The document provides an evaluation of Jamie Kessel's vegan workbook project. It discusses comparing the project to the existing Veganuary website, receiving positive peer feedback with some criticisms of the article page. Surveys of 14 people also provided feedback, noting the article layout as confusing. The document outlines Jamie's time management approach, extensive planning process including research, mood boards and a draft booklet. It evaluates the technical execution and consistency of the project, and notes it lacked creativity compared to previous work, but was overall satisfying and effective for its purpose despite not being innovative.

1. Evaluation
Jamie Kessel

2. Compare to existing work
• The best thing for me to compare my own work to is the work of the actual veganuary
website. I tried to keep my work aesthetically not dissimilar from the veganuary website
design in order to create continuity between my own work and the existing work. Having
said this however, there was a lot different between my own work and this previous
veganuary work. I stuck to a more dull and washed out looking bluey greeny colour
scheme for my work, whereas the actual vegnuary website adopted a more vibrant and
diverse range of colours raging from orange to blue. As well as this, the fonts used by me
also differed from those on the veganuary website as I couldn’t directly find what fonts
had been used in order to install them and replicate them in my own work. Instead I had
to pick fonts from Dafont that I personally thought would work well, and mostly managed
to keep a similar font style to the website’s work. Both the fonts I used and the fonts used
on the website were san serif for the most part (excluding my article). In terms of the
writing style I feel my work mirrored that on the website quite accurately, using quite a
light hearted and friendly choice of words such as ‘tempting’ and ‘yummy’ to keep things
not too serious, much in the same way that the website’s writer had. I wanted my
workbook to be an accurate reflection of the veganuary project as a whole and everything
that it stood for, and this is why I focused on trying to keep these similarities.

3. Feedback
Peer feedback: The majority of my peer feedback was actually very positive, and more so than I had expected. There was
actually very little that was criticized about my work, but the criticism I did receive was all constructive rather than
destructive, meaning that they allowed me to go back an correct things. The main criticism across the board in terms of
what wasn’t that great, was that the article was the weak point. They suggested that it looked to plain and boring, lacking
color scheme. Not only this, but they said it looked too crammed in and could have done with being spaced over an extra
page. Other than this there really wasn’t much that they criticized other than little niggles at things that didn't’ t really
matter much. Some of the strong point according to my peers were the front cover and infographic pages. People liked
the fonts, as well as the general colors used, commenting on the consistency of the pages.
Surveys: My survey was distributed via not a massive audience (14 people), but one big enough to help me out and find
out what was good and what wasn’t so good about my project. The majority of the participants were friends who I felt
would give a neutral and un-biased opinion, and I also collected data from family members. I chose to do my survey in a
purely quantitative format, in order to be able to build up statistical data on my work and people’s opinions on it, rather
than simply just having sentences written. Of course the disadvantage to conducting the survey in this way was that I
didn’t have anywhere near as much scope to find the reasons behind why people thought the things they did about my
work.
‘I think the main article because the layout
moves around your pull quote in a confusing
way.’ ‘the layout of the article itself is very plain.’
‘the article could be re visited to maybe
change the font to match up with the rest of
the booklet and to maybe play with the
spacing.’

4. Time management
• The timing of my project went pretty well, and I met my deadline pretty
comfortably so there isn’t a great deal to say about the management of my time
throughout the project. I actually took quite a relaxed and un-structured stance on
my time management without making any solid plan. I didn’t include a schedule
or any sort of layout to which task I would tackle first and in what order I’d get
everything done, instead I chose to just do each page in the most convenient order
possible and just play it by ear. Perhaps If I had made a schedule it would have
further sped up the production process and allowed me to finish long before the
deadline, so this might be something to consider in my next project, but in this
instance I managed to comfortably get away with not doing so. Using my draft
booklet helped me to get things done quicker, as it meant I knew exactly where
everything was going prior to starting production, meaning that I wasn’t sat for
ages faffing around trying to work out how the structural composition of my
booklet and trying to get my head around the technical aspects. In this was you
could say that I did put some planning into my time management (sort of like an
investment of time initially that allowed me to save time in the long run). I always
kept a clear idea in my mind of when exactly the deadline was, and of how long I
had each lesson, meaning that I’d crack down extra hard at the end of a session to
try and get a certain page done and out of the way before the session ended.
• To summarize, despite not having the most structured plan to how I’d go about
managing my time (like I had done in pervious projects through the use of
schedules), I managed to get everything done before the deadline, and pleased
myself for in this aspect.

