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Borough Project Evaluation

At the beginning of this project I was excited at the potential and possibility of an amazing piece of design, the project brief was specific enough for there to be a sense of direction from the outset, but not restricted to one general outcome, which has led to some interesting idea generation. Right at the start of this project I had a flick through my inspirational journal then I did before the term of 2016 and filled with pages of art styles that I admired, much like I did near the end of the ‘Say Something’ project to remind me of a style I felt was interesting enough and would work for my piece ideas. Taking this look through my inspiration journal led me to the style of design called ‘monoline’, in my mind this was a perfect match for the target audience that Borough would like to attract, as it is a very modern and simple style that I felt would attract a wide spread of younger generations from younger students to individuals coming to the end of their university diplomas. This seemed like a perfect style for me to aim towards, so right from the outset I tried to look into this style of working, the only problem being that there were not many designers that specified publicly that they worked in a monoline style, so this left me with limited inspiration to respond to and thus my artist research was a little bit bland due to my heart being set on this monoline style of work.

Style of working aside, I felt that to cater to the target audience, the book itself would have to have an extra layer, if not few layers of interaction to keep it interesting. Instantly the words ‘mobile phone’ came to mind, almost every individual within the target audience Borough aimed to attract would have access to a smartphone or mobile phone device. This really excited me as this meant that I would instantly have one or two extra layer of functionality, due to the capability of nowadays smartphones. I began looking into the use of smartphone virtual reality and code scanning to implement this into my piece - however great this concept was initially in terms of the wide possibility, after researching it seemed apparent to me that much of the virtual reality available on smartphone devices were not available to independent designers such as myself, and I would have no open source way of prototyping this route, which was understandably disappointing, but did lead me to find the app Aurasma, which will be implemented into my book, and also the functionality of Snapchat and its new ‘Snapcode’ feature.

With style and functionality in mind, I then started to look into source imagery to influence my monoline illustrations, once again I feel as though this part of my project was reasonably stale, as I was limited to the market itself and as much as I regret doing so now, I was limited to my one style of design. I will need to ensure for my FMP to not get my heart set on one idea from the outset as it ultimately limits my experimentation, research and project as a whole. Which I am not exactly happy about, but regardless, I feel my concept and design is strong.

Working in my chosen style meant that the only logical path was digital design, although when in mind, digital design seems like the simple route -and in many ways it is- working digitally for this project context was in-fact a struggle as I had previously never done anything like this. However, despite the odds against me, I am extremely happy with my designs as of this stage; they are interesting, simple, modern and I feel that they suit the target audience tremendously. Implementing colour to these designs is something that I feel would make the book come to life a bit more, however, it would go against the whole uniformity idea that I initially had in mind. In my eyes, though: the digital illustrations are strong, striking and fit for purpose, so I am happy in regards to that.

Illustrations for this particular project did not come without their pitfalls, for one: getting the illustrations to be legible (but not obvious) and interesting throughout the range of letters from B of Borough to the T of market was a hard task, but had to be done. Through constant peer review of printing my designs and asking the students around me and tutor feedback, I managed to -piece by piece- resolve my designs to a standard I am happy with. Another struggle was in-fact laying the pages out digitally to be printed, which was initially a compost of rotating and flipping images and making prototypes whilst trying to numb the headache throughout, but in reality had a very simple solution.

My successful ideas will be developed into a physical copy of the book, complete with the illustrations, note pages, instructions on functionality and a hardback cover. I understand that it may be a reasonable struggle to implement and produce this, however I would honestly like to see my ideas in a physical form if possible.

Overall, I feel that conceptually this project has been very strong for me, however my sketchbook work was a bit lost in all of the digital work and idea generation. Due to my narrow-minded approach to the brief, stubbornly sticking to one idea throughout, my experimental stages and research/response stages of this project have suffered. This is something that I will try my best to not let happen again by keeping an open-minded attitude to the next brief. This approach, combined with the strong conceptual ability I possessed within this project should ensure that my final project is a strong one.

words: 971

#project #evaluation #2016 #College

Week 30th January

This week, I really knuckled down on my digital designs, looking at source images and taking feedback from people as I worked to resolve my ideas. Doing this improved my digital ability and my problem solving skills in a design context as I had the challenge of making each page interesting, attractive and legible; without making it obvious. I learnt some new techniques in Adobe Illustrator which enabled me to fix the initial problems I had with my designs and am ultimately happy with how the majority have turned out.

