Design ideas and design process

Coming up with the idea of combining typography within the ‘talking mouth’ was developed during the design process. My initial thought was to create simple and identical stickers using symbolic and geometric shapes. After considering adding several shapes and images, e.g., microphone, dialogue sign, headphone, etc., I finally create the idea by turning the literal meaning of ‘taking about typefaces’ into graphics, by shaping the typography into the shape of a ‘talking mouth’, which shows the designs in below.

DESIGN 1:

Design 1 (final design) (mainly with hand drawn illustration)

As I would like to practice drawing illustration in Adobe illustrator more flexible, I have spent more time on the first design than others to practice drawing smooth lines using the pen tool. My first design (Design 1) then ended up being my final design. By watching Youtube tutorials that teach how to use the drawing tool, I have further learned to use the width tool to adjust the stroke width, as well as the appearance panel to make changes separately and recover things easily. Besides, I have learnt to create wrap text by envelope distort effect and puppet warp tool (Screenshot 1), which these tools is efficient to create stylish typography. As I was aiming to create stylish and more recognizable stickers, I have chosen an analogue colour scheme with bluish-purple and pink, contrasting with a yellow margin. Hopefully, it was more attractive.

Screenshot 1: Wrap effect to the text (envelope distort effect & puppet warp tool)

Screenshot 2: Making the text with lips shape (knife tool to cut the curved shapes from circle > replace the shape with text by Ctrl+Alt+C > puppet warp tool to shape the lips) 

Screenshot 3: Drawing illustrations for decorations (pen tool)

DESIGN 2:

Design 2 (Experiment with 3D text)

Further developing the idea of making the typography into a mouth shape, I then created a 3D version using the blend option (Screenshot 4), as well as shaping the 3D text by using the puppet warp tool that learnt while creating the previous sticker (Screenshot 5).  I remain to choose an analogue colour scheme of Cyan and purple while using gradient colour for the tongue to make it look more realistic. It ended up quite successfully.

Screenshot 4: Creating 3D text (Blend option & puppet warp tool)

Screenshot 5: Apply the 3D text into a curved stroke (blend> replace-spine) ; Shape the 3D text into a mouth pupplet wrap tool

DESIGN 3:

Design 3 (Playing with shapes, letter forms and gradient colour)

In Design 3, I have developed skills in constructing text and adapting gradient colours within designs. I came up with another approach playing around with the composition and different letterforms using the pathfinder tools. The background was filled with gradient shapes and colours using the gradient tool, also drawing of  simplified graphics are added, such as the book in rectangle shape, and the typography pen, both were drawn and constructed with the pathfinder tools.

Screenshot 6: Constructing the text with different letter forms (pathfinder tools)

Screenshot 7: Creating background with gradient-shapes (gradient tool)

Software Tutorials

By learning the fundamental techniques in Adobe illustrator, I began with watching a few resources from Adobe creative cloud for a tutorial like creating monograms and adding texture to illustration, to learn how to write text within a circle using text on a path tool and scissors tool.

For specific techniques, I watch a tutorial from Linkedin learning: illustrator 2021 Essential training by Tony Harmer,  which I found useful and more organisable. It includes a tutorial on almost all tools and even a specific aspect. In Design 1, I have learnt to use shapes and line drawing tools to create a variable-width stroke. It also allows me to develop skills in constructing shapes and forms using pathfinder and shape builder tools. (Screenshot 6)

The most useful technique I have learnt from these design tasks will be using blend options, which I have learnt from several Youtube videos. In How to design a wave shapes gradient background, I learnt to adapt the gradient shape effect using the blending option (Screenshot 7). In Warp Text Into Shapes Illustrator Tutorial , it allows me to further adapt the technique in my design by creating the 3D typography with shapes of talking mouth.

Resources for research and inspiration

I mainly found inspiration from Pinterest (My Stickers inspiration) (Reference picture 1), which provide loads of sticker designs with any styles that allow me to make references with their composition of text and graphics. Furthermore,  99 designs also provide professional stickers desigsn for me to observe how they manage to create an attractive sticker.

