Category: Student work

Techniques learnt from Indesign

Reading film theatre (red and black-final)

Shown here is my cinema listing I created on Indesign. I chose to use this specific title as it reflects on my learning from this task. The reason it reflects so well is because from creating my two listings (one is showed here) I learnt new things and enhanced my knowledge on some of the techniques.

Before doing this task I struggled with using paragraph styles and characters and now I feel a lot more confident with using them for future tasks/projects. When I did stuggle to create some things or find some things I used the internet and researched how to overcome the issue.

Some issues I did overcome while creating my two listings were having to stop forcing line breaks, instead i used paragraph styles to help me. Overall I feel I have learnt a lot from this, one being to ask for feedback to improve my work and ideas as the feedback I recieved helped me to make my final outcome better.

Techniques learnt from Indesign

Reading film theatre (black and blue- final)

Shown here is my cinema listing I created on Indesign. I chose to use this specific title as it reflects on my learning from this task. The reason it reflects so well is because from creating my two listings (one is showed here) I learnt new things and enhanced my knowledge on some of the techniques.

Before doing this task I struggled with using paragraph styles and characters and now I feel a lot more confident with using them for future tasks/projects. When I did stuggle to create some things or find some things I used the internet and researched how to overcome the issue.

Some issues I did overcome while creating my two listings were having to stop forcing line breaks, instead i used paragraph styles to help me. Overall I feel I have learnt a lot from this, one being to ask for feedback to improve my work and ideas as the feedback I recieved helped me to make my final outcome better.

Grand Concert and Dance

Grand Concert and Dance

This piece interested me for a couple reasons, firstly the colours of it were very different to a lot of other things in the collections, I found the gradient interesting because when you look closer at it you notice that it’s possible that it was one gradient across the whole piece and each of the separate sections of information all use the sections of the same gradient that will have been applied just once.
Secondly, the choice of fonts for this poster, more particularly the amount of fonts used on the piece, from a quick glance you can notice more than 10 different typefaces on this piece, which is absurd compared to now where we’re advised that 3/4 is the absolute maximum.

Movie time!

Project Brief

Design the programme flyer for Reading Film Theatre, listing their Autumn programme of films. Design TWO variants, based on some kind of underlying different approach (eg different users)

For this project, we were asked to design the Autumn 2017 cinema listings. We were given a document with all the information with typos and we had to correct them and then order and design the information so that it would be easy to understand. We also had to choose two types of users to design our cinema listings.

I chose:

  • Parent with two children under 10
  • Retired doctor and her husband, both of them who have a passion for old Hollywood

Sketches

I started off by sketching out ideas on how each listing might look, keeping in mind which features of the listings would be more important for each user.I began with the design for the parent with two children under 10. For this design I thought that the title, age rating and the running time would be the most important for the parent as it would be key for them to know the age rating of the movie to see if the movie would be appropriate for their children and the running time as a parent might not want to sit through a long childrens movie. Due to this, I chose the middle sketch to base my cinema listings on as it had the title and age rating at the top and the running time directly under it.

 

For the retired doctor and her husband who have a passion for old Hollywood, I thought the key features for them was year of films, country the movie was made in, as well as being able to know which movies had extras such as subtitles or audio description. This is because old Hollywood is specific genre and to be able to see the year and country of the movie would be useful for the couple to find the movies they like the most. Therefore, I chose the last sketch to base my design on as it has the country and year of the movie towards the top of the listing.

Process

I began by reading through the document and edited the text so that all necessary information was there such as the running time for every movie and correcting any typos in the movie informations. I decided to use the RTF’s logo colors for my color theme. As the logo had multiple colors and we were only allowed two, I used red and black as my colors, red as the accent color and black for the main body. I had originally planned to put the synopsis of each movie into my listings but I did not have any space to do this as we only had little space and already quite a lot of information to organise into the space. The two typefaces I chose was Gill Sans and Rockwell for both designs as they looked appropriate and has quite a lot of styles within the font such as italics, bold etc, and this was very useful in differentiating and highlighting certain information even without a range of fonts or colors.

First Draft and Feedback

In the feedback session, it was suggested to check that our listing have the correct hyphens and to have a full name on one line or movie title on one line as well as having correct spacing between hyphens, check spaces between numbers e.g., 8, 4 etc. I also decided to change the position of the title and information to make it more prominent.