One of the things I found most difficult was ensuring that each page was interesting enough. Initially I had hoped that everything would be mono-stroke and completely flat with no sense of perspective, however through trial and error, my illustrations are now duo-stroke with the masses being 6pt and the focus of the design (i.e. the hidden letterform) being 8pt stroke, this was to improve the legibility and the overall look of the design, as a mono-stroke piece I found that everything rather blended together, and that made the design more confusing than interesting. As well as realising that my designs would have to be duo-line, I have also had to implement minimal perspective into a few of the illustrations due to them not looking resolved as a fully fledged flat line work piece. Although this was a difficult thing to do, I am happy with the results and feel as though my work is more resolved as a result of doing so.

Implementing colour into my designs also proved a challenge, because finding relevance to add specific colour to very monochromatic designs didn’t quite feel right. Choosing a separate colour to adequately represent each page is a task that I will need to push towards to implement the digital scan layer of my book design.

This project has offered a lot of opportunity for me to create designs that I am proud of, however as I sincerely hoped I would not be, I restricted myself within the experimentation stages of this project, unfortunately I stuck to resolving my initial designs and ideas rather than experimenting with new techniques and styles - this has limited my experimentation, however I still feel as though my current designs are fit for purpose and suit the audience I am aiming for.

I’m looking forward to creating a final book for this project, however at this current stage I will admit that my sketchbook work has not been the greatest this project as I tend to formulate ideas in my head, translating that on to pages in a sketchbook has never been a strong point of mine. I will be sure to structure myself a lot more so I can create an accurate representation of my ideas within my sketchbook in the upcoming FMP.

#evaluation #2016 #College

Week 21st November

This week I began the Borough Book project. During the first day I received my brief and instantly had to put my mind to work thinking of various ideas. I improved my idea generation even within the initial stages, right after being handed the brief as I was tasked with showing my design cycle plan for this project, to begin with I thought it would be a good idea to display each step from 1-8 of my design cycle within various stools that I imagined I would see at a market. After looking at Borough Market itself I figured my drawings were not relevant to the aesthetic of the market itself, in terms of the long almost stadium seat looking shelves and displays of various food, so I changed my idea. This improved my personal reasoning skills within idea generation, which means that in future I will be able to reason more directly with my ideas and it will speed up this stage of my design cycle.

Over this week I have looked at Borough Market itself and put my limited hand rendering skills to practice in responding to the images, signs and buildings I saw in-front of me. Normally, I am not one to enjoy hand rendering and responding to things in this manor, so I am actually quite proud of myself for doing so, and this has definitely made me more confident.

I looked at various examples of A-Z books and designers that worked with that theme, as I will take this forward within this project. One designer I looked at and responded to was Alan Kitching, who has a book called ‘A-Z of Letterpress: Founts from The Typographic Workshop’ in which he mixes various typefaces together in a printed style using letterpress. I looked into his work as the variety of typeface for each letter is something I admire and may be able to take forward in my own book at a later stage.

One thing I have found difficult so far is choosing relevant imagery and sources to respond to and research into, but I believe taking a trip up to the market itself on Wednesday will enable me to gain the primary experience which will give me a better insight into the characteristics and contexts of the place and everything within. This will then be accordingly transferred into my work in the relevant places.

Overall this project so far has a lot of promise, however I sincerely hope that I am not restricted in my experimentation and outcome stages.

#2016 #College

‘Say Something’ poster series + Evaluation

Over the past few days of planning this work, I have refined my digital skills and even my hand-rendering ability. I did this through my research responses and idea generation stages. These are both abilities that I will be able to take forward to the projects to come, and even beyond that. I feel that even in the short period of three days, I am a lot more confident at responding to designers through the process of drawing as when responding to the two artists that influenced my ideas I pieced together elements I liked to populate two sketchbook pages. Through designing and creating this series of posters, I have explored a new style of working, although digital, each poster was created in an ‘Art Deco’esque style.

