Exercise – Logotypes

Logotypes

A confectionary company has asked you to present some ideas for a new range of chocolate bars. They are looking for logotypes and decorative typography that can capture a sense of the unique qualities of each of the bars.

AZTEC GOLD

First, I pulled apart the name and what the words meant to me, I looked up Aztec patterns and they were in keeping with my impressions of stone brick temples and pyramids that came to mind. I looked up ‘fragments’ and found image of the same name by an artist called Brooke Boothe (ref below) that fit perfectly with its angles and bright colours. I also found an image of honeycomb to create a colour palette.

SKETCHBOOK

Then I moved onto working digitally.

PROGRESS PICTURES (screenshots)

I couldn’t find a typeface as a starting point, so I created the letters out of squares. I Wanted to make a pattern to fill the letters and made a honeycomb with a blend of colours but when I put it into the shapes, it just looked spotty, you couldn’t see the shapes. And the 3D effect just looked like a glitch, so I went back to the idea of fragments. I kept a hex shape as the base, but broke it into pieces and shifted them around. The colours were all picked from the honeycomb image. This worked well and I created a 3D effect by putting a copy of the letter shapes below.

     

I was keen to keep a ‘stone’ effect in keeping with the idea of temples. I used a vector to overlay like a filter, but it just looked grubby.

       

FINAL AZTEC GOLD LOGOTYPE

Placed on a stone coloured background with a subtle transparent grunge vector filter.

HIGH TEA BISCUITS

SKETCHBOOK – brainstorm and ideas

RESEARCH

M&S and National Trust biscuit ranges, tea cup image ref below, gold bullion for colour ref.

I like the idea of the quaint little tea cups, they’re predominantly white with dainty floral designs and gold leaf detail. It’s the type of thing we had when we went to afternoon tea with my Granny. I also wanted to reference the time of day that high tea is/was taken by fitting a clock into the design.

It was hard to fit the floral detail into the narrow spaces of the letters, so I tried out a floral pattern using elements from Creative Market by Twigs and Twine.

PROGRESS PICTURES – screenshots

I used Nomah Script-Light as a basis for the typeface. I wanted it to be a tall composition to reflect the word ‘high’. I came up with an idea to put the words around a clockface, but was keen to just use letters with added detail, I didn’t feel that using images was true to the brief. This made this particular design quite a challenge for me.

I found that simply adding a pattern didn’t really cut it – It looks like a pattern you’d see on an outdated sofa. It needed to be toned down and to include white.

FINAL HIGH TEA BISCUITS LOGOTYPE

POW MILK BAR!

SKETCHBOOK – brainstorms

RESEARCH (references below)

SKETCHBOOK

My image of this was to follow the theme of the comedic ‘fight scenes’ in comic books, I wanted it to be bold and simple, I drew the lettering for ‘POW’ in illustrator

PROGRESS PICTURES – screenshots

As much as I like the fist as the ‘o’, I also liked the simplicity of the word ‘pow’, I moved the exclamation to the end of the word rather than the sentence, for more impact.

I also wanted the design to look worn, so I included a filter to give the effect.

FINAL POW! MILK BAR LOGOTYPE

REFLECTION

This was quite a fun exercise, I enjoy working with type. The High Tea Biscuit was really challenging and I think it shows. I followed my design process but I’m not keen on the result, I can’t pinpoint what it is about it, maybe the colour of the flowers in the pattern? I’m not sure. Maybe it will become clear if I return to it at a later date. I’m pleased with the pattern for the Aztec Gold bar, I think it captures all elements in a complementary way. And I love the POW! Milk Bar, it was fun to make and fulfils the brief.

REFERENCES

Brooke Boothe, (Unknown), Fragments [ONLINE]. Available at: https://www.decalgirl.com/artwork/5386/fragments [Accessed 12 February 2017]

more-sky.com, (unknown), Honeycomb Wallpaper #24095 [ONLINE]. Available at: http://more-sky.com/WDF-190648.html [Accessed 12 February 2017].

Unknown, (unknown), high-tea [ONLINE]. Available at: https://twofatblokes.com.au/high-tea-spring-special/ [Accessed 13 February 2017].

Roy Lichtenstein, (1963), Whaam! [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/images/work/T/T00/T00897_10.jpg [Accessed 16 February 2017].

