Targets 13!

As you can see, I was quite successful in the completion of my final sketches. That is not to say that it was not a stuggle. I beginning my creations with the sketch of the charcter George Smiley, at the top. The main issue I had to deal with during the entire week was that, when I was sketching in my sketch book, my fine liners were very tempermental, eventually just not working on the paper. This caused me to start several different attempts at the first character, eventually having to scrap the attempt as the pens refused to work. This set back cost me quite dearly. I then thought that I might as well try to complete the sketches on my printer paper that I have at home, and luckily, the pens worked perfectly and so I was able to complete each piece of the pieces of printer paper and then simply stuck them in my sketch book. In order to save both time and ink, for the other 4 characters, seeing as I would only be using part of each portrait, I felt it necessary to only the draw the corresponding sections. Natutrally, even though I would only be using a quarter of each portriat, I drew alittle bit more for each portrait just to be on the safe side.

Even though, as I have previously mentioned, I have not drawn portraits properly since mid 2011, I am very pleased with how these portraits have turned out. From the moment I saw this brief, I very much wanted to create a piece that had illustration heavily involved as it appears to be a rarity in graphic design and I have yet to recieve a brief that has allowed me to do so, and therefore I feel that this brief allows me to show off another aspect of my skills.

By next week, I plan to=

• Complete the fonts that I will be using on each cover. I will be creating 2 different fonts for the title 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' that will be placed at the bottom of each poster. Some experiementation will be needed as I am not certain what path to go for, but I plan on trying to use a font that bares similarities to the rest of the cover.
• I will also begin the creation of my final pieces, getting both documents prepared, ready for the rest of the week.

Targets 12!

Over the last week I have successfully decided upon my mdeia of choice for when I created my final portraits and I believe I have chosen two layout designs that I will take forward for my final pieces. First of all, deciding which media I should use for my portraits...

The two illustrations on the left are my attempts at using fine liner, and the two on the right, biro. While I was once reasonably skilled when it came to using pencil, I felt strongly that it just would not work for this project, once the image was scanned in, the tone just would not be varied enough with my skill with pencil. Beginning with the top left, I used fine liner to create an illustration of George Smiley, and found it to be a success. Thankfully after having not really drawn portraits since June 2011, I had not lost most of my capabilites. I found that the tone fine liner allowed me to create was beyond what I had hoped. There was however a downside, when it came to drawing the very dark areas such as the glove and his right eye, a lot of time was consumed. This is the major draw back to using the fine liner, dark areas take far to long to complete and the tip of the pen covers such a small area, hence I did not finish the image, not only were my pens being ruined, but I felt that the illustration had served its purpose. I then created the image in the top left using biro. As you can see I completed far less of this illustration. This is because I found biro to be a failure in comparison to the fine liner I had just used. I could not create the dark that I had achieved with the finer liner, whether it was down to the paper I was using or the quality of the pen, I was unsure, but fine liner seemed to work so well that I felt it was unnecessary to investigate other options. One thing I had noticed was that I very much liked the way the outline of the portrait looked when I was using the biro and so I decided, after another fine liner illustration, that I would use biro again to see if simply creating the outline of the characters would be enough...as it turns out it wasnt, while I do like the way the illustration looks on the bottom right, it is no where near as promising and the fine liner was and simply was not suitable for this project.

I then moved onto creating larger version of my best layout ideas to see which would be the most suitable. While I do like them all, I decided that the most promising ideas were the two top ideas. One being the idea of just having one charcter on the cover, keeping in line with the modern Little White Lies covers. The second idea is that of having four charcters form the shape of one portrait. In detail this idea will have the characters dubbed Tinker, Tailor, Soldier and Spy split into quarters, seperated by broken glass but organised in a way that they take the shape of one portrait. I chose these two ideas as not only are they the two most drastically different ideas, but because they both have the most potential. The first will allow me to create a greatly detailed illustrative piece and the second will be greatly eye catching due to the broken glass idea.

Now that I know what my final piece will look like, the next step for me is to begen creating them, starting with, the final illustrations using fine liner. This task will take quite along time to complete and so because of this, I am making the completion of the 5 character portraits my only target for this week.

Self Branding

This is something I found especially difficult, particularly when it came to thinking of a name as I did not want to just use my name. First of all I used the idea of teeth as frame for the text. This resulted in 2 quite interesting ideas both of which I was quite happy with even if the name 'Connor Design' is ridiculous. 

