For this brief we had to trace one of our letters based on a word (dissect) in illustrator and make 26 variations.
Some of the designs and experimentation.
Showing posts with label OUGD101. Show all posts
Showing posts with label OUGD101. Show all posts
Saturday, 21 November 2009
Alphabet Soup - Illustrator Brief
For this brief we had to trace one of our letters based on a word (dissect) in illustrator and make 26 variations.
Some of the designs and experimentation.
Friday, 20 November 2009
No News Is Good News - Mailshot - response to feedback and development
After my final crit on thursday, I decided to act on some of the feedback which I was given by amber and the others in the group.
The general feel was that the mailshot I produced carried out its message clearly... however there were a few design and layout problems... which i totally agreed with.
The envelope itself... with the pouch in the center, restricted the size of the cards which were contained. This, in turn made the text on the cards look too clustered and not simple enough for my liking (too much type, not enough space). I had also been looking at the same thing for so long that I hadn't noticed slight spelling errors and i had written "you are an addiction" rather than "you are an addict.
So i was advised to just make a larger fold on the bottom to just keep the cards on the inside... rather than keep them in a pouch of their own.
This is the final result of re-visited envelope design...
Alongside with the orginal imagery I used... i was thinking of creating some more to go alongside them in reaction to some feedback I received in the crit... however i didn't end up using them in the final design...
The general feel was that the mailshot I produced carried out its message clearly... however there were a few design and layout problems... which i totally agreed with.
The envelope itself... with the pouch in the center, restricted the size of the cards which were contained. This, in turn made the text on the cards look too clustered and not simple enough for my liking (too much type, not enough space). I had also been looking at the same thing for so long that I hadn't noticed slight spelling errors and i had written "you are an addiction" rather than "you are an addict.
So i was advised to just make a larger fold on the bottom to just keep the cards on the inside... rather than keep them in a pouch of their own.
This is the final result of re-visited envelope design...
Alongside with the orginal imagery I used... i was thinking of creating some more to go alongside them in reaction to some feedback I received in the crit... however i didn't end up using them in the final design...
No News Is Good News - Mailshot
This week we were set a brief in response to the previous 'No News Is Good News' poster design brief. We were told to carry our previous idea into a mailshot... again, using two colours plus stock. We were given a specific size of envelope to produce (of which we can edit the design in any way as long as it fits into this size...). This mailshot needed to be designed to be sent to 10 seperate people... therefore being easily reproduced, inexpensive and could be delivered in the mail system effectively.
On the monday, we were set the task to identify 5 statements of fact, 5 statements of opinion, 5 closed questions and 5 open questions to do with our chosen poster topic.
On the monday, we were set the task to identify 5 statements of fact, 5 statements of opinion, 5 closed questions and 5 open questions to do with our chosen poster topic.
Statements of fact
Statements of opinion
Closed questions
Open questions
This really helped in regard as to what to include in the mailshot and to what purpose it would serve... is it to persuade? to inform? to promote? to instruct? or to educate?
Before I could start to produce the finished product I had to determine the WHY? WHO? WHAT? and HOW? this is what i settled on...
WHAT message am I trying to get across?
I am trying to inform people of the danger s of Twitter becoming an addiction
WHY am I trying to get this message across?
Because, similar to many other addictions, people are starting to get addicted to using Twitter. There are so many ways to access the website, including many applications on phones makes it so easy to use. People are using it to document every move they make, from walking down the street, to what they are eating.
WHO will I be sending this mailshot to?
I am going to send it to people who are/are very close to being addicted to the website... to give them help to reduce the amount they post... and stop them starting to depend on it.
HOW will i be conveying this message?
With the use of a mailshot... including different ways to help kick the addiction, and ways to determine if they can be named a 'tweetaholic'.
I then had to come up with my mailing list. I had many thoughts as to where I would send them, but i decided on finding out the 9 top Twitter celebrity users, based on the amount of Tweets they have posted/ the amount of followers they have.
They turned out to be...
