Wednesday 31 October 2012

Illustrator Workshop

As part of our development as Graphic Designers, we've had Illustrator workshops to enhance our abilities in Adobe Illustrator, to a professional level of expertise. Below, you can see some examples of the techniques which we tried.







Friday 19 October 2012

OUGD403: Applying the font to a product


We were asked to use out typeface to brand a product, so to speak. I've decided to use the Persil washing brand as my product, to which I'd add my font.

I like the way it's turned out, I think it would fit well.

OUGD403: Tracing the Letters/Name Badge

Following the illustrator tracings, which I did from the drawn designs, I've now come to the final stages of this part of the brief. I've enlarged the images substantially to A1 size. The quality is contained as the letter forms are all Vector format. The letters were laid out in Illustrator, I came across a few clashing ascenders and descenders, however, a few adjustments, and it seems to look good. Sadly, I've had to print out the letters on many sheets of A3 and stick them together, but this wasn't a major issue.


Image of the letter forms printed out on A3, assembled together into an almost A1 size sheet of paper. Which I then layered a sheet of A1 tracing paper on-top  secured, and began tracing the letters, as you can see below.


The image tracing was a lengthy task, taking the best part of 4 hours to make sure the stokes around the tricky curves and spirals were as accurate as possible. I also had to use a very fine nib of pen to accurately navigate the lines around the shapes of the spirals in the letterforms. 


Finally, we had to design a name badge as part of the brief. Click here to see the name badge research. I designed it on Adobe Illustrator, and printed on textured brown card, which I reenforced with white card on the back.

Wednesday 17 October 2012

OUGD403: Tracing the Letters on Ai

Following the finalised designs you've seen in my previous posts, I've not traced the letter forms on Adobe Illustrator CS6, to give the below.

Using the new techniques I learnt in the Illustrator workshop, I was able to subtract the spiral shape which I designed from the letters, as I designed. Rather than keeping the font simple.


I will soon commense in laying the letter forms and glyphs out on A1, for print, so I can then trace them onto the tracing paper, which we must present our final work on.

Monday 15 October 2012

OUGD403 Design Skills: Alphabet Soup (Task 2)

Following the group crit, where I presented my near final design to the tutors and my peers within the crit, see the below, I've begun working on the final touches for my letterforms.


Feedback from the crit advised that I work on including more of Noma Bar (Lizzy's favourite designers)'s style into the letter forms, but this, they meant try to include the 'shapes within shapes' into the letter forms in the style of Noma Bar. So I've decided to pick up on one of her other points, her super-power; time travel. 

Now, I want to keep the shape within the letter forms fairly simple, so instead of tracing the impossible shape of  a victorian time machine, I've decide to use shapes which correlate to time travel. I've turned towards some motifs from the 1958 film Vertigo, by the genius Alfred Hitchcock. Click here to see the Design Context Post. Hitchcock uses the spiral within this film to represent the past, and how the protagonist is trapped in it, almost like time travel. I've also recalled seeing many sci-fi-esque films which incude a spiral to show the journey through time. So I'm going to implement this into my designs.


As you can see above, I've implemented the basic shapes of the Vertigo-Time-Travel-Spiral into the letterforms.

Tuesday 9 October 2012

OUGD403 Design Skills: Alphabet Soup (Task 2)

The Brief



The Questionnaire


Initial Ideas

Research into her artist, Noma Bar (see Design Context page here) and attempt to implement his style into the font, also try to find a fond similar to Noma Bar's style of work. (11.10.12 Update: Bubleboddy chosen) 

The phrase which she over-uses the most is "so", which is an emphasis. So I thought i'd emphasise, and exaggerate the ascenders and descenders from the characters in the font, trying to implement characteristics of her personality into the font.

12/10/12 Update

After experimenting with Bubbleboddy i've decided that it isn't a suitable typeface to base my work from, as it is too thick to work with, and very informal, the stumpy ascenders and descenders are hardly suitable to work with. So instead I've decided, after browsing FontBook, to use Neville Brody's Industria Solid.








Friday 5 October 2012

OUGD403 DESIGN SKILLS

We were asked to narrow down the 10 images we've created, see previous post, to five images. The images had to be the best at visually communicating our word, mine being layer. We were asked to stick these to the wall, along with the other five selected letters from other people in our groups. 

These letters would be then be the subject of a group crit, the groups swapped and we went to crit another group's work, whilst they did ours. We then had to eliminate a letter from the wall, one at a time, and justify why we remove them. Until we had 5 left, we then were asked to tell the rest of the class. We then had to remove four of the five, to reveal the one final design we had left.



My letters being next to the yellow post-it note.

Monday 1 October 2012

OUGD403 Design Skills

Using the letters, from our summer project, we cut them out and displayed them on the table in multiple fashions, developing and kickstarting our visual communication skills, as you can see from the images below, we had alot of letters.








We were then asked to go away and create 10 letters, which communicate a word, selected from the randomiser. My word way layer. 



The A was designed to seem 3, with the top layer being blank.


The G was based from sedimentary layers.


The K, my favourite letter from the 10, was created overlapping two Ks and working black and white image.


The N was placed on a bed of layers squares.


The R had a layer of almost snake skin on it.


The T was designed to look like paper overlapping each other, however, I don't believe this was effective.


The V was supposed to look like a page turning effect, a layer being peeled off.


The W was simpilar to the A.


The X was created as if it was made from two parts, one layered ontop of the other,


The Z, similar to the K, was designed by layering 3 Z's ontop of each other.