In the end I decided to place these three Type Specimen Screens onto Miro for critique, by my Lecturer, Kyle, Hal, a UX designer, and my peers.
As we could select only one for review by Kyle and Hal, I went for the version furthest to the right as this was my most interesting design, they both agreed it was my best design, they liked the style and the colour choice, only really remarking on the possible difference in padding for the top and bottom paragraph’s something I will definitely correct as it will make the piece more balanced, as I look at it again it really does stick out.
This is the sort of constructive critique I was hoping for, but unfortunately, I did not receive much feedback from my peers. In fact, I only received one piece of feedback, fortunately it was very good feedback and something I have already tried to implement as I have iterated on my designs since the critique sessions.
Here is that feedback via Miro
Here are my Design Iterations Taking in the feedback received.
As you can see I am experimenting with different alignments for the mask, the paragraph and the words “New Roman” to try to find the most suitable final product. I do feel that Figma is somewhat limiting my ability to enhance the design any further so I am going to move to Adobe Illustrator for its wider suite of tools to see if that gives me the final product I am looking for.
I found the Critique very useful, I enjoyed looking at the work of others, for inspiration and offering constructive feedback on their work to hopefully help them gain the highest marks they can. I however cannot help but be slightly disappointed that I didn’t got more feedback myself as I feel this would have been hugely beneficial to me, but given it was our first critique as a class hopefully confidence will build and the next critique will be more fruitful in this regard.
I am happy with my screens and I feel after finalising the alignments and positioning of the elements I will have a very solid final submission.
Here is how I created my final Type Specimen Screen, to ensure my paragraphs were aligned correctly, I created rectangle of a common size and used these as guides to ensure the correct positioning. In this screenshot you can also see the letter “I” mask I used to create the cutaway.