5. Planning
• The first section of my planning was the research section of the project. For this I essentially found a bunch of articles do
do with veganism and pulled certain quotes and images from them which I thought were particular relevant and would
help me build up a knowledge that would aid me prior to the production of my booklet. I also wrote little summaries for
each article In order to compile the information, making it easier to skim through and access at a later point. This came in
handy and made life easier during the planning process. I also created a set of tags that would allow me to find any of the
articles if I lost the link or couldn’t find them, meaning that I was safe in the fact that any information I lost would be easy
to find again. I covered a lot of different topics such as celebrity vegans, vegan health and vegan ethics in order to build up
the largest range of knowledge prior to production, and for this reason, I feel that the research section of the project went
very smoothly and worked well in my favor. There aren’t really any faults I can pick in it.
• I then went on to create a set of mood boards that would allow me to plan out exactly how I wanted my project to be, and
to plan out small details and generate further ideas. For me, the mood board section of my planning was the most
important and pushed me forward the most, and prior to it I definitely didn’t feel ready to start the production. I
separated this section of my planning into multiple sub categories of mood boards. I created one based on other
organizations I would use for influence, and this meant that I was able to go and extensively research these organizations,
learning what made them successful and what made them work so that I could mirror certain aspects within my own
project. I then needed to decide fonts, so made a mood board with a few different to choose from. By leaving the
screenshots with the names above of each font it really helped as it meant I could go back and access them on dafont
when needed, which was greatly beneficial. I discussed multiple different variants of color schemes which meant that I
was able to build up an extensive idea of the different possible aesthetics and what they would look like, meaning that I
knew exactly what I wanted to do color-wise prior to actually starting, and allowed me to be prepared and know exactly
what I wanted. One criticism of the colors mood board I have is that I would’ve liked to experiment more with color
schemes and tried creating some more vibrant and distinctive looking aesthetics, but having said this I really am pleased
with the way my colors turned out. To add to all this, I also created a final mind map labeled ‘themes mind map’, in which I
compiled a large amount of images which further rounded up an idea in my mind of exactly what I wanted. This helped as
it gave me ideas for images I might use within my project, such as ones of celebrities which I might include in the booklet,
or animals being kept in poor conditions.
• Another thing I did which helped greatly was creating a draft booklet with the layout of each page. This helped greatly due
to the nature of our InDesign template being one which was fairly confusing, so by having a replica booklet in which I
could see where everything went, it allowed me to progress in a much more structured manner.
• To summarize how my planning went, I’d say that it was more than adequate and allowed me to progress to the
production stage of the project with an extremely clear idea of what I wanted to do and the path I wanted to take in terms
of various elements of the project such as the message I wanted to push, the aesthetics, the audience I wanted to target
and more. Given more time of course I would’ve done even further planning, possibly by making some mind maps as an
initial idea generation.

6. Technical
• I think that I’ve managed to put together my work to a pretty good standard in terms of composition and how it all fits
together. This of course was helped by using the page layout planner that that I’ve previously mentioned. I had to be careful
with the way I composed the work due to the confusing InDesign template, and due to the fact that most of the pages are
not directly connected to one another. This meant that any work which spanned over 2 pages had to be be carefully planned
out so that images and text weren’t left split and detached via the central split of the page. I worked out that pages 6-7
didn’t have this problem as they were directly connected meaning that I could get away with not having to worry about this.
With this in mind I was able to place me infographic onto pages 6-7 with complete freedom to compose the layout without
anything getting in the way. By making sure I was informed of the fact that the pages were separated in this way It allowed
me to be successful technically.
• The color schemes of my work all matched up as I wanted them to and this was great. I went with a blue/green color
scheme and the colors all worked well together, aiding towards the technical consistency that my work has. To make sure
these colors did work together, I used a website (which I can’t remember the name of) that allowed you to select a color
and have it generate a set of colors that would work well with it. Little details of planning ahead like this allowed me to get
everything looking nice and working well together. One page which lacked the technical consistency of the other pages in
terms of color schemes was the double page article spread on celebrity vegans. This was largely down to the fact that when
I did implement the blue/green color scheme on it I just simply couldn’t get it to work well. I think this was due to the large
amount of text spread across the page meaning that I had to keep it looking more simple, and no allowing me the freedom I
had with some of the more spacious and less cluttered looking pages (for example the fact file pages).
• The texts were all consistent and fitted well with the overall theme in my opinion, and I made sure I picked the correct text
for the correct areas (headlines, small text etc.). By making sure to use a more neat and less messy looking font within the
main text, I was able to make sure the smaller text was easily readable for the viewers and wasn’t a struggle to read. One
fault I’d pick in the easiness of reading was the fact that I didn’t use a serif font for this main text, meaning that it might have
slightly made it harder to read than had I used a font like Times New Roman for example. But like I said, this didn’t really
matter much because I made sure it was a font that was easy enough to read. In order to maintain consistency, I only used 2
fonts (one for main text and one for titles etc.) meaning that all pages had a consistent aesthetic and didn’t look overly
random. To add to this point, the two fonts that I used were similar in terms of their art style, adding further balance to the
technical and visual consistency. I made sure that all text was positioned appropriately on the page, and didn’t overlap on
the central creases, however, as mentioned in the ‘feedback’ slide, I failed to compose the double page article in a
particualrly elegant way. The text just looked slightly cluttered, and this was something that’s bothered me slightly. All in all
though, on a technical level my work was pretty well made.

