APP Words: Evaluation

General Thoughts - Research etc

I am pleased to say that this was one of my most enjoyable projects I've done throughout this year and both of the HND years. I am so glad that I went along with the idea of trying out hand-lettering, or I would've never have known how much I enjoyed it.

I think that it was enjoyable because I was able to mix together both typography through hand-lettering and illustration without feeling that it was 'too' illustrative. I had to take composition into account, but it was much easier to do than my London piece. 

Another thing was that I could embrace my 'inner-child' as I returned to doing little doodles no matter how anatomically incorrect things were, because it was acceptable. I came to terms with my imperfect drawings instead of being bogged down trying to make them before, producing a series of fun and quirky illustrations. 

This was inspired by the likes of Steve Simpson and Linzie Hunter, both of whose works I continuously looked over at. They have shown my that making mistakes or including a certain sketchiness isn't altogether bad. However I wish I did try more type styles such as Blackletter, but as I wanted to aim for that 'fun' appearance I didn't think it was appropriate. Maybe next time!

I think that this was the first time where I didn't force myself to analyse so many illustrators and illustrations, only analysing what I found inspirational. This is because everything I found interesting was placed on my Pinterest boards, and it was a great way to create mood boards. I could easily go there from my phone and just flick through my collection. I cannot explain how good Pinterest is! I'll definitely use it a lot more in future projects. 

I can't actually think of what made this project un-enjoyable because even the printing process - which is normally my downfall - went well as well as prototyping. By opening my eyes and using the resources around me I was able to produce a sufficient template almost immediately.

Speaking of resources, I have to say that in this project I asked for opinions on my designs and listened to them, trying to figure out why my target market liked one thing more than another. I was able to use that information to make my own decisions and chose what would be best for both my 'client' and for my target market. After all, they would be the ones I'll be 'selling' my designs to, so it is important that I pleased both parties.

I found it easier to base my design around an existing company, and I'm hoping to send them my designs once I've done taking photos in a studio. 

I spent a lot of time during this project having a look at videos, and I've discovered that there are the perfect way to get inspiration. By watching people actually doing some hand-lettering shows me that anyone could do it with practice, so I didn't feel too upset when I didn't get perfect results on my first try. Even though I didn't analyse videos in great detail I still found them inspirational and included them within my blog. 

My Final Design

My final design was... Unexpected. From the very start of my project I knew that I'd do hand-lettering but I thought I'd go down the calligraphy route, not the funky sans serif one, and I'm actually quite glad I did in the end. If I had used calligraphy then the design would appear all too feminine - an aspect that my audience had also pointed out - and I wouldn't be able to portray the light and funny side of tea. Tea could grant the student that energy they need, but is also good for calming down, so I aimed to create a design that reflects that.

I did this by choosing a colour palette that would link with those emotions. Green is known to represent harmony and tranquility, and I've chosen a shade relatively close to blue to emphasise the 'calm' emotion, and orange provides that burst of happiness with the cream to bring the boldness down a notch. 

I made sure that the forms were as smooth as possible to reflect the smooth flow of tea from a teapot as well as that soothing effect it could have. My main focus was on the banner so I included more shading and lighting to it to bring it out.

My illustration was mainly formed on Illustrator, and this in itself is surprising. I've always told myself to avoid Illustrator at all costs because of my lack of experience with it, but this project has made me come to terms with it and I can say that I'll happily work with vectors again. I have learnt so many functions and techniques, which made the process much easier later on when I had to repeat certain things over again. Repetition really is the best way to learn. 

My illustration as a whole is successful in that there is a clear relation to tea, and to Twinings. I wanted to make my Twinings label more 3D and 'realistic' than the others as if it was the real deal, and I referenced from one of their existing designs to emphasise this. Of course, I couldn't be photo-realistic, but the vector was good enough.

"Never Give In and Never Give Up" was the perfect quote choice (if I must say so myself) because it's short. This means that it was much easier to work with because I didn't have to think of the style of lots of letters, and it'll be easier to read at a glance. I didn't include any credits of the author because it wasn't a very popular one, although I'll be sure to credit them when I upload my final design onto all of my online profiles and Behance.