By exploring how others shaped the text to a mouth, I found quite a lot of designers have been using the idea (Reference picture 2), so I only make references with the shape of the lips while shaping it with my text and typography style. Lastly, reading the article ‘Top 13 Tips To Create And Print Sticker Designs That Stand Out‘, teaches us how can creating efficient sticker designs. It is said that stickers should look simple while funny, and make things super large to create readable text, so I enlarged my text in my Design 2 as much as it can.

Reference picture 1: My pinterest board (stickers inpiration)

Reference picture 2: By googling ‘Typography mouth’

Reflection

By reflecting on my design, I think it was not quite successful in my design 3, as the text looks a bit messy with too many small objects, I can improve by unifying the text by using the same gradient colour similar to the background, so it may look more harmonious. Another solution is to enlarge the object and remove the non-necessary part.

At the time, my sticker designs are lack of funny elements to attract the audience. In future design, I need to improve on the skills of developing creative ideas and reflect on how I can create more eye-catching stickers with simple graphics. For example, I can use contrasting visual elements, line strokes or simple characters in order to make my designs more interesting. Besides, I may get more inspiration from other artists. To develop my skill further, I still want to practice using the pen tools and other tools that I haven’t used in Adobe illustrator.

Design Ideas & Design Process

As I approached this task, I knew my main priority was to become more familiar with the software and more specifically tools in the software, whilst keeping the brief in mind. This explains my widely varied designs. After searching for inspiration I had lots of ideas that I wanted to develop, and skills I wanted to master.

Design 1

Figure 1 – Final sticker design 1

BMW, BBC, NBA, KFC. All these brands are known by a 3 letter acronym. My first idea stemmed from this concept. I chose to shorten the title of the podcast to the 3 letters as it creates a brand which is more memorable than an independent podcast. In my design I have highlighted the abbreviated title to draw attention to it, which was my aim when going through the design process.

Design 2

Figure 2 – Final Sticker design 2

Here I wanted to concentrate on developing solely text-based skills. To achieve the handwritten look I was after, I selected a calligraphic font as I feel like this portrayed my goal successfully. When researching I had seen multiple stickers with a vague silhouette of the design acting as a border/outline which inspired me to experiment with this idea, hence why there are multiple shadow layers to this design.

Design 3

figure 3 – Final sticker design 3

Typography is all about words. When said, the word itself has “type” in it, and this design reflects exactly that. A book has tens of thousands of words in it and is usually the first thing people think of when the topic of conversation is words. After watching a tutorial, I learnt how to create this book-like effect which I think conveys the theme of typography perfectly.

Software Tutorials

Design 1

Figure 4 – Using type on path tool 

For continuity, I designed a sticker based on one of my previous podcast covers where I used smart filters, the liquify tool and a clipping masking in Photoshop to create the effect of the distorted TGC. Once I had moved this to Illustrator, I drew a circle around it and used the type on path tool (Figure 4) to add the smaller text around the edge of the sticker, creating a border highlighting the abbreviation. I edited the size of the outer text so it joined as a complete circle.

Wrap Text Around A Circle with Adobe Illustrator | Beginner Tutorial

Design 2

figure 5 – using offset path and merge tool 

Figure 6 – without typographic brush strokes

figure 7 – with typographic brush strokes

To emphasize the text, I added a black shadow by duplicating the text, then I expanded, blended and merged the letters together. Additionally, I increased the stroke weight so it was a thick, bold shadow. The use of copy and paste came in handy for this design as I created multiple shadows. The blue shadow behind the white text came from duplicating it, changing the colour and using the selection tool to position it slightly down and to the right of the foremost layer. To enhance the hand-drawn effect, I added some brush stroke-looking shapes using the pen tool, incorporating bezier curves to intensify the sections of the letters that cross over another (Figure 7).

