I was getting a bit stuck on what to do with my "quotes" word; it looked good but the white gaps between each letter was uneven. I had tried to change that in Illustrator (as you can see from my design process) but it still didn't work very well...
So it was back to the gathering-research board for me, and I quickly had a flick through Mary Kate Mcdevitt's Hand Lettering Ledger. I really admire her work and how she manages to create different effects by simply changing the letterforms, and even though I didn't really want to create a fun appearance as such I wanted to figure out what sort of decorations she used.
I mainly focused on the decorations - as mentioned above - and quite liked how she created that 3D effect on some of her letterforms. Her designs leaned more on the "fun" side of things so I wasn't completely sure if I would use bold and bright colours, but I did find the way she drew things really inspirational.
I also had a flick through "New Vintage Type: Classic Fonts for the Digital Age" by Steven Heller and Gail Anderson for some colour combinations. I really want to use a monotone palette as I had noticed that the Oxford Literary Festival's primary colours were black and white but I just wanted to add one splash of colour to liven it up just a little bit. I feel that the monotone palette really created a professional and elegant appearance. Here are some photos I took of it while looking through:
What really caught my eye was the design for Balthazar Bakery. It had that beautiful, clean, crisp appearance and the splash of gold really set a "royal" tone to it. The colour palette had a certain elegance so I tried to look on the internet for other designs that had a similar combination and found a typographic piece which was for a vintage beauty lounge.
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| http://designspiration.net/image/691718737903/ |
This was actually an important source of inspiration for me in terms of colour combinations because it solved my problem of having too much black on the page. It gave me the idea of having the little illustrations in gold (so the swirls and the quill) and then having my type in the deep black colour. I was also inspired by the way there was a faint grey vignette in the background.
I was still a bit stuck on how to draw out my "quotes" type, so I looked through vintage typography on Google and I came across a site where Luc Devroye had created a collection of Victorian fonts.
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| http://luc.devroye.org/victorian-index.html |
This one really helped me out when it came to figuring what I would do with my "quotes" type as I was really stuck on it. I wanted to incorporate diamonds in it but (as you can see on my design process) it was a bit too crowded for my type so I just added them onto the edges of the type and included the diamonds within the counters.
Reflective Thinking - Summary
Despite not analysing these pieces in great detail I can still pick out the elements that really inspired me and affected my design in a positive light. This allowed me to spend more time designing my book cover and it didn't distract me from doing that.
My next step is to go back to my designing process (as I am writing this up just so that I could jot my notes down while I'm designing). I realised that I have actually missed a diamond off the U for quotes so will need to amend that.
Learning Outcomes:
[4] Developed research skills in the area of contemporary professional practice.
[5] Developed skills of independent study, resource utilisation, problem-solving and decision-taking.
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