Tianxu Liu A1

Desktop Publishing for Business INFS 2032Assessment #1–Minor Project

Name: Tianxu Liu ID:110009716

Introduction

Westpac Banking Corporation is the first bank in Australia when it established in

Sydney in 1817 and named the Bank of New South Wales. In 1982, it changed its name to

Westpac which is a portmanteau of 'Western-Pacific'. Westpac provides services in

Australia, New Zealand and some areas of the South Pacific, it is one of Australia's

big four banks and is also the second-largest bank in New Zealand. It provides

financial services for 11.8 million customers and helps them achieve their financial

goals (Westpac Banking Corporation 2013). As a result, the business documents (letters,

invoices, order sheet etc.) are necessary and generally used when represents Bank in

relation to external parties. Therefore, the documents should be designed clearly and

concisely to show a good corporate identity and attract customers. In this report, it

will compare and contrast three business documents (a business card, envelope, and

brochure) from Westpac Bank through 6 desktop publishing theory.

Design Principles

To arrange the structural elements of design, six principles are used as concepts.

These principles are: Balance, White space, Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and

Proximity. Balance is the core concept of visual equilibrium and is a state of

equalized tension, it relates to the physical sense of balance. Usually, it is a

reconciliation of opposing forces in a composition that results in visual stability as

two ways: symmetrically and asymmetrically(Jirousek 1995). The business card and the

back of brochure of three documents in appendix are symmetrical balance. In business

card, all elements are arranged on the central axis as the bilateral symmetry, it is

referred to as formal balance. The back of brochure arranges 'W' logo and other logos

symmetrically on either side of clinodiagonal. In addition, the envelope and the front

of brochure are asymmetrical balance, the elements in them are arranged to balance a

heavy weight with a cluster of lighter weights on equal sides of a fulcrum. In

brochure, there is a small logo balanced by a cluster of words. In envelope, there is a

loge and some words balanced by white space. Overall, these three documents are

successfully achieve balance in two ways which does not have too many elements on a

page.

White space means elements in documents do not occupy all of space that leave gaps as

the resting point for the eyes and provides contrast. It is an active element in any

good design, it would be used to create interesting backgrounds. Design a document with

a appropriate using of white space will make the document become rhythm, unity,

legibility, readability and balance(Jones 2010). The documents from Westpac Bank uses

lots of white space between the various elements, and all documents are not overcrowded

that gives more whitespace between lines of text and make content becomes easier to

scan and digest. The brochure of Westpac Bank use whitespace within text well, the

space between lines makes the content easily and comfortably be read. In addition,

there are no rivers in all documents, and the column space are appropriate.

Contrast is one of the principles of design, that is the difference between two

elements. Contrast adds interest to the page and provides a means of emphasizing what

is important or directing the reader's eye. The greater the difference the greater thecontrast, and the greater increasing on visual interest for audience. The core method

to create contrast is to make sure the differences are obvious. There are four general

methods of creating contrast: using differences in size, value, colour, and type

(Farley 2009). The Westpac documents use three ways to create contrast. It colours

different elements by red, white, and dark purple, it also arranges words with three

different typefaces and three different sizes. It is clearly creating great contrast

between logo, address, head, and other words. In short, Westpac's documents are

successfully on contrast that is attractive to the eye.

Repetition is repeating elements of design, such as using the same colours, styles,

shapes, or other elements and principles throughout a document. The repetitive visual

elements may be bold fonts, lines, colours, shapes, logos, particular format, etc. It

can be anything that readers will visually recognize and make the whole design tend to

unify the total effect of a work and create good corporate identity (Bear 2009). Three

documents of Westpac repeats its logo, colours and typefaces. According to the

documents in appendix and repetition principle, the logo of Westpac is repeating on

business card, both sides of brochure and the left corner of envelope, the colours of

logo, words and background also are repeated in three documents, and the repetitive

element in business card is the repetition of the strong, bold typeface between address

and the name of banker. All in all, the repetition of these documents is not redundant

but is sufficient for helping establish a unified, cohesive look, and creating good

corporate identity.

