The PDF

For this brief we also have to create a short PDF file showcasing and explaining our work. This will then be submitted to YCN and in turn our clients for them to look over and evaluate. Now for this I wanted to try something a little different. I wanted to use illustrator to create something visually accomplished and eye-catching. I wanted to utilise similar principles to the ones found in my final artwork to create a strong theme and environment. I thought that a lot of other people submitting PDF's and designs would probably really heavily base and style them on Dominos existing style. In particular their branding guidelines. A white background with red and blue text. Now whilst that shows that they understand Dominos branding guidelines and can mimic them it wouldn't show a great deal of individuality and creativity. So I have taken a little bit of a gamble. I have somewhat ignored the branding guidelines for Dominos and created a design unique to me and my work. My hope is that this will make it stand out from the crowd and be engaging. If I can make it look appealing then hopefully Dominos will be more inclined to look at it. I think that it has the potential to work that way and I am really pleased with the design scheme I created for the PDF. So without further ado here it is:

I am really happy with how this has turned out. It looks professional and there is a clear, consistent theme across all of the pages. I used Dominos font from their guidelines "Trade Gothic Bold Condensed No. 20" for the titles and paired it with "Baskerville" in italics for the little extensions of the title placed above. Accompanying those for the body text is "Baskerville Old Face". All of these work together exquisitely I think. They compliment each other and create a really appealing aesthetic. The shade of red I chose also really works well in my opinion. I didn't want it to be too strong and overpowering to a softened it a little bit. I brought it closer to a pastel shade yet still left it rich enough to draw the eye. The inclusion of custom artwork also I think helps to add a personal touch and a level of iteration within the PDF itself.

Now to make the PDF was a challenge but to get it to work together as one consistent document was something completely different. I probably could have used InDesign to get them to work together as one document but I didn't have a lot of time after finishing all the artwork and had to think of something fast. After looking on the web I found a plugin for Mac called "Combine PDFs" that worked perfectly. To use it firstly I made a custom preset in Illustrator that exports the files as really high quality PDF's then assembled them in a folder:

Select all the PDF files you want to combine:

Then you right click and select "Open With":

And choose "Combine PDFs":

Then when inside the program you make sure all the files are there and in the right order. Once your sure they are just name it as you see fit and then click "Merge PDFs..."

Then hey presto! In no time at all I had a full quality merged PDF with all the files I previously had separate. This plugin was a godsend.

So that's how I created the PDF. Again I am really proud of it and hopefully it will help to just provide an edge over other submissions due to it hopefully standing out and being unique.