On Tuesday, I looked into a range of artists and designers who’s work inspired me, from Jean Chassaing (Art Deco Posters) & Jean Carlu (distinct styled posters, to; Malika Favre who uses a digital process to create simplistic, vibrant and modern looking pieces. I particularly like her ability to blend large groups of people effortlessly, to create a flowing and interesting piece of work. My main influence for these posters however was Jean Carlu, his anonymous human form style enticed and interested me as it was unusual and geometric which is something I believe looks amazing.

After looking into these artists, I responded to two of them as they greatly inspired my ideas. This then allowed me to take my ideas forward with the process of thumbnail designs, focussing on scale and composition. I created an initial four designs, then took a step back and resolved them to develop them further. After creating the thumbnails I took them onto the mac to complete them.

I found when composing the posters on Illustrator that finding the right balance of scale and layout was a difficult task, however through peer feedback I was able to achieve a selection of posters that I am reasonably proud of. I particularly feel the gradients and human forms within the posters worked very well. However, it did not completely achieve the effect I initially desired. I feel as though if I were to do these posters again, exploring the process of screen print would be beneficial, and create a much more authentic effect.

Overall, I am quite pleased with these poster designs and will definitely implement this style of working within my future works, in and outside of college.

#ArtDeco #PosterDesigns #JeanCarlu #Evaluation #2016 #College

Project Evaluation

This project has been Unit 10 Contexts and Characteristics, the majority of this project I have enjoyed to a certain extent, but there have been a few aspects that I did not particularly enjoy.

The project was split into a series of smaller projects, varying in deadlines from a week, to four weeks. I find this reasonably practical as it enables everyone to recycle the creative cycle within a selection of contexts. Recycling the process of design means that it will become a lot more refined over time, it also means that a range of resolved pieces were produced throughout the various project segments. Normally over the course of a longer project, the motivation is drained because the topic becomes stale after a certain point, ideas are quite easily just thrown away in this way of working, however, with smaller project segments like this one, ideas are kept fresh an enabled to be resolved.

The series of projects list as: ‘The Design Museum Posters’; ‘World Food Day Posters’; ‘Canterbury School of Visual Arts Logo’; ‘Christmas Cards for Canterbury College’ and ‘Say Something’.

My favourite ‘sub-project’ was the logo for the CSVA as this required me to implement skills that I will implement upon leaving college. Logo design is something that interests me, and I have always liked working to create logos for fictional brands, friends and family - so I hope to pursue this field of work eventually. For this project I had to: research; experiment; generate ideas; digitally produce the said ideas, and then present my initial ideas and final ideas on a page. This process is something I will have to repeat throughout my life, not just in further projects, but outside of college as well, working for varied clients. For this sub-project I am reasonably happy with my ideas throughout, from initial sketches, all the way through to a developed logo as I feel I displayed good digital ability - although my logo was not actually chosen to represent the visual arts sector, I am still quite happy with the result and I will be sure to post the logo on my graphics Instagram.

My least favourite sub-project was the ‘Say Something’ project, which required me to research into protest, and decide a topic to ‘Say Something’ about. Initially, I had a reasonably in-depth project plan written out based on a personal topic. The brief listed that I would be required to create a signage piece that said something about my chosen topic, however, as the project progressed the desire for a piece of signage was no more - instead I was required to: design a double-sided card for the ‘House of Cards’ based on the ‘toy’ made by Ray and Charles Eames and, design a newspaper on newsprint based on my chosen topic. Both of these ideas were long, drawn out and I did not particularly find them very interesting to do, despite the topic having a personal tint. The house of cards sides were the piece I felt looked better out of both, as I was able to put my digital ability to use in the form of Illustrator designs. I designed a type-piece, with visual communication through form, colour and effect, which I am reasonably happy with - I also created a side full of simplistic perspective syringes, that I made from scratch which I also feel work quite well. In the theme of cards I wanted to replicate the pattern design of a pack of cards, but obviously without being too obvious, I swayed loosely towards the pattern approach, just repeating the syringe with different tone and direction.

