Week 2

7-17-07

In Class we talked about annual reports and Mr Julien brought in annual reports to look at. Mr. Julien went through the annual reports and showed good and bad examples. He also brought in some other magazines that used the grid well and went over the things that he liked. Today was really an informal and relaxed day where we mostly had a general discussion and after about an hour and a half he allowed us to go to work. I used the class time to write my proposal for the project.

7-19-07

In Class we presented our proposals to the class. The main point of my proposal was to take a legendary company like Harley Davidson and give it some youthful inspiration while still maintaining that legendary status. After class we had a short discussion about page unity and an overall them for the project. This gave me some ideas that I might explore later. Idea 1 to put focus on the riders. I could have a few pages that are really dedicated to highlighting the riders while using that to spring board emphasis on the bikes that the like personally.Idea 2 I could come up with some creative ways to really explore the names of the bikes themselves, which, of course, would lead to the bike itself. Harley Davidson has some colorful names for some of their bikes and it could be a fun design element to have some play off the names. I could either use the spread itself to represent the name of the bike, or I could come up with some nice illustrations or use type to bring it home. I could go over-the-top with this and use all three.

Before I get to far ahead of myself I really need to do a full review and breakdown of their annual report. Once I analyze what they did and look at the direction that they had already gone I may change some of my ideas. The overall impression of their annual report is that is neat clean and really business-like.

7-21-07

At Home took some time after work to look over Harley-Davidson's 2005 annual report. It's too bad that I don't have the physical annual report, because it was hard to tell how exactly the spreads where laid out. It would be nice to see the paper quality and it would be nice just to see it printed out. I will be requesting their latest annual report, but as of right now all I have is the 2005 annual report as a PDF document. I could probably go through it again and pick it appart some more, but I think I give a fairly comprehensive run through in this critique of the report.

Finally, I can start the strategic planning and of the re-design. I haven't collected many pictures to this point, but I haven't really decided how crucial—or what kind of pictures—that I will need. Either way, I know that I don't want it to be in the same style that it is currently. The real brainstorming starts here and I am looking forward to doing a little more research on the riders while starting to sketch out the rough concepts.