Design Theories

When it came to designing the booklet it was very important to focus on how the design itself looks, and this actually far more complicated then it sees.
Graphic Design uses the key art elements of:
Line
Colour
Shape
Texture 
Space
Form
Typography
How these are all combine can come up with completely different designs, even if the designer only changes one of the elements, so it's important to pay attention to how they are all used and combined. 

In a booklet especially, the placement of things and the space and form of it is very key to the layout. If there is a key, eye-catching element is on the right and pointing right, then they will look straight to that and then off of the page. It is key to ensure that not only are they in the right place but they are pointing in the right direction, imagine it like an arrow that's guiding your eyes on where to look.
The focal point of the design, if you chose to have one comes off as the main point of the design. Emphasis to it is achieved by a combination of, position, rhythm, colour contrast, typeface weights and styles. This is why things like titles tend to be larger in both size and weight, as it will draw the readers eye to it first, as well as being clearer to read.
A page doesn't need a specific focal point, but it's important to think about how it looks without one, and if there is actually an element that overwhelms the others and comes off as a focal point. In general a page covered with text and images, the images will become the main focal points of the pages, this is why in general for my design I've either tried to have them at both the top and bottom of the page or just the bottom. This is due to the fact the eyes will be drawn to the image and when they're at the bottom it draws you all the way from the title at the top to the image at the bottom, and the viewer should then take all of the text in. 

The combination of these elements also changes how the design is read in in audience manner, the use of colours is one of the most obvious of these, something with lots of bright and vibrant colours will come off more like it's for children, where as something with blacks and whites and more neutrals come off as more grown-up and serious. Just changing the colours and some slight shape of a design can completely change the audience it attracts, whether it be the target audience or not, and if the content doesn't match the people it attracts, then it's not very good at all.

With my design in general, I stuck to a lot of white space to give the design a sort of breathing room, as well as a red and gold colour scheme. This was important to me, both because they are two very traditional colours in Asian media, and the colours really symbolise the hotter country, but also because of the sort of audience this would attract.
Red is a very vibrant colours so is aimed at a younger audience, however gold, especially if not overused, attracts a slightly older audience, combining the two, especially with this pattern attracts a young adult group. A design that is more minimalistic is defiantly more attractive to older people, so including the bright images of the animals helps balance it out more, especially including the illustration of the animals; as illustrations in that style tend to be considered more on the childish line. 



After having it reviewed with my peers as well as some older people outside of my target audience, they agree that these design elements work for my target audience and expected it to be aimed at that sort of age range. Which is good as the general population would be the ones seeing this.
To test this further I also printed it out, to ensure that all of the colours worked when printed and not just on a screen, which will show colours slightly differently due to how the screens work. I am more then satisfied with this, especially on the ad page, where I was a little worried that the image affect wouldn't work well enough and cause the text to be hard to read, but luckily it isn't.