Finanzpartner

Nice. Colors, layout, background - it all works. The photos popping out of the borders is a nice effect I've used myself in the past. If I had one (incredibly minor) criticism, I'd like to see the photo angles go back and forth on the ones that are stacked as opposed to all of them angled the same. But that's a nitpick - not important.

You like the floaty curves. This is very busy. Especially the inside (assuming this is a brochure.) There is no flow to the info, it's just all over the place.

Imagine it folded.

i can imagine it folded, and it's still very busy (as mintsauce said).

there's no white space. everything is all crammed together. it's too much content for too little space.

White space is an expression - it means open space, not necessarily WHITE space. I'm assuming this piece is letter-sized (or A4) when folded, which means that donut hole on the bottom left panel is going to look like a black hole at actual size. There are also arrows for the reader to follow, so I don't see how flow is a problem either (again - once it is folded). If you guys mean "busy" like the background is too powerful - I could agree with that. Drop it down 25% and you're good to go. But I could easily live with it as is. It's colorful - BAM BABY! - in your face. Ballsy is nice sometimes.

yes, that's exactly what i meant, open space. and there's very little open space in that folder. the elements are very crowded. there are too many elements, not enough 'open space' and not enough hierarchy.

i'm not sure why you think that "donut hole" is going to look so huge, but that's one panel out of six. there's one panel that has tons of white space, one panel that has that donut hole (surrounded by crowded images), and four panels that have no white space and images crowded all over each other.

There's no real hierarchy that leads your eye from item to item, the elements all fight each other for dominance.

it may be "BAM BABY!" but more like a punch in the nose than something exciting. it's just too busy.

The problem I always have with a "BAM BABY! in your face" brochure is I wind up spending a great deal more time dealing with pain and dizziness than absorbing the message of the brochure.

That's what's happening here. There's no clear place to begin reading. The arrows don't really help, because they are the first thing you see, and they tell the reader to look at secondary, tertiary, et cetera messages, which are meaningless unless understood in the context of the main one. You could say that your need to resort to the arrows are like warning flags that something is fundamentally wrong with your composition.

One thing that bothers me very much is the electric blue swirly background. It's a little nauseating because it fights so hard to dominate the whole piece. You'd be much better off without it. The other is your use, in fully half the panels, of an even number of elements arranged in vertical alignment. The rotations you gave to some of the elements don't help enough to break up that unsettling Pillars of Solomon's Temple look. I believe you might have added that swirly background in an attempt to soften this effect. Why not just resolve the unpleasant effect instead?

Interesting. I think the real problem here is three-fold... the blue background (which I could live without as well), the flat presentation and the reduced size. At actual size I don't see either a white space problem or a flow problem. Could it be designed better? Sure. Then again... which job on the planet Earth couldn't be?

As always... jmho.

Redo it all. The blue swirls in the background has this freeflowing wispy feel and then you have all this blocky notepad and photo junk on top. For the background, I'd like it toned down so it doesn't have such a presence. then redesign the information into some thing more streamline and elegant.

The front cover works for me, but I would try reducing the size of the logo and increasing the title's size...they're competing with one another.

I've had my ink-heavy designs too to my printers' "delight"...and still do with some of my work. One client calls it my X-Files designs.