When I looked back at the line work this morning I decided to make a few adjustments so that the most important words "I am so clever" and "I don't understand" had a 3D effect. I did originally want to create an effect where the words appear to be falling out of firework sparks but felt that it didn't work out so well due to the large number of overlapping lines. Instead, I went for the 'normal' 3D effect but for the top line I drew it so that the shading pointed inwards to create a perspective.
I scanned in the developed line work into Photoshop to start the colouring stage. I deleted all of the white areas and put in the black layer, and when I coloured all of the line work in white just so I could see it against the black I came across a pretty neat look; it was, as people could say, a happy accident. I then played around with different colours and gradients before settling with the orange to red gradient. At the same time I dropped in a midnight-blue-black gradient for the background to make it look closer to the night sky.
I scanned in the developed line work into Photoshop to start the colouring stage. I deleted all of the white areas and put in the black layer, and when I coloured all of the line work in white just so I could see it against the black I came across a pretty neat look; it was, as people could say, a happy accident. I then played around with different colours and gradients before settling with the orange to red gradient. At the same time I dropped in a midnight-blue-black gradient for the background to make it look closer to the night sky.
I wanted the words that didn't have the 3D effect (so everything apart from "I am so clever" and "I don't understand") to be filled in so I went onto the line art layer and erased the lines, and filled in the words with blue/aqua. I realised that the words looked a bit weird without the line so I brought it back but just made it a shade darker than the filled in colour.
The bottom line still looked a bit off so I used the pen tool to create a guide and then rearranged the words, letter by letter, so that they looked as if they all sat on the same line. I did this because the quote looked broken up because of the way that it didn't flow. I also shifted "a single word" so that it was closer to the bottom line to support the flow.
Feedback:
I printed this out to ask for some feedback and one of my classmates questioned why I chose blue, and that maybe I should try out either a lighter blue or something completely different so I went back to Photoshop to do just that.
During the stage of moving these words about I accidentally merged the lineart and filled in colour layers, so I created a couple of new ones to separate the tool by using the magic wand tool and deleting the fill from the lines. Then I was able to change the colours.
When it was in the lighter blue I felt that it detracted the attention away from the main words. I wasn't too happy about this because I obviously wanted the main focus to be on the un-filled type so I flicked through Google to look at some reference images and dropped one that I found most inspirational into Photoshop. I created two new groups, one for the fill colours and one for the lines, and I duplicated each one into their rightful folders before merging them all onto one layer.
Using the colour dropper I created four differently coloured versions of the designs before printing it out to ask for some feedback.
Feedback:
I asked my classmates and lecturers to tick next to the colour combination that they preferred, taking note that the printer made it a lot darker than it was on screen.
It seems like most of the votes are going to the yellow version, and I am quite happy with this because a) it sticks to the similar red/yellow/orange colour scheme and b) the yellow doesn't take away all of the attention from the main words.
Thoughts..
When I looked back at this design I realised that I wasn't really satisfied with it. I couldn't quite pinpoint why I didn't like it but nevertheless I wanted to take a bit of a break from the screen.
I looked back at my sketch and realised that the typography didn't really have much of a structure and I wanted to experiment putting it together with my calligraphic handwriting. I took out the tracing paper to plan the layout before sketching it out onto paper.
Once I drew another structure out I went back onto Photoshop to make some small adjustments. I pieced together the words "I am so clever" and "I don't understand" from my old version together with the newer version as I much preferred those words in the old one.
I'm still feeling a bit frustrated with this design because the layout just looks a bit off, so I'm going to take a breather and flick through some inspirational material to see if that sparks an idea.
I'm not only frustrated with my design but also at myself for jumping to conclusions way before I am comfortable with an idea. Yes, my design looked good on paper, but I should've listened to that nagging voice at the back of my head to take it slow and do some experimentation.
It seems that with this "project" I was doing just two hours research into the quote, two days sketching, and then the design. I can see as I am writing that out that I have clearly moved too quickly to get the final design done and that the process should've looked more like research & sketching, experimentation, and then final design. I totally skipped out on the experimentation part.
To overcome this I shall spend the next day or two just experimenting with ideas and producing more sketches. Luckily I have done all of this work over the weekend so I technically still have a week to finish this design! But I can feel myself starting to panic of having to produce at least another 6 DPS spreads (if I do choose to use blurb.com in the end).
Learning Outcomes:
[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.
[10] Developed their skills of visual, written and oral communication.
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