I chose to do a teapot and cup because it was extremely 'British' and provided a strong connection between that and Twinings, an age-old British tea company. I had originally wanted to put a watercolour paper texture to the design but as I mentioned in my last post it didn't print as well as the non-textured version, so I used matte paper to provide that slightly textured, well, texture.

Unfortunately I couldn't find a company to print this design off properly onto the travel mug, and those that I did find only provided a small square for my illustration. This is the reason why I've printed it off on paper and attached it onto the travel mug, but I do hope to find a company to do it for me one day. I think I fancy having this design myself, haha!

Conclusion

In conclusion, I really enjoyed this project for the fact that I wasn't trying to cram as much research into it, focusing more on my doodles and idea generation. I only researched on what I thought was appropriate for this project, doing it whenever I felt inspired and had to write it down. My final outcome was much better than I had original anticipated... So trying out new things isn't really a bad thing at all!


Update 17.01.14
I tweeted Steve Simpson and Linzie Hunter - the key inspirations for this project - and they both got back to me!

I am really happy to have gotten some feedback from two of my most inspirational designers, and it gives me more confidence in my design. I hope to continue down this path in future because I really enjoyed doing hand-lettering. 

APP Words: Small Re-Evaluation

[5] [8]

I've seemed to have hit a brick wall with this project, and after flicking through my research I realised that I haven't gathered enough inspiration hence why I seem to be lacking in ideas. My deadline is approaching so I'm getting a bit stressed at the short time I have left.

To try and overcome this I'm going to produce another to-do list, highlighting each point that I need to undertake to ensure that I have as much inspiration as I need under my belt. This might include looking at more illustrators and how hand-letterers combine that with lettering, as even though I do love Steve Simpson's work I think that I need to look at a wider range.

My to-do list therefore includes:

• Analysing inspirational pieces in greater detail - literally pick up and anything that would help me to understand the connotations a bit more 
• Finish off my inspirational letterpress pieces post
• Bring all of the highlighted doodles made and bring it up on Photoshop to start connecting them, producing a design that I could develop further
• Gather more inspiration to add to my Pinterest board 
• Do more doodles
• Figure out the dimensions of my travel mug and see how I'm going to assemble my design
• Look at colour schemes 

I've started by creating a mind map with all words connected to Tea and Twinings, to see what I could possibly sketch and include within my design. As mentioned in my post on existing product designs, most mugs have a pattern and aren't very much focused on typography, and that illustration is one of their main aspects. This means that I might have to reduce the amount of quotes on my design and just focus on one really decorative one, possibly surrounding it with little relevant doodles or single word. That had been my plan from the start, although now I think I might reduce the word amount even further. 

Now I can move onto doing some illustrations, as I had made a little section on some of the ideas produced from this mind map. I think that I shall do this before any of the bullet points made above, or when I'm feeling inspired.

This project is a merry-go-round!

[n] Learning Outcome

APP Home (AOI): Evaluation

The Final Piece
My aim for this piece was to show a different perspective on the city of London, having been inspired by the work of Jan Pienkowski and storyboard techniques. I wanted to produce that magical appearance to portray London as being ‘Wonderland’ and the home to many little stories that are silently significant to the development of it as a city.
By using purples and blues I have set London in a surreal night time scene and also created connotations of magic. Purple is a colour heavily associated with this as it’s incorporated into all things Halloween as well as being used in fantasy art.

Most of my learning outcomes mention being able to undertake a project in a professional manner and produce an effective piece. I believe that my illustration is effective and is a perfect amalgamation of known and unknown methods; I was able to explore into the territory of digital painting, and yet I could also rely on my knowledge of watercolour and inking.

Drawing the Buildings - Perspective and Composition
In regards to my project as I whole I found drawing the buildings and perspective most challenging. I haven’t really drawn buildings before so I had to look carefully at my references to make sure that they were done accurately. I wasn’t able to do all of the tiny details in great detail, but I had managed to draw the general outline.

