Creative Project

developmental process. art. illustrations

[daniafes101-blog]

Reflection

There were many challenges I encountered during the course of this assignment but I have also gained a lot of knowledge and experience. 

For one, it was a step out of my comfort zone as I am not as accustomed to drawing architecture as I am to drawing people. However I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and through it I learnt about the history of a lot of the prospective buildings I have researched, even if it didn’t make the final cut in the illustrations.

I also underestimated the amount of time I had and I had to seriously cut the number of my illustrations down from four to six to two instead. I would have loved to do an illustration of Spanish colonial architecture in the Caribbean to complete the theme but there just was not enough time. Therefore I know that the slides are not as complete as they should be and that is one of the flaws.

Another challenge was my limited experience in design software. I mainly used Photoshop CS6 since I am a little more familiar with it but my knowledge is lacking compared to others. Therefore, my slides were quite simple and maybe a little too simple for my liking. However, I did try my best and made use of the knowledge and resources I did possess. 

Another step out of my comfort zone was the typography itself. I have never really considered myself to be good at typography and thus I struggled a bit to produce a font from scratch. However while I know in terms of neatness and organization there is definitely space for improvement in my font, I am pleased that I came up with such a unique concept for the font, especially with regards to the addition of the pillars.

I gained a a lot of experience in certain aspects of design such as logo design, typography and the layout and composition of material such as slides. It forced me to work with Photoshop and learn more about the software. I also gained first hand insight in the preparation and advertisement of products and I appreciate the effort designers put into their work even more now. All of this knowledge will surely be helpful when entering the field.

Thus, in conclusion, while there were indeed challenges, the knowledge I have gained in the duration of the course and assignment is invaluable and will not be forgotten.

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Last minute changes to the fourth slide. I almost completely forgot to include the name of my font. 

Just like the 2 previous slides I used Adobe Garamond Pro but this time in Regular so as not to diffuse the focus from the hand drawn font itself.

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Slide 5. The Mock ups.

These were the mock ups I chose to put in my slide. Like I said previously, architectural illustrations are very versatile and can be used on a number of items. However I decided to limit the items used in my mock up to three so as to not overwhelm the prospective audience.

As such I used three completely different and unrelated items so as to show how differently the illustrations can be used.

The illustrations could be used in a magazine of an informative type such as architectural, cultural, tourism, history and art magazines.

Furthermore it can be printed on decorative cushions centred around a common theme of Architecture. It can be combined with other decorative cushions, bedspreads, rugs etc. of architectural illustration from all over the world.

Lastly, I used a mouse pad because I’ve seen many mouse pads that have artistic designs and illustrations on them. Perhaps someone interested with architectural illustrations would think about buying it.

Again I used the same border I used in slides 2 and 3 to add uniformity to the set. As well as a light brown background to add contrast so as to draw the audience’s focus to the items.

Sources of the mock ups:

Pillow: https://www.behance.net/gallery/28365813/Pillow-PSD-Mockup-(FREE-PSD)

Mouse Pad: https://www.behance.net/gallery/34925491/Free-Mouse-Pad-Mock-up

Magazine: http://madefordesigners.com/freebie/freebies-for-designers-mockup-magazine-cover-back-cover

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Slide 4. The font.

I had alot of problems with this slide because I didn’t know how to make it more interesting or make the font pop out more.

At first I thought I would arrange the letters in a certain way to make it look dynamics but it ended up looking very odd as seen in the first picture. I also tried to recreate some lattice work as a border but didn’t like the way it looked either. So I scrapped it and started over with rearranging the letters in another way that was more centred which can be seen in the last picture.

I tried various colours and settled for the dark brownish green similar to slide 3 with a custom shape I made by combining and eclipse and rounded rectangle with a fill that consisted of a warm beige colour. I used this colour because it went well with the font and allowed it to be seen most clearly. It also provided contrast to the dark brownish green background.

A simple border was made using two rounded rectangles overlapping each other and the eclipse tool to construct circles for the edges. The reason this border was slightly more intricate than the other was simple to add more interest to the slide.

I’m not as happy with this slide as the others but I see a definite improvement in the way it looks now from what it looked like before. It is now also more uniform with the rest of the slides.

The typography itself was very time consuming since I had to digitally paint in the textures of the wood, roof and pillars. In hindsight, I should have opted to do a more simple texture consisting on two of 3 flat colours. However I find the effect of these textures to be very interesting and I hope they are representative of Caribbean architecture.

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Slide 3. This illustration depicts the building at an angle so it was slightly harder to resize it to fit in the centre. The reason for centrering and making the illustrations smaller was due to the fact that it looks much more visually appealing that way and focus would be drawn more quickly towards it if it is centred. It also allows the viewer to have a good view of the illustration which is very important for prospective buyers.

Like the previous slide the same typeface was used (Adobe Garamond Pro) in the same way as well as the border which is also the same as the second slide.

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Slide 2. Since this illustration was basically a forward facing view of the building it was quite easy to resize and centre to fit neatly into the slide.

 I used the Adobe Garamond Pro typeface in bold for the name of the building and italics for it’s location.