Roy Lichtenstein, (unknown), Oh my god I’m so retro [ONLINE]. Available at: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/200691727123868395/ [Accessed 16 February 2017]

Claes Oldenburg, (2010), Mistos [ONLINE]. Available at: https://photobarcelona.wordpress.com/2010/04/07/giants-matches-mistos-sculpture-claes-oldenburg-la-vall-dhebron-barcelona/ [Accessed 16 February 2017].

Unknown, (2017), selection of retro sweets and chocolates from the 1960’s [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.allsorts4u.co.uk/storepage142486.aspx [Accessed 16 February 2017].

BlueG, (unknown), Retro cartoon comic with humerous shouts reminiscent of the caped crusader [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.blueg.com/gallery/themes/home/?cat=gaming&name=retro-comic-shout [Accessed 16 February 2017].

Exercise – Logo Worksheets

Logo Worksheets

Find a wide range of insignia, emblems, badges and other forms of logos, draw them and highlight their basic shapes, noting dominant elements and components.

Use one or more logo to explore the visual possibilities.

Sketches and notes on a range of logos.

After noting some very general obsevations, I moved onto illustrator to play with a few logos to see how using different shapes as a basis would work with each one. I chose one that used letterfoms, one that used a letter and a shape, and one that was made up of shapes to see how these different components affected the outcome.

(observation notes on individual pages)

VW

Famous Stars and Straps

Olympics

In a time when printed media dominated, I think that the overall shapes that a logo formed would dictact it’s application, for example; a landscape rectangle would work better than a circle for a letterhead. Space on a page needed to be utilised as best as possible. In a digital world, this isn’t necessarily the case. There are limitations when setting profile pictures and cover images or banners but white space isn’t wasted, in that it wouldn’t cost money or the environment. That said, a poorly fitted profile image or banner is not good for business. A logo needs to be flexible – to fit into a circle, square and rectangle, or be adapted to these shapes in order to meet all criteria. I’d suggest that this would now be the case for printed media, we are so over stimulated/bombarded with products that people are looking for new ways/places to appear in the physical world, so their brands must remain flexible in the same way as above.

 

Reflection

I wasn’t sure if I was meant to be coming up with new logos or playing with the ones that exist, I went with the latter. It was interesting to see how the logos worked (or didn’t) when forced into different shapes. A logo is only a part of a brand, I think a sign of a good logo is to be able to alter it to fit multiple applications without losing its identity.

Exercise – Altered Pamphlet

Altered Pamphlet

A local university gallery is hosting an exhibition on artists’ book and fanzines and asks you to produce a small pamphlet. Consider the spirit of the artists’ work, the materials and be playful in approach.

The pamphlet should highlight 6 different artisits’ book or fanzines, artists or collectives that you’ve personally reasearched and selected as wellas some details about the university gallery and when it’s taking place.

Artists’ books are not something that I’ve particularly come acrross before, so I decided to look into them, it’s something I found interesting and very diverse, so chose 6 artists’ books for my pamphlet.

Research and Notes

I decided to choose Jeanie Meejin Yoon over Harriet Bart, because I think her use of ‘absence’ is more interesting. I also omitted Tom Burtonwood’s work because it doesn’t fit with the other artists’ I chose, and was based on another designer.

Pamphlet design research

I needed to consider the tools I had available. I already knew that the page for J.M Yoon was going to have the letters punched out and the range for this is limiting (as in I can only punch the letters near the edge.)

I also needed to think about the actual content and how many pages/leaves I needed to include all the information.

Mock ups

I really liked the idea of having seperate cards for each book, they could be double sided and different shapes, then clip together like a festival guide. But rereading the brief it talked about he folds, and I was concerned that it wouldn’t be a ‘pamphlet’ if I went down that path. Also, this kind of thing needs to produced over and over to hand out to people, and a university would want to keep costs low, it would potentially be a time consuming expensive design.

I decided to go with the cross shaped design. I want each leaf to be a design in it’s own right, this allows for that and for me to punck holes in the leaf that opens out into two for Yoon’s book. It also means that each artist has an equal amount of space.

Brainstorms for each design

 

I wanted the leaflet to reflect the main features I picked out from the books. There was a strong feeling of handmade, collage, mixed media. I scanned in different textured papers, items I had lying around, and took some photos either for reference or to photoshop and add to my designs. I was considering handmade collages, but again, the practicality of reproducing that could be an issue, so once I had all the elements, I put them together digitally.

