APP Words: Banner Idea Development

[8]

After picking some chosen designs I decided to take my banner idea a step further to try out some different styles for the banner and for the type. This is because I had gathered some feedback from my classmates and from my sister - who would fall in my target market - and they said they really liked my calligraphic writing, so I wanted to incorporate that into my banner design. 

The first thing I did was try out drawing the banner differently, and I took inspiration from both infographic posters and chalk lettering banners for this. As you can see, I spent a lot of time thinking whether or not to try a straight banner rather than a swirling one as it'll be easier to draw up on the computer. 

I then focused on placing the type within the banners and have the ampersand in the middle to connect the two sentences together. This was when I realised that maybe the straight box wasn't good for this layout because the ampersand was very smooth and curvy, so the straight box heavily contrasted. I also wanted the banner to reflect the fluidity of tea, and so went with the curvy one in the end. [8]

Here I focused on developing my handwriting so that it looked near-enough what it would look like on the cup. I used my micron pens in various thicknesses to produce different effects for the shading. For example, I used a thicker pen to shade beneath the banner where it overlapped the ampersand to give it a 3D appearance.

I couldn't quite decide which design to go for, so I presented both of these designs on my personal facebook profile. [4] Surprisingly, despite what people had said about my calligraphic writing previously, most people preferred the sans serif typeface. This is shown on my Feedback post.  I tried doing my calligraphic writing with some shading as well as I was quite curious as to what it'll look like, but then I thought about how it would look when printed and realised that the writing would be quite small on the mug.

At the same time as doing some experiments I jotted down notes on what I could improve and try out from what people have said, and one of them was to try out the sans serif but in lowercase. After showing them the uppercase and lowercase version I then tried doing it with capital N's, but it didn't work out so well. This is because the other letters would have to be extremely small in order to fit on the banner. 

Conclusion: [5]

Carrying out this small series of experiments was really useful as I was able to practice drawing sans serif, and I have noticed that over the past couple of weeks I didn't require looking at any references. There is a hidden personal style to my sans serif types that gives away the fact that it's hand drawn as not every letter is perfect. 

I can't decide whether or not to go for the uppercase or lowercase version, so I shall draw up two versions and show my classmates and lecturers to see what they think works best with my overall design.

[n] Learning Outcome