Wednesday, 23 December 2009
Thursday, 17 December 2009
Evaluation.
End of module evaluation OUGD301
The start of this module was a bit of a nightmare for me, as I was a bit unsure what design work I wanted to create and felt the pressure of third year and felt I should be producing really amazing work. This pressure kind of paralysed me to do anything good, and just did what I thought I should be doing.
When I received the headline brief, my immediate reaction was to illustrate - which is probably one of my weakest skills, so I don't really know why I even attempted to do this. I just made decisions and not very good ones, and I was trying to design what I felt like I should be designing. I did not feel comfortable with what I was doing, but it took a disastrous crit for me to realise what I was doing was not working. It was at this point I was forced to really look at what I wanted to get out of this module, and find something that I wanted to work on. I naturally fell into a brief that led me to creating type.
Typography was what I was interested in before I came to the course, and I felt like I was stripped off everything when I came to Leeds - learning to work in a completely different way, realising how much there actually was to design and how my way of working before was quite superficial.
Now, I feel I have fallen back into typography after learning everything that I have and have started to love it again. The reason I picked to do a brief on the Royal Mail was due to seeing the Johnson Banks send a letter campaign, I just thought it was brilliant, but I did not really see it as typography at that point- just a great idea. Which is what I am really interested in and what I think makes good design, concept. But now, I see typography as a format to present my ideas - rather that image - which, for me, seems like such a simpler and more effective way of doing it.
The Royal Mail brief was without a doubt the brief I enjoyed the most and that must show through in my work. This was my starting point to typography and was a self initiated brief so I was able to do what I wanted with it really. The rest of the briefs gave me a real world context to use my type and concept skills.
I am really happy with my perfume book cover, however, I do want to work on it more before submitting it to Penguin, as I think after I had stepped away from it, I started to realise things that I did not like. For example, I forgot to put the penguin logo on it!! Also, I want to experiment with the type on the back of the cover a bit more. I showed this piece to Si Scott and he said that he liked the used of the mask to represent the masking of natural odours idea.
The H.G Wells cover was a very quick brief, and I do like the final pieces. However, I want to do more on it - for example, produce the whole set before submitting to D&AD. And to experiment with the composition of the type more. I think it has more potential.
My other brief was Jazzcakes. I enjoyed this one the least, and after a Week I just wanted to get rid of it to be honest. I just got qhite bored of it - I could have done all of that in a day, and I should have set it as a day brief really, It probably would have been more successful as a shorter brief, just because I lost the motivation to do anything with it. Next time I have a branding brief, I am going to spend just one day on it.
I have learnt alot this module - I seemed to feel alot more comfortable working in the studio as well, and this has had alot of impact on my body of work.
Every time I got a brief last time, I would feel paralyzed for the first few days not knowing what to do, but now, I come up with ideas in minutes. Just knowing what I am good at and knowing my idea is going to be in the format of primarily type, makes the whole process alot of smoother and more successful.
I have not submitted two briefs that I worked on - headline and Metro. I did not complete these briefs because I had a bit of a nightmare with them (this was the disastrous crit) and decided that I needed to get out of the rut I was in and more onto something fresh to inspire me - which really was the best decision I made.
The start of this module was a bit of a nightmare for me, as I was a bit unsure what design work I wanted to create and felt the pressure of third year and felt I should be producing really amazing work. This pressure kind of paralysed me to do anything good, and just did what I thought I should be doing.
When I received the headline brief, my immediate reaction was to illustrate - which is probably one of my weakest skills, so I don't really know why I even attempted to do this. I just made decisions and not very good ones, and I was trying to design what I felt like I should be designing. I did not feel comfortable with what I was doing, but it took a disastrous crit for me to realise what I was doing was not working. It was at this point I was forced to really look at what I wanted to get out of this module, and find something that I wanted to work on. I naturally fell into a brief that led me to creating type.
Typography was what I was interested in before I came to the course, and I felt like I was stripped off everything when I came to Leeds - learning to work in a completely different way, realising how much there actually was to design and how my way of working before was quite superficial.