In the end I settled on designing an envelope which would hold 3 seperate cards, each with different information contained on each.
I spent a lot of time on the envelope... thinking up different ways to fold it so the cards would not fall out. I tried using little slits in the card, which was effective, but from an aesthetic point-of view... did not look good in the finished design. I decided then to settle on a pouch, with folded sides to contain them.
Final envelope design...
FRONT-
BACK -
With the envelope done... It was time to design the cards. I wanted to come up with an almost tongue-in-cheek response to the statement I was using... and turned it into a real addiction.
I looked at different websites and establishments which helped with drug addiction rehabilitation, and different ways people use to stop using traditional drugs. The ones which stood out to me were the rehabilitation centre and the "talk to Frank" campaign and decided to play around with these ideas.
First of all, I designed a quiz to help establish what stage the recipients were in the addiction... with three seperate outcomes. I looked at different quiz layouts in magazines and online and decided on a multiple-answer questionnaire...
In response to the questionnaire results, the other cards were more of a 'help get yourself unhooked' message. One was a business card based on the 'talk to FRANK' campaign... replacing 'FRANK' with '@ellieujel' and on the back writing 'someone who lived in 140 characters'... almost an agony aunt where people could seek help through the use of communicating with someone who had already been through the same thing for the less extreme addicts. Throughout the project I'd wanted to use the idea of 'life in 140 characters' and found this to be the perfect way...
FRONT-
BACK -
And for the serious addicts, the third card was an advert for a (made-up) rehab clinic in London called 'The Twitter Barnyard'.
To close the envelope... I used a sticker as a final touch... making the mailshot immediately recognisable as being about Twitter without even opening it...
STICKER DESIGN -
For the visuals, I wanted to keep the same theme as the previous poster brief, using the same pale-blue stock, the same colours (black and 'Twitter' blue), the same images and use the same typeface. I feel that these communicated what I was trying to say really well the week before and wanted to carry it on into this brief to make it all into a set... simple but effective.
Statements of opinion
Closed questions
Open questions
This really helped in regard as to what to include in the mailshot and to what purpose it would serve... is it to persuade? to inform? to promote? to instruct? or to educate?
Before I could start to produce the finished product I had to determine the WHY? WHO? WHAT? and HOW? this is what i settled on...
WHAT message am I trying to get across?
I am trying to inform people of the danger s of Twitter becoming an addiction
WHY am I trying to get this message across?
Because, similar to many other addictions, people are starting to get addicted to using Twitter. There are so many ways to access the website, including many applications on phones makes it so easy to use. People are using it to document every move they make, from walking down the street, to what they are eating.
WHO will I be sending this mailshot to?
I am going to send it to people who are/are very close to being addicted to the website... to give them help to reduce the amount they post... and stop them starting to depend on it.
HOW will i be conveying this message?
With the use of a mailshot... including different ways to help kick the addiction, and ways to determine if they can be named a 'tweetaholic'.
I then had to come up with my mailing list. I had many thoughts as to where I would send them, but i decided on finding out the 9 top Twitter celebrity users, based on the amount of Tweets they have posted/ the amount of followers they have.
They turned out to be...
- Perez Hilton
- John Mayer
- MC Hammer
- Pete Wentz
- Phillip Schofield
- Stephen Fry
- Fred Durst
- Lance Armstrong
- Ashton Kutcher
In the end I settled on designing an envelope which would hold 3 seperate cards, each with different information contained on each.
I spent a lot of time on the envelope... thinking up different ways to fold it so the cards would not fall out. I tried using little slits in the card, which was effective, but from an aesthetic point-of view... did not look good in the finished design. I decided then to settle on a pouch, with folded sides to contain them.
Final envelope design...
FRONT-
BACK -
With the envelope done... It was time to design the cards. I wanted to come up with an almost tongue-in-cheek response to the statement I was using... and turned it into a real addiction.
I looked at different websites and establishments which helped with drug addiction rehabilitation, and different ways people use to stop using traditional drugs. The ones which stood out to me were the rehabilitation centre and the "talk to Frank" campaign and decided to play around with these ideas.
