Design Ideas and Design process

At the start of my design process I decided to research and look at pieces of work that would inspire me or trigger ideas. I wanted to use typography and colour in a creative, effective way to give my podcast cover an attractive look. Going into Photoshop my initial idea was to use the title of the podcast, ‘typography and graphic communication’, in a repeated fashion, creating a ‘trippy’ or ‘disruptive’ looking effect. With the success of this idea, I decided to implement it in all of my other tasks as my first design. I had used the same effect for my postcard and for my sticker, the only difference was I had used various colours and word effects. My podcast was an electric blue (which I struggled to recreate) and my postcard was a vibrant pink, using the same image and font. In my final task, I wanted to bring all of my ‘first idea’ designs together and combine them in a harmonious way. My sticker involved both colours from my previous tasks and similar effects in the distortion of my type. As a set of designs, I think that they all work together and you can see that they have distinctive similarities.

For my second podcast idea, I wanted to do something simple, yet effective in the way that it’s put together. I wanted to draw peoples attention to it, making it appealing to look at and easy to notice. I started with a simple background colour with some text and added some circular shapes. As I lowered the opacity of these shapes, I noticed that the text was also affected by the colour. This was not intentional, but the outcome was extremely effective. I think that both of my designs are very different in terms of colour and overall aesthetic, however, repeating the words definitely makes it a strong noticeable cover. Overall, making these covers were relatively easy if you know what you’re doing. I didn’t decide to use any fancy effects as I just wanted to create something simple and straight to the point. I think that the covers simplicity and minimalism is what makes it effective.

Software tutorials

In terms of tutorials that I had used, surprisingly, I didn’t use that many at all. We were provided with some mini tutorials on Blackboard so I mostly followed them and learnt some basic skills. When creating my designs, I was mostly just playing around with the software and exploring different ways to use it. I already had some knowledge when using photoshop as I did photography while I was in sixth form. However, I still think that I still have a lot more to learn. Looking at everyone else’s designs on our shared Padlet board, really gave me insight about how many different effects you can create in just Photoshop alone. I remember being taught how to use the magnetic lasso tool in Photoshop. (This is the tool that I used to cut out the podcast microphone for my first designs). I watched a few tutorials of how to do this, but this one really helped me: https://youtu.be/0rQEctxkjBM.

The tutorials on blackboard were also a huge help for me, especially for the Illustrator sticker task. I had never used Illustrator before, but by learning just a few basic tools, made me feel more comfortable and confident with using it. The tutorial showed us how to use a type and image distorter feature called ‘envelope distort’. When you click on an image or a sentence of type, the feature allows you to create different distortion techniques and shapes. I used this tool for my sticker design, I created different waves of text that flowed around the shapes. I also ended up distorting the podcast microphone accidentally, but it ended up working so well. I think the envelope distort feature really helped everything come together and flow effortlessly in a simple way.

Design resources and articles

For my design resources, I mainly looked for inspiration using Pinterest and other art sites. I researched the general look for ‘podcast covers’ and came across so many different designs. For my other tasks, I didn’t really research many things as I had already come up with a set design aesthetic of my own for all of my first designs. One helpful resource would definitely be Padlet, as I mentioned before, it really inspired me and gave me ideas of my own. Again, at the start of the design process I really had no idea where to start or what I wanted to do. I looked at various pieces of work on the internet and watched a few videos, but I came across this article: https://99designs.co.uk/blog/design-other/how-to-design-a-podcast-cover-the-ultimate-guide/.

This article was the ultimate guide of how to create a podcast cover. It is a guide of how podcasts should look and how it should be very simple and straight to the point. In this article it says ‘let your typography talk’. This is exactly what I had followed throughout all of my designs. It gave me the idea of creating that initial ‘trippy’ affect. It also helped me with the layout of all my designs, keeping them very minimal and easy to recognise what’s going on.