I explored with the perspective and used what information I had gathered from my research to achieve this. I would like to experiment with perspective in my other projects because it’s a really handy tool and I quite enjoyed creating an unusual composition. Even though my experiment with my second perspective wasn’t as effective as the first I learnt that larger objects leads the eye, so I should’ve drawn the Big Ben at the bottom and shifted the bus to the side. I did try this out in Photoshop (as shown in my experiment) but it didn’t turn out so well. This is because each of the buildings were drawn for the first perspective so when everything was shifted around, the perspective had to shift, which was quite hard to do even with the warp tool. Maybe next time I'll draw the Big Ben and the Bus at the bottom of the page so that it was bottom-heavy, but as I've already mentioned this was my first time I explored with an unusual perspective. At least I'll know for next time!

Poster Sizes
I have created two versions of my poster, one fit for A3 so that I may include it in my portfolio, and one in Double Royal.
The Double Royal poster design was more effective with the type placed beneath the image so that I could show the full illustration, and although the A3 version doesn't obscure any objects of the illustration I just find that the type sits more comfortably in the Double Royal. Unfortunately when I tried to carry this composition across to A3 the text would've been at a very, very small size, and I would have to cut it down so that it was actually smaller than A3 as the illustration wouldn't fit otherwise. This is why I thought it best to have two versions and present my Double Royal poster as a mockup.

Research
Initially, it was quite difficult to research into London folklore until I found one of the books done by Helen East. If it weren’t for this book then I’d still be stuck trying to figure out stories to portray and would’ve gone for the ‘obvious’ ones such as The Portrait of Dorian Gray or Sherlock Holmes. By looking more into the lesser-known narratives I was able to widen my knowledge and learn more about London.

Experimenting with Different Materials
As it was a purely illustrative piece it pushed my boundaries as an illustrator. I have played with aspects I wasn’t experienced in, experimented with watercolour, and managed to mix both traditional and digital media effectively. It has shown me that even though digital painting is difficult it all pays off in the end, and the methods of experimenting with colours are endless.
I have also found my ‘signature style’, which was something that relied on detailed line drawing and also watercolour painting. I would’ve like to do something entirely watercolour-based but wasn’t able to with this drawing as I hadn’t converted it onto watercolour paper. Next time I hope to try it out with watercolour!

I found experimenting with watercolour most enjoyable, because not only did it make me use unusual materials that I wouldn’t normally even think of, it made me realise that unsuccessful results were okay (the rock salt was perhaps the only method that worked). It was all part of the learning process.  Now it only makes me want to try more experiments!

Update - 14.12.13
I'm glad that I left my adjustments a couple of days after I had produced my design because I was able to look at it with fresh eyes. Even though I haven't managed to find the time to tackle a new composition I was able to change the layout of my poster so that it resembled the Double Royal poster but in A3 size. I preferred this text layout, and it was more consistent with previous AOI and Serco Prize Poster designs.

FMP: Evaluation

The Final Designs

I am extremely pleased with my designs, even more so that I have managed to create a stationary set rather than just a wedding invitation. It had been my first time in dabbling in stationary design and I have to say that I really enjoyed it and would love to do it again.

The fact that I’ve hidden little aspects of fairy tale stories within my illustration that is repeated across all of my designs means that I have met the requirements of my brief, which was to create an invitation for a fairy tale wedding. I had used traditional techniques because I felt that it was one of my strong points in design, and I am so glad that I had done this (especially because I wasn’t happy with my previous designs!)

It may seem strange that I had used black in my designs, but that’s because I wanted to create a design that would fit into one of the current trends in wedding stationary - Monotone. By using pink only brings the illustration to life and enhances the romantic appearance of the design, therefore linking to the love that the couple share.

