I have decided to do this project separate from my other DPS designs that I had done so far as my process was a bit chaotic; I couldn't make my mind up about this design and kept going backwards and forwards, that even I am confused with what I did sometimes.
The Raven
For my Edgar Allan Poe piece I only really had one decorative font on there, so there was a possibly of either going with the same font or produce another one. I therefore produced four versions: the one that's already been done; two script styles in different thicknesses; and one sans serif with the same width and height as the sans serif I had drawn for my book cover.
I practised with my dip pen on the bottom of the page but it didn't really carry that thick-thin stroke effect I was looking for, so instead I just went with what I already had done with micron.
I scanned all of my versions in to have a closer look at what I had, and from this I picked out the advantages and disadvantages of each one.
Thoughts
1. Was exactly the same as the type I had above, so even though it would definitely work it might look a bit boring and repetitive, especially because this typestyle was very dominant in my main illustration.
2. Has a nice variation of thick and thin that could resemble the quill pen, as if Poe had written it out himself. Out of curiosity I had a look on Google of what his signature actually looked like, and I found one on the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore:
After looking at this, my script font might not work anymore as a hand-written signature because it's so different to his own. I really like his signature so after I have produced my layout for my spread I might ask my lecturers if I could possibly use it (if none of my other fonts work).
3. Following the same reason as the first, this wouldn't work because it's not similar in the slightest to Poe's actual signature, and far too thick.
4. Although the sans serif has a minimalist and "lack of connotation", it might not work with my piece because it doesn't contain any gothic connotations that I wanted to produce in my piece.
After looking at all of these I have decided that the best typeface to use is the very first, but I will adapt it so that there's less decoration on it as I fear that it would look cramped at a smaller scale.
Photoshop
I put my type to one side and first worked on the feather that would be positioned right above the text. I opened up my illustration's document and simply copied and pasted one of the largest feathers there, deleting any areas of white space. I also copied and pasted the words "The Raven" so that I could get a general idea of what it would look like as I know that I might have to redraw it. At this point I redrew my other typeface so that it was a more toned-down version of the decorative typeface.
I put these two together with my Edgar Allan Poe type and then positioned it by the illustration so that I could figure out which would be the best size for it.
After looking closely at "The Raven" I realised that it was getting a bit pixelated so I drew it out again and scanned it in. Then I allowed myself to produce a couple of different versions; the first one I drew a faint outline of a box around the text, another with just a light grey box, and another with a white box and a grey background.
Thoughts
I'm starting to get really worried with the short amount of time that I have left, especially because I'm still not satisfied with these designs. I feel that the new "slides" I came up with has reduced the chaotic impact that my illustration has and I'm really unsure of how to go about it.
I would like to create something to emphasise the drama within the piece and even though the best way is to create something minimalist, I am unsure of whether to actually make it equally chaotic. I think the best thing to do here is to take a break from this design and look at some inspirational pieces to see if they give me a bit of a boost.
I had wanted to get some inspiration from Fursy Tessyier's designs that I had researched on from a project that I had done last year, but it seems that they have removed those images from their website. I hope that when I have the time I could track down these designs but for now I just looked at some others.
After having looked at some designs (which I will write about on a separate post) I roughly sketched out some layouts, and settled with the idea of having it in the centre like my original idea but I will try and place the feathers in different places to see what it would look like.
For my first idea I simply copied and pasted some feathers on the bottom corner of the page, selecting some of them and 'warping' them. I did this by using the transform tool and right-clicking it, then selected 'warp'. The reason I warped it was because some of the feathers looked a bit stiff and not as if they were gently falling across the page.
My second idea was to have the feather border the right-hand side of the page having been inspired by Henri-de Toulouse Lautrec's design for Jane Avril. However when I placed it beside the illustration I thought it looked a little out of place.
My third idea involved having some of the feathers 'leak' from the main illustration and across to the other page. This didn't work as well as I hoped because the feathers looked out of place and didn't flow very well. Unfortunately I forgot to take a screenshot of this.
I then went back to playing around with the positioning of the feathers, and I finally came up with these three designs:
Thoughts
1. This one was very much like the original three I had produced at the beginning. I still wasn't too sure about this as it looked very minimalist, and I had hoped to include some decorative feathers to border the text and create structure. However, without the structure the text looks 'free' on the page just like the feather is floating above it.
2. Here I had created hairline barriers at the top and bottom which gives the text more of a structure. I quite like this as it follows a 'traditional appearance and it reminds me of what I've done for Moby Dick.
3. I have included a version where the feathers were floating down the page and I found that including less feathers worked better as it was more 'realistic'. Birds don't tend to shed feathers in such a large mass and so this one would just look as if some stray feathers just floated off the raven's wing.
I am still a bit unsure with these designs so I thought the best bet was to flip just one of them to the other side and see if that helps out a little bit. If it works I could do the same with the others to compare.