Overall, this project has been reasonably successful in a sense of; I was able to refine my creative cycle process to a shorter period of time which will be hlpful in the years to come, as I hope to work as a freelance designer, working for various clients who may require a creative cycle as evidence. It will also make freelance work more productive as i will have a clear way of working. One thing I would mention is if I were to do this project again, to find out more information for myself to make what is expected of me, more clear - this would enable me to work to that standard consistently rather than having to backtrack and complete things I had not completed previously. Despite this, I am still reasonably happy with each project outcome, and the sub-projects as a collective.

#project #evaluation #750words #2016 #College

Logo and type created for Syncronisis on Soundcloud.

#logo #type #2016 #College

This week I researched eight separate fonts from dafont – I did this because it enabled me to enhance my perspective on communication through type. Fonts such as ‘Benegraphic’; ‘Times’ and ‘Times New Yorker’ in my eyes represent the fact that the way the government deals with certain subjects such as my project focus is a dated one – they do this through having a traditional face to them. I feel the font ‘Mom’s Typewriter’ conveys the secrecy within parliament and an inability to own up to their mistakes. Finally, fonts such as ‘F_Rotten’ and ‘MB Think Twice’ convey the more horrific side of the situation, through the dripping and blood affect. Looking into typefaces such as these enabled me to further my experimentation of communication through type by physically and digitally editing the typefaces themselves. Initially I found this quite difficult as communicating a certain word through one set typeface is a broad process so there are many ways to get the desired effect. Overall, I am reasonably happy with my experimentation of communication within type and the poster I created further on from them. The hardest word to communicate was ‘Tainted’ as the word itself represents contamination and pollution, there were many ways to achieve this desired effect – initially I decided to just repeat the word and change the opacity using the scanner and printer to add an overpopulated or ‘polluted’ effect. Later, when working digitally with the word I created a more desirable effect of contamination using a similar process but implementing wave distortion and a blur to make the word look like it was fermenting and polluted. I also took a look into Universities and different courses that are a possibility for me, however I must say that currently even after taking a reasonable look at a selection of Universities, this route is not something that I am extremely enticed, excited or interested in. For the price of the qualification and what it entails, I just do not feel it is worth it at this moment in time. Overall, I looked into communication through typeface and manual distortion of type and can say that I could now choose suitable typefaces and distort them topically for a range of scenarios. My interest in University isn’t a shining one as of when this evaluation was written, but I’m not completely denying the possibility…

#2016 #College

3rd October Week.

For this week I looked into the works of Tom Phillips. Taking a period of time to look at his work as a designer and artist from his paintings and drawings to 'A Humument' which is a book project started in 1966. After looking into his work I applied a similar process to create a work of a style reminiscent of his. Choosing an almost random selection of three pages, I deciphered a selection of words on each that read as a sort've broken sentence or paragraph, relating to my chosen topic (The Tainted Blood Scandal of the 70s & 80s.) of course. Once selected I designed a piece of work surrounding the words, attempting to link them in a legible way. The media I chose for this was a thin paint as I felt that was appropriate for the topic and enabled me to get a blood like appearance. My skills in the area of painting are limited so I tried my best to represent each page however I'm not completely happy with it. Although with that said I'm proud of the content of the piece and feel it relates well to my topic. Overall, looking at the artist and designer Tom Phillips was beneficial as it gave me another insight into a unique avenue for design. I'm reasonably happy with the content of my response piece however my painting skills are limited so the intended effect was not achieved. Despite this, the words within the piece have meaning, and the pages do look interesting to a certain extent.

#evaluation #2016 #College

Contextual headlines and keywords combined with composition to create cyanotype.