7. Example of the
slightly cluttered
looking text on
the article, with
the composition
just feeling slightly
squashed. It feels
like the text is
suffocating the
image of Carl
Lewis slightly and
not really leaving
it enough room on
the page.

8. Creative• Creativity played a massive part in this project, as we had to come up with work that would draw in an
audience through aesthetics, novelty value and general interestingness. To be honest, I don’t think that on a
creative level my work was anything that amazing. The main reason for me saying this is because there isn't
really anything on it that particularly stands out or highlights my creative ability on a good level. Although
everything's put together nicely with decent ideas, there just isn’t anything that groundbreaking. To give an
example, the contents page of the booklet looks nice and is fairly creative with the lettuce bordering, but at
the same time isn’t anything you’d look at and thing wow that’s a great idea. This contrasts with my social
action project, which was actually very innovative and creative in it’s assets and content, for example the map
of Great Britain made from once pence pennies in order to symbolize UK poverty. It is in this sense that I
wasn’t entirely satisfied with this projects creativity as I like to be able to sit back after it’s ended and feel
pleased about the ideas I’ve managed to present via my work. Despite all this, I don’t think that the work
lacked creativity on a dramatic level, rather it just lacked fresh ideas and flair. I think the way the booklet looks
is great, with a good choice of appropriate fonts that are pleasing to look at, good colors and a good choice of
topics discussed. I think the real way that I would’ve been able to push it a step further creatively would be
through the use of graphics which had some sort of unique idea behind then (like the pennies idea from the
previous project). Although the graphics used on my info graphics, front cover etc. looked visually pleasing,
they just weren’t particularly original, and I feel that pretty much anyone could have generated the same
ideas. Looking at my work from an outsiders standpoint, I think I’d look at it and think yeah that’s nice to look
at and is fairly interesting, but when you really think about it it’s just not an accurate reflection of my creative
ability in the same way that other previous projects have managed to be. To add to this, some of the graphics
used for my info graphic page were not entirely my own content. I used an icon website and took a couple of
images from it. In my defense, with the images that I did take from a website, I then brushed them up with my
own creative flair by messing around with Photoshop's warping and colors until they looked exactly how I
wanted them to
The very original ‘pennies’
design idea from my social
action project, demonstrating
the contrast in creativity
between this project and the
social action.

9. Finished products
• In terms of the finished product, I was overall pretty satisfied with the way it turned out. I feel that the work
mirrors my original intentions pretty clearly and in this way I’m more than happy with the work I’ve
produced. When compared to the pre production work and the original intentions I came up with (colors,
topics etc.) the work reflects it almost exactly. As mentioned in the previous slide, I didn’t feel that the work
had as much creative flair as I was capable of giving it, and whether or not this was just down to the fact
that there was less scoped for creativity when it comes to the topic of veganism or not is debatable, but I
feel that this was definitely a factor to some extent. Despite it not being a creative masterpiece, the work is
well presented and it’s intentions are made clear throughout. The work is well written and mirrors the
friendly and inviting language style I originally intended on using (this is especially relevant in the double
page spread article). In terms of whether the work fits it’s purpose, I think that it would be more than fair to
say that it definitely does. I don’t think that work has to be particularly innovative to be effective, so despite
my work not having much of a wow factor I feel that it really gets the job done and manages to put it’s point
across in an effective manner through a wide variety of page types and through the art of kind and friendly
rhetoric and lots of color and images. When I compare my finished product to that of other members of the
class, I can certainly say that it’s clear we’ve all approached the task in varying ways, and although my work
isn’t necessarily better or worse than other members of the class’s work, I feel that it’s equally effective and
in some ways has better and worse qualities. To give an example, Chris’s work (which I gave feedback on)
outshined my work from a creative stand point in many ways. It had fresh, funny ideas and kept me
entertained. In contrast though, it lacked compared to mine from a technical standpoint. I feel that fonts
and general layout and color schemes weren’t as good as mine. The point I’m getting at here is that all work
has strengths and weaknesses, as is the nature of any project. To conclude, I was satisfied with my project
for many reasons. I felt that it wasn’t the most amazing thing ever, but it served it’s purpose and did it in an
elegant manner. For this reason I’d find it hard to say I wasn’t pleased with how it turned out.