OUGD405 - Studio Brief 01

Final Designs

For my final designs I decided to keep the nature theme however I edited some images to create a more abstract, eye catching and colourful design using various block colours as seen below.

I used the resolutions 6x4, 7x5, 8x6.

OUGD405 - Studio Brief 01

Design Process - Frame Shape

The brief involves us creating 3 designs to go as backing papers on photo frames. I initially thought that this brief was going to be slightly challenging due to my recollection of backing paper only consisting of black and white photos of family's etc. So I decided to go look at some photo frames in shops such as Asda living, M&S Next etc. What I found was mainly typography and shape based backing papers and I didn't want to do this. As seen in the images below. This made me think further into the demographics, i.e the target market. I then looked into possible theme's such as; Shape, Nature, Geometry, Time, Universal, Family, Organics, Tradition etc.

I looked into a couple of the themes in more detail particularly shape and nature; sunsets, flowers and butterflies etc. I  really liked the idea of nature as it is vastly broad. I then looked into flowers, as they are particularly homely, something that is in a home itself and simply pretty to look at, similar to a photo frame. I looked at a couple pictures on the internet of flowers as they were relatively good quality and showed the geometry of the plant which I knew I could use to manipulate in photoshop. As well as butterflies on plants. I liked the colourful nature of the images, and how they were cleverly photographed, something I would find particularly challenging to do myself.

After looking at a couple of these images, I used the select tool, paint brush and various other tools on photoshop to create a draft idea seen below.

However, I felt that this image wasn't very eye catching and homely so I looked into another approach to the nature theme. I looked at a couple of photographs of scenery I had captured on my phone including beaches and sunsets.

I manipulated a couple of these in photoshop however, I didn't feel they worked very well as backing papers to a photo frame as they were simply just photographs.

I then referred back to the flower theme, and created an design piece from a photograph of a rose. I manipulated it in different ways, such as changing it to black and white, adjusting the colours, changing the exposure, brightness/contrast/colour and using the gradient map, inverting the colours ,selecting different colours etc. My initial designs are featured below.

For my final designs I will follow a similar manipulation technique when creating them. 

OUGD405 - Studio Brief 01 - Design Process - Frame Shape (Photoshop)

Studio Brief 01 - Design Process - Frame Shape (Photoshop)

Today we were given Studio Brief 01;

Re-imagine the backing paper for a photo frame. This must include the dimensions of the frame. You must produce a minimum of three designs, which work as a set across three different frame sizes. Choose from the frame dimensions below: 6x4 inches - 7x5 inches - 8x6 inches A5 - A4 - A3 The concept of your design should be shape, you can interpret this as a literal shape e.g. circle, sphere, triangle, square, box etc or be more imaginative. Consider how you frame your shape, be creative with your manipulations and compositions. Consider how to engage the audience and the target market of your photoframe. For example a Wilkinsons photoframe would be packaged and designed with a different aesthetic to a Harvey Nicholls frame. All typography and vector based images must be produced in Adobe Illustrator. Any images must be manipulated in Adobe Photoshop. The final composition must be produced in Adobe Photoshop.

OUGD403 - Module Evaluation

Module Evaluation

During this module I have learnt various things from simple design techniques such as using a grid to learning how to use various design interfaces, more specifically Adobe Illustrator. I enjoyed working by hand at the start of the module as it enabled me to think more creatively and work more quickly rather then relying on mainly digital design, which I did on my previous design course. I was particularly surprised with my hand rendered abilities. I also enjoyed the group work we did, such as group critiques, which improved my work dramatically as I was told what to change to make my work better. I also enjoyed working as a team when completely tasks as it enabled me to brainstorm different ideas collectively. I learnt that collaborating this key aspect of being a designer.

Although I did find the workload near the end of the module slightly hard to keep up with it pushed me to improve my organisational skills and work harder to produce a better outcome. Initially I also found working with Adobe Illustrator slightly challenging as I wasn’t very familiar with it and it did affect the outcome of my work, however this is something I would defiantly like to improve on throughout being on this course.

OUGD403, Studio Brief 04

Studio Brief 04

To start I sketched out a few ideas that could potentially work, however I wanted to see how these would work digitally. I started with the Adobe Photoshop Interface and placed one of the quotes onto a red background with black text, it read “ONCE ONLINE, YOU CANʼT TAKE IT BACK”.

I instantly knew that this wasnʼt effective in communicating cyber-bullying effectively due to the quote giving off a broad range of meanings. Next, I came up with the idea of a gun shooting cursors, but naturally this didn't work either. I then imagined the effects of the words that ' said and came up with my idea for the type only poster. A plain typographic image in the shape of a knife on a black background, I felt this worked well however it needed an extra layer of text to communicate the cyber-bullying message. My original typographic design (left image) didnʼt work as well as my final design with the text. 

