Brief 2 / Net Design

After looking at existing stationery ranges, I know I need to start with creating some nets to place my designs on to. I want to try out a few nets to create something that is a bit unusual compared to the standard stationery nets for the products I am creating.

I've already bought some products to cover, so I will need to measure these to see what space I have to work with.

Wilkinson's Products Nets  [see products]

Here are the net outlines for these products that I have bought:

Nets to make

Greeting Cards

Tags

Gift Bags

Variety of sizes storage boxes 

Envelopes

OUGD301 Feedback Crit

For the crit, I am showing my blog and have printed some sheets of work. I've also re-written my briefs as these will be useful to help people who don't know anything about what I'm doing to understand my work. I also realised that the old briefs I had written didn't totally make sense now that I have changed a few things.

Questions I want answering:

1. Does the logo design for the Graphic Design Museum work as intended? (To appeal to a wide audience and to last the test of time)

2. Which colours do you associate with the internet?

3. For the stationery brief, should I go with the pixel theme I've been looking at or look into Icongraphy?

4. Should my graphic design rulebook contain images or be type based only?

5. What do you think of the decorative heading text I have made for the rulebook? (See printed sheets)

Feedback:

Plan of Action:

After reading the feedback, here is what I have decided to do based on peoples opinions:

Brief 2

- Won't go with the pixel typeface as it is too obvious and not creative enough
- The colours I have decided on to represent the internet are blue, green, black and white

Brief 3

- Take the range further with merchandise etc
- Make sure the words of the typeface are readable and make it more like a proper typeface, so use the same glyph for each of the same letters in a sentence
- Think of the content, a bit of writing for each statement to back it up (Such as with the "Its not how good you are..." book)
- The purpose of the book is to motivate and inspire so it is better not to call it a rule book but a guide book
- The U.S.P of the book is that it is attractive to designers because of its design and the print finishes used
- The purpose of the typeface can be explained in the book. It looks good, and it makes designers think about how they can alter a font to customise it to how they want it to look, rather than just going with what is easily available

Brief 4

- Use helvetica or typefaces that are more relevant/important to graphic design in designs to appeal to target audience
- The previous audience for who the invites to the opening night would be sent to was too broad, so I have narrowed this down, to graphic design industry professionals including 'celebrity' graphic designers, such as ones that would appear at design festivals like typo, and members of the media to put the museum in the spotlight, like graphic design magazines
- I will avoid using gradients in the logo as this doesn't work
- I am going to continue to experiment with the logo design rather than settling for what I have now, as there are still changes to be made

Brief 4 / Digital Logo Development

Initial Logo Development

I am looking for fonts to use with different weights, so I can re-create my initial logo plan drawing. Its important to choose one with different weights as I want the MGD and Graphic Design to be bold, but the other words to be regular. I've played around a bit with the positioning and style of the logo, but I think the third example underneath is my favourite. I like the font used here but think that I'll have a play around with others just to make sure.

Here is just the wording with different fonts to see which ones work best. I've gone for a series of simplistic sans serif fonts, that are available in different weights, as I think these relate to the style I am going for, will stand the test of time, and will make the logo appeal to a wide audience.

From left to right: 

1. twen cent mt, century gothic, gill sans,

2. helvetica, lucida sans, oriya mn,

3. kannada mn, quicksand, thonburi

Its between Twen Cent Mt & Century Gothic (which are the first and second examples). After a lot of thinking eventually decided on Twen Cent Mt.

This is what I'm thinking for the logo, which could also work reversed out.

The logo has the potential to put a bit of colour or an image behind it. I want the logo to be versatile, so that it can work with different colour ways, such as the existing museum logos that I have shown on my design context blog.

I think I'm happy with this logo design and am going to try foiling it as well as considering what images and colours could be used behind it.

Brief 4/ Print Finishes Experiments

For some of the products I aim to create for the Graphic Design Museum brief, I will want them to look quite classy because of who they are intended for, such as the invite for the opening night party.

To get this look of luxury, I think I will achieve this by applying print finishes to my designs. I want the designs of the invite to match in with the rest of the Museum branding, but to have an extra quality. 

Before I decide which print finish I would want to choose, I'm experimenting with how I would do these. 

EMBOSSING___

For example, this is my attempt at hand embossing with some tools I bought. 

The left image is me using an embossing tool, and the right is the finish result. I've used the 6 different heads to try out the different tools of embossing.

This is what it looks like from the back. I think the embossing would have worked better on thinner card as the one I used was quite thick. It was really hard to photograph which shows the final results weren't that obvious.

