Visual Language: Photography

In visual language we were given a keyword to photograph, mine was three. I have take photographs of number 3's as well as series of three's around the college building. We are to choose our favourite example of logic shown in these photographs, these ideas will be developed for use in a book we will later create.

End of Module Self-Evaluation

1. What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?

Through my induction and also through my own experimentation, I have learnt to use Illustrator. Before, I did not understand how Illustrator could be a useful tool and instead always hand drew my images or used Photo shop. I think I have effectively applied my new skills, as they were used not only in the Illustrator brief, but both of the No News is Good News briefs which I created after my Illustrator inductions. Through the group work I also learnt more about Photo shop through my peers.

I have now developed typography skills through this module. In my previous education I had not been taught about typography, so I have found this fascinating as well as extremely useful and have tried to apply what I have learnt about typography in all my briefs. I learnt about the rules of letter forms, but found it quite difficult to apply these when creating my own typeface by hand, and as a result, some letters were out of proportion.

Through this module I have developed visual communication skills. At first I found this difficult, such as with the visual thinking brief, where there is a good idea behind my work but it is not obvious to the viewer. But I believe I have improved these skills, especially after my research for What is Graphic Design, and I think this can be shown through my Alphabet Soup typeface, which I believe is understandable by itself.

2. What approaches to/methods of research have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?

I have used the Internet, books from the college library as well as relevant existing examples of Graphic Design that I have collected for research. They have informed my design process by showing me what works well, but also in some cases bad examples show me what not to do, such as colours which don't work together. As well as this, research is useful for me to know my competition, so I don't create something which is identical to something which has already been made. Research has been the starting point for each brief, especially important for the mail shot brief, as I had never created a mail shot before, or experimented with unique foldings, so research helped me to understand what a mail shot is and how useful it can be.
I haven't done much primary research, but to improve in further modules I think this important.

3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?

I am quite critical of my own work and so find it difficult to identify strengths. One strength that stands out in my work is that I am always continuing to develop it after receiving feedback. I regularly discussed my work with tutors to ensure improvements could be made.

Another strength is that I believe I have always created work that is relevant for the target audience. I have always listed considerations such as target audience before planning a piece, and I believe this is how I have capitalised on making my work relevant.
4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these more fully?

Although I am creating many design ideas at the start by hand, I tend to stick with one idea from the start, and not attempt to create the others.

Colour is something which I felt I didn't understand well previously, so a lot of the colour I have used seems to be quite irrelevant, more to make a piece look attractive than having a purpose.

I don't think I have focused on presentation as much as I should have, I would address this weakness by using relevant stock and being more careful with folds and cutting in future.


5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?

Next time I will try different ideas instead of just rushing in with my first idea. Making mock ups of an idea and developing it may lead me to a better quality piece of design.

I will think about stock, experimenting with different stock which may make my pieces stand out, such as the use of stickers. I will try unusual sizes and shapes as well instead of choosing the safe option so that my pieces are unique.

I will evaluate my work as I go instead of just reflecting at the end of a brief, as I feel evaluating has been a really useful process with I never previously used. This reflection will hopefully help me to stop making mistakes and realise what is working well.

Now that I am beginning to understand colour, I will be more careful about picking colours with relevance, rather than just choosing colours I think look good. I think this will help to share my message through visual communication.

I will spend more time considering layout. Some of my designs didn't work too well because of their layout. I will try both horizontal and vertical orientation, and consider how folds can effect a layout. By doing this I can choose a layout which makes the most sense and therefore make my work easier to understand and so more effective.

6. How would you grade yourself on the following areas
(5= excellent 4=very good 3=good 2=average 1=poor)
Attendance = 4
Punctuality = 5
Motivation = 3
Commitment = 4
Quantity of work produced = 3
Quality of work produced = 3
Contribution to the group = 3

Visual Language: Colour Theory

Colour and Contrast


In today's visual language we learnt more about colour theory. We saw many examples of contrasting colours which left everyone with headaches or feeling sick - but we can now be more confident about knowing which colours work together.