How To Create Custom Type Designs in Adobe Illustrator

Design 3

figure 8 – using free transform tool

figure 9 – using blend & anchor tools 

figure 10 – moving text position 

The free transform tool helped me achieve the opening book-like effect. Taking two copies of the word, I morphed them so they were the very outer and inner “pages” (Figure 8). Using the blend tool, I was able to fill the gaps with a desirable number of copies and then adjust the positioning using the anchor tool. I then used the gradient fill tool to give the look of them disappearing into the background, enhancing the book effect (Figure 9). After using the rotation and reflection tools to create the rest of the book, I experimented with the positioning of the remaining text (Figure 3 & Figure 10). In the end I decided upon the first option (Figure 3) because the writing isn’t completely legible in the second one.

Flip Text Effect in Adobe Illustrator | Blending, Reflect & Gradient | Graphic design

Design Resources & Articles

Design 1

figure 11 – BMw logo comparison (2020s v 1970s)

My inspiration for this design was the branding of BMW. Above is the logo from the 1970s along with the current one (Figure 11). My sticker shape reflects the main shape of both logos, a circle. The slight involvement of colour means you are drawn to it so I used this idea for my design for the extended title, as that is an important piece of information. This helped develop my work in terms of hierarchy and the order in which the viewer will see the information.

https://www.creativebloq.com/news/bmw-old-logo

Design 2

figure 12 – sticker sold on redbubble.com

The solid theme throughout this website’s stickers is the bubble-like border around the designs. It gives the illusion that the design is much more prominent than the background colour and this is a way of manipulating the viewer to look at certain information. I applied this to my own work and the results are successful in that you are really drawn to the word ‘typography’, like it is almost jumping out of the page.

https://www.redbubble.com/shop/?iaCode=all-stickers&ref=search_box

Design 3

figure 13 – Book cover designed by david pearson 

Earlier this term, David Pearson, a successful book designer, led one of our Baseline Shift sessions and this particular design of his stood out to me. The concept of making shapes and letters out of words really intrigued me so I wanted to build on this idea in my own way. The result of this was the idea of creating the shape of a book as part of my sticker design, as books have a strong link with typography and graphic communication.

Design Ideas and Process

Starting off my illustrator project, my main focus was to tie together my indesign and photoshop tasks, seeing as the idea for the project as a whole was to create material for a podcast it made sense to tie them together as a set, however, my indesign and photoshop work was very different in design so to have the 3 pieces as a full set I wanted to tie them together with this project and use elements from both in this design.

My initial idea for the illustrator task (figure 1) stemmed from the form of the microphone image I used in the photoshop task (figure 5), I took the same image into illustrator and drew the outline of it using the pen tool, my initial idea was just to use the silhouette of this image and have a very basic background using the shape created, however after creating it I decided I would add slightly more detail to the silhouette to allow it to be more easily understood to be a microphone, especially if the user had seen the actual podcast cover (figure 5), having the microphone sticker with slightly more detail as a base flat simple image allowed me to branch out into colour very easily because of the simple style and shape, it was from here that I added in the colours that I’d used in my indesign project (figure 4) using the iconic pink and blue to create a vibrant sticker (figure 2), with the task itself being to create a sticker I found that having bright colours made sense because the function of the sticker is to stand out against any background and be noticeable no matter where it is stuck. From this point I decided that text wouldn’t need to be a huge part of the sticker itself because the bright colours allowed it to be noticeable, this meant I could embed the text into the shape which I did, creating an emphasis on the word podcast by making it larger, I also decided that I’d cut the text into the shape to simplify it down more, I wanted the sticker to consist of 2 colours and only if necessary three, also cutting the text into the microphone silhouette shape meant that it flowed better within the shape as a whole and the text didn’t just look like an afterthought addon. Finally, I decided to bring in some more elements, the lines dots and squiggles, from my indesign task (figure 4) and add them onto the sticker (figure 3), this meant that the sticker tied the 3 designs together much better, however I eventually decided that this made the sticker itself too crowded which defeated the design I’d originally gone for, so I decided that figure 2 would be my final design.

Software Tutorials

When it came to software tutorials, my main focuses for illustrator were learning how to use the pen tool better and I also wanted to improve my use of layers within illustrator, as this is something that I’ve not done before, and it’s led to issues in past projects.