First of all, I designed a quiz to help establish what stage the recipients were in the addiction... with three seperate outcomes. I looked at different quiz layouts in magazines and online and decided on a multiple-answer questionnaire...
In response to the questionnaire results, the other cards were more of a 'help get yourself unhooked' message. One was a business card based on the 'talk to FRANK' campaign... replacing 'FRANK' with '@ellieujel' and on the back writing 'someone who lived in 140 characters'... almost an agony aunt where people could seek help through the use of communicating with someone who had already been through the same thing for the less extreme addicts. Throughout the project I'd wanted to use the idea of 'life in 140 characters' and found this to be the perfect way...
FRONT-
BACK -And for the serious addicts, the third card was an advert for a (made-up) rehab clinic in London called 'The Twitter Barnyard'.
To close the envelope... I used a sticker as a final touch... making the mailshot immediately recognisable as being about Twitter without even opening it...STICKER DESIGN -
For the visuals, I wanted to keep the same theme as the previous poster brief, using the same pale-blue stock, the same colours (black and 'Twitter' blue), the same images and use the same typeface. I feel that these communicated what I was trying to say really well the week before and wanted to carry it on into this brief to make it all into a set... simple but effective.
Sunday, 8 November 2009
No News is Good News - Part 2 - 3 Posters
This week's brief was to react to a statement using the information we accumulated the week before in the first part of 'No News is Good News' and produce 3 posters, one using type, one image and one a combination of both.
I looked at the obvious addictions... smoking, heroin etc and decided that obvious was the best way to portray what i was trying to say (keeping it to the point and all that...) and set out to try and incorporate twitter into this.
I came to a firm decisions about my colour-scheme rapidly as, in some ways, it was already decided for me as it fits in with the 'twitter' colours (pale blue and black).
I wanted to use the twitter logo as a prominent feature in the illustration (this was also an opportunity to practise my illustrator skills) and proceeded to trace it and play around with different layouts, also including a cigarette a s the addiction chosen.
There are several different logos on the website, one includes the traditional bird icon with illustrative curly branches which i decided would look good to portray smoke coming out of the end of the cigarette.
I experimented with different layouts and positioning on illustrator, combining the smoke-branch, cigarette and small birds and came up with this as a final piece.
TEXT
Similarly to the colour-scheme, the typeface i chose to use was almost chosen for me... I found a couple of typefaces which resembled the one used on the website and experimented with different colour arrangements and layouts.
The typefaces proved a slight problem as neither looked completely right when put together... which made me combine the two to make it look effective.
(z) Arista -
Picoblack - 
I wanted this poster to look simple but punchy and decided, after much experimentation, that the words 'twitter is becoming an' should be in black... and the word 'addiction' in the twitter-blue colour, highlighting the most important part of the message.
I then came to the conclusion that the type positioned on the bottom-left of the page looked best.
This is the final poster...
TEXT AND IMAGE
Once i had done both the image and type posters, the combination of the two seemed to come a lot easier.
I wanted to keep the phrase 'Twitter is becoming an addiction' and lay it out the similarly (if not the same) as the type poster. For the illustration, however, I wanted to vary it away from the original cigarette image and focus on another addiction.
For this I wanted to find an addiction which was both controversial and had strong visuals. Heroin was one which ticked all the boxes. It is the most controversial of the substance addictions... and there was a lot of imagery associated with it (spoon, tin foil, flames) and decided to go with that.
The imagery for this poster seemed to take me a lot more time than the last one as there were several different layouts which i could use. At first I overcrowded the page with the bird icon...
then I didn't have enough... in the end i settled on them fanning out of the spoon... getting larger the further away.
This is the final image...
For the stock, I printed it out on white... which didn't seem to give the effect I wanted. I then tried it out on brown... which, once again, didn't have the desired effect.
The library didn't have the colour I wanted... therefore i walked into town and bought a pale blue colour... which went really well with the designs.
As previously decided, I focused on the view that twitter is becoming an addiction.