• Change the hue the chromatic value stays the same
• Change the lightness and so deal with the tint and shade axis
• With desaturation, the colour value drops and with eventually be removed

• RGB mixed together makes white - additive colour
• CMY mixed together makes black - subtractive colour

• We need light to perceive colour, and we don't all see colours the same because of the eye's sensitivity
• Colour only makes sense in comparison to other colours, for example we only know light blue through recognising dark blue
• The eye can be 'fooled' into seeing colours - the same colour can look like a different colour when placed with another colour - using a Pantone Matching System is the only way to identify a true colour
• High contrasts between colours makes things stand out, and makes text easier to read

Seven Contrasts of Colour
Tone  Colours have tonal values, these can be seen in the forms of neutral grays by removal of hues by desaturation. This is a monochromatic understanding.
Hue  The greater distance between hues on a colour wheel, the greater the contrast
Saturation  The juxtaposition of light and dark values and their relative saturations.
Extension  Deals with the proportion of colours we can see - where they are placed, where the points of contrast are. Two images containing the same amount of one colour but the colours are spread out differently changes how difficult something is to look at
Temperature  The juxtaposition of hues that can be considered warm and cool. Blue is considered cool and red is warm. A gradient shift is created by this juxtaposition, although the colours are in fact flat colours. The colours seem to warm up, and then cool down as the colours get warmer and vice versa for cooler colours. This shows you cannot trust what you are seeing when it comes to colour.
Complementary  These are the opposite colours. The colours are as far apart as can be. Contrasts can be painful to see - such as red and green, not a good idea.
Simultaneous  The boundaries between colours make them perceptually vibrate


What happens with colours when placed with their opposites? I tried to show how colour effects colour with this task. Orange is the opposite of blue, so I placed blue and orange objects on different colours of paper and other objects.

No News Is Good News: Part 2 - Mail Shots

Brief: Produce a mail shot that distributes, disseminates and reinforces your message to an appropriate list of recipients. (160mm width x 105mm height) There should be 10 editions of the resolution and 1 visually appropriate mailing list. One resolution must be mailed back to college.

Considerations: What do you want to say and how do you want to say it? What will the mail shot achieve? Does it direct you to a website, encourage you to attend an event, is it interactive or is it self contained?

Initial Ideas:

Celebrity gossip magazine

• Ticket to a magazine launch party
• Advertising Celebrity forum
• Mini magazine
• Vouchers for magazine

1.

2. 

Advertising a wedding company

• In the style of Perry & Brand's Wedding invites
• Win a dream destination wedding

1. 

2.

3.

Development

To find inspiration, which was especially important as I had never created a mail shot before, I started by browsing the internet and looking through books at existing mail shots.
I decided to go along with the idea of my mail shot advertising a celebrity gossip magazine. The interesting twist to this would be that the gossip magazine was online, giving readers the chance to join in and give their opinions on the latest celebrity gossip. I decided the layout and style would be similar to my final image and type high impact poster regarding Katy Perry and Russell Brand's Indian wedding. This is the design idea that I chose to develop further.

I tried to re-arrange my image and type poster so that it would work horizontally for inside the poster, but I don't think this is as easy to read as it is vertically, so I decided to re position the mail shot so that the text was inside.

This question, which contains opinions in the hope of provoking thought from the reader, was placed in the middle of the mail shot instead of the image and type poster.

This is an initial layout plan for the mail shots, but the folds are not accurate, so I redesigned this.

Development After Progress Crit

After my progress crit I made some changes to my designs based on the feedback from tutors and peers. 

I created this lowercase typeface in the same style of the uppercase typeface I had already created for the posters, because I thought readability may be an issue if uppercase was used for all text. I created it in Illustrator by messily tracing around Myraid Pro, and filling in the counters.

This is the re arrangement of type after feedback.

The images below show a mock up mail shot I made to give me an idea of how the real thing would look. After creating this mail shot, I realised there were a few things which needed neatening up and perfecting before I would be ready to print in high quality in the digital print workshop.

