TO THE MOON// Evaluation

Overall I am pleased with the final result of the publication, however I do consider there to be room for improvement.

Firstly the topic it covers is one that I am absolutely fascinated by. I chose to study the US space program for my dissertation and this project was a realisation of much of that research. However, having completed the publication I realise that it would be far more interesting to me to have based this on more recent or future space missions and to have introduced an element of the unknown nature of space exploration with cutting edge science and technology, rather than retelling a story that had been told before. However this option would have neglected the project from the huge database of stunning high res NASA sourced images which make up half the publication.

If I had spent more time on this brief I would have liked to have created a dust cover which could be removed and used as a poster. This would have also improved the current cover which I feel could be better. The cover was designed to be printed on an off white recycled cardboard, which would look great with a monotonal design such as this. However due to my printing options this did not become a reality and the cover was printed on a matt, uncoated paper, reducing that ‘crafted’ vibe I was going for considerably, ultimately altering the tone of the publication.

In sourcing the images I often attempted to find lesser know views of the missions on NASAs huge database. For example Apollo 1 is synonymous with an infamous photo of the burnt out cockpit after the cabin fire which killed its crew, I opted to use a photo of the crew training for a water landing, floating in a pool and appearing to have a great time. I feel that the images I selected were trying to tell a story of human achievement, not to neglect the failure of that mission but to celebrate the human nature of space exploration rather that focus on the inherent and obvious dangers.

I suppose this highlights some of the functions of this publication; to provide information about a topic but to also proved a medium for people to explore the spectacle that was the US space programs race to the Moon.

One other question I often wondered while working on this brief was whether I should be building a website with this information rather than sending it to print. The brief set out to produce a printed publication, but I do believe that it could have been presented beautifully on screen. However this information is already easily accessible on the web to those who have the time to find it. My goal was to design something which could be picked up in a library, book fair or coffee shop which would be informative and entertaining to those people, who would find the topic interesting but want to cut down to a great summery of the missions without having to sift through huge amounts of data. This is how the publication is successful in my eyes, it takes a huge amount of data and information about a hugely complicated topic and communicates it in an easily read book supported by fascinating images.