Module Evaluation (Reflective Report)
The final and last module of my first year within Graphic Communication titled ‘Exploring Meaning Through Narrative’ has encouraged us to work towards a more ‘hands on’ approach with our design outcomes. Over the seven-week period we were asked to produce two beautifully crafted books, one in response to a classic book we had read and the other linked to our own personal story. In addition to this we were also expected to complete a reflective report (a brief summary of around 500+ words) on an Area of Practice we were most interested in pursuing after graduation, and a presentation (two A4 landscape pages) identifying the core principles of two selected graphic design practitioners/organisations.
At the start of module, I was a little apprehensive of the tasks ahead as someone who often relies on the use of digital methods of working, I rarely design all of my work by hand. The overall module aimed to enable us to experiment with more hand created ways of designing, developing skills mainly in the areas of illustration, folding, binding and printmaking.
Over the three week Easter break, before the beginning of the overall project I began by selecting a classic book title from the list we were given to read. Most of the books were ones I was already familiar with and have read in the past, so this made it quite easy to identify a story that I liked and could see myself illustrating as a response for one of my outcomes. The book I decided to read was Lewis Carroll’s, ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’, the classic tale of a girl who falls down a rabbit hole into Wonderland a fantasy world where she meets various characters and explores a variety of environments. Growing up as a child reading the story I really enjoyed the fantasy element and how the individual characters were depicted, so I thought this was an ideal choice for the direction of my own book. After deciding on the basis of my first book, I began working to practice my experimental skills through the creation of a sketchbook. Within this I experimented with a variety of new techniques and explored alternative methods of working to create an array of interesting and playful responses that could be used to interpret the stories narrative. These included paper cut, ink marbling, potato and sponge print, tea staining, marble rolling, finger print, bubble wrap print, stick patterns, and selecting specific quotes to illustrate in brush gouache, marker pen, watercolour, sticker and stencilling. This was a really useful way for me to begin the process of seeing how effective certain processes where, which worked well or not and how these could possibly be utilised someway as illustrations or typographical elements within my work.
After thoroughly researching through my blog into the history of Alice and Wonderland as well as examples of existing book designs this gave me a better understanding of the narrative context of the story itself and the conventions that have been regularly featured before. From producing several mind maps, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to reinterpret the original story in the form of an ‘Illustrated Journey’. My idea focused on the main character of Alice and her journey throughout her initial fall into wonderland, the individual chapters of the story, and the different characters she meets along her adventure. For the production of the book itself I was conscious that I wanted to create the book’s illustrations and typography all by hand, with an attempt to avoid my usual digital methods of pre-set fonts and Adobe packages. With my illustrations I created them all by hand drawing with a black fine liner pen, so this took me quite a long time to produce - with a few hours spent on each piece! For the style of my illustrations I decided to incorporate the strong elements of pattern (stripes, lines) and geometrical shape (triangles, circles), something I was inspired by from my initial research into existing book covers which I discovered regularly depicted the elements of optical illusion, intricate pattern and imagery (Alice, the white rabbit, or the rabbit hole).
The artist of Hannah Davies an award winning freelance illustrator originally from Wales served as an influential practitioner, as well as the Scandinavian design movement in developing my interest for working with the context of pattern through the integration of black line stripes, checkered pattern, and triangular shapes.
For the quotes alongside my illustrations, I made the decision to create these through the method of brush script lettering using the material of gouache similarly to my chosen practitioner Kal Barteski who’s work I explored over Easter. Although time consuming, I really like the ‘handmade’ feel it helped to reinforce and the effectiveness it had on on my pages overall. Further to this I considered the use of colour, binding and paper cut. With my pages I agreed on using a selected colour palette of the pastel tones – light pink and violet purple, as this helped to reinforce my intention of the book being an innocent and sweet tale and highlighted the dark details of the quotes and illustrations. Exploring the various types of binding and folding methods through the workshops I attended, I finalised on stitching the pages together with a traditional Japanese bind. I also added the cutout of holes throughout a section of my initial pages to reinforce my stories narrative of Alice falling down the hole to wonderland, as well as aiding the visual aesthetics.
For my second book outcome, I found this to be the most challenging task within the module, as we were required to create a book in response to a personal story or issue that we were most passionate about telling, and could interpret any type of response. After brainstorming I came up with a variety of concepts, with the one I found the most interesting to be the ‘exploration of my creative mind’. I’m really interested in how differently creatives think to non-creatives. Not everyone can come up with engaging ideas or have the skill to design, so I was fascinated in exploring the inner workings of my own mind and illustrating this in an exciting way. My intentions for the book were mainly to inspire and motivate fellow designers and creative practitioners to stay creative, through the integration of illustrative drawings and interesting quotes.
Early on after researching I agreed on making the book quite informal and humorous for my target audience, to emphasise the quirky nature of the narrative. Through my own hand created lettering and doodle style illustrations, I believe I achieved this effectively, drawing them initially with black fine line pen and digitally adding colour using Adobe Photoshop. As I love bright colour I decided on producing the book with bright neon pinks and yellows, which are vibrant and appealing to the eye. Although small in size, and folded as a concertina, I strived to make my book interactive and engaging, introducing the element of visual pop up mechanisms.
Overall I am really pleased with the progress I have made within this module and throughout the year as a whole. This specific module has been one that I feel I have learnt from the most and has challenged my physical production skills and creative process of designing. My hand drawing skills have developed dramatically and my interest for illustration has grown. Through each module I believe my work is begininning to look more professional and of a high standard. I now feel I am technically competent and confident in presenting my ideas for second year, something I’m really looking forward to and excited about.
During the summer my intentions are to update my online presence by creating an online portfolio and add work to my Behance and Instagram accounts. I also plan to revise my Adobe Accreditation material to pass both Adobe Photoshop and InDesign qualifications. As I am looking to pursue the field of digital design I am going to explore the packages of video editing software and Adobe After Effects, to try and create my own independent projects from using them.