#cyanotype #composition #2016 #College

Project Proposal for Characteristics and Contexts

For this project I am deciding to create a response piece of signage to the ‘Tainted Blood Scandal’ of the 1970s and 1980s within the United Kingdom. I have decided to base my response piece on this event or ‘scandal’ as the subject is very close to me personally, and my family: Having lost a valuable member of society, and a member of our family to the scandal. The basis of the event is that an estimated total of 5,000 Haemophiliacs were infected with Hepatitis C with a total of 1,200 of them also being infected with HIV, “co-infected”, by using contaminated clotting factor products that were distributed to Haemophiliacs all over the UK by the NHS in the 1970s and 1980s.

My concept for this project is that I will strive to create a large poster or piece of ‘signage’ based on the Tainted Blood Scandal. I will gather a collection of both primary and secondary research from various sources to support my topic of choice (the Tainted Blood Scandal) which will include: researching news articles online written on the topic during the event and after, primary and secondary photographs of the emotions of people affected and the scenes caused by the incident, contextual design research, quotes (possibly in the form of written responses from family members affected). Collecting this research will enable me to effortlessly transition into experimenting with different responses. I will use my digital rendering skills to create accurate illustrations and templates to further with separate media such as collage, mark making, screen printing, acrylic paint/watercolour, animal fluid painting which will improve my ability in a wider range of media. Experimentation will take place within the furthering of my initial ideas to ensure that the best fit for purpose media to use in my final piece. Said experimentation will pave my route to creating a polished and affective piece of signage that will represent the emotion and importance of this event. I will record my trail of thought through bodies of text within my sketchbook as this will enable the viewer of the sketchbook to understand and will enable me to build on the ideas easier which will result in a more successful and resolved outcome. I hope to achieve structure for this project which I will by fragmenting the project mentally for ease of understanding and then collate everything in an easy to follow structure.

By accepting verbal feedback from tutors and peers and short feedback sheets I will be able to better improve and refine my ideas as I continue so that they are easier to explain in my sketchbook which will mean the reader can gain a better understanding of my topic of choice and my ideas.

Throughout the research period of this project I will use multiple to sources to influence and support my ideas at the later stages of the project. The sources I intend to use are:

Tainted Blood.info: (2016). Tainted Blood. Available: http://www.taintedblood.info/.

BBC News: (2016). BBC. Available: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news.

Daily Mail News: Daily Mail. (2016). Available: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/.

The Guardian Archiver: The Guardian. (1970). Archiver. Available: http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/guardian/advancedsearch.html.

#2016 #College

26th September Week.

This weeks brief consisted of the re-branding of the creative sector of the college I attend. The design was required to be easily scaled without losing legibility and initially it was required to be monochromatic, however: experimentation with implementing a colour palette wasn’t frowned upon.

Throughout this week I tried to capture visually interesting points of the college to influence my logo design process. I found this difficult as deciphering what would be relevant to the design and the brief is always a challenge, especially when the brief was quite open and no mood board was provided.

Transferring these visual elements onto paper was beneficial I feel, as letting myself go and mark making onto the paper opened up a whole perspective of the visual elements captured on camera. I found this step quite simple, however I wasn’t completely satisfied with the drawings I had initially. This wasn’t a problem though, because I knew that developing them digitally I would have some exciting pieces of design.

Overall I’m reasonably happy with my final design (not shown above) as I feel it captures the creative sector appropriately. Although it is very cubic, the sectioned border shows that the creative sector isn’t limited to the status quo, holding tight to the center square represents that each piece of the creative sector comes together as a team, this combined with the vibrant colour palette and cubic letter-forms ensures the logo has a modern and clean aesthetic. I feel that it could represent the sector uniquely if chosen.

#logodesign #logo #modern #creativesector #creatives #junior #designer #2016 #College

Working on #logodesign for our current brief. I took photos around the college to inspire the initial sketches. Abstract iconography combined with text and possibly a logo system is the route I will most likely take for this logo brief as it will enable me to be creative with my concept. Also, creating a logo to represent exactly what the brief desires would be difficult with pictorial and I feel it would be boring with simply a typographical approach. I will continue to develop these designs and recreate them digitally as vectors to ensure the quality withholds throughout any scale.

#logodesign #sketches #2016 #College