Reflection

This project really helped me understand to know the importance of knowing how the finished project will be viewed as looking as the printed version of my listings helped me see some of the issues I could not see on screen such as the size of the body text. As well as this, this project showed me how important of using paragraph styles as with so much information, anytime I wanted to make a change to a section such as the running time, I didn’t have to individually go through every bit.

Trade cards

This was a really interesting session for me as we got to look at some things from the collection that we have access to in the department. This was one of my favourite pieces from the collection. I was immediately drawn to it because of the shapes and colours.  I loved how each one was shaped into what was sold at each shop, I thought that this was a really creative and thought threw design. When I looked at it initially I wasn’t quite sure what it was, I had a few thoughts. To me it seemed as though it could have been a tags or perhaps some kind of business card?

After the sessions I went home and researched to see if I could find out more information about them. I found that most were made in the mid/late 19th century, and that they were in fact trade cards. So these were used by merchants and traders to give to their customers, which were usually made out of paperboard or thick paper as these ones were. They are made small enough so that they fit inside a pocket for easy distribution.

New Minimalism

For this mini project we were given 10 different themes to choose from. Originally I chose the 70s retro style, I began researching and creating mood boards of  different colours, shapes and textures that I was inspired by.

When I started drafting my design ideas I found it really difficult to come up with an idea to represent me. I had experimented with three different designs which I did not like. I shorty realised that the colours of the theme I chose didn’t represent me as I wanted therefore, quite last minuet, I decided to change my theme to something I thought was more up my street. I love simple and elegant designs with a range of neutral colours and thought that the theme ‘New Minimalism’ was exactly that.

I started again by creating a first mood board of colours and textures that I found appealing that was related to my new theme, I focused on interior design and furniture from the website ‘interior trends’ which included; natural materials, raw woods, soft and earthy colours inspired by nature as well as some off whites and tobacco and browns.  This is where my inspiration for the background and textured circle came from. I took an image of wood and used the image trace tool (3 colours) to make it look a little more smooth, more graphic looking rather than realistic. I also then took the image of the wooden bath tube and used the drop colour tool to get the colours for my final design.

I then created a second mood board focusing on fonts and design layouts, I decided to design my logo in a circle as I thought it looked a bit more structured  and put together. I chose to work with two different fonts.

With regards to what I was going to name myself I experimented with a few different ideas these including my initials ‘NBM’, My full name ‘Nelly Bridger Morales’ which I found was too long. I then thought of just Nell as I didn’t want it to be just my name ‘Nelly’ as I thought that it was a bit too plain and basic. In the end I decided to use ‘Nelly’ as I realised it was quite a unique name and thought it was the perfect amount of letters.

 

 

 

 

Cinderella Penguin Cover

 

I decided to take a different approach to designing my second penguin book cover, instead I was inspired by the ‘Pocket Penguin’ collection. I chose this collection because the simplicity of the design was a good base to work from and adapt. I firstly used the classic penguin orange, inspired by the original classic covers. I moved away from the ‘pocket book’ and placed the title at the top half of the book because we read from the top to the bottom of a page and I wanted readers to see the name of the novel first. For the title itself, I made the C larger to create that magical affect usually seen on fairy tale novels, almost looking like a moon. I tested out different typefaces to also convey this so I chose the Serif font ‘Minion Pro’ as it looks both elegant and simple. I wanted to add a feature image to appeal more to the children reading it, I then changed the size of the silver slipper but it became too distracting and stood out more than the title and author. I then wanted to replicate the use of vibrant colours used by the classic covers, as the vibrant colours represented their genre.

Cinema Listings Development and Presentation

Initial Ideation

Following the brief being set, I began by quickly sketching designs. It is important to note that my target audience was a father with two young children, so many design choices were influenced by this. I used blocks in place of the main title, writing only the other information to see it in context. This was a purely experimental process intending to generate a range of ideas relatively quickly.

I trialed different positionings of the title mostly, which I shaded in pink for simplicity.  The larger texts, while optimal for a typography-based poster, would likely not work in the context of a cinema listing, which must be a vehicle for information. The A5 size limit means that text must be carefully balanced to ensure hierarchy and optimal readability.