Before we set out to produce the posters we did an idea session on monday which consisted of writing/ drawing 10 different things in relation to the topic we had chosen.
- 10 verbs
- 10 adjectives
- 10 images
- 10 icons
After this exercise I found that ideas for the brief came quite easily and many of them featured the things we had done previously.
I wanted to pay attention to the part of the brief which said "keep it brief, simple and to the point" and decided to look into how i could visually communicate an addiction... any addiction and then bring Twitter into it.
I also decided I didn't want to do one image and one bit of type... and combine the two for the third. I wanted to be more imaginative than that... maybe zone in on 2 different addictions?
IMAGE
I came to a firm decisions about my colour-scheme rapidly as, in some ways, it was already decided for me as it fits in with the 'twitter' colours (pale blue and black).
I wanted to use the twitter logo as a prominent feature in the illustration (this was also an opportunity to practise my illustrator skills) and proceeded to trace it and play around with different layouts, also including a cigarette a
There are several different logos on the website, one includes the traditional bird icon with illustrative curly branches which i decided would look good to portray smoke coming out of the end of the cigarette.
I experimented with different layouts and positioning on illustrator, combining the smoke-branch, cigarette and small birds and came up with this as a final piece.
Similarly to the colour-scheme, the typeface i chose to use was almost chosen for me... I found a couple of typefaces which resembled the one used on the website and experimented with different colour arrangements and layouts.
The typefaces proved a slight problem as neither looked completely right when put together... which made me combine the two to make it look effective.
(z) Arista -
Picoblack - 
I wanted this poster to look simple but punchy and decided, after much experimentation, that the words 'twitter is becoming an' should be in
I then came to the conclusion that the type positioned on the bottom-left of the page looked best.
This is the final poster...
TEXT AND IMAGE
Once i had done both the image and type posters, the combination of the two seemed to come a lot easier.
I wanted to keep the phrase 'Twitter is becoming an addiction' and lay it out the similarly (if not the same) as the type poster. For the illustration, however, I wanted to vary it away from the original cigarette image and focus on another addiction.
For this I wanted to find an addiction which was both controversial and had strong visuals. Heroin was one which ticked all the boxes. It is the most controversial of the substance addictions... and there was a lot of imagery associated with it (spoon, tin foil, flames) and decided to go with that.
The imagery for this poster seemed to take me a lot more time than the last one as there were several different layouts which i could use. At first I overcrowded the page with the bird icon...
then I didn't have enough... in the end i settled on them fanning out of the spoon... getting larger the further away.This is the final image...
For the stock, I printed it out on white... which didn't seem to give the effect I wanted. I then tried it out on brown... which, once again, didn't have the desired effect.
The library didn't have the colour I wanted... therefore i walked into town and bought a pale blue colour... which went really well with the designs.
Monday, 26 October 2009
No News is Good News - research brief
This week we were instructed to bring in a newspaper from the previous saturday. I brought in a copy of 'The Times'.
We were then told to pick a headline which we were interested in... I picked a personal addiction of mine... an article on 'Twitter' with the headline 'Twitter Twits'. It was an article about celebrities and some of the outrageous things they have said about themselves on the website.
We then had to narrow down the research to 3 focus points... i refined it to
We were then told to pick a headline which we were interested in... I picked a personal addiction of mine... an article on 'Twitter' with the headline 'Twitter Twits'. It was an article about celebrities and some of the outrageous things they have said about themselves on the website.
We then had to narrow down the research to 3 focus points... i refined it to
- Celebrities getting into trouble over things they post
- Twitter addiction
- Celebrity tweets/personal friend tweets
Sunday, 18 October 2009
Alphabet soup 2 - For a partner
This week the brief is to design a typeface... 26 letters and glyphs based on a fellow classmate.
To get a better idea of what my partner (Chris Ando) was about... we were given a quiz comprising of 10 questions from 'The Guardian'.
What is your earliest memory?
Building towers out of bricks in my back garden
Which living person do you most admire?