Each leaf had the artist, book name and a quote to explain the content. The ‘title’ page is an imalgamation of of all the artists, with a collage/found object feel.

Final design/prototype

The reverse needs to printed upsidedown to look right when folded.

Final Pamphlet

 

 

 

Reflection

I was surprised to find that I really enjoyed this exercise. I got to look into something I’ve not looked at before (artists’ books) and I think physically playing/experimenting with paper led to the most practical solution without settling for the most obvious. I have made mock ups in this wayin the past, but it’s not regular practice. My final pice looks really varied, I think I have captured an elemant of each artist/book. It was fun to do something other than a design on a flat piece of paper/screen. I’m happy with the outcome.

 

 

 

 

 

Exercise – All the World’s a Stage

All the World’s a Stage

A regional arts company wants you to design a poster that reflects a sense of being in a real space through your typography and connects the theme of the production to the location they’ve chosen.

Try to create some sort of conceptual connection between the materials and the content of the production.

Research and Notes

I had a look at 3D typography, I was already familiar with Sagmeister’s work, so wanted to look at some different examples.

I also had a look at how others had gone about interpreting Frankenstein into posters

I love the twelfth night poster, it’s a brilliant idea. Collage seems to fit the subject perfectly, I’d like to incorporate it into my design somehow.

I went out to a local castle and took photos with an idea to use pictures from different perspectives to create a collage of the ruin as a whole. I also created the letters for the title with nuts and bolts. Below is a selection of the photos I took.

Process

I tried different effects and layouts with what I had, I knew that I wanted something dark and bleak, but didn’t want to lose all detail, because the castle is beautiful, and I think that needed to show.

(Screenshots)

At this stage, I realised that the type and the image were not working together, and my attempts at a digital collage were not very effective. I had reached the decision to use just one image, because multiple images looked too disjointed.

The photos I took of the lettering were too dark, so I went back and retook them so that I could remove all background/shadows. This would allow me to place individual letters. I then printed out and ripped up the photo of the castle, and loosely taped them back together.

I had to rethink the composition.

 

Final Piece

 

Reflection

My final poster is a lot simpler than I had originally planned, but I think that it actually works well. The tape on the ripped photo is a clear nod to something being crudely put back together. The type also worked well, once I had taken better photos that allowed me to place them around the line of the castle. The composition gives the impression of a ominous, looming figure. I left space at the bottom for other  relevent info.

I found this exercise quite hard because the ideas I had were not ones that went together very easily, but I think I got there in the end and fulfilled the criteria set out in the brief.

 

Exercise – Your Manifesto

Your Manifesto

Develop a manifesto that celebrates and visually presents your position on reading, typography or any other graphic design and book related activity. This could explore readingn and legibility as well as reading and the idea of the text. Typeset it to reflect your position. 

Research and notes

 

I decided that my manifest owould be based on my preferences on poster/advert based typography. To cover my reading preferences as well would make it too cluttered and would potentially contradict the design.

Content ideas

 

Putting it together…

some of my sketches didn’t seem to translate very well once I started to put them together.

First mock up

 

Although all my ideas are here, it doesn’t look finished – there could be more detail and the composition is weak. And I saved it in the wrong colour format.

Final Manifesto

Reflection

The hardest part of this was putting into words, my preferences and deciding which were the most relevent. Having ideas that cover different topics and making them fit together was also quite challenging, as my first mock up shows. I enjoyed seeing what topics had been covered and how it had been tackled during my research. It was a useful exercise, and one that may be worth revisiting further down the line to see how my views and abilities have progressed.

Response to Tutor Feedback

A very general summary is that the content is good, but the rest is messy. It lacks any form of hieracrhy and is too busy. After being away from it for a while, I’m inlcined to agree. I was drawn to the Dali manifesto in my research but his has a structure that mine lacks. I created a very basic grid, and stuck with a simple typeface that was more fitting to what I was actually saying. I placed this simple list version onto a ‘notebook’ texture*, which is how I plan out my work on paper anyway. It’s in keeping with my style of working and easier to read.

*

Fuzzimo, (2009), Notebook Texture 03 [ONLINE]. Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/fuzzimo/3887252883 [Accessed 10 February 2017].