The main illustrator tutorial I used was an in-depth video on the pen tool inside illustrator by ‘tutvid’ on YouTube, focusing on using it for creating very custom paths and shapes. This video helped me learn to create the simplified microphone shape for my sticker, this wouldn’t have been anywhere near as easy without the pen tool, the amount of iteration and detail needed if I’d done this using basic shapes prebuilt inside illustrator and editing the anchor points that way would’ve taken way too long in comparison. Furthermore, using the pen tool as opposed to another option or method, meant that I had the paths built in aw way that I understood and could utilise properly later on when I wanted to add more detail or customise the shape, the paths became easy to use and simple, because I could limit the amount of anchor points, I’d used it meant I could manipulate the shape perfectly. The tutorial specifically explains how to use the pen tool for tracing a shape and how to get the angles and curves you want properly and how to refine them down to be exactly correct to the image you want to create.

The video also touched on certain shortcuts and key binds you can use when using the pen tool to allow you to quickly create certain types of joins in the shape or certain Bezier curves, these shortcuts and commands are something that I’d like to develop further now so I can more efficiently use the tool in future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXpnKlUMZQA&ab_channel=tutvid – This is the tutorial I used.

Design Resources and Articles

When I was looking into shortcuts and quick commands I could use inside of illustrator I came across a default keyboard shortcuts article by adobe, this article highlights all of the keyboard shortcuts inside illustrator and is particularly useful as they’re well grouped into sections and easy to sift through to find what you need quickly, I spent time going through this article to learn some new shortcuts that would hopefully allow me to more effectively utilise the given tools inside illustrator. As well as a list of every shortcut for illustrator the article also has downloads for ‘one page reference’ sheets, one for both mac and windows users, this download is a very useful and precise list of the most helpful shortcuts for illustrator, I saw this as a list of shortcuts that it would probably be necessary to learn off by heart, and then from there I can go and learn the more specific niche shortcuts as and when I need them from the full list on the original article.

https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/default-keyboard-shortcuts.html – this is the article I used

1. Final Outcome Design Idea 

For my sticker design, I wanted to an image that was eye catching. In order to do this, I decided to experiment with combining shapes and images using the resources Illustrator has .

2. Creating a Clipping Mask

                    I found a tutorial on YouTube that demonstrates how to combine an image and shape using the ‘Clipping Mask’ effect. How to do Clipping Mask in Illustrator – 2 MINUTE Tutorial – YouTube The process is when you select both images making sure that the ‘shape’ is on top, then go to ‘Object’, ‘Clipping Mask’ then ‘Mask’. I used a print that combined different typefaces to visually demonstrate the use the content of the Podcast.

3. Combining the two chosen shapes 

I wanted to experiment with two shapes rather than the traditional one, as it would provide more space for experimentation. I placed the blank star slightly on top as the star with the print provided a nice background design.

Design ideas and design process

This is my first time using Illustrator for graphic design. I rarely use stickers in my life, so I searched for pictures of stickers. I wanted to make a simple and cute style. It took me some time to understand what is Cutcontourkiss and Cutcontourperf, then I started to search for some videos to teach you how to use InDesign.

I like ice cream so I want to design an ice cream shape sticker, so I search some pictures about the ice cream, and I want to show the ice cream melting, I think that would be more interesting, so I make it like this.

And then I saw a video to teach you how to make a sticker, and the designer taught people how to make a shape of cloud so I practice and try to make one.

After that I want to make a sticker in a square way, I want to make it look like an app logo so I make it a little bit like Instagram’s logo, so it looks very simple but also colourful.

Software Tutorial

Illustrator is not as difficult to use as I thought. In fact, it is very convenient and concise, so that I, a beginner, can have a good experience without much pressure. I tried to use different graphics to form a pattern I want, and I used several circles to form a cloud shape. Using illustrator is really interesting.

But I still don’t know more about the functions of illustrator. I’m just using it to do basic things. After watching some teaching videos, I understand that it can do many works belonging to different media. I hope I can continue to use it to make better works in the future.

Design Resources and article

I found and watched two teaching videos. One is to teach you how to draw the outline of stickers, and the other is to teach you how to make basic graphics with illustrator and then modify it to make it a lovely sticker. All the graphics are composed of different graphics, which makes users feel very convenient and inspires me to think differently.