I'm still feeling as if there's something missing, so my next step is to therefore have a look at some inspiration and then come back to this design and have a little bit more freedom when it comes to 'playing around'. I really wanted to find some of Fursy Teyssier's pieces but the only ones I could find were the ones I had used in last year's project.
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After the Break...
The Raven
For my Edgar Allan Poe piece I only really had one decorative font on there, so there was a possibly of either going with the same font or produce another one. I therefore produced four versions: the one that's already been done; two script styles in different thicknesses; and one sans serif with the same width and height as the sans serif I had drawn for my book cover.
I practised with my dip pen on the bottom of the page but it didn't really carry that thick-thin stroke effect I was looking for, so instead I just went with what I already had done with micron.
I scanned all of my versions in to have a closer look at what I had, and from this I picked out the advantages and disadvantages of each one.
Thoughts
1. Was exactly the same as the type I had above, so even though it would definitely work it might look a bit boring and repetitive, especially because this typestyle was very dominant in my main illustration.
2. Has a nice variation of thick and thin that could resemble the quill pen, as if Poe had written it out himself. Out of curiosity I had a look on Google of what his signature actually looked like, and I found one on the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore:
After looking at this, my script font might not work anymore as a hand-written signature because it's so different to his own. I really like his signature so after I have produced my layout for my spread I might ask my lecturers if I could possibly use it (if none of my other fonts work).
3. Following the same reason as the first, this wouldn't work because it's not similar in the slightest to Poe's actual signature, and far too thick.
4. Although the sans serif has a minimalist and "lack of connotation", it might not work with my piece because it doesn't contain any gothic connotations that I wanted to produce in my piece.
After looking at all of these I have decided that the best typeface to use is the very first, but I will adapt it so that there's less decoration on it as I fear that it would look cramped at a smaller scale.
Photoshop
I put my type to one side and first worked on the feather that would be positioned right above the text. I opened up my illustration's document and simply copied and pasted one of the largest feathers there, deleting any areas of white space. I also copied and pasted the words "The Raven" so that I could get a general idea of what it would look like as I know that I might have to redraw it. At this point I redrew my other typeface so that it was a more toned-down version of the decorative typeface.
I put these two together with my Edgar Allan Poe type and then positioned it by the illustration so that I could figure out which would be the best size for it.
After looking closely at "The Raven" I realised that it was getting a bit pixelated so I drew it out again and scanned it in. Then I allowed myself to produce a couple of different versions; the first one I drew a faint outline of a box around the text, another with just a light grey box, and another with a white box and a grey background.
Thoughts
I'm starting to get really worried with the short amount of time that I have left, especially because I'm still not satisfied with these designs. I feel that the new "slides" I came up with has reduced the chaotic impact that my illustration has and I'm really unsure of how to go about it.
I would like to create something to emphasise the drama within the piece and even though the best way is to create something minimalist, I am unsure of whether to actually make it equally chaotic. I think the best thing to do here is to take a break from this design and look at some inspirational pieces to see if they give me a bit of a boost.
I had wanted to get some inspiration from Fursy Tessyier's designs that I had researched on from a project that I had done last year, but it seems that they have removed those images from their website. I hope that when I have the time I could track down these designs but for now I just looked at some others.
After having looked at some designs (which I will write about on a separate post) I roughly sketched out some layouts, and settled with the idea of having it in the centre like my original idea but I will try and place the feathers in different places to see what it would look like.
For my first idea I simply copied and pasted some feathers on the bottom corner of the page, selecting some of them and 'warping' them. I did this by using the transform tool and right-clicking it, then selected 'warp'. The reason I warped it was because some of the feathers looked a bit stiff and not as if they were gently falling across the page.
My second idea was to have the feather border the right-hand side of the page having been inspired by Henri-de Toulouse Lautrec's design for Jane Avril. However when I placed it beside the illustration I thought it looked a little out of place.
My third idea involved having some of the feathers 'leak' from the main illustration and across to the other page. This didn't work as well as I hoped because the feathers looked out of place and didn't flow very well. Unfortunately I forgot to take a screenshot of this.
I then went back to playing around with the positioning of the feathers, and I finally came up with these three designs:
Thoughts
1. This one was very much like the original three I had produced at the beginning. I still wasn't too sure about this as it looked very minimalist, and I had hoped to include some decorative feathers to border the text and create structure. However, without the structure the text looks 'free' on the page just like the feather is floating above it.
2. Here I had created hairline barriers at the top and bottom which gives the text more of a structure. I quite like this as it follows a 'traditional appearance and it reminds me of what I've done for Moby Dick.
3. I have included a version where the feathers were floating down the page and I found that including less feathers worked better as it was more 'realistic'. Birds don't tend to shed feathers in such a large mass and so this one would just look as if some stray feathers just floated off the raven's wing.
I am still a bit unsure with these designs so I thought the best bet was to flip just one of them to the other side and see if that helps out a little bit. If it works I could do the same with the others to compare.