Tom Yorke - for his lyrics
What is your most precious possession?
My ipod
What superpower would you have?
Invisibility
What extinct creature would you bring back to life?
A woolly mammoth
Who would play you in the film of your life?
Jim Carey
Who would you invite to your dream dinner party?
Jim Carey... again.
What makes you unhappy?
Windy weather
What would you get dressed-up as at a fancy-dress party?
A cowboy
Which phrase do you most over-use?
'innit'
Then I added a few more questions as I didn't feel i could get as much as i could out of the given questions...
What is your favorite colour?
Orange
What is your favorite type of music?
Dubstep and Drum & Bass
Do you have any special character traits?
Real perfectionist
I then decided on 4 words to narrow down my ideas... they were...
I picked a few fonts off the internet and played around with them to see which would look best with the orange i was going to add to it. I decided on a font called 'Zealot'.
I then tried to find different ways to add orange... removing borders and changing the edges.
When we had the crit... Fred said "So you basically downloaded a font and coloured it in"
After that slight embarrassment, i decided to take the project in an entirely different direction. I appreciated that I had not followed the brief and manipulated the typeface.
This time i decided to go with the fact he would like to dress up as a cowboy and was a perfectionist.
I looked into what made 'Perfect' and thought the idea that models... who are generally seen as perfect... had to have symmetrical faces to make the cut.
I decided to look at different cowboy patterns, found on the guns, chaps, spurs, saddles and boots and see if i could manipulate type made up of those patterns, made symmetrical.
It didn't quite work out the way I wanted it to...
So, once again i sat there and thought of what else was associated with cowboys... and came up with lasso's and ropes.
I ended up creating the letterforms out of ropes of different thicknesses and creating serifs out of freyed ends.
I used a western-style font called 'Oklahoma'.
To get a better idea of what my partner (Chris Ando) was about... we were given a quiz comprising of 10 questions from 'The Guardian'.
What is your earliest memory?
Building towers out of bricks in my back garden
Which living person do you most admire?
Tom Yorke - for his lyrics
What is your most precious possession?
My ipod
What superpower would you have?
Invisibility
What extinct creature would you bring back to life?
A woolly mammoth
Who would play you in the film of your life?
Jim Carey
Who would you invite to your dream dinner party?
Jim Carey... again.
What makes you unhappy?
Windy weather
What would you get dressed-up as at a fancy-dress party?
A cowboy
Which phrase do you most over-use?
'innit'
Then I added a few more questions as I didn't feel i could get as much as i could out of the given questions...
What is your favorite colour?
Orange
What is your favorite type of music?
Dubstep and Drum & Bass
Do you have any special character traits?
Real perfectionist
I then decided on 4 words to narrow down my ideas... they were...
- orange
- dubstep
- cowboy
- perfectionist
I picked a few fonts off the internet and played around with them to see which would look best with the orange i was going to add to it. I decided on a font called 'Zealot'.
I then tried to find different ways to add orange... removing borders and changing the edges.
When we had the crit... Fred said "So you basically downloaded a font and coloured it in"
After that slight embarrassment, i decided to take the project in an entirely different direction. I appreciated that I had not followed the brief and manipulated the typeface.
This time i decided to go with the fact he would like to dress up as a cowboy and was a perfectionist.
I looked into what made 'Perfect' and thought the idea that models... who are generally seen as perfect... had to have symmetrical faces to make the cut.
I decided to look at different cowboy patterns, found on the guns, chaps, spurs, saddles and boots and see if i could manipulate type made up of those patterns, made symmetrical.
It didn't quite work out the way I wanted it to...
So, once again i sat there and thought of what else was associated with cowboys... and came up with lasso's and ropes.
I ended up creating the letterforms out of ropes of different thicknesses and creating serifs out of freyed ends.
I used a western-style font called 'Oklahoma'.
Thursday, 15 October 2009
Alphabet Soup 1
Our aim for this brief was to produce 10 letterforms based on manipulating an existing typeface to visually communicate a word based on typography which we were randomly alocated.
