SNELEPHANT DESIGN

My name is Emma Snell. This is a blog documenting my work studying Visual Communication: Graphic Design at Birmingham City University. [email protected]

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Final Hand Painted Board - 

This is the process of my hand painted board. As it was my first time, I used a font I found online as a stencil guide, then as I was painting it, I decided to personalise it slightly with the colour palette and small accents. The ‘the’ in the middle of the board is completely free hand. I used pencil, acrylic paint, a black marker to outline, then a white gel pen to add accents.

I wrote the phrase ‘Raise The Ruckus’ as again this was originally going to be on my business card, as it’s one of my favourite sayings and I think it suits my personality, my work, and my future very well. I also think it sounds very cool! If I were to do this again I would probably use a longer ruler and sand the board down first, as it was very gritty which made it hard to get clean lines. But overall I am happy with my first sign writing piece.

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Hand Painted Board - Process

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Hand Painted Board - Sign Writing.

For my business cards and self branding, one of my ideas that came from experimenting was to use branding inspired by hand drawn original sign painting. I love the craft and skill and I have always been fascinated by hand drawn type and traditional sign lettering, and I didn’t want my research and experiments to go to waste so I decided to create a hand painted sign myself. I also wanted a really stand-out piece at the exhibiton, that really showed off my love for D.I.Y and hand rendered design. I’d love to practise more with hand lettering and offer these boards as commissions, with different type on them.

Here is some visual research I conducted through Pinterest before going straight to painting.

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I wanted to print my portfolio as I did originally design it to be that why. I loved the idea of having it printed brochure style, but it turned out to be very complicated and very expensive, so I bought this sleek black folder off amazon and printed it myself. I wanted to have something professional looking that people can flip through and easily see my work. I can also use this in the future to take to interviews.

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Business Cards

So, my business cards finally arrived! I loved the humorous and stand-out design of the type. I designed them with the printer, MOO in mind, as I knew they offered a Luxe business card design with a yellow trim. I loved the idea of that extra added detail. I also designed a small elephants head logo, to keep my nickname and online presence ‘snelephant’ relevant. This helped me decide the self branding I want to continue with for freelance work after university. 

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Sketchbook Scans

For the final graduate show, Jane Anderson suggested handing in Sketchbook pages for an ideation wall. Here are my submissions.

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Final Aston Villa Football Club App Wireframe.

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AVFC Kids App - Learning Sketch

Using mainly YouTube, I started learning Sketch by watching tutorials online and following along. I used the drawn up wireframes I had drawn up in my sketchbook, and made them digital.

I also loved the simplistic design of the layout, and how it purely showed how the app worked so I followed what I saw here:

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AVFC Kids App - Research

For this project I really enjoyed looking into the psychology of designing an app particularly for children. I used social media to ask my friends who have children what apps they enjoy, and look into popular and successful kids apps, how they work and why children keep using them. Particularly the needs and goals and the content of the app.

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Aston Villa Football Club - Kids App.

I chose this brief as I have never created an app or used wire framing software before. I’m also interested in UX/UI design. I wanted to push myself and my boundaries and see what I could create, even thought it was final major study. I also loved the thinking behind the user. Making sure the concept made sense to me, and most importantly, my target audience. The brief was simply ‘To design and create a prototype for a new app for Aston Villa Football Club, aimed at engaging and inspiring their younger fans’ Here are my initial ideas from sketchbook pages.

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Secret 7 The Clash Merchandise Design.

I decided to carry on this brief and create a design inspired by the suburbs and flats based collages I experimented with earlier. I really wanted to show how you can design a punk, 1980’s inspired style design, with modern software. I love the pop of colour too, and decide these would look awesome on a t-shirt, as the vocalist was a big fan of bright, bold, statement t-shirts, and The Clash’s official march reflected in that.

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Secret 7 Final Posters

I decided to carry on this brief and create a design inspired by the suburbs and flats based collages I experimented with earlier. I really wanted to show how you can design a punk, 1980’s inspired style design, with modern software. I love the pop of colour too, and decide these would look awesome on a t-shirt, as the vocalist was a big fan of bright, bold, statement t-shirts, and The Clash’s official march reflected in that.

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Here are some more collage experimentation images I did.

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Secret 7 - Continued...

So for this years Secret 7 submission I submitted an artwork inspired by The Clash - I’m Not Down. I decided to carry this on and make it more of a bigger project! Here are some images of the creation of a poster design which I eventually turned into a merchandise design. 

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Business Card Layouts.

Just uploading a clearer image of the layouts.

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I used MOO.com to print my business cards as I saw they offer a ‘Luxe’ 4 layer, 600 gsm, matte printed business card, which really appealed to me as I want the business cards to show my love for paper, print and all things hand rendered. So I decided to change my design with a bright yellow trim in mind, even more eye catching! 

These are the final front designs, with hot pink type. Keeping in mind the trim will be bright yellow and the back bold, professional and legible. I ordered a mixed pack, so I will have 13 of the first two designs and 12 of the last two. So they can be mixed up and look similar, but have a slightly different flair. Again, making them noticeable and keeping my personal branding together.

Here is the final back business card design with my contact info and small elephant logo:

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Business Card Final Digital Experiments:

So I shortlisted it to this humorous design. Nothing like what I started off as! 

I love the funny, quick, clean, but still bold and bright design of these. The front can be changed with a different ‘quote’ or ‘saying’, depending on what I’m working on, feeling or what kind of creative work I am applying myself for. 

For the back I created a really quick geometric style elephants head for a small logo, to relate to my business and nickname ‘snelephant.’ I want people to be curious and notice the correlation between the ‘-phant’ and my name and the logo, whilst still being subtle. I chose a small, but legible font as it’s really important my contact information can be read and noted down.