Alternatively, when made smaller, the title loses its dominance over the other information. While there are other factors likely more important to a father, such as whether the timing of the film works with the family’s schedule, the conventions of a cinema listing and other users also have to be considered. The film title is typically the largest element in each individual listing, allowing other users to quickly identify a film that interests them.

After reflecting on these ideas, I concluded that the bottom right image on the first page and the top right image on the second page were the two most suitable. These two ideas appeared well-balanced but will be refined in later development.

 

Idea Refinement

Having decided on the two concepts, I drew these out to a larger scale, now writing the full title out. Although this is more in line with the final piece, the actual refinement would take place within InDesign, so this is simply refining the concept.

I drew the ideas twice, once with the longest title and once with the shortest, allowing me to see the extreme differences this element will need to have, in turn being able to adapt the design to these requirements.

Having done this, I used a red pen to write on notes and adjustments to make when in InDesign. At this point, I decided that shorter, single-line titles could span the height of two lines, believing that this would make the design look more balanced.

I also concluded that, while spacing was important and should be tweaked and adjusted when suitable, a larger font would be optimal. This would make the final printed product clearer, allowing it to be better at its purpose, to communicate information to a potential customer of the cinema.

Having concluded that these ideas would be suitable and refined them slightly on paper, I then had to use InDesign to begin the digital creation of the ideas.

 

Digital Creation

I began with black text, creating a single entry in the structure of my first sketch, using style sheets in order to regulate and standardize the sections. I found this stage complicated and difficult to construct, trying to tweak the paragraph styles to create a successful result. After watching a tutorial video on Drop Caps, I had finished the first entry and was able to quickly apply these styles to the remaining text.  I then added the remaining information, including the titles and contact details, which I placed at the top of the page. I adjusted the sizes of these, making the title significantly larger while making the other information smaller, semantically spaced, and arranged to create visually balanced spacing by controlling the negative space around these elements. I realised that smaller titles could not be in a larger font as initially planned, as this made the design look incongruous and visually imbalanced.

Having completed this, I reflected on the design. I decided that the spacing needed work, with the blocks seemingly blending into one. To combat this, I adjusted the spacing more and added rule lines underneath each listing. This helped to define each block of information as separate, differentiating the data and allowing the design to be more visually balanced.

Having created this design, I then added a coloured box to the top of the design. I selected a dark blue, allowing the text to all use the same colours (because, at the time, I thought that white counted as one of the two allocated colours). To allow the text within to be visible, I changed the colour to be white. This created a visual hierarchy, the white text standing out from the thick block of colour.

Completing a basic format, I then printed the design out to scale in black and white. This was a helpful stage within the process, allowing me to better understand and gauge the sizes of the various elements. Looking closely at this printed example, I was able to correct scaling and spacing issues that came up. For example, the smaller metadata was still too big in this example and more spacing would allow the design to seem more clear and visually appealing. I was also able to add more space between the upper listings and the coloured box, balancing the overall look better.

Having made these changes, I was happy with the design. I checked the use of punctuations and hyphens before resaving the design with a new name, allowing me to simply adjust the style sheets on the duplicated document instead of starting from scratch.

 

Second Design

Having stripped this duplicated file back to the basics, I was then able to make adjustments to make the alternate design. I began by adjusting the layouts of each listing, with this being the most important factor to the user. Although other stylistic choices were also necessary, such as changing the typefaces and colour used, I wanted to ensure the concept was visually effective and appropriate at communicating the desired messages. Being able to use the same size font as the previous design was a reassuring sign that this design would be similarly readable and clear to a potential customer.

I think that this listing layout, while still somewhat successful for shorter length films, works considerably better on films with longer titles. For example, in the working document on the left, entries like ‘Wind River’ and ‘Nosferatu’ look visually more appealing than ‘Detroit’ and ‘Coco’. This came down to the contrast of line length, with the bigger title standing out more and filling a larger amount of the negative space when the title is longer. Due to this, I increased the kerning of the titles, attempting to increase the horizontal size of these shorter titles, making them more appealing as individual listings.

The dark orange shade I selected for this design was incredibly effective, with both the body text, titles and colour blocks with white inner text looking visually appealing and inviting. Although the previous design’s dark blue was functional, I think that this colour conveys more character and personality, with the blue making the programme feel uninteresting and overly informative. For the target audience, this inviting design is more likely to appear to the children, while remaining clean and sharp in order to be a useful programme of information to the father.