    Front of Mail Shot                             Back of Mail Shot

Inside                                     Opened Completely

Final Mail Shot Design

Outside

Mailing List

In the brief it is stated that a visually appropriate mailing list is required to accompany the mail shots, so having already considered the audience to be young woman (15-25) with opinions on celebrity gossip, I began to think about where these mail shots could be posted.

• They could be distributed to places where the target audience would be likely to spend time, so they could read them and then take them home to remind them to visit the website. These places include coffee shops, hairdressers and shopping centres.
• The mail shot could be sent out to student accommodation, where the target audience will be living. These students probably won't have much money, so they may be more inclined to visit an online celebrity gossip website rather than buying a magazine. Also, they may have a lot of spare time, so this is suggesting something they could do when they are bored.
• The mail shot could be sent to people who already are signed up to celebrity fan clubs, mailing lists, email newsletters etc, who may be interested in finding about more about their favourite celebrities.
• The mail shot could be sent to people who subscribe to similar gossip magazines, such as OK! A possible partnership could be formed. 
• The fictional company "Oh!So Celebrity" could form a partnership with an already successful company with the same target audience and similar qualities, and so the mail shot could be sent out to their existing customers. For example, the existing fashion company ASOS (as seen on celebrity) would be a perfect partnership.
• Influential people known for their interest in celebrity gossip could receive the mail shot.
• The mail shot could be sent to internet cafes, meaning that the website can be visited there and then.

Visual Language: Pantone

Colour Theory

• High contrast makes things easier to read - changing the contrast can change somethings effectiveness
• The laws of physics are the basis of colour theory, so they are the same everywhere
• The full range of visible colours can be seen through the proportionable adjustment of just three colours
• Millions of colours can be created by mixing RGB in different quantities
• Primary Colours - Red, Yellow, Blue
• Secondary Colours - Orange, Violet, Green - Made from mixing two primaries
• Tertiary Colours - The mid point between primaries and secondaries - E.g. Yellowy-green
• RGB Colours are made for screen, CMYK are for print

For visual language, we had to collect 10 objects over a week in one colour scheme, mine being blues. The first image shows my collection and the second contains the items collected by my group.

In our colour groups, we ordered our items so that they were in the order of colours in the colour wheel. We had to make sure our items blended into the items of the neighbouring groups. 

Here is a photograph of the different groups as one: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet.

We then used a pantone colour matching system reference guide to find the exact pantone of 10 objects from our collection. This was difficult to do as there were so many colours to choose from. Pantone is a standardised, universal set of colours. After finding the pantone for these items, I created a square for each item on Photo shop, filling each square in with the correct pantone code.

Pantone Matching System

Plate [Coated Euro - 246-3C C 95 M 0 Y 25 K 0]

 

02 Wallet [Solid Coated - 2767C 16ptsP Blue 72.7% 6ptsP Black 27.3%]

 

Crate [Coated Euro - 222-4C C 80 M 25 Y 0 K 5]

 

Spray Lid [Solid Coated - 2738C 12ptsP Red Blue 75% 4ptsP Violet 25%]

Milk Bottle Top [Solid Coated - 2728C 6ptsP Ref Blue 37.5% 2ptsP Violet 12.5% 8ptsP Trans Wt. 50%]

Plastic Tub [Solid Coated - 298C 3 1/4ptsP Pro Blue 20.3% 3/4ptsP Ref Blue 4.7% 12ptsP Trans Wt. 75%]

Crayon [Solid Coated - 3105C 14 1/2ptsP Pro Blue 87.9% 1 1/2ptsP Ref Blue 9.1% 1/2ptsP Black 3%]

Paper [Solid Coated - 299C 6 1/2ptsP Pro Blue 40.6% 1 1/2ptsP Ref Blue 9.4% 8ptsP Trans Wt. 50%]

Ball [Solid Coated - 312C 6 1/2ptsP Pro Blue 40.6% 1 1/2ptsP Green 9.4% 8ptsP Trans Wt. 50%]

Bobble [Solid Coated - 294C 8ptsP Ref Blue 47.1% 8ptsP Pro Blue 47.1% 1ptsP Black 5.8%]