Friday 27 May 2011

Evaluation

This module has been the one which I have been most excited to do yet the hardest to achieve something I'm pleased about I think this has been due to where I want to be as a designer therefore looking at a range of design context things which are what I believe are amazing! Therefore comparing myself to these has been something which doesn't please me and has made me realise how far I need to push my design practice and stick at it in order to be par within the industry. I have experimented more within image in this module I have enjoyed this and by doing the image module OUGD205 it has really excited me about graphic design again. I've currently been creating imagery using collage do to this brief I wanted to achieve a real personal feel to Adele's album cover as its a personal album talking about her previous relationships. I originally wanted to  screen print scarves as this would be mixing to of the areas of industry which I'm most interested in working for music and retail. As I have learnt from this brief in order to this time management is essential and as I have a slow start to the brief I wouldn't of had time to produce them to a standard I was happy with therefore after a progress crit with Lorraine she suggested I changed my whole idea and went with album artwork I wasn't pleased with this decision as I wanted to create something different and was excited about doing scarves as applying my designs to a different distributor method would really benefit my portfolio. Therefore I plan on taking up the opportunity to do this in third year. The YCN  brief was really good an I enjoyed working on a live brief and collaboratively I think we would have worked better if we spent more time designing in uni together rather than doing are own thing and then trying to get together to discuss what we had researched designed and brainstormed. As for writing out our contracts what each person would do it was more about picking up anything that needed doing which was good as we learnt different things. Another thing which I found to be interesting we would talk about our ideas and then mock them up separately and both come up with completely different things! which goes to show how our minds work differently I took control of visualising our ideas and brainstorming ideas we could have achieved a lot more from this and I had big ideas to recreate a shop window which we didn't achieve. Throughout the web design workshop I didn't think it would be for me I was afraid at the thought of coding a website, these fears were easily suppressed as Simon was so helpful and quickly explained you can mainly use the design side of the program yet for some things we would have to understand the code in order to achieve the full potential of the program was surprisingly easy once you had got the hang of it. After getting the basics done for my website I asked Simon to come and help me make the work page a little more complex and I wanted to this for the rest of the pages yet unfortunately dreamweaver crashed and lost all my pages and all my assets I had to start from scratch therefore my site is not as complex as I would have liked yet it functions and works properly I am pleased with my achievement and I have learnt a lot from this happening. I wish to design my own website with my work featuring on it and believe I will be able to do this now yet I want it to have more creative flare to show personality and my design views. I think all in all I leave a lot more time and get into the briefs right from the word go!

Thursday 26 May 2011




At the weekend I went out to take photographs of landscapes and derelict areas after listening to the the tracks from Adeles 21 album I felt inspired to take photos which I could use within my collages I was thinking in a very fine art manner looking out for empty benches trees that had lost there colour and leaves anything that had been deserted and left unwanted. I also wanted photos of butterflies and swans things which are considered as romantic full of colour and in bloom. I would be able to add these to my collages and produce sets of posers which showed mood emotion times forgot.













Open publication - Free publishing - More image

From the images i have mainly used the trees and branches and used them in a more decorative fashion I have included some T-shirts just simple phtography with type over the top some look affective yet I am not completely satisfied that I pushed the imagery as far as i could have.












YCN_Working collabratively is something which I really enjoy doing as you can have 2 brains thinking about ideas rather than one I have paired up with Ellis as we both like each others style of designing yet struggle to achieve this within are own design practice. We had to write up a contract of working together what we expect from each other and we will work well as a pair. This was quite easy for us as we both have different talents so could share the work load quiet easily.  Weve wrote up action plans in order to keep the brief on track... 


I have designed a surface pattern this would be used for packaging for when the album is purchased I was experimenting with different coloured paper to see which worked best I want it to still have a vintage feel and I want to tie the album with ribbon. By doing this I want to achieve more tangible design to improve record sales and i believe by creating limited edition prints and new ways to package things. Something needs to be worth buying an album instore for  as if its just for the music then people are going to choose to download for free! 








