Design Practice: OUGD301

Showing posts with label OUGD301. Show all posts

Wednesday, 12 December 2012

Tuesday, 11 December 2012

This year my work has been looking a lot more professional and to continue with this, I have applied my own branding to the things I will submit, such as this label for the folder, and the CD case. This makes it easy to see that everything belongs to me and also looks a lot better than if I'd just scrawled my name on!

Photos of the branded items:

Brief 3 / Proposed Extended Range

In one of the crits it was suggested that I extended the range for this brief. It would be quite easy to apply the decorative typography to any type of merchandise to be sold alongside the product, like a t-shirt or tote bag, but then this wouldn't really have a concept. The idea behind the posters and postcards has more of a meaning behind it:

I haven't had time to create the other products, as I wanted my focus to be on the design of the book, but if I did, I would have liked to create:

- A series of posters

- A series of postcards / notecards

- T-shirt & Tote bag

- Notebooks & Sketchbooks

- Pens, Pencils

These are all products that a graphic design student would use daily so the message would continually be on their mind to work hard. These products are quite similar to the ones I have created for my stationery brief.

Brief 5 / Printed Outcomes

As well as the ident for Inglenook Productions, I have created business cards for the three people I was doing branding for. This is because I wanted the outcome of the brief to be both digital and printed. I have just printed these out in digital print to show what they would ideally look like, but I intend to get them professionally printed as soon as possible.

Simply Plumbing.

I've applied sticky back plastic to the front of the cards to show what it would ideally look like, as it would be printed with a flood varnish on the front, but matte back. The gloss makes it look more professional, as does the thick card stock, and the matte back is something which I normally include on business cards, so notes can be scribbled on the back if need be. The card is available in two colour ways, because one is a hot tap and one is a cold.

Ben Mayfield.

These actually aren't finished, because I want to spend a longer time on this brief later. So I've just printed out an idea of what the cards could look like, using the things Ben wanted included on the cards. I think a range of cards showing off the different objects Ben has modelled would be the best option and hopefully I'll get around to this soon.

Inglenook Productions

Printing black on both sides is not something I would normally do, but think with this colour scheme it works best, to represent the theme of the warm colours, relating to the flames of an inglenook fireplace. The cards are really simple, with the focus on the logo design, and the information is written in Gill Sans, the same font I've used for the logo.

Brief 3 / Photo shoot

Unfortunately I didn't have this brief finished in time to photograph it in the photo studio, so I had to create my own mini photo studio with a photo tent and lighting. The photos have turned out quite well considering but I could have done with a better hand model to hold the pages open! These are some of the best photos that will be appearing on the boards.

This brief has been quite different to my others as there is just one product with a lot of content, where in my others there were loads of products. I think that makes this one difficult to photograph, so on the boards I want to include images of the actual quotes to show them off.

Monday, 10 December 2012

Brief 3 / Making the Book

Here are some photographs of the book at different stages as I put it together. One of my targets has been to work on my presentation skills, so its important that this book is perfect!

The pages have been printed as double page spreads a6 size, to be folded to a7. They are printed on to photo paper which gives a nice glossy finish. Its not the best quality paper in the world but does the job, just can't afford to print all off on the gloss paper in digital print.

The back of each page is stuck to the next page kind of like a concertina bind.

Putting the cover together. Need to think of some way to close it together.

A few photographs of the book. I'm so happy with the size and how much content I actually managed to create, as for a bit I was worried it wouldn't get finished.

I wish I had finished this brief a bit earlier so I could have applied some sort of print finish to the cover and also photographed it in the photo studio like I did with my other briefs. I know for next time!!

Sunday, 9 December 2012

Final Rationale & Briefs Summary

Brief 4 / Website Design

I'm creating a website to match in with the re-brand of Manchester craft and design centre, as their website at the moment is really messy.

There is so much information on it, and I want to combine the stuff I've learnt in the web sessions I've been doing with the designs I've been making for mcd.

First off, a website should have about 5 pages, where as this one seems to have hundreds, as well as loads of random images everywhere.

What stuff is actually needed?

A lot of the pages can be condensed on to just one page.

- Home

- About (+ getting here, details, company information)

- News (+ events and exhibitions)

- Studios (+ image gallery, information)

- Contact (+form, mailing list, social media links)

What is needed that isn't already there?

- Image gallery section

- Map

- Contact Form

Website Mock Ups

- A few quick mock-ups trying only to use the information which is needed.

Final Website:

Brief 3 / Final Book

Got there in the end. Realised I should include a little explanation of the font and colour choices in the book. Originally I was just planning to include this information on the boards, but I think it would be relevant to the person reading the book and interesting to know about the design choices.

Thursday, 6 December 2012

Brief 3 / Book Cover

Based on the book folds I experimented with (see blog post), the french folded book will be inside a card cover. I had an original idea based on how the design was looking at the time, but as I have finished my design the cover design has changed.

(OLD idea)

The cover will be printed on to black card. I'm thinking about foiling black on to black. I'm going to use one of the quotes from the book on the cover, so for example it could be called 'Be Unique: The Graphic Design Rulebook'. The foil will appeal to the target audience as designers are interested in stock and print finishes, and will be a simple way of making the book more eye catching. The cover will be then held inside a slip case.