 

 

Exercise – Envelope Patterns

Envelope Patterns

A stationary company wants you to create a new line of envelopes that puts a modern twist on the tradition of having a single coloured pattern on the inside of an envelope. The company wants a series of pattern designs that go beyond the need to simply protect the contents of the letter.

Create at least 3 or 4 different designs.

Research

I chose 4 different pattern designers and noted what made their styles stand out. I wanted to use my main observations as a basis for my designs.

Based on my research, I set out to create 4 different designs:

1. Floral/organic
2. Modern/clear
3. Busy repetition/detailed
4. Clear, grid based/geometric shapes

1.

I sketched some individual elements to use base my patterns on, then traced over them in illustrator so that I could place them in different ways to create the best pattern.

Process

I followed the same process with my other ideas. I created a couple of different designs for each category to see which worked best.

2.

These designs work better with no stroke/outline and a background colour.

3.

For these to work, I needed to create a pattern with the images then create a pattern from that pattern.

 

4.

I think the cubes work the best here, but they are not original, so I needed to come up with shapes that would tesalate well with each other.

 

Mock Ups

 

Reflection

I really enjoyed this project, I liked seeing all of the elements come together, but it was VERY time-consuming.

I think that how well some of the patterns work would be dependent on the size of the envelopes – the ants or the lady birds would need to be on an envelope that is at least A5.

It was hard to choose just one design from each category.

I think the poppies worked well, but next to the water lilies, they look a little old-fashioned.

The space theme is quite childish and may not appeal to as many people as the outdoor theme (flowers and kites), which could have different coloured backgrounds.

The beetles and ants work well, as do the diamonds and coloured stars.

I’m happy with my designs, and think that they fulfilled the brief.

 

 

Exercise – Soviet Remakes

Soviet Remakes

A film festival in Poland has asked you to redesign movie posters in the style of Soviet film posters.

Choose a classic film to work with and develop a range of posters that exploits the visual dynamics that Soviet designers employed.

Notes on brief and research:

My research showed that the designers used a limited palette, there is very little text, the focus is on very bold, basic imagery and white space.

I chose Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, because the eerie, dark story fits well with the style of poster.

Research of existing film posters:

The simple designs (yellow and black, and red and black) are a good pathway between the original and the ideas of Soviet design.

Sketchbook

From my sketch brainstorm, my ideas were to have a manipulated/simplified photo from the film, with simple geometric shapes (to represent HAL 9000 and the monolith)  and necessary text, then play with the compostion.

Process

Simplifying Keir in his space helmet using image trace

Added to simple shapes and block colour:

Using other scenes/characters. I wanted to use characters because my research had shown faces/characters in nearly all of them, but mine did seem to recreate the Soviet style design.

I’d also tried to play with the placement of the text.

Use of greyscale image….

A different character….

At this stage, I felt that I was going around in circles. The fundamental elements of my designs were wrong, so no amount of recomposition was going to help. I went back and looked at more Soviet movie posters. They were more basic than I had appreciated before. The work of the Stenberg Brothers was more detailed and colourful, and conflicted with my idea of  what I was trying to acheive.

Notes on (lack of) progress

Posterised versions of characters

The application also allowed me choose the palette and the level of detail included. These are more fitting for my purpose.

On closer inspection in Illustrator, Poole floating in space was not clear enough to use, and Dullea was barely recognisable, but I thought I would try to use him anyway.

The Dullea poster is the closest in style so far, but the image of Keir is clearer and stronger. THe change of typeface has worked well.

I tried to pare down the detail in the Keir poster (HAL) and played with the composition of both, to see what would have a better effect.

 

Reflection

This exercise was harder than I thought it was going to be. Mimicking such a strong and recognisable style was a slow trial and error process for me which led me to go back the drawing board and change my path. I stuck with my ideas of what was to be included because I felt my main challenge was getting the style right over exploring other elements that could be included.

I’m still trying to extend my use of my sketchbook, again, there is still room for further use/exploration but I’m still using it more than I was in the previous unit.

 

 

 

 

Exercise – A Sense of Space

A Sense of Space

Using family photos, find ways of intergrating typography that describes the people and locations of the photos. Try a range of different approaches.