FOIL BLOCKING___

 

LASER CUTTING___

I have used laser cutting on a few projects before, so this could also be an option.

Brief 4/ Logo Development

I've been researching existing museum branding to see what works, and what is suitable. Its helped me think about what I need to bare in mind when creating my logo.

I need something which can be applied to a variety of products, would work in black and white or with a variety of colours, works at different sizes, is easy to read and understand and is relevant to the subject of graphic design. It shouldn't be too complicated to do all of these things and to still be understandable if it was placed over a more detailed image.

It needs to be appealing to both people with an interest in graphic design, and to a general audience who may want to learn more about the subject. So I don't want the design to go too 'hipster' or anything as I want people of all ages to appreciate it.

I also want to make sure it looks classy, like the V&A logo which I looked at, because it needs to stand the test of time, as a museum can't keep updating its logo to fit in with the graphic design trends.

I've started out by just trying different logo ideas for the letters MGD, as the museum is the Museum of Graphic Design. I've tried to relate the logos to the theme but some look a little random.

This is the same image but you can see in yellow I've circled the ones I liked best. I've also been asking others their opinions and luckily they picked the same logo designs that I had liked the best to continue to work with.

I then tried out some logos included the title of the museum as otherwise I was a bit worried it wouldn't be obvious what it was for, seeing as its not well known as it will be new.

Again I've circled the ones I liked best, asking for feedback about these from others.

People have said:

- Be careful that the text you use doesn't look too futuristic and therefore science like

- Make sure the logo represents graphic design

- Keep the box as it makes it unique

- Try it on a slant

- Works better with the text included

- Hand drawn style works well

Heres a close up of the logo I like the best, which I then tried playing around with a bit more.

Now, I quite like the logo in the bottom right, as it would be more sophisticated with a timeless sans serif font, but still looks a bit unique with the box around it.

This is the logo that I like best that I will try re-creating in illustrator.

Here are some attempts to re-create the first logo design. I've traced over my hand drawn text to make this in to type, but I don't think this idea works very well on screen as it doesn't look as professional as using and editing an existing font would do.

Playing around with re-creating the logo digitally was harder than I thought because of the important decision of font choice.

 

Individual Progression Tutorial

Today I've had my individual progress tutorial with Phil which has been useful as I felt I was stuck at a bit of a dead end, not knowing what to do next, but now I know where to start and have an idea about how I should structure this module.

Notes:

1. Typographic Rule Book - Longest brief

- Play around with breaking the type face down, remove parts but so it is still legible
- Look at book formats: what shape will the book be and how will the reader interact with it?
- E.g. book could be shaped like a letter
- This should be the longest one, span out over 7 weeks
- Look at Graphic Design Rulebook - Thou Shall Not

2. Internet themed stationery - Short brief

- Who is your target audience? At the moment will be most appealing to young boys
- Choose colour scheme, start by choosing sets of 5 colours that work together than eventually lower this down to just three
- Keep this brief short, once you've got a pattern easy to apply it
- Pixel idea obvious side of internet so which other ways could you go?

3. Graphic Design Museum - Shortest brief

- Once you've got a logo and a colour scheme can apply this to anything
- Look at Saul Bass branding for Joomi Sushi

4. YCN Competition Brief - Short/ Medium brief

- Choose a back-up brief from the ISTD briefs, in case the YCN ones are not applicable to your design practice

Brief 2 / Colour Choices

After my tutorial with Phil he suggested that I start this brief by choosing my colour theme, then I could get experimenting with some design ideas. I am starting with choosing sets of 5 colours that relate to the internet, and then I'll break these sets down to 3 colours, before eventually choosing which ones I'll use in my designs.

I also asked people "what colour do you think of when you think of the internet?" and the most common answer was a light blue. People said this is mainly because of it being the colour of the internet explorer logo.

Here I have taken the colours from some of the images I found when researching the internet. Personally when I think of the internet I think black, white, and then bright contrasting colours.

Now I've chosen the best examples of colours to make up different possible sets of 5, making sure the colours would work well together.

        -->        

I decided I definitely wanted black as one of the colours I use, so I just need two more colour choices. I can get the greys I want to use by taking a percentage of the black. Above are my possible choices.

As it is what people have said reminds them of the internet, and because I think it will be more appealing to both males and females, I think I will use a light blue. Now I need to choose exactly which shade of blue. The other colour I use I think will just be white, to keep the designs simple.

After the feedback crit, and asking other people their opinions on which colour reminds them of the internet, I've decided to add green in to the mix. Here are my final colour choices:

Black, White, Blue (C 73 M 30 Y 3 K 0), Green (C 73 M 0 Y 89 K 0)