Software Evaluation

Design for print

Software used: Indesign, Illustrator and Photoshop

For this brief I used all of the above a fair amount for different reasons. Photoshop was used to edit photographs used for content, for print photos have to have a minimum of 300ppi and must be resized after being placed into indesign. I also used photoshop to crop photos down and adjust the brightness and contrast. I used illustrator to create the alphabet in patch work, utilising the pen tool, text and ruler/guides, at first a letter was taking me a long time to create however once I got the hand of it, it was much quicker work and using copy and paste for certain sections of the letters worked. The third piece of software I used was Indesign, from the start I created a folder in finder specifically for all of the contents that would be added to the document - this is because links are created when using indesign to the files, for example after editing a photo in photoshop then saving it as a psd, you can go from indesign directly to photoshop to edit and it updates in real time when you save which is a lot quicker than editing and re placing the file. Indesign was the best option to develop the layout as it has options for margins, columns, bleed etc and then when it comes to printing the print booklet option helps with organisation depending on what bind you have chosen. I couldn't have completed this brief without the help of all these softwares however indesign is the one that brings everything together.

Design for screen

Software used: XD, Illustrator and Photoshop

Similar to design for print I used Illustrator and Photoshop to create the components needed for the app design. I created the icons for the menu bar in illustrator then pasted them into XD, edited the photos in photoshop and pasted them in XD,  it would have been possible to create the app without the help of these softwares however the app would look a lot more basic as XD only allows you to create very simple shapes - it is more for creating wireframes and adding everything to finish the design. I found XD very easy to use both on the designing and prototyping side of things, the prototype is very useful as it allows you to experiment with navigation to see what works with transitions.