I am very pleased with my typeface choices as well, as I fell in love with Lavanderia as soon as I clapped my eyes on it. It is actually the first typeface I’ve used in a university project where I could only use it for personal use, so whenever I posted my design online I will say how it’s for a personal project in order to avoid any problems in future with the type designer. 

Junicode works really well with Lavanderia because it is quite simple in comparison, and it wasn’t too overpowered by its serifs, as they were relatively thin. 

However I feel that by using black for the back of my other designs does probably make it look too dark. The reason I used black in the first place was so that all of my designs linked in, and as I used black card to insert in between my invitation then I thought it would be best to carry on this feature throughout my other designs. The audience could misread the use of black as one of the dominant colours, and so I hope that by using hints of pink and a lot of white space then this’ll dampen the “dark” connotations that crop up.

The reasons listed above is the reason why I have changed my mind and quickly printed out another series of designs, and this time I didn't mount them up onto black card (although left the invitation with the black card inserted in between the two sheets, as it were). The black card backing just didn't seem right to me, and even though it might look quite plain these designs are now more suited for a wedding. 

I had some problems deciding whether or not I should draw a line for the couple to write out the guest’s name, but after much deliberation I decided to leave it as it seems more personal and less mass-produced if I left this feature out. Besides, most of the invitations I had looked at didn’t include this line possibly for the same reasons as mine.

I also couldn’t figure out whether it would be more appropriate to write “names” on the RSVP card instead of the “M”, as when I showed it to several of my classmates they didn’t know what the M was for. I went with the “M” in the end as it was very rare to write “names” and I hardly ever saw it being used on the RSVP cards I had looked at. To help my lecturers know what the M is for I shall write on the names of a made up guest and then provide a blank version. 

Printing & Assembling Designs

This happens to be the first project where the printing process went extremely smoothly as I was more experienced in using the printers at university, and I had also tried out by printing off at Staples. The result was perfect; the black was pristine and the type didn’t sink into the matte paper. Even the illustration came out very clean and there were no pixilation issues. 

I did have problems with assembling my designs, especially where I wanted to put the black card inside of the invitation. My spray mount wouldn’t work so I had to resort to using double-sided tape that worked surprisingly well. Too well, in fact, because when I stuck my black card inside my invitations wrong I wasn’t able to correct it so I had to cover it by inserting another black card atop of that. 

The Overall Process

After having some experiences in the past where I was rushing at the last minute I made sure that I did as much as I could right at the beginning of the project, and so all of my energy was focused during the first stages of my project. This enabled me to be able to do relevant research and even though I did go around in circles and had to redo my designs, I had plenty of time to experiment because of the fact I was doing so much work at the beginning rather than spreading it out.

My research went along quite well and I was more open to getting ideas rather than just sticking with Behance, and soon found stationary designers through wedding magazines. Even though these magazines mainly focus on clothing and the bride I was able to figure out the current trends and this helped me with my design. And, like I mentioned before, these magazines often featured some stationary designs so I was able to research into the actual designers a bit more. My favourite has to be Coral Pheasant, and she was my inspiration throughout the project. 

I did waste a lot of time debating on what kind of direction I wanted to go in; for ages I went for the more digitalised look (so minimalist vectors) and kept on experimenting with different ideas even though I didn’t like any of them. Luckily I was able to talk to my lecturers about this to get me onto the right track, because if I hadn’t then I would’ve ended up hating the project and all of my designs. 

I just wish I thought of using traditional media sooner! The thought was there at the beginning, but I just wanted to try something completely different that I didn’t realise I would end up not liking it. I think next time I won’t be so stubborn and perhaps try both digital and traditional media to see which one looks best. 

I didn’t experiment with media as such – and would’ve loved to try out gold foil and creating wax seals – but there were several difficulties in learning these methods, and so I thought of abandoning the wax seal and replace the gold foil with experimenting on outlining with gold pen. 

I focused most on my experimentation on idea generation, and this was something completely new because I had never been able to develop my ideas as much as I did for this project. This means that I spent more time on getting the ideas and sketching so that the designing process was much shorter (as I knew exactly what I was doing). 

