Manipulate to communicate...

We were all told to bring 20p with us to our visual language class, the 20p was to buy an old magazine from the library which we would manipulate to communicate.

We each wrote down an adjective on a piece of paper which was then placed in the randomizer, we were each given a word. My word was INTELLIGENT, i had to manipulate my magazine so that it visually communicated intelligent.

At first i got stuck on what to do, i looked through the magazine and found a page that said intelligent on it, i thought i could cut through the pages until you reached the page that had  my word on it, but unfortunately i had bought a very thick magazine that would take me forever to cut through. So i thought again, i started folding pages and then thought of another idea. I used the middle pages to make a capital Q and either side i folded the pages into the centre to make them look like a capital I. So when you look at it it looks like IQ, which is related to intelligence.

After finishing we had to leave a piece of paper by our manipulated magazine and people had to write what word they thought we were trying to communicate, unfortunately no one knew what my word was, which means i pretty much failed the task. But it has made me realise that we all see things differently, so as a graphic designer you have to see things as others what see them, not just how you see and interpret things.

Communication is a virus...Final designs...

My final designs:

These are my final designs for the group brief, i designed four posters, each one to do with fitness and trying to get people (students) get motivated for the sake of their well being and fitness. I think that my designs work well and work as a set as well as working well with the designs that my group members had done. As a group we really became fond of the colours that we used and i do think that they work really well together. I think that my designs would appeal to our target audience of whom is our class of student peers.

I think that because they were hand drawn out and then manipulated digitally, that they have a more original feel to them, even though i used fonts from online i did hand draw them which means they wouldnt have been exactly the same.

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Screen prints:

I am really pleased with my screen prints, they work really well and it was nice to try something new rather than using the mac like i usually do. It goes well with the theme of hand rendered. Not only did it look good for my work but i really enjoyed the process of screen printing.

My screen prints have been cut down to the 2:1 ratio of an A3 and i have rolled them up and tied them with blue ribbon, i will give these out during the final presentation.

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Transferring onto T-shirts and tote bags:

I bought some transfer paper from a craft store along with some tote bags, and a few cheap t-shirts to print my designs on. I have never done this before so i was a little bit scared of messing up, but they came out really well, the t-shirts in my opinion look quite professional and so does the tote bag. i decided to print onto these because my subject was fitness and the t-shirts could be worn when someone goes to the gym or for a run and the bag could be their gym bag.

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My groups final pieces:

Claudia's final designs

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Matt's final designs

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Mitch's final designs

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Steph's final designs

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Our presentation 

Communication is a virus...Development...

Monday 21st March: Group discussion

We started to look at colour and scale of our posters/ ideas today, we decided to stick to a fairly neutral colour palette, as we didnt want our posters to be too 'in your face', we want them to be almost poetic and our colours needed to reflect on this. Because our posters are typographic based and some of us are hand drawing them we figured that they would all have a different style to them, so we thought it would be a good idea to design a logo which help give visual consistency throughout the poster designs, we would also have them the same size and orientation, and using the same colours.

As a group we thought that it would be a good idea to come up with 5 final posters each, which would give us 25 different designs in total, because we each had a category to work with (mine being fitness). Because we are designing the posters to motivate individuals in our class we wanted a variety of designs and styles that would appeal to a large percentage of people, we want them to have an individual feel to them.

Size of posters: A3 with a ratio of 2:1 = 198 (w) x 420 (h)

We chose 2 colours plus stock which are:

Colour 1: BLUE

Pantone 3135c Solid coated

C: 78

M: 19

Y: 16

K: 0

Colour 2: BROWN

Pantone black 4c Solid Coated

C: 59

M: 64

Y: 72

K: 65

Stock: CREAM

Pantone 7506c Solid Coated

C: 6

M: 11

Y: 28

K: 0

We settled on these colours after looking at the meaning of colour and what effect each colour has psychologically on a person. Blue can be a calming colour but electric/ brilliant blues become dynamic and dramatic and can be an engaging colour that expresses exhilaration. Brown is known for stability, reliability and orderliness. The stock colour of cream was chosen because we felt it worked well with the other two colours, its a very neutral colour.

We want the blue to provoke exhilaration and motivation in someone to get them to get up and give more to themselves and we want the brown to give them confidence and orderliness, if they can find the time to help themselves then they will.

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I decided to use one of my initial poster designs to test the colours and they appear to work well together, the blue really stands out against the stock colour and the rich brown. I would like to keep this design as part of my final five, but following the last crit i may need to edit the content to make it more motivational and specific.

This design again is a previous one that i am testing the colours on, i think it works better on the design above, i really like the type that i designed on this poster but it lacks something. I have made it into a question to try and provoke someones thinking in whether or not they are going to get fit. By asking a question the individual had the chance to answer it themselves, i guess in a way its trying to make them feel guilty about the decision that they are making.

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Typeface research for posters

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DESIGN BOARDS EDITED

These are the new idea boards edited using our new, revised idea and the restricted colour palette.

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Poster designs by Steph with the restricted colour palette

Steph's logo design:

Matt's logo designs

Matt has designed some logo's for our posters to give them a visual consistency, the designs have been kept quite simple and to the point, i think that these designs work well but maybe the wording could be changed. Help yourself seems fairly appropriate because we are wanting people to help themselves and give more to themselves. I dont think 'NEW YOU' is appropriate to the content and purpose of our posters, the design itself looks good, but' new you' doesnt really promote what our aims are.

I have tried the logo's on my posters and they do work well, i think my favourite from these 3 is the top one, it's saying 'we have given you the motivation now you just have to help yourself'.

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This is a new poster design that i hand drew using typefaces from dafont for inspiration, the layout may seem messy but that is the style we are aiming for, very hand drawn and individual. I tried to use decorative and simple typeface to give it a random look.

With this poster i have added Matt's logo to see how it works with my design, i dont think it matters that Matt's logo is digitised compared to my hand drawn poster, because if all the posters have the same logo it gives them all continuity anyway.

I really like this poster with the change of stock colour, it really stands out and feels more vibrant, if i had this in my room i think i would definitely look twice at it and it would make me think about doing some exercise.

With this poster i added a question with digital type at the bottom of my hand drawn design. The hand drawn part is simply a statement and from our last crit we were told that we need to pose a question to make our audience think which may provoke them to take actions. ' Can you do it?' is making them think about the actions they may or may not take, are they strong enough to take action towards the statement?

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These are my attempt at creating a logo for our posters, i have kept to our colour choice of blue, brown and cream (stock). I have used helvetica neue typeface as its quite a modern and simple typeface, i have also used the love heart that is on the 3 idea boards, it has a jagged hand drawn feel to it which i think helps link in with the designs of the posters.

These are my poster designs with my logo on to see how they work, i quite like the one that says 'give yourself some lovin', the one that says 'more 4 u' now reminds me of 'phones 4 u' so maybe its not a good idea to use it as it may not seem new and original.

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SCREEN PRINTING

I decided that i wanted to screen print one of my poster designs so that i used a different media than what i usually would like using digital print, i think screen print gives a really nice hand made feel which is suitable for the hand drawn type designs.

This is the design that i am going to screen print, it was the last design that i did and i think it is the most successful, i like the type faces i have used and the way in which i have laid them out, it looks very hand rendered. i think the style of it will also appeal to the younger audience of whom we are aiming our work at (students). We decided to use one of Matt's logos as we felt the design worked well and so did the content of the logo.