Having got the layout to something I was happy with, I left the design for 10 minutes before returning to reflect on it with a fresh, more objective viewpoint. I concluded that more visual contrast was needed and, upon seeing the two non-English films, I decided to balance the design better. I did this by moving these two entries to the end of the list, putting a matching coloured box around them and changing the colour to white. With the large block of colour in the top left of the design, which was needed to highlight the products aims and format as a programme, this second box created balance and contrast without interfering with the hierarchy. This also helped to separate films of different languages, assisting clarity and benefiting the user experience.

Having completed this, I again printed the design off in black and white. I was then able to see the design to scale and in context as a printed document. While more changes and tweaks were exposed by this process, I was able to make these amendments at this non-essential stage. I then printed a full-colour copy of the design, bringing it into class for peer assessment.

 

Peer Assessment

My two programmes were printed on thick paper, almost card like in structure, but with a relatively smooth texture. Although a typical cinema listing would be on glossy paper, I decided that this wouldn’t work for my target audience. For a father with two young children, it is likely that they would want to hold and read this programme, so the final product would need to be somewhat robust to withstand anything that may happen to it.

Having shared this with peers, I had feedback written over the designs. This was a useful process, as I received information and feedback on aspects I hadn’t considered, such as the respect of putting actors’ and directors’ names on a single line.

With this information, I then went back to the last saved files of my respective designs, making necessary adjustments to adhere to this advice. For example, on the first design, the spacing between the dashes when writing times were highlighted as an area for refinement. I was able to alter this, changing the sixth spaces to hair spaces, making the text and the design as a whole look more visually effective, likely helping its purpose as a product to convey information.

 

Final Designs

Looking at the final designs, I am very happy with the overall outcomes. I think that the dark orange design looks visually better, with the colouring, typefaces and layouts helping this. The box in the bottom right helps to balance the product visually, creating a design that would be successful at communicating this information to the target audience, a father with two young children.

National Theatre Poster

Introduction to the Brief

In the lesson with Emma, we looked through a wide sample from the Collections within the department, seeing a vast array of different ephemera. After looking through all of these, I was immediately drawn to the National Theatre poster for ‘The Advertisement’. I found the use of colour and the layout of the text visually interesting, following the modern conventions of a National Theatre poster. Having selected this as my focal item from the collection, I then looked into this piece in more detail, looking for its context and creation specifically.

 

History and Context

After doing some research into this design, I found that this was a poster for the 1969 London performance of the play ‘The Advertisement’, Henry Reed’s translation of Italian author Natalia Ginzburg’s original piece. The design itself was done by Ken Briggs, a renowned designer and typographer of the 1960s. He became the first of only 5 designers for the National Theatre, coining the unique typographic style and visual identity. However, in the early 1970s, Briggs abandoned this conventional style, placing more emphasis on the individual plays by creating something visually new and fresh for each new design. His modernist, Swiss-style design was often done on short notice, often sometimes in as little as one night. His use of Helvetica, originally through the use of a Letraset, built the foundations for the theatre company’s branding for the years to come.

The photographs used were taken during rehearsals of the play in 1968, featuring images of Joan Plowright as the leading lady, Tessa.

While now highly collectable items, these posters were originally (and ironically) for advertising; These posters would be in varying sizes, placed around London to promote their upcoming shows. The design choices are likely used to reflect this, with the application in places like the London Underground giving a designer very little time to engage and communicate with an audience. Upon researching, I was unable to find much about the creation of this poster. It would have been done by hand, with Briggs being known for his Letraset typefaces, likely meaning a mast copy of this poster was created before being replicated and mass printed. The grainy, textured images would have helped this,  meaning that the quality of the images was not lessened by upscaling the poster for different uses.

 

Colour 

The use of colour within the design appears minimal in an intentionally modernistic manner. The use of a predominantly triadic colour palette allows the design to appear simple and visual hierarchy to be easily created and manipulated to guide a viewers eye. In this design, lime green is used to highlight the words ‘The National Theatre at The Old Vic’. As an already established and credible theatre company, their reputation is something that would likely attract an audience, with the piece being a little known translation of the original Italian play. This allows the poster to achieve its goal more successfully, helping to promote the show with the use of this visual hierarchy. The same green shade is used again on the two blocks of quotation. While also highlighting them to a viewer of the poster, this was more likely used to add visual balance to the overall design, used here to accent and balance the poster.