Overall Conclusion:

All in all, I really enjoyed this project despite the difficulties I had at the beginning and would love to delve further into stationary design, so maybe over the summer I shall look into it a bit more.  

Portraits: Evaluation

When I first looked at the brief I admit that I had a bit of a heart attack; I didn’t have a clue what the psychology of faces was so the first thing I did was research into that subject. I feel that by doing this first helped me generate ideas rather than drawing something and hoping that it would fit into the topic.

So my first thought was to create something that showed emotion, or different kinds of emotions, and this happens to be what I used for my final idea. By connecting all of these faces with a single line showed that they all belonged to the same person, and to further support this idea I made it so that the faces had the same features and hairstyle.
I experimented by adding colour to emphasise the emotions but I was treading on a thin line, as some sources said – for example – that green was the colour of surprise but then others said it was the colour of envy. To avoid any confusion I made my illustration black and white and this then allows the viewer to focus more on the facial expressions that are drawn rather than be distracted by the confusing colours.
This then creates a successful illustration because a) it had an obvious meaning to it and b) the viewer could focus on the actual drawing rather than the “pretty colours”. My target audience (psychologists) would be able to tell that the faces are the same but many variations of emotions, and facial expressions are one of the key parts of human psychology as they could portray a certain emotion that makes up the character’s personality.
By adding a grey gradient I have made the illustration softer as the lines aren’t so bold and demanding, and then this’ll help the viewer to read the article without being distracted. I made it darker so that the white border would be deliberate as I noticed that most of the images in New Scientist don’t “bleed” to the edges.

The typefaces used in the caption – Minion Pro and Myriad Pro – resemble the ones showcased in the magazine, which then allows my design to blend in easily with their articles. I have used a blue for the heading because blue and black are used on their main website (the colour scheme changes within each issue).

However when I printed out my two versions (one of the illustration at it’s full size, and the other alongside a caption) I noticed that the one with the caption had a darker grey gradient even though they were the same image. I think that this is because I had printed from Photoshop for one version and as a PDF from the other. This has taught me that I should print out from PDF’s as they “hold” the right colours.
So if I were to revisit this project I would save both documents as PDF’s to ensure that they’ll be exactly the same safe for the little caption.

This project was pretty challenging because of the fact that it ran alongside my FMP, but because I knew this was going to happen I was able to draw up a schedule so that I could research specifically on the things that were relevant to the project so that I had more time for the designing process. By doing this I was able to save valuable time and ensured that I was finished a week before the deadline so that I could brush up on any mistakes made or add a bit more research.

Like all of my recent projects I drew up conclusions of all of my research so that I could reflect on what I’ve learnt and how they were going to be relevant to my project. This then helped me to generate ideas, as I was able to flick between research and idea generation as I was going along.

If I was to say one thing about this project then it’ll be that I wished I did more experimentation, although at the same time my main focus was on the actual idea and so I didn’t waste time just doing them for the sake of filling out my research methods. I had discovered my style as well – which is line drawing – and so I wanted to explore into that rather than dabbing a hand in, say, charcoal or paint. Illustrators such as Joe Ciardiello, Ralph Steadman and Giacometti influenced me on line drawing as I really liked the way they produced sketchy images and making them appear finished at the same time.  

With my next project I think I’m going to look at inspirational designs first and then come up with my ideas because this project was a bit of a mess when it came to idea generation. The reason being was that for a couple of days I was so stuck that I wanted to avoid the project altogether, but after looking up at some other illustrations I was able to “get back in the game” and become inspired and produce ideas.

Evaluation - Live Music Project

Research
I feel that this time I have been very specific with my research as I only researched on the existing designs for inspiration, inspirational illustrators, and some tutorials to help me along my way. Because of this I was able to have more time for experimentation and design and still had plenty of time before the deadline to go back and conclude all of my research.
So my time management was very efficient because I made sure that from the first day that I was doing something. Whether it was just a little bit of research and mood-board gathering it still helped me along my way.