TY1SK Submission B Blog Post

Design Ideas & Process

For this task I had to design a Facebook banner to accompany a podcast called ‘Homegoing’ by Yaa Gyasi. This is my process on how I produced my final design.

From looking at the original poster for the podcast, I noticed various different features that I wanted to include in my design to keep the different mediums consistent and on brand. These specific areas I wanted to include is the use of colour, use of simple yet effective shapes, silhouettes and use of fonts.

In the original poster I observed that the rhombus shapes used formed a composition that helped with direction. Which further lead to white space for text and areas for character illustrations. I decided to use this in creating a funnel/arrow type effect to draw focus into a certain aspect. I made these shapes by using the ‘rectangle tool’ and moving 2 of the anchors. to repeat these shapes faster and more efficiently I used shortcut of ‘command + c’ and ‘option + drag’. Only using half of the required space allows room for text.

Within this area of focus I wanted to include the silhouette used in the original poster, however I believe that by not including the repeated pattern into the dress, it made the silhouette stand out more. This is because the overall design is far less crowded and easier to intemperate. I utilised the pen tool drawing out the outline whilst holding the ‘shift’ key to ensure smooth lines.

The chose the fonts in this design and their different weights to emphasise the title, author and quote. This was highlighted even further by separating via the use of the same colours within the rhombus pattern.

Software Tutorials

Because I was not very confident in using illustrator and more specifically utilising the pen tool (which from using it in this task and practicing with it have noticed it is an extremely vital tool within Illustrators armoury) I mainly used tutorials focussed on this. I used the pen tool heavily for the silhouette and for the buds in the bottom left. I then utilised tutorials around creating and manipulating shapes, which is how I created the the rhombus shapes. Below are the links to the tutorials:

https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/illustrator/how-to/shapes-basics.html

https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/illustrator/how-to/draw-vector-paths-with-pen-pencil-tools.html

Design resources & Articles

Because this was the first time I have looked into banners in detail and designing banners I started off before putting ‘pen to paper’ by looking at existing banners to gain some inspiration on the use of colours, compositions, effective fonts, use of images (in this case illustrations) and the use of shapes. I found this information on Facebook itself and Pinterest.

Learning Across the Module

I wanted to use this module to test me abilities by going out of my comfort zone through using software that I am not as confident in, Illustrator is being one of them. This is because I struggled to get my head around creating smooth curves utilising anchors, paths and handles. Once practicing with the pen tool in this module I familiarised myself with these aspects and became a lot more confident in drawing with vectors. I found that I became more efficient in using the tools as well, producing work a lot quicker than I did before.

TY1SK – Submission A Blog post

This is my photoshop work where I completed the task as per the brief in making 3 Podcast Covers.

Design Ideas and Design Process

Idea 3

This was my first design where I wanted to highlight the use of books because of their importance to typography and graphic communication, and what better way to represent this is using an image of bookshelves. From viewing covers a black and white background with text over the top is an extremely common trend. However, this looked rather busy so I decided to blur the background to put more emphasis on the text but still can tell what the image is.

Idea 2

This is my second design where I wanted to link the topic of the podcast to something that people always look at and relate to. So just like the book idea above, I created this idea using road signs. However, with this design I feel like the sign I created does not look weathered enough.

Idea 3 – Final Idea

This is my last and final idea and by far my favourite one. Just like the covers above I wanted to make a cover that could relate to a lot of people but because this podcast is of a specific topic, I wanted to really filter down on Designers themselves. So, I decided to take a picture of my desk space because this is where a lot of designers will be sitting to complete their work, even including a MacBook as this is pretty much industry standard. I think by doing this makes listeners more comfortable because it is something they are used to seeing.

Working in layers to create suitable Hierarchy
Cropping & Dragging image across using lasso tool
Choosing a font to match the same thickness illustration
Cropping and colour correcting image

Software Tutorials

Because I have some experience in using photoshop, when completing the task, I used existing knowledge of the software and where my knowledge lacked, I would look into alternative means in filling those gaps. I did this mainly by looking at tutorials provided on Blackboard but also venturing through YouTube videos.