However, the photographs include an array of monochromatic colours, creating depth and texture within the images. This can be seen within the left image, especially on the nose, which appears to have depth through the use of tonal textures and monochromatic colours. While the dimensions of the face are important, the stylistic application of this allows the images to fit well into the simplistic, modernist design style. Practically, as these were shots from rehearsals, this may also have been used to make the images seem more congruous by removing the background and styling them all in the same way.

 

Layout/Structure

The layout of this poster is visually striking and engaging through the angular text, immediately breaking many conventions of other advertisements and theatre posters. The words ‘The National Theatre’ are positioned centrally on the poster, being the focal aspect and carrying the promotion through their positive reputation.

The incredibly small amount of kerning and leading, a modernistic style choice by Briggs, shows contemporary and unusual nature, again, positive attributes for the experimental and critically acclaimed theatre company. The distance between the text ‘National Theatre’ and ‘The Advertisement’ would usually be visually confusing, but the use of colour helps to distinguish and differentiate these two elements despite their close proximity. The 90 degrees flip for the words ‘at The Old Vic’ created more visual difference and engagement in the design, using the principles of Swiss design in order to captivate and interest a viewer of the poster.

The vast amounts of black negative space around the text allows the images to blend well into the block background colour. In direct contrast to the tightly structured text, this creates a sense of visual balance in the design, helping to not overwhelm a viewer with textual and photographic elements. The space is seen between the two blocks of quotations also helps this idea, giving large amounts of space to these elements, allowing them to accent the main text. The small lettering seen beneath the title of the play, while still relevant, is conveyed as less visually important through the sizing selected, creating visual hierarchy through the size and positioning. While only using two text colours, two sizes and one typeface (likely to create a minimalistic, Swiss-inspired, modernistic appearance), Briggs utilises all three harmoniously in order to create visual balance and hierarchy within the design. The use of layout and negative space only amplifies this, creating a poster that is effective in captivating a viewer, visually stunning through its initial simplicity and modern aesthetic, despite being technically impressive, especially given the hands-on working of Briggs.

 

Francis, Day & Hunter Ltd Collection

Following the Thursday interactive session from Emma about the introductions to the collections that the Typography department have relating to Typography and how it was created/used over time; I took an interest in evaluating and researching the music sheets and covers of Francis, Day & Hunter Ltd.

The origin of these particular music sheets originate from 1938 (Any broken hearts to mend?) and 1928 (I’m sorry Sally) and were published by Francis, Day & Hunter Ltd. From first glance the covers conveyed a sense of nostalgia, as the old minimalistic style as well as colours fit the interwar era of design as it was a rather depressing/lonesome era (as the vast majority of men were fighting at war). The purpose of these music sheets were for families to purchase to be able to play the most recent songs at home on the piano, as most households owned a piano for entertainment. Additionally, Orchestras and bands that would play at venues, would also purchase these music sheets as playing the most recent music of the time was there occupation.

The front covers of the designs connotate a sense of melancholy and intense sadness relating to love, which clearly relate to the historical context of lost love/missing a lover due to the war. The cover for “Any broken hearts to mend?” has the female character possess the same colour scheme as the background itself, to possibly minimise the printing cost as well as having the correct blend of colours for the tone of music. The layout of the title suggests a sense of optimism as the flowing/rhythmic text suits the curiosity of the question if there are “any broken hearts to mend”. Whereas “I’m Sorry Sally” has only used black and white to present the cover, possibly due to the fact that this cover was 10 years older than the other cover, showing the development of the publishing company. But more interestingly, the typeface included possesses serifs compared to the other cover, to potentially emphasise that the music included is of a more serious or somewhat “classier” fashion as the typeface has more visual flair. The age of the music sheets clearly show, due to the fact that the price that is present on both covers is “6d”, or is more commonly referred to as a sixpence; thus the historical context suggests that these are older published music sheets.

To conclude, observing the vast examples of the collections within the typography department has aided me in recognising how old style of print was developed/conceived for particular genres or styles; as well as understanding the potential ideas that were intended when publishing designs and other forms of media.