I was given the word 'dissect'.
I decided to, again, base it on photography, this time which i found on the internet.
I took a very literal approach and literally dissected the letterforms as if they were human, in very specific places, uncovering several different layers with a scalpel as if I was performing a surgery.
Skin, fat, muscle tissue, cartilage and bone.
I think as a resolution they looked quite effective. They were all hand-made. For this reason, they could look a lot crisper and professional if done on the computer. Once again, I would like to re-address this project when i am photoshop/illustrator savvy to see how much better it could look.
I was given the word 'dissect'.
I decided to, again, base it on photography, this time which i found on the internet.
I took a very literal approach and literally dissected the letterforms as if they were human, in very specific places, uncovering several different layers with a scalpel as if I was performing a surgery.
Skin, fat, muscle tissue, cartilage and bone.
I think as a resolution they looked quite effective. They were all hand-made. For this reason, they could look a lot crisper and professional if done on the computer. Once again, I would like to re-address this project when i am photoshop/illustrator savvy to see how much better it could look.
These are how the letters turned out...
HOW TO...
Our first proper brief at the college was a group one.
Each put into groups of 5/6 with people we didn't know.
The brief was to produce something based on a given phrase, we were given 'How to stay healthy at university'.
It is a common problem with students at the start of their university careers, leaving home, having to fend/cook/look after yourself without the help of your parents. It is easy to let your health lapse, especially with freshers week... or freshers fortnight, as our case was.
We thought a lot about our resolution. We wanted to produce something that students would keep rather than receive and throw away (like the millions of flyers we were given). We came up with the idea of giving out stickers (everyone loves stickers).
We decided to produce a series of these stickers to put around a student flat. Stickers which catch the eye, are fun but most importantly give a message.
Some were serious eg 'change your toothbrush every 2 months', some were facts 'over-boiling vegetables loses the nutrients' and some were comical 'you stink... have a wash'.
We tried to incorporate all aspects of being healthy. Eating, excercise, hygiene, safe sex and cleanliness around the home... all in bright colours to catch the eye.
We even produced some simple ones with just 'USE ME' on them... to stick on hoovers, mops and other cleaning apparatus.
To go with the stickers, we wanted to produce some packaging that people would also want to keep. We looked into different nets and materials to use and settled on an off-white thick paper, with our logo screen-printed in gold on the front. Simple, but effective.
Our logo - We decided that a logo would look good to group our work together. We came up with calling ourselves 'WIZE' and our tagline was 'guilt for students'. The logo itself was a pair of owl eyes, implying we could see everything.
Each put into groups of 5/6 with people we didn't know.
The brief was to produce something based on a given phrase, we were given 'How to stay healthy at university'.
It is a common problem with students at the start of their university careers, leaving home, having to fend/cook/look after yourself without the help of your parents. It is easy to let your health lapse, especially with freshers week... or freshers fortnight, as our case was.
We thought a lot about our resolution. We wanted to produce something that students would keep rather than receive and throw away (like the millions of flyers we were given). We came up with the idea of giving out stickers (everyone loves stickers).
We decided to produce a series of these stickers to put around a student flat. Stickers which catch the eye, are fun but most importantly give a message.
Some were serious eg 'change your toothbrush every 2 months', some were facts 'over-boiling vegetables loses the nutrients' and some were comical 'you stink... have a wash'.
We tried to incorporate all aspects of being healthy. Eating, excercise, hygiene, safe sex and cleanliness around the home... all in bright colours to catch the eye.
We even produced some simple ones with just 'USE ME' on them... to stick on hoovers, mops and other cleaning apparatus.
To go with the stickers, we wanted to produce some packaging that people would also want to keep. We looked into different nets and materials to use and settled on an off-white thick paper, with our logo screen-printed in gold on the front. Simple, but effective.
Our logo - We decided that a logo would look good to group our work together. We came up with calling ourselves 'WIZE' and our tagline was 'guilt for students'. The logo itself was a pair of owl eyes, implying we could see everything.
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