OUGD504 - My Design Process - Leaflet Research Ideas

Research

After my admittedly less than innovative folding "ideas" from earlier, I've come to the conclusion that I'm probably better off trying to adapt some existing ideas for the fold in my leaflet rather than come up with my own.

There were quite a few cool ideas on Pinterest which could be made into leaflets that weren't necessarily used for leaflets initially.

I'd not even considered the final shape of the design, but this is quite cool in that the content of the whatever this is informs the shape of it. This can't be the most useful shape design for text based information though, and at the same time it really limits what shape and size images you can use.

What strikes me about this idea is the ability to have the frailty of having cutout sections but still having the security of it being able to stand up with the inside fold. What I don't like however is that when this is flat it would look very square and not very compact.

This design takes the opposite approach to a regular leaflet and starts as a 3D object and folds out to become 2D. Although this is pretty much the opposite of what a leaflet is supposed to do it could still be an interesting concept to run with.

Using empty space to emphasise and/or border something is something I'd never have thought of given that using a border or something is usually how something is emphasised. Quite a cool idea in my opinion.

I think this is quite cool in how it gives the impression of something being revealed. I can't really see how I could adapt this into the form of a leaflet, but I think the spiky exterior making use of folds to create 3D triangles is usable. I'd have thought a dark stock would help as well because it'd minimise the impact of shadow on the design. 





My Efforts

I found this really cool website, http://foldingtechniques.com/, which has short videos demonstrating how to fold paper in various inventive ways. I had a go at some of them, with varying degrees of success.



X-Form Fold

The x-form fold looks like it could mainly be used for decorative purposes rather than informative ones, but it looked pretty complicated to make, so I thought I'd have a go at it to test both the limitations of the folding process and also my ability and accuracy at folding. 

I found this one incredibly hard, but I don't think it was helped by the fact that you needed to start with square paper. This meant I had to cut my own out and it was definitely not square.

The  outcome looks really nice though, and using different coloured triangles would make this sort of folding look really nice because of the shadows it creates.








V-Pleat Fold

The v-pleat fold was one that someone did in the workshop, at the time I thought it was amazing, but when it came to doing it myself following the instructions it was slightly less impressive after I realised how it was done.

This is another one that starts with a square but of paper, but this one was considerably easier to fold and for a lot less reward.

I feel like this doesn't open out enough to provide enough space for images or even text. On top of this, the flat form is so much uglier than the folded form I wouldn't want to put the two together. 







Angled Envelope Fold

I think the angled envelope fold had a lot of potential to be suitable for what I needed, and it looked relatively simple. It also leaves a lot of large empty spaces for content, which is always nice.

The folded out form of this fold is at an angle, which is something that's definitely a positive because it implies progress, which is generally what a process achieves.

 Re-folding the envelope is quite difficult though and lead to me bending and creasing some of the panels, which looked ugly. This is definitely the main drawback of this fold.

The exterior of this fold looks really nice. I particularly like the sense of secrecy it has about it, as it doesn't initially have an obvious way to unfold it, which keeps the contents (the process) more personal.







The Trihexaflexagon Fold

This was something that had a really appealing concept to me because in the final product you don't really have any folds, they're more like spines, it was something I wanted to try out.

It's not really obvious in the photo, but this fold works by folding the thing together and then unfolding it in a different way. I tried to demonstrate this by putting different markings on each face.

While I do really like this, I think it's a bit complicated and delicate to use for my project as it doesn't really reflect the rigidity of my process, more something a bit more fluid.







Conclusion

It's been quite fun experimenting with the different folding methods, but I've come to the conclusion that other than the angled envelope fold, none of them have the rigidity that reflects my process, and even then I feel like the envelope fold is a bit gimmicky, something that isn't really present in my process.

Because of this I think I'm going to use a more standard tri-fold leaflet, as it allows me completely separate sections whilst keeping the ability for me to link them together through the design pretty easily. I prefer the tri-fold to the get fold because I like the idea of having equally sized spaces, and I prefer it to the accordion fold because I think the birds-eye view of the shape of the accordion fold is pretty ugly.

I will probably end up going for an A5 sized leaflet as it reflects my fondness for things to be regular and manageable.