(NEW idea)

The cover will be a wrap around card cover, an idea from the book mock ups I made, to keep the book safe from getting bent and to make it seem a bit more exciting. I realised that for such a small book, a slip case would be a bit pointless anyway so I don't need to do this. Also, I think using black on black will be a bit harsh against the other colours, as I have ended up using an emerald and creamy white colour scheme throughout.

This is the design for the cover, simplistic so all the focus is on the title. Ideally if I had more time I would have liked to apply a print finish or try laser cutting this or something to make it stand out.

Net, to be printed double sided on to white card. It might look a bit random now but will make more sense when wrapped around the final book.

--- After printing this out in digital print, I had a bit of a disaster. First of all the cover accidentally got scaled to fit and then secondly it came out with a black mark on the front, and finally, the green was way out to the green of the inside pages. Also, I didn't allow for how thick the book would actually be once I had made it, so I needed to re-print the cover at home, the only problem being that I don't have an A3 printer! --

I have re-arranged the cover design, which I will print in to 3 parts then package together. I've measured out the size of the book so it fits perfectly.

Outside cover

Inside Cover

Net (only one sided, because the book will be stuck to the other side)

Again this might be quite confusing but makes a lot more sense when you see the actual made book. In the end I much prefer this cover, I think the book lots a lot more exciting like this, so it was quite a good mistake to make!

Brief 5 / Inglenook Idents

Idents

I started out by watching videos of big name movie companies indents, noticed a few similar traits such as the camera angle hovering from different views such as birds eye view, side on, and the text zooms in and out.

I was drawing out scenes for complicated idents but then realised that the best idents were the simple ones, that got the companies name stuck in the viewers head.

Here are some of the effects I tried in these ident experiments:

- Flicker effect: Go on opacity for layer, alt click stopwatch and type A=wiggle(7,25) The flicker was applied to give it a vintage, spooky feel, relating to theme of the inglenook fireplace

- To get layers to move together, place each individually and arrange at different starting and ending positions

- Letters start out saying nook, and then push together so the o's are overlapping, the link is the intimacy of the letters.

- To get music on to after effects, download firefox, go to firefox add ons and download the download helper. Then when watching a video click the download logo and place on after effects as a video but hide the image or convert to a song on quicktime.

Final Ident:

The final ident brings in a few of the effects I have tried out in the previous idents, as well as adding in the sound of a crackling fire place (which I got off youtube), as suggested by the client. I've added a stock image of a vintage paper as the background, to add to this vintage theme.

This is a screenshot showing how crazy this file got! Instead of using the automatic light flicker effect, I added it in myself by constantly changing the opacity for each letter at different times. This was very complicated but I think the final effect looks far better. I'm really pleased with how this ident has turned out, especially because after effects is not my favourite program to use.

Wednesday, 5 December 2012

Brief 3 / Book Update

Here are some more screenshots of the progress I have made to the book design. I don't know whether the text works best horizontally or on its side? Might have to ask others opinions. I also need to work out how much of the page it should take up.

Those that I asked suggested that it just makes sense to have them all the right way round. Also, try and get the quote to fill up the same amount of space in each page, so that everything is consistent.

I also played around with where the text should be positioned on page. Should it be at the top, middle or bottom?

I don't think the text looks as good on the black background as the green so I'm just going to keep all the background pages green that aren't white, also, this will add to the consistency, as I think three different background colours would be a bit much.

I'm nearly finished with the design and layout, but I think I need to test it by printing it out and seeing what size things are, and if the colours work together.

I am slowly just making everything simpler in terms of the page designs, as I want everything to work together, where before, a few things like these pages looked a bit random and messy.

A pdf of where I am up to now... nearly done just need to ask for some feedback before I'm ready to print.

Brief 5 / Inglenook Productions

Inglenookproductions

This is another live branding brief that I have been working on as part of my mini brief.
Inglenook film and theatre productions want a new logo that is relevant to their name.

They also want a 20 second ident and new logo ideas.

Inglenook is a type of fireplace, and keywords relevant to this that would also be relevant to what the theatre company say about themselves include: warmth, gathering, intimate, originality, adventure, experience.

Initial Logo Ideas:

OO's could be eyes
Could be a glow from the darkness
Close kerning represents intimacy
People sat around the fireplace watching tv
Lights could flicker on and off
Colours used should represent warmth such as orange flames
Bold text adds impact

Initial Drawings:

LOGO IDEA 1.

- Retro feel - Thin font - Sophisticated - Fun / Original - Slightly spooky look - Elegant curves

LOGO IDEA 2.

Inglenook logo represents the warmth of a fire, (colour), intimacy of sitting around the fire (kerning), impact of the fire (Bold text), sophistication and professionalism of company (choice of typeface).Added shadows to the interlinking oo's to make it more obvious what it is.

Favourite Logo: (Gills Sans)

Logo applied to business card:

Printed on to 350gsm gloss.