Notes and Research

Jack’s Bar

David Carson

Raynal Pellicer

Adding typography to my photos:

(Left: Original, Right: Edited)

Reflection

This was a fun exercise, Some ideas worked out better than others. I especially like the R Pellicer style photo of River, I think it worked really well. I think the least interesting ones are the basic annoted ones, like Jesse in the hippo and River at the station, though they are clear and serve their purpose. I was really looking forward to doing the picture on Scarfel Pike, but I think the contrast in background colours left me a little more limited than I had hoped with the placement of the text – that style of text looks a lot better when its a much larger size over the picture.

 

Exercise – Travel

Travel

A magazine called Travel has asked you to create a grid system to support the layout of photos, content and details about destinations across a range of pages.The clients want the magazine to feel more like a coffee table book or journal or journal rather than a throw away magazine.

Notes on brief and research

I looked up travel magazines and books to get an idea of how their layouts work. They all look like they’re trying to fit a lot of info into the space they have. The one that stood out the most to me for their minimalistic approach is the ‘another escape’ range of covers. I think that I need to aim for a middle ground – fitting in  plenty of information without over crowding he page.

More notes on research and ideas for grids/measurements:

I decided that the clearest way of seeing what will work is to make the mock ups on my mac.

4 columns looks like it will be too busy, so I prefer the 3 column mock up.

I decided to centralise the margins because I think that it looks a little more modern. The margins are quite big, so the content will still be visible.

I placed text, pictures and tables onto the grid to see the different ways it can be used – different pages show how different elements can dominate the page and still use the grid. I used filler text and images from a family holiday in Morzine, France and Snowdonia.

Reflection

I felt really limited with this exercise – it’s not particularly something I’ve explored in any detail before, so it is very basic. A lot of my time was spend watching tutorials on how to make grids, so I have learned something, but my use of the grids I created shows that I’m a novice. With more experience, I imagine that I’ll become more adventerous. I read that some designers struggle with the uses of grid systems because they can become quite restrictive. That said I have seen many interesting magazine layouts that I think have followed a grid.

Exercise – White Space

White Space

The Space Gallery has asked you to prepare an art catalogue fora forthcoming rerospective of an artist of your choice. The catalogue should highlight who the artist is, their work and titles and a short bio. It should also reflect the gallery’s ‘white cube’ status.

 

 

How other designers and artists use white/negative space: my notes on examples of work.

I think that the Nike ad is the most interesting use of space, it allows the words to overlap and sit at different orientations and remain legible and eye catching.

 

Choosing an artist:

I immediatley thought of a couple of artists that I thought would fit well into a white cube style gallery, but wondered if they were a little too obvious. I Eventually found an artist whose work was a lot more rugged and organic, which I decided would look good against a stark white setting.

Next I needed to learn more about catalogues, how they displayed work, what was included etc.

Examples of a catalogue for Derek Hyatt from The Space Gallery: This catalogue has less images than some of the others I looked at, but the pictures are large. The text also has a lot of room on the page.

Screen shots from White Space Gallery web catalogue. Again there is only the absolute necessary on the page – Images, titles, bio and exhibition history.

Now I felt like I had the tools and knowledge I needed, I went back to my chosen artist and started looking for biography info and work, then put together a rough plan for the catalogue to establish how many pages and pieces of artwork I would include, and looked at what information I needed and where/how it would be included. I used Saatchi Art to source my info on Jover. http://www.saatchiart.com/louijover

Loui Jover

I decided that I wanted to design a 20 page catalogue, including 15 pices of Jover’s work.

Progress:

Screen shots from my mac whilst placing elements of the catalogue. Some of the pages look a bit cluttered, so I removed two of the images to make more space for the others.

 

Loui Jover Catalogue

Front cover

Facing pages

Back cover

 

Reflection

This was a really interesting exercise, it involved more research than design work which I think is good practice for me. I focused on sketchbook work again and found that it took a lot of time off of the computer based design. I also got to use a programme that I haven’t had much experience with (Indesign). I still needed to adjust my ideas and design when it came to putting it all together in order to better suit the brief. I’m pleased with the outcome.

Response to Tutor Feedback

Unfortunately, my tutor could not view my work clearly, but he suggested that my text was too large and that I could have been more adventerous with how I designed my catalogue. Both valid points. I made the text smaller on each page and it does seem to be more in keeping with the brief. As far as being more adventerous, I had an idea of what the brief meant to me and how I wanted the final piece to come across – I’m happy that I achieved my vision and that I learned a little about a new program. Given a little more experience, yes, my grid and layout could be expanded upon.

Louis Jover Catalogue (v2)