I'm still feeling as if there's something missing, so my next step is to therefore have a look at some inspiration and then come back to this design and have a little bit more freedom when it comes to 'playing around'. I really wanted to find some of Fursy Teyssier's pieces but the only ones I could find were the ones I had used in last year's project.
-
After the Break...
For this I wanted to try out creating a black, bordered background around the text having been inspired with the way that Fursy Teyssier's spread often had the illustration overlapping the next page. Unfortunately my illustration isn't wide enough so instead I wanted to highlight it by making the other page much darker.
For the first design I wanted to create a little black box where it comes over the feathers so that they could seem as if they were part of the illustration (as they have a white background rather than black). This meant changing the text to white too, and once I had a look at it I was reminded of those screenshots of silent films where they would display their text.
This then allowed me to play around with layout and where the thin white borders would be placed against the black background. So these were all of the versions together:
Thoughts
1. It holds a very unusual way of bordering around the text because of the fact that a corner had been cut off of it, highlighting the importance of the feathers and it's connection to the main illustration. The top and bottom of the box aligns with the imagery and it looks deliberate as there's quite a large amount of white space surrounding it.
2. Here I have eliminated the white corner and just had the black background cover the whole page. This holds more of the traditional appearance of a book spread, and I had remembered to take out the quotation marks which I would need to do on the others as well. It's clean, minimalist, which once again contrasts heavily with the illustration yet without appearing very empty because of the black background.
3. Here I've used my other format with the feather atop of the text. The borders around it really highlights it's importance and brings it up on the page a little bit without it being too much to distract the viewer. It provides a more structured appearance, although I'm unsure whether I want it to be very structured or more 'free' to reflect the nature of the feathers.
4. The white box around the text really brings it out on the page and although it is a good thing if the page were on it's own, it does detract some attention away from the main illustration.
For all of the designs, the white text works well against the black background as it's still quite easy to read, and for some reason it looks as if a void had been created as it is enveloped in the black. It's quite an eerie effect, and contrasts heavily with the chaotic appearance of the illustration.
I am leaning more on the second and third versions of the designs because they are both clean and minimalist which emphasises the dramatic movement of the feathers on the other page. I do like the way the first looks a bit unusual but I think it makes the overall design a bit too busy.
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After another break...
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After another break...
Even though I was satisfied with the designs I produced earlier there was still a part of me that wanted to try out something different. I really wanted to see what the page would look like with some feathers in the background so I grabbed my pencil and started sketching.
I was originally going to ink in all of the feathers but that's when I had the idea of just creating a pattern in Illustrator like I had done with my book cover. Therefore I just inked in the feathers that I was going to definitely use for the pattern.
Once the pattern was created in Illustrator - I skipped taking screenshots as I used the exact same method as before - I brought it over to Photoshop and had a bit of a play around. I thus produced the following designs:
It's hard to figure out which one I like as I think that all are particularly strong pieces, although my eyes keeps drawing to the one on the bottom right. What I might do is show these to my classmates as well as the ones I've produced previously, to see what they think and whether or not the feathered background works.
I was originally going to ink in all of the feathers but that's when I had the idea of just creating a pattern in Illustrator like I had done with my book cover. Therefore I just inked in the feathers that I was going to definitely use for the pattern.
Once the pattern was created in Illustrator - I skipped taking screenshots as I used the exact same method as before - I brought it over to Photoshop and had a bit of a play around. I thus produced the following designs:
It's hard to figure out which one I like as I think that all are particularly strong pieces, although my eyes keeps drawing to the one on the bottom right. What I might do is show these to my classmates as well as the ones I've produced previously, to see what they think and whether or not the feathered background works.
Reflective Thinking - Summary
This part of the project has shown me the importance of having a general idea of a layout and how to use inspiration, because before I had looked at inspiration - even if it just meant flicking through my Pinterest board - I kept hitting a brick wall and found it really difficult to be satisfied with my design. Even though there isn't a big different between the "chosen" designs here and my original set, I feel a lot more comfortable with them.
I think this is mainly due to the colour scheme and the placement of the illustration. The illustrations really do look better on the right because even though the background of the text is black I still look at the illustration first. From now on I shall place all of my illustrations on this side and erase the quotation marks to keep consistency within my design. I'm unsure of whether I'll add a little description of the book/author, so I'll keep it as it is for now.
My next step is to start building up a post of where I got all of my inspirations from and then move onto the other DPS designs. For those I shall look at inspiration first, draw up some more designs, and them do them all up on computer. I want to focus more on my type as well to ensure I choose a suitable one right at the beginning.
Learning Outcomes:
[3] Developed written and oral skills of critical self-evaluation in relation to their design practice.
[5] Developed skills of independent study, resource utilisation, problem-solving and decision-taking.
[6] Developed skills of critical thinking, analysis and evaluation.
[7] Developed their ability to learn through reflection on practice and experience.
[9] Developed their ability to work with complex material, analyse problems and identify appropriate solutions.
[9] Developed their ability to work with complex material, analyse problems and identify appropriate solutions.
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