A month and a half had passed since the last meeting, and the third meeting of the Moripass Club for the third term was held at the end of July. With feedback from the designers and writers who participated as Moripass Club advisors and mentors, the work was polished towards completion. Here is a report on the final meeting before submission!

Please click here to see the situation in Kansai, where the event is being held at the same time.

Harsh feedback from the instructor made me realize the difference between "communicating" and "being understood"

The third meeting was held after the students had submitted the data they had created up to this point to the instructors. This was an important day for receiving feedback from the instructors and for them to begin the final polishing process before submitting the data.

Joining the mentors from today are designer Uchida and writer Arai. These two creators with extensive practical experience will provide advice on how to create "communicative pages."

First, the Kanto team's advisor, Mr. Hashizume, who had checked the team's progress so far, gave some harsh feedback.

"Do the visuals communicate? Do the words really get the message across? Stopping to reassess will improve the quality. Think about who you are making it for, and make it something that will make students want to pick it up at first glance."

He speaks with the belief that things will only get better, having observed the process of creating the pages up to this point. After commenting on the booklet as a whole, he gives specific advice to each team. If we compare reporting to cooking, the process is like gathering the ingredients. The editing process from here on involves the "cooking" of how to prepare the ingredients and what flavors to add.

Next, the Moripass team members, who received feedback, shared what they had been thinking about when they created the site, and what kind of improvements they plan to make in the future.

"I had originally planned to include a table of contents on the cover, but I changed the page layout so as not to disrupt the worldview of the illustrations and the words 'love at first sight'. However, this alone doesn't convey the message, so I'm thinking of adding an outline of the special feature in a woman's own words," she commented.

Next, the feature, advertising, and editorial teams presented their own ideas for improving the booklet. However, working on the booklet individually will not lead to improvements across the board. In particular, the mentors provided feedback on how to create a sense of overall balance and unity.

"For example, the visual page. Although it's supposed to be a completely different project from the pages before and after, it ends up looking like part of the interview page from the first half. It might be a good idea to discuss this with other teams and make corrections."

As each page nears completion, new challenges arise. How will Moripass members overcome them?

Final brush-up before submission. Some teams make major changes to their plans.

After receiving the feedback, it was time to polish up the designs. Designer Uchida and writer Arai went around to each team, sharing their ideas to solve their problems.

First, Uchida-san visited the special feature team.
"Have you seen the website of Omizo, the person I interviewed? It's a cool page. His work is also introduced in the special feature page, but I wonder if it really conveys the quality of his work?"
He commented.

Feature page headline

He shows us that narrowing down the number of works and showing each one more carefully will make the page more appealing, and then sketches out layout ideas on the spot.

Writer Arai called out to the cover team, saying, "Is this the best format for the table of contents? Since you have the concept of 'falling in love with the words at first sight,' I think it would be good to standardize the table of contents and writing style to fit that concept."

He suggested a way to give the booklet a cohesive look, and advised that the table of contents can act as a guide for production, as it involves all pages.

Table of contents page proposal. The team discussed what the role of this page is and what information is needed to achieve it.

The team, which interviewed typeface designer Chikao Ito, is currently discussing how to present visuals to introduce the Shaded Mincho font. Should they make the visuals smaller and increase the amount of text, or should they try to convey the message more through photographs? This is a difficult decision, especially since there is so much they want to communicate.

Nakamura-kun from our team wrote a novel to match the image of the shading Mincho font. This was an elaborate project in which the novel was printed using letterpress printing and photographed.

The typeface research team received feedback that "It's a really great page, but the title is a shame. I think it would be better to adjust the wording so that it's clear what kind of interview it is," and they brainstormed ideas on which aspects of the project they should emphasize in order to reach readers.

An interview page with the typeface research team. Thinking about how to create an entrance to a page that piques the reader's interest.

Each team took their mentor's words seriously, and the discussion time ended before they knew it. It seemed that 90 minutes was not enough time to explore how to reflect their growing ideas on the page. Afterwards, each team reflected on the day's work and presented their findings, bringing the day's session to a close.

Advisor Hashizume, who was watching the brush-up work,
"It's important to try to land well, but I'd like to see them push a little harder to improve the level of completion. At this point, it's difficult to make decisions one by one, but it's important to take the initiative and make changes.
All the past Moripass Club graduates have used this booklet as their portfolio. It would be a loss if we cut corners. We're almost there, but let's do our best until the end."
He sends a strict yet warm message to the team members.

Let's unite to submit our manuscript!

Even after the meeting ended, all the teams seemed to still have more to discuss and continued working at the venue. There is one month until submission. Perhaps feeling a sense of urgency about the approaching deadline through today's meeting, the members' eyes were full of seriousness. What kind of pages will be produced?

The next meeting will be held in September after the booklet is completed. We will report on the presentations, so please look forward to it!