The brown on here isnt the smae tone as parcel paper therefore looks quite horrid yet I have printed it out and tested it and it appears fine!




Open publication - Free publishing - More adele

Boards for product range distribution im really pleased with the presentation of these and think it demonstrates my developments throughout the brief well. 








Mock ups for the I-tunes banner I wanted to get across with this one its a very personal album and used all collage in order to make it stand out against all the other digitised art work which features on the i tunes page. Although I think this design singles itself out from the range it has similiar methods behind it yet is very bright.








I think the image above works best against the bright colours as its similiar colour range to the bounding box of i tunes . 

These are the designs for the album artwork I have used the collage materials which i have collected and made a love heart all the objects relate to songs from the album 21. I dont paticularly like the violet i have used on this image it appears soft yet very girly maybe too girly. As i have found many men like this album also more for her voice rather than the meaning of her lyrics though! 


This design is a lot better the cream is very unisex and neutral yet still girly feel which i am mainly going for a personal design personal added touch from the album its about expressing her feelings for her ex and all things that she feels and wants to express te objects I have used within the deisgns I have decided on the brainstorms of the lyrics and looking for the deeper meanings from the lines she sings.



With the poster designs I went for aiming to get the meaning across of that particular song through image I had decided to laser cut the type out for a very vintage limited piece of art. Although i dont believe I have tome to get a laser print nduction and be able to print these out. Also from the knowledge I have it leaves a burn mark outline which I dont particularly want I dont want it to look purposefully old looking.


The photographs which I took were very crisp and I wanted it to be be like fine arty where as I found things which were deserted etc I had the idea of making them into polaroids they would look old or almost as it they were in her box where they kept things from the relationship one of the lyrics where like photgraphs you left behind remind me of you..

These posters were trying and testing the typefaces and size and layout.



This collage was one of the favourite ones I produced and did most of it digitally which I wish I would have done with them all as they were hard to edit once I had scanned them in I couldnt remove things and change them. This posters has much more of an aesthetic image purpose rather than a meaningful one although it has made me realise how much I enjoy image making and can see designs like these in retail for T-shirts hopefully in riverisland/ topshop one day :) tooo excited. I have finally got a real taste for this brief!

Changing the opacity automatically gives this a soft feel delicate things like her heart and her life situation at the time.
The lyrics dont you remember relate to the tea party almost as if they knew each other since they were little remember the good times.





I dont think this type face is fitting with this type of image I need something a little stronger.
Making it more into album artwork due to the cropping of the image much more seems to be going on within side the frame and suddenl its coming together the 21 has been lightened so its more of an important feature to the design and the adele works best jet black stands out.
The adele works best top right as its after the 21 therefore links both type together I have decided to add these to the T-shirts as I think it would work better rrather than it being artwork from my research of the current t-shirts which are fashionable and selling in the shops.

Final Tshirt design all is good when i think i would purchase this!! really makes me proud to have designed it as I rarely feel this way about my work. Excited to do more for retail including tags vouchers etc.

I tried to apply the designs to bags etc and I dont think this works at all therefore I wont continue to develop this type of work. Otherwise I would need more design time to develop the whole collection of in store maerial.


The beginning process of collage work.









I was thinking about developing things for the walls of the store near the section for her album or even could be used in shop window I thought about using vintage frames and antique looking wall paper.
Experimenting with white walls and vectored quick shapes obviously would be much more smoother than these are yet i was jusr trying and I dont think this works a all!! I think i need to change the wall base colour so the frames dont look so much as if there just plonked there!



Actually love this design! things are looking up and im tryin and testin new designs and gettin inspiration from other things ive done love the colours used here and really chuffed with the outcome :) too happy at this point.

Adding the album name to the design to see what works best as I like the style of this Im thinkin I want to change all the poster and especially album artwork to something very similiar yet I dont think I have the time for this as Its late in the design stage when I have cropped up on this just by trying different things wish i would have done this earlier. 





Putting things into context could this work as the artwork?!