Category: TY1DP1

Work by Part 1 students as part of their ‘Design Practice’ module.

what is your ideal gift?

For Kim’s project we had to design ideal gifts based off of our partners’ interests.

My first partner enjoys playing the violin as well as watching horror films and Studio Ghibli. I decided to design a horror themed violin using recognisable illustrations such as spider webs, bats and skeletons. However, the next stage of this project was incorporating a random word into our designs. My word was ‘bridge’. I decided to make the violin a ‘bridge to the other side’. I represented this through the ghosts appearing from the bow of the violin. My final gift can be seen below.

My second partner loves sparkling water as well as watching Disney and Marvel films. I decided to design a bottle of sparkling water that has buttons on, to allow you to change the flavour of the water. However, my random word was ‘aeroplane’. This gave me the idea of how to make this bottle more easily transported. I combined this concept with the prompt of Disney and came up with a bottle that can shrink and expand, taking inspiration from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. My final design can be seen below.

I was unable to decide which design, out of these two, I preferred and so I decided to experiment with both and create final outcomes for them. They are both so different, and so I found it hard to compare them!

Overall this was a fun project as I was able to spend time creating many ideas and concepts, before experimenting with my two favourites. It was also a great opportunity to get to know my class mates, which has been difficult due to the current situation of Covid-19!

The Diary Of A Wimpy Kid Penguin Cover

For Tuesdays task, we began using InDesign and started by creating a book cover. To do this, we replicated a Penguin book cover. I really enjoyed this task of learning how to manoeuvre the software and found most of easy to follow along with. I found the top logo of ‘Penguin Books’ the most difficult to create.

I then went on to create my own cover, using the style of the Penguin books. I changed the colour to a purple and chose the book of ‘The Diary Of A Wimpy Kid’ as this was one of my favourite books when I was growing up. I changed the image of the penguin to a black and white one to fit in with the illustrations used within the book. I enjoyed making this, however found that as I exported it into a PDF, the quality of the images were lost. I then also included ‘My Diary’ for comedy to refer to the fact that I was the wimpy kid.

 

Bunny coronavirus signage!

Coronavirus signage

 

The signage used to negotiate social distancing, personal hygiene, and other precautions commonly advertised to prevent the spread of coronavirus, tends to include a similar colour palette, fonts and pictograms.

 

One key commonality between most of the designs was the use of a sans serif font, often in caps or bold, in a dark colour contrasting the background. This makes the message clear and urgent, while retaining the ability to be paired with other design features to make it seem friendly and helpful. The use of a bold, clear sans serif font makes the message readable to the target audience, employing a clinical, professional stance, while also remaining visually appealing.

 

Another key feature was the use of colour, specifically the use of only one colour or colour family, in combination with either black or white text. Colours that were most frequently used were yellow, blue and green. Yellow alerts danger and is eye-catching but doesn’t suggest immediate danger that might invoke an emotional response like the colour red, for example, would. Blue and green are often associated with healing or medical professionals, and are generally calming colours, so they work well to convey a message that is detrimental to the health and wellbeing of the general public.

 

I also saw the use of shape being utilised to grab attention, for example many stickers or signs used a circle to have a main message in the centre, with other, important text surrounding it. This works well to grab the attention of the audience, and then maintain their focus to process or follow a message.

 

Signs were often posted on the ground, in order to explain social distancing protocols, or simply because it provides a good surface area that people will frequently look at. Signs on common signposts or walls also are effective, especially when encouraging people to wash their hands or to direct them safely. The use of stickers on posts or walls also does this effectively.

 

Overall the use of bright colours associated with clinical practice, bold sans serif fonts, eye catching shapes, and accessible signage are key components in the effective employment of coronavirus signage, whether it is used to serve as a warning, a direction or simply a reminder to stay safe.

Are the Government making change happen?

The word I was given for this task was ‘Government’. To represent it, I chose to draw the Houses of Parliament as I felt they were a visual icon of the government in Britain. As the central buildings for the government in England, I felt this portrayed a strong message. To show opposition to Government. I chose the issue of climate change and the key figure Greta Thunberg. I turned half of the building into money with Gretas face on it. I then wrote the words ‘Any change?’ This was to question whether the government had actually made changes about climate change or whether they were still more concerned about money as changing to climate saving solutions can be expensive. I then used a Gif maker from the App Store to blend my two images.

For someone who likes skateboards and records.

For the ‘Ideal gift’ project, my partner was interested in skateboarding, guitars collecting records. I then chose my random words of ‘shoes’,  ‘clocks’ and ‘bottle’. I began brainstorming 6 different ideas focusing on their interests and my random words. I experimented putting a clock with hands on a guitar front and using a solar powered digital clock on a skateboard. For the word ‘bottle’, I created a guitar shaped water bottle, however felt this may not actually be very practical. To explore the idea of his record collection, I customised a pair of skateboard wheels and the front of a guitar with his favourite record. My final favourite idea that I developed was a pair of shoes with skateboard wheels on. For my final idea, I then also customised the wheels with his favourite record album on. This meant that I had incorporated 2 of his interests and my chosen word of ‘shoes’. I was very happy with how this came out and felt that it was a cool, personalised present. It encouraged out of the boxing thinking and fitting to somebody else’s specifications like a client.