My other two poster designs worked on elements of the shock factor. The image only poster shows the detrimental effects of the aftermath of online abuse in a stripped back graphical form. The image and text poster again shows how online messages can hurt someone as ultimately the heart is associated with someones feelings. Each image was developed on both Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. The colours red, black and white were all used as I felt that they contrasted with one another and brought the raw image forward effectively. I added the mouses on as a final feature as I felt the cursor alone wasnʼt effective enough in communicating cyber-bullying itself. I printed the images out onto A3 printer paper at first, however the black came out not as I expected so I therefore re-printed them onto better paper.

OUGD403:Studio Brief 04 - Message & Delivery - Delivery

Task;Produce designs for a set of three high impact posters that deliver a personal identified message derived from your research into part one of this brief.The three posters should work as a set or series and be visually consistent. The first must be produced solely using type, the second solely with image and the third a combination of both type and image.

Today we had an interim critique for studio brief 04 where I briefly explained to the group a couple of my ideas for developing these posters on cyber-bullying.

The feedback I received was to look into ad campaigns that order people what to do, for example; Propaganda in the war, Don't drink and drive, Don't smoke etc. I was advised to produce my posters as a set that could potentially be put near the escalators on the tube. Something that needs to be communicated very quickly, maybe using the shock factor. Here are a few of the ad campaigns I looked at. 

OUGD404: Negative Space Brief

Negative space in Graphic Design. Task: After looking at the examples of ‘negative space’ both in typographic terms and even in photographic terms the workshop is to choose a word i.e. HALT (Typographic) Upper or lower case and see what element you can add to use with or replacing the identified space to create an image suggested by the chosen word/element. Within the time available, you may render this in any way you choose, if you wish to Mac up, and you feel you have time, go for it otherwise by hand if it suits you as a creative. Please work to A3/A4 so we will have a better view of the finished character when we discuss at the end of the workshop. Initially, I found this brief particularly challenging due to having to pick my own word as well as having to design something on my own, without being in a group. I started off with choosing three letter words such as, pop, dog, cat, eye, hot etc and sketched some designs out. After finding it extremely difficult to work with negative space on paper, I moved onto digital designs. After various manipulations I came up with these three designs.

OUGD404 - Emergency Exit Mini Brief

Tuesday 4th November Today we looked at symbols or images to communicate specific messages. One of the most important symbols we can consider is that of a ‘Fire Exit’ and how it is, as many warning elements potentially another vital element in visual communication. Not only will it have to consider language, culture and way finding (to a degree) so this  can be a difficult one to address in such a short time. We are all aware of the existing symbols, are we  happy with them? Is it time to revisit them. Now we can in a limited time (it concentrates the mind). Consider all the elements you need to address and see how ‘different’  you can make this. Colour, legibility and scale. These things are legally required and can  in some areas and scenarios have a detrimental effect on the building in which the are positioned. 1982 Japanese exit sign ("running man") designed by Yukio Ota in 1979 Published as ISO Standards in 1987, it is standard sign in parts of Asia-Pacific, Europe, Canada and New York City (LL26) We were asked to redesign the fire exit symbol. Therefore as a group we all sketched out some ideas we thought could possibly work however it was incredibly challenging to recreate something that already works perfectly without the need for change. We therefore looked at existing emergency exit signs and looked at what worked and what wasn't necessarily needed.  We went with a red triangle as it is a globally known warning sign. We then worked with various different arrows to symbolise movement to the exit.  After coming up with a few ideas as a group we then digitalised them.  After all agreeing on the top left design as being the most effective, we developed an extra red box to make the sign more legible. After experimenting with the designs and fonts we came up with our final idea below Here are some of the experiments along the way.

OUGD403: Studio Brief 02

Visual Thinking - Vector type

Task: 

Produce an alphabet based on one of the letterforms you created from the Alphabet Soup, Visual Thinking brief. You are restricted to working in black, however you may experiment with opacity and half tones. After the feedback from the group critique, I decided upon using the typeface that they thought was the best. I scanned into into the computer and live traced it on illustrator. However, I found it extremely difficult to draw the angels on the top of the letterform. I found this letter particularly difficult to digitalise due to it's exaggerated and complex corners. Especially the top half, where the corners are slightly curved, similar to that on a fence. Also, I found I was particularly unskilled on illustrator due to just being introduced to it, I found this compromised the development of this letterform into an alphabet.   Therefore, I reverted back to my original ideas and I found a better suited letterform, which I also thought was better than my original design my group had chosen. I started to develop a few letter forms by manipulating each one and referring back to the helvetica font. However, without using a grid I found it extremely difficult to make the letters uniform and similar to each other. Shown above on the H it looked out of place.  So from then on I started to use a grid.  After completing the whole alphabet I presented it to a group as a final crit. However I decided not to use a 4x7 grid to present it as it wasn't suitable to my uniform and uneven font. As seen on the picture below the 4x7 grid didn't suit my font at all. So therefore I decided to print it like this instead. I feel this layout better suited my font.