The one tutorial I heavily used in one of my podcast covers was because I wanted a desired effect of a weathered or distressed road sign. This was because the text and the boxes used to create the overall cover looked very unnatural to me, so I looked at means to make this more realistic. A lot of the road signs I have seen look weathered, rusty and warn down. This tutorial helped me develop my skills further as it is something used a lot in projects, and it also opened me up to seeing and playing around with filters to change images.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rGFkOvpPrE

I’d like to improve on cropping and using the likes of the lasso tool to make sections look sharper and crisper. This is because I kept finding additional tags when cropping out images which made the image look blurry and messy. It took multiple attempts for me to be happy with some of my cropping.

Design Resources and Articles

When it came to looking at additional resources around the podcast covers, I mainly looked at various different websites and podcast services/ apps to find what common conventions each cover had. As an avid podcast listener and knowing how to navigate these I found this extremely beneficial as I created a list on what covers had in common. This is the list I created and used throughout my covers:

Minimal/ simple
Use of white (either for background or text)
More illustration than photography or combination of the two
If photography is used it is very specific
Mainly use 3 colours
Square

These really helped me and inspired my designs for my covers.

TWA Travel Poster

I found that going through some of the collections and having discussions on the work exhibited was a real eye-opener on how work was produced and how we have moved on in terms of design, materials and processes. However, there was an item of work that stood out to me especially once finding out the date in which it was produced.

I was drawn to David Clines ‘New York’ travel poster which he produced in 1956. The concept behind this advertisement was so intriguing to me due to it being so ahead of his time. I did further research into travel posters and advertisements around this era and when comparing Cline’s work to other poster, his work was extremely contrasting. This is because other posters consisted of 3 or 4 colours, place names and a directly linked image to the country or city. Where Cline’s work differs is through the use of layers, colours and shapes to depict a country or city, in this case being New York.

Here are some examples of posters produced during the 1950s:

I would describe this specific piece of Cline’s work as a “controlled mess”. Intentional because Times Square in New York is an extremely hectic place, Cline has used multiple different colours in layered shapes to represent the vibrant advertisement boards and shop windows as well as dotted lines to depict bust traffic on top of this.

Typeforms

I found this practical task very insightful as I gained a greater understanding in the different aspects and features revolving around typefaces. What I found most useful was understanding why features where designed in a certain way to make it less challenging for audiences to read.

The session was split into two activities, firstly we had half of a font in which we had to draw what we thought the other half would look like and the last activity was drawing missing letters using the features from examples above. I had to really take into consideration curves, Line thicknesses and the lengths for both ascenders and descenders.

Bravo Two Zero

This is a remake cover of the action packed true story of ‘Bravo Two Zero’.

I decided to use a black & white colour scheme for this cover to represent the SAS Uniform and its badges. Not to mention that serious forms and documents use only black & white, which emphasises how serious the topic is surrounding this book and the events that took place within it.

I thought to match the same font as ‘The Great Gatsby’ due to the fact that it is a bold sans serif typeface. I feel this was appropriate as the soldiers who endured the events within this book were both bold and brave as individuals and as a unit, but also to link with the font on the face of the SAS Badge which states “who dares wins”.

I did make some slight changes to the cover where the iconic penguin logo was replaced by the SAS badge and changing ‘Fiction’ to ‘Non-fiction’ as this book is based on true events.

Eye Line

This is a mini project looking at the different types of lettering in the environment. For this project I had a theme of ‘eye-line’ where I took various photos at signs around campus and looked at what features they had.

From looking at the various signs I found that all the signs at eye-line were important or warnings. This was emphasised by bright colours against a plain background and that the had bold sans serif fonts to grasp the viewers attention.

Labyrinth

This is a mini project called ‘Broken Narratives’ where I experimented with ideas for a conceptual book and it’s materiality. I looked into the theme of a Labyrinth.

‘Labyrinth: a family moves into a house with unexpected spatial characteristics. The rooms keep shifting position every time a door is opened. The family members are trapped inside the house and start a journey to find the front door. While they keep moving from one room to the next, they discover that they are not the only ones lost in the impossibly infinite labyrinth of the house.’

The whole concept of my idea was focused on the rooms of the house and a way in which the family could escape. I created cut outs after glueing pages together to make a 3-dimensional floor plan of a fairly generic home (living room, kitchen, dining room, etc). I then highlighted in red the shape of the landing and hall way, which is in the shape of a key, to emphasise how the family could escape.

Flavour From Home

Using aspects from someones interests and applying them to an ideal gift for them. I Can link this to a real working example, using client details to produce a product or piece for their needs.