 

 

Illustration Vs Typography

For this task I wanted to look at the differences between graphic design that has been released as a part of a government campaign and graphic design that his been done by individuals not employed by the government. I found some really interesting pieces of design from something called ‘the visual art project’ which is a virtual art gallery that invites graphic designers and artists to submit original poster designs that respond visually to the Covid-19 pandemic. The project was created by Mark Kelner (a DC-based artist), Ben Ostrower (a graphic designer specialising in political campaign branding who founded (wide eye), and Zachary Levine (a historian and curator who runs throughline collaborative).

I thought this would be a good source of comparative work as the designers haven’t had to work with a specific client like the government released Designs. Obviously the two designs have different intentions in terms of sending a message about covid but I think both are effective in their own way. The government design uses a very bold sans serif type in all caps which creates an extremely legible message. The message of ‘control the virus’ is also in a larger type which creates an almost summary of the governments instruction. In comparison to the poster regarding hand washing, the governments design is much more accessible. Not only could this design be read a lot further away (impacting more people) it is just easier to read in general with the centre alligned, large type. The colours used also give this design some sense of urgency for the reader. The border of the design look almost like some kind of hazardous tape which alerts the reader to read the warning.

The hand washing poster uses an extremely small type to elaborate on the message of ’20 seconds’. The use of such a small font here could work in either one of two ways. Some people could be intrigued at the fact that they cannot read the words at first glance or alternatively, someone may simply not be bothered to read it as it requires more effort to look closer. This designer is almost allowed to take this risk as they have not been employed by the key people responsible for controlling the virus. For such an important message perhaps it is best to stick to legible type.

Another large difference between the two designs is that the hand washing poster used illustration to portray a message. A line drawing is used to resemble the washing of hands. Again this could of have varying impact. A line drawing is not something that is bold or even legible at all from a certain distance. This leads to similar implications of the small font choice.. Some may be interested by this, it looks like a piece of art.. however some may hardly notice the subtly of this design which means a failure to pass a crucial message on.

 

these-excellent-covid-19-posters-are-both-beautiful-and-beneficial

I can’t tell where “d” ends and “D” begins

This project involved reducing my initials to basic geometric shapes or silhouettes and merging them in different ways. My initials are the same letter, so I used both capital and lowercase to gain some variation between round and sharp edges. In my final transmogrification, I used watercolour as a medium to emphasise the theme of fluidity.

A useful time-saving technique that I will take from this task was cutting out my initials to trial different combinations of positions and letter casing without needing to draw them out.

Shoes design present

As my partner Hannah had a passion and business in designing custom trainers, I came up with a custom design of my own. Going through some ideas I found that there could be a lot done to the design on a shoe and that the opportunities are great. I was given the three random words ‘fire’, ‘electricity’ and ‘clown’ to work with so I decided to go for a very light expired design with bright colours and a floodlight at the back to represent ‘electricity’. For ‘fire’ I came up with the idea to put a fire hazard symbol for safety on the side of the shoe next to the floodlight as the having such I bright light next to fabric could cause a hazard. And as for ‘clown’, I first tried to incorporate a clown nose onto the back lip of the shoe, however, I did not like the outcome of the product. After that, I decided to try and let colour represent the ‘clown’ and a came up with this final product. Sadly the colour does not represent the clown as much as I would like but the colourfulness in addition to the eeriness did make a connection for me.

The new library:

In the first task, we were given an original Penguin copy of ‘The Great Gatsby’ to recreate to the best of our ability in InDesign. This allowed us to understand and get to grips with the fundamentals of the InDesign design program whilst also getting a good look at a very widespread and professional design. With this new knowledge and design template, I was able to create a design of my own called ‘The New Library’ where I used a QR code to the Wiki page as the title, binary that translates to ‘Safari’ in the side text and the author being named ‘Tim Berners-Lee’ as the man who helped invent the internet. This idea was inspired by the way the internet has changed the face of research and reading as a whole whilst still holding its origins in the cover of a book.

 

Eat, Pray, Love, Repeat

In TY1INT Indesign practical session, we had to all create a copy of a classical Penguin book cover. We were then asked to experiment with that book and perhaps change the colour and title of the book.

I chose to change the cover to another classical penguin book.

We were then asked to design our own book/film cover, including an element of wittiness. We had to stick to the basic rules of our first classical penguin book cover.

I chose the book ‘Eat, Pay, Love’, because it is about a woman who had everything; a house, a successful career, and a husband. However, she loses everything, and loses sight of what is important to her in life. She sets out on a journey, stepping out of her comfort zone, and she builds her life back together again, coming back a stronger woman. To me this book conveyed such a powerful and important message.

We can all relate to Eating, Praying and Loving in a very personal and eclectic way, but there are also universal ideas and emotions about these concepts that we can sometimes joke about. In this case I am playing with sarcasm and the notion of food as a comfort, but also as a source of guilt. In a society where women are constantly beating themselves up for wanting to eat (a lot and not necessarily healthy)and always chasing the unattainable perfect body, you have to appreciate the encouragement to eat as much as you can, praying that you don’t expand beyond your most comfortable outfit. And when you ticked the first two boxes, Loving the chef is easy. I added Repeat to highlight the fact that humans are creatures of habit and we sometimes struggle to move away from our repetitive lifestyles and routines.