Alignment is one of the most basic and important principles of design that results to

create order and organisation among elements. It allows elements to create a visual

connection with each other and makes design become more ordered and clearly. Alignment

can be visual and textual, visual alignment means all elements should be aligned to at

least on other element on the page; textual alignment means the alignment can be left,

or right aligned, centred or justified (Hortin 2009). The business card of Westpac is

aligned centrally. Although a centred alignment often appears a bit weak with a 'soft'

edge and a weak line, it is more suitable for Westpac's business card. Because, it uses

a short logo as a head that can achieve balance better than left or right aligned. All

elements are left aligned for envelope is more suitable than right alignment, centred

or justified, because the white space is used for writing details of receiver and

creating a asymmetrical balance. Also in the brochure, logo and text elements are

respectively aligned as left and right alignment, that creates asymmetrical balance.

Proximity means relative elements should be placed near each other and form part of a

group that will become one visual unit rather than several separate units. That will

help organise information, reduce clutter, and give the reader a clear structure.

Therefore, readers can easily start and finish reading. However, proximity doesn't mean

all elements have to be placed together, it means they should be visually connected in

some way like colour, size, or font etc. Then, unity can be achieved by using relative

elements to connect different parts (Farley 2009). The documents from Westpac allocates

all elements well by using proximity design principles. All three documents can be

easily started reading from left to right and finished from up to down, although the

brochure's font and logo are separate.

Logo design & consistency

The logo is a mark or icon which identifies a business in its simplest form. It is a

symbolism for the identification of company or organisation, it likes a name of

people. However, a logo is not just a icon, it reflects a company or organisation's

brand and inspiring trust, recognition and admiration for a company. Therefore, a good

logo must be simple, memorable, timeless, versatile and appropriate (Cass 2008).

According to K.I.S.S. Principle, simple logo will be easily recognised, memorable and

the most effective in conveying the requirements of client. The logo of Westpac bank is

simple and not overcrowd that allows customers recognise easily and makes the logo be

versatile and memorable. It represents a distinctive culture, the logo W means Westpac

Bank that implied its name in logo. It is a transformation from company name into a

logo that will be easily memorable. According to the result of researching logos of

Westpac, the logo of Westpac has barely changed since 1982. That means its logo is

timeless. In addition, It is not a extremely tall or wide logo and works well in all

sizes and clear in all situations. So that, this logo is versatile. The logo 'W' is

appropriate for its intended purpose because of the meaning of this letter (W).

Therefore, the logo of Westpac is effective, memorable, versatile and appropriate for

this corporation.

According to these documents, they use the same business logo, Typeset the logo and

other elements in a fixed fashion, choose a couple of typefaces and using them all the

time. Moreover, the corporate colour of Westpac is red and is used as the dominant

colour scheme throughout its materials—printed or online. Also, the visual elements are

consistent used across its documents. The design systems that are similar throughout

all of three documents. From a business card to an educational brochure, the elements

are always the same.

Target Audience

Target audience is a specific group of people within the target market at which a

product or the marketing message of a product is aimed at. According to brochure of

Westpac, personal, kids, youth, student and company are all included in its target into

four segments, the upper-class segment, the middle class segment, the working class

segment and the lower class segment. Westpac transforming banks to be customer centricand gives a guide in brochure for different kinds of customers. The ‘customer centric’

strategy focuses on directly fulfilling customer needs which relates to the majority of

people, visually attract their attention with providing elaborate service to them.

Therefore, it has a broad range of customers.

Corporate Identity

Corporate identity is the overall image of a company in the minds of diverse publics,

it is usually visibly manifested by way of branding and the use of trademarks.

Corporate identity is a common ownership of an organizational philosophy and a

corporate culture which shows to publics. In general, it is a corporate title, logo and

guidelines (Knapp 2001). The brochure shows the ‘customer centric’ strategy which

focuses on directly fulfilling customer needs. Westpac Bank is focus on providing

financial service to all classes of people and companies. Also, the logo of Westpac

Bank is clearly shows it supports financial service to all customers in Western

Pacific.

Colour

In the documents of Westpac, they use red in logo which is a warm colour, and use dark

purple for font which is a cool colour. This is additive colour system and caused a bit

visual vibration when it presents in documents. It is harmonious in visual sense. Red

is associated with excitement and danger in Western culture that results the logo of

Westpac to be conspicuous. Warm colours are colours whose relative visual temperaturemakes them seem warm. This positive attributes of these colours include love, passion,

heat, joy, and power that will attract people's attention. Although the dark purple is

a cool colour, it is not overpowering and tend to recede in space. It is adjacent

colour to red which next to each other on the colour wheel. Therefore, these two

colours can work well together and create contrast in a certain extent.