Now, I feel I have fallen back into typography after learning everything that I have and have started to love it again. The reason I picked to do a brief on the Royal Mail was due to seeing the Johnson Banks send a letter campaign, I just thought it was brilliant, but I did not really see it as typography at that point- just a great idea. Which is what I am really interested in and what I think makes good design, concept. But now, I see typography as a format to present my ideas - rather that image - which, for me, seems like such a simpler and more effective way of doing it.
The Royal Mail brief was without a doubt the brief I enjoyed the most and that must show through in my work. This was my starting point to typography and was a self initiated brief so I was able to do what I wanted with it really. The rest of the briefs gave me a real world context to use my type and concept skills.
I am really happy with my perfume book cover, however, I do want to work on it more before submitting it to Penguin, as I think after I had stepped away from it, I started to realise things that I did not like. For example, I forgot to put the penguin logo on it!! Also, I want to experiment with the type on the back of the cover a bit more. I showed this piece to Si Scott and he said that he liked the used of the mask to represent the masking of natural odours idea.
The H.G Wells cover was a very quick brief, and I do like the final pieces. However, I want to do more on it - for example, produce the whole set before submitting to D&AD. And to experiment with the composition of the type more. I think it has more potential.
My other brief was Jazzcakes. I enjoyed this one the least, and after a Week I just wanted to get rid of it to be honest. I just got qhite bored of it - I could have done all of that in a day, and I should have set it as a day brief really, It probably would have been more successful as a shorter brief, just because I lost the motivation to do anything with it. Next time I have a branding brief, I am going to spend just one day on it.
I have learnt alot this module - I seemed to feel alot more comfortable working in the studio as well, and this has had alot of impact on my body of work.
Every time I got a brief last time, I would feel paralyzed for the first few days not knowing what to do, but now, I come up with ideas in minutes. Just knowing what I am good at and knowing my idea is going to be in the format of primarily type, makes the whole process alot of smoother and more successful.
I have not submitted two briefs that I worked on - headline and Metro. I did not complete these briefs because I had a bit of a nightmare with them (this was the disastrous crit) and decided that I needed to get out of the rut I was in and more onto something fresh to inspire me - which really was the best decision I made.
I am going into uni tomorrow to foil these. I am a bit poor at the moment, so I am doing a bit of designing to try and make my christmas presents a bit better/more thoughtful!
The starting point was when I decided to do some personalized Christmas tags for the family - each letter being individual.
This is another T-shirt design for a present for my boyfriend. Looking at a variety of fonts.
Wednesday, 9 December 2009
Updated Boards: 
PRODUCT
Final Logo:
All the final contexts -
PROMO
These are to act as promotional products. I decided to do an umbrella as they described themselves as an 'umbrella' of things, as they deal with art to bakery.
I decided to do a tea cup as they run tea and cake events.
The T-shirt could be give away items, or for staff to wear at events. Same goes for the canvas bags.
I think that this shows the logo can work along a range of products, and works particularly well on the bag and the t-shirt.
PRODUCT STATIONARY:
Tuesday, 1 December 2009
Generating Font in Font Lab.
I then took the red ink on red stock look from the booklet and creating some more posters.
BOOKLET DESIGN TWO
It was good to see how the font works as body copy and printed out. I chose the colour red to relate to the Royal Mail.
I liked working with red on red - it has a screen feel effect to it.
BOOKLET DESIGN ONE
I used one of the foiled prints as a band around the booklet and one of the stamps to seal it. I think this works quite nicely as a set - with a postcard inside and a set of stamps inside.
As part of the second typeface brief I decided to create another booklet just for this way up. Having the font as a workable type really made this easier! I did two variations and the (top) second one is the final.
I already had my typeface set up as an illustrator file, but it was getting a bit tedious having to use the type as a shape rather than an actual font. It seemed pointless having a font that was not workable, when I wanted to work with it in context of things, and see what the font would be suitable for.
I copied and pasted the illustrator files into Font Lab and then edited the letter forms within Font Lab. Below are some screen shots of me doing this. It took a full day to create the full typeface.
And now it is part of my font book :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)