out more. The person that gave
me this feedback repeated this point throughout and had no other problems with my product. The
second person that gave me feedback on my recipe cards also repeated this point throughout my
feedback, but also told me that the alignment of my text, I chose not to amend this as I felt that the
inside of my recipe cards looked fine (other than the boldness of my text). I was also told that the
images on the front of my recipe cards could have been made larger, and that using these images
could confuse the person reading it; I also chose not to amend this as I felt that using the images on
the front of the recipe card would help the consumer understand what cuisine they would be eating.

4. Finished Products: Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of your final product regarding its technical
and aesthetical qualities.
I don’t personally feel that there is anything wrong with my final design; in fact, I feel that there are
many strengths within my recipe cards. When designing my product I had some difficulty making it
my cards look professional, every design I made looked cheap and extremely unprofessional (can be
seen on blog). After seeing some of my peers designs I decided that I should use a picture in the
background on my recipe card; I picked an image of a Chinese dragon to use as the main image
within my recipe card, and I felt it proved very effective. I also decided to use Chinese translations of
the recipe names on the front of the recipe cards, as I felt that it really matched my theme and made
my recipe cards look very professional. The only weakness that I feel is worth mentioning is that the
colour of the fonts don’t exactly match on all of the cards, this happened because I could not match
the colours exactly each time I went to make them.
Finished Product: What skills/knowledge have you gained/developed in this project? How could
these be applied in future practice?
I feel that throughout the project I have gained/developed a lot of new skills and knowledge. When
researching about vegetarians I found out a lot of new facts about the lifestyle of vegetarians and
the different types of vegetarians that there is. I found all of this information very interesting and
would probably look into it even further than I already have. I also feel that I have gained and
developed my skills. At the beginning of the course we were taught how to use Photoshop, but since
I had not used the software for a long time I had forgotten most of what we have been told, it was a
shame as my work took me a lot longer than I had planned, but I re-taught myself the skills and even
learnt some more along the way, but only basic things such as how to drag images onto new
Photoshop files without having to alter them again. Although this is a simple task, it helped me a lot
with my work.
Production Processes: Do you believe your work is creative and technically competent? Why?
Production Processes: How effectively did you manage your time?
Unfortunately, I did not manage my time well at all. I found myself behind on work a lot of the time
which had a huge effect on me hitting the deadline. If I had concentrated more on completing work
then it would have made the whole unit a lot easier, but as I can not change what has been done; if I
was to change how I managed my time, I would have spent a lot more time of my work and tried
harder to hit deadlines.
Production Processes: If you could repeat the process what would you do differently?
There are many things that I would change if I was to repeat the process over again. Firstly I would
change what I chose to pay most attention too, as this had a big effect on hitting deadlines. Secondly
I put more of my creative ability into my product. Although I felt that my final product looked
professional and up to a good standard, I still think I could have been slightly better, and if I had
decided to use more creativity when creating them then they could have been better.

5. Working to a Brief in the Creative Media Industries
Constraints Experienced
Legal Constraints
Fortunately I did not have any legal constraints whilst creating my recipe cards, due to the fact that
all of the photographs I used were used for college work and would not be sold or claimed as my
own. Therefore I would not have encountered any legal woes from the owners of any of the
photographs.
Regulatory Constraints
Regulatory factors would have been considered within my project, as they have to be included when
creating any project. Although, I did not deem any of the content posed by our recipe cards as
‘offensive’ to our primary target audience, as there is no explicit material or any content that would
be classified as morally or ethically inappropriate. Therefore, the light-hearted nature of the cards
themselves shows that no regulation would really need to take place, unless someone became
offended by anything that was displayed upon the recipe card set.
Financial Constraints
I did not have many financial constraints, as I did not prepare any of the food myself and instead
used photographs collected from the internet. The only financial constraint that could have possibly
got in the way of my work would be the cost of printing. As I was working on my own I had no one to
split the costs with, luckily, as I had been given money buy the college specifically for printing, the
cost did not affect me much.
Management
How did you work as part of a team?
I did not work as part of a group; I had to work by myself. I do feel like this had it’s advantages and
disadvantages. The advantages of this were that working on my own meant that I would not be let
down in anyway, as I would not be relying on anyone, but the disadvantage of working by myself
was that I found doing all of the work by myself was very time consuming and made it very hard for
me to reach the deadline.
How important is communication when working in a group?
Communication is very important whilst working in group; having no communication with your
partner could quite possibly lead to certain constraints, such as, conflict between ideas, and not
being able to complete work on time. Luckily for me I did not have this problem as I was working by
myself, as mentioned before, working by myself has both it’s advantages and disadvantages.

6. What have you learnt about working in a group and how will you apply this to future practice?
Unfortunately, I have not learnt much about working in group as I was working by myself, but I did
learn certain things from watching my peers. I found that most of the groups worked well together,
and this was reflected well in the work that they produced, but I also found that some groups did
have a lot of conflict between ideas and I could see that some people found it hard to work together,
but luckily this was not reflected in their work.
What have you learnt about working to to a brief and how will you apply this to future practice?
I found that I preferred working to a set brief, as it allowed me to follow the guidelines set in the
brief, which meant that I did not have any excuse to not know what I’m doing, and it gave me certain
restrictions which made it a lot easier for me to complete my product and not stray away from the
guidelines set for me, and therefore the recipe cards became a product of the set brief. In the future
when I am working to a brief, I will follow through the brief that if set in order to create a perfect
product.