Typography

Typography in design means the visual communication from calligraphy to the ever-

developing use of digital type is the broad use of the term typography. It encompasses

many separate fields from the type design of letterforms, graphic, and arranging

different typefaces on the page (Bear 2009). The documents of Westpac complete set of

letterforms in a particular typeface, the font style of some parts is serif and other

parts is sans serif. Shadow, outline and underlined text are never appeared in

documents that is comfortable for reading. It uses three different types on the same

page and uses both warm colour and cool colour together that creates contrast. The

heading and following fonts use different type size and typefaces, it makes a

distinction between the important information and the lesser one. Moreover, the space

between letters and other elements are not loose or tight. The business card of Westpac

is aligned centrally, alignment of envelope and brochure create asymmetrical balance.

The line length in three documents are optimum (letters no more than 45). All in all,

these documents can be considered as nice design because they do not have straight

quotes, double returns, grey boxes behind text, word art, clip art, all caps problems,

etc.

Conclusion

To conclude, the design of three documents of Westpac Bank mainly followed six design

principles. It successfully arranged all elements in design and created clearly and

concisely business documents for Westpac Bank. The logo design is simple, memorable,

timeless, versatile, appropriate and consistent with Westpac's target and corporate

identity. The general typography of three documents is distinctive, appropriate,

practical, graphic, simple in form and conveys an intended message.

References:

Bear JH, 2009, 'Repetition', Desktop Publishing Glossary, viewed 27 August 2013,

<http://desktoppub.about.com/od/glossary/g/Repetition.htm>.

Bear JH, 2009, 'Typography', Desktop Publishing Glossary, viewed 29 August 2013,

<http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/basic/g/typography.htm>.

Cass J, 2008, 'How to Design A Logo', viewed 28 August 2013,

<http://justcreative.com/2008/01/08/how-to-design-a-logo/>.

Color Matters, 2013, 'How the Eye Sees Color', viewed 29 August 2013

<http://www.colormatters.com/color-and-vision/how-the-eye-sees-color>.

Farley J, 2009, 'Principles of Design: Contrast', viewed 27 August 2013,

<http://www.sitepoint.com/principles-of-design-contrast/>.

Farley J, 2009, 'Principles of Design: Proximity', viewed 27 August 2013,

<http://www.sitepoint.com/principles-of-design-proximity/>.

Hortin A, 2009, 'The 5 Basic Principles Of Design', viewed 27 August 2013

<http://maddisondesigns.com/2009/03/the-5-basic-principles-of-design/>.

Jirousek C, 1995, ‘Principles of Design’, Art, Design, and Visual Thinking, Viewed 26

August 2013, <http://char.txa.cornell.edu/language/principl/principl.htm>.

Jones H, 2010, 'Whitespace: The Underutilized Design Element', viewed 27 August 2013,

<http://webdesignledger.com/tips/whitespace-the-underutilized-design-element>.

Knapp PM, Evans J, Cullen CD, 2001, 'Designing Corporate Identity: graphic design as a

business strategy', Rockport Publishers, ISBN 1-56496-797-2.

Westpac Banking Corporation, 2013, ‘Company overview’, viewed 26 August 2013,

<http://www.westpac.com.au/about-westpac/westpac-group/company-overview/>.

Appendix:

Business documents

Assessment 1feedback

Desktop Publishing for Business INFS 2032Assignment 1: Individual Minor Project, 25% weighting overall.

Key assignment criteria

Performance(note: each section is not equally weighted)

Comments

PoorBelowAverag

e

Average

AboveAverag

eGood

Business documentsPresentation

Report

Design Principles

Logo design & consistency

Target Audience

Corporate Identity

Colour

Typography

Submission

Referencing

Grammar& Spelling

Assignment grade:

Marking Guideline

Business documents /10

Presentation /20

Report

Design Principles /25

Logo design & consistency /10

Target Audience /5

Corporate Identity /5

Colour /5

Typography /5

Submission

Referencing /10

Grammar /5