Lastly I created the border using the rounded rectangle tool and eclipse tool to put circles at the edges. This resulted in a simple but elegant border that doesn’t take the attention away from the illustration while also getting rid of unwanted white space

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Slide 1. I touched it up a bit and made a few minor changes such as combining the shapes of the rounded rectangle and eclipse used to make the logo into one and resizing it to give it a more polished and neater look.

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This was my experimentation with making the Logo as well as the layout of the title slide and making it work together. While I loved the layout of the first slide, it didn’t give me enough space to include additional text. I was also going to go with just a simple eclipse for the logo with text inside but I added the rectangle and thought it made it look more interesting.

The reason for the simplicity of the logo was due to the fact that the illustrations themselves as well as the hand drawn font are very detailed and fancy. If I was to make the logo more intricate, it would have been overkill and the focus would have been lost.

I also really liked the layout seen in the third picture, but once again the problem was not having space to include additional text. I did try shrinking the illustrations to provide more room but it just looked very odd and I had to shrink it down alot to get space for additional text.

I decided to just use one of the illustrations instead of the roof tops of the two as I had intended. I remembered from class that drawing a close up of an object can increase the dynamics of a composition so I used a close up of Villa Maria to cover roughly half of the title slide. Thus I had the other half in which to put my logo as well as the additional text. I also included a simple border which I created with a rounded rectangle with a stroke and no fill.

As you can see the font as well as its colour changed in the eclipse with the additional text. In a discussion @silverserpent suggested that a serif font would work better so I used Garamond Pro instead of the sans serif Gadugi font that I used for the word “Caribbean” in the logo. I found it did indeed look better and I also changed the colour to that of the background of the slide to make it more readable.

The reason I used the Gadugi font in the logo was because my own font was a serif font and I knew certain sans serif and serif fonts go well together so I has experimented with various sans serif fonts until I got a desired look. I also added a thin line under the word “Caribbean” to subtly increase visual appeal.

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I played with some mock ups that could potentially be used to advertise my designs and I was quite pleased at how this one came out. These can be used in souvenir shops or just furniture stores in general. 

Architectural designs, from my observation can be very versatile and can be used to decorate a variety of things be it wallets, cushions, bags and so on.

Source of mock up template: https://www.behance.net/gallery/28365813/Pillow-PSD-Mockup-(FREE-PSD)

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My second and final illustration of Villa Maria located in Willemstaad, Curacao.

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Progress pictures of the first illustration which is now complete. The first picture is some rough line art which i traced over with two shades of yellow. I did most of the shading in one layer as a way of recreating the feel of those architectural sketches done in traditional media.

Methods used: hatching, cross hatching, cross contour line shading.

Colours used: mostly yellow and green with a light and dark brown shadow in some areas. I also added a blueish highlight. All the colours can be seen above on the right hand side.

Initially I’d wanted to put more greenery which can definitely be seen in the third picture. However, I found that it took away from the focus which is the building itself so I got rid of most of it. I also took the liberty of adding a dark green shadow using the hatching method concentrated on the right side of the building. This was actually to add more contrast but it also gave the composition a vintage kind of look, a bit like an etching which made me very pleased.

Due to my technique, which utilized lines more than anything, the colour of the background was very important and I had decided to go with a colour that was similar to what I had in my palette which gives the piece a sort of harmony. Using a contrasting colour would have made it look weird and thrown off the composition.

The building that has been illustrated is Falmouth Courthouse, Jamaica.

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Layout of the Caribbean Architecture font. This, of course isn’t final in terms of how I want it too look on the slide.

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Close up of the Upper and Lower Case Caribbean Architecture Font. The Upper Case font was mostly freeform while inspiration for the Lower Case Font was taken from the Droid Seriff font can can be seen in the last picture. The reason I chose this type of font for inspiration was because it was simple and would not take the focus away from the Upper Case letters, providing a good balance.

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Villa Maria, Willemstaad, Curacao is an old colonial villa that has now been converted into a sort of hall in which parties and weddings are held. This is the second building I’m illustrating. The reason I chose it was because it is one of the lesser known colonial buildings in the island. It also has a wonderful bright colour scheme that is very appealing to me.

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Illustration 1 Almost complete. Will post the processes and progress pictures from sketch to finished product soon.

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This is the illustration style I’m going with. It’s a loose, sketchy pen and ink sort of style but done digitally utilizing contrasting colours: warm and cold colours with extra highlights. In this case the main colours are yellow and green due to the fact that the Falmouth Court House in Jamaica is painted yellow. As such, I can only choose very bright colourful buildings to make this technique work. That means I can probably no longer use the Mandeville Court House as a subject since it has a very neutral colour scheme. This sort of style would work especially well in things like post cards.

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I tried out illustrating this in a conventional smooth digital painterly way in Photoshop with a custom hard and soft round brush a few days ago in  bid to experiment with other methods before I decided on using a sketchy pen and ink style. 

I thought the look was too smooth and lacking in colour. Additionally it took a long time to lay out colour and details using this method making it a very unrealistic option given the limited time frame. This is Mandeville Court House, Jamaica.