To try and add a bit of diversity to my brand ideas, I tried to go down a different route in terms of the images. I thought I would go down a more unusual and less common route of lots of tone and detail with a heavily sketched appearance. For this I decided to draw an crazy evil robot head with the name 'Roboticus' next to it. The name came from a play on my surname, Roberts-->Robots-->Roboticus.

(When I sketched it, I did not anticipate that it would not fit the page)

While out of my designs, the robot idea is my favourite idea, however it seems a little unsuitable for a brand logo, it would also take along time to vectorise or sketch with a graphics tablet. The heavy tone and detail could work against the logo is the sense it will be void of bright bold shapes to catch the eye. You could argue however that due to the large image, sketched tone and font, that it would stand out amongst the simpler, more usual logos.

In the end I decided to go with the 'Braces" idea, out of the 2 teeth ideas I preferred this one due to its darker feel. Not only that, but I feel that the text stands out more and includes more specific details such as the brace wire wrapping around. I also feel that, because it has been scanned in from my sketch book, the colour from the lines have a faded appearance, which looks far nicer then if I were to go over it in the graphics tablet.

Project 2-Puffin Book Cover

 

For this project we had a choice to decide between designing a front cover for 'One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest' (Penguin Books) or 'Grimm's Fairy Tales' (Puffin Books). I was instantly drawn to the Brothers Grimm idea due to the darker nature of the fairy tales. After some research on book covers and on the fairy tales I began my idea generation process with scamps. After this, I found I was more drawn to the silhouette ideas, particularly the witch, and the idea with the tall trees to the top right of the scamps.

Next I developed the most promising ideas with more detailed sketches in my sketch book attempting to use more unusual media, such as marker pens, cardboard, biro, felt pens and watercolours.

I also developed some of my ideas on Illustrator in order to get smoother edges and bolder, cleaner colours.

Clearly this method helped to significantly improve the quality of my silhouette idea, giving a much deeper black, far cleaner edges, and a selection of text fonts to choose from. Using the tools Illustrator provides I was able to construct the idea to the left all from scratch, however I felt the chaotic nature of this idea of this idea was quite overwhelming and so produced a disappointing piece.

In the end, I decided to go with the idea of the tall trees with the stalking wolf. This idea was scanned in from my idea development in my sketch book and then developed almost entirely on Illustrator. The pen tool was the most heavily used tool which helped to create all the shapes from the trees and wolf to the title and stars. I used 'Handwriting-Dakota' for the text on the spine and back copy. After the pen tool created the shapes and the pencil and oval tools created the final details, I moved the piece into photoshop where I added a simple gradient which I felt really transformed the look of the idea. As with the previous project, I feel my real weakness lies with a lack of skill in both Illustrator and Photoshop, I feel I will have to seriously begin to practice using these programmes till I am at a point where I feel more comfortable using the more unusual tools, in particular, I would like to be able to add gradients and texture efficiently. I would say my strengths for this project lay in my preparation, I significantly improved how much research I did which lead directly to the ideas I was able to produce.

Project 1- Staff Bistro

The brief for this project was to design a new logo and brand name for the Staff Bistro based at Newcastle College. The brief contained very little restrictions in terms of names, colours, symbols etc, so we were given free reign to design the logo however we wish within the parameters of our skill level.

     

After a suitable amount of ideas generation for the name, I settled on naming the bistro 'The Attic' based mostly on its location within Rye Hill House. I felt the name was homely and welcoming, however, the lack of relation to a restaurant or food left the name questionable.

In an attempt to solve the name issue, I made some designs that involve cooking cutlery to help form a connection to what The Attic does. Unfortunately I felt these above ideas were lacking in some aspects, such as colour and an eye catching appeal.

My final piece is the culmination of all my criticisms to previous segments of work, the addition of some ideas that were implemented towards the end and heavy usage of initial ideas. The first thing worth mentioning is the continuation of the cutlery idea to help form the connection between The Attic and food, I feel that, in comparison to the previous idea, the cutlery is not as subtle, but this helps to rid the concern that my logo would not so eye catching. One idea that I introduced fairly close to the end of the project, was the integration of the college blue. This pastel blue was, I believe, would be a welcome colour to use in any case, but fortunately, it happens to link back to college. Lastly, my favourite feature of this piece is the double T building shape, this idea was one of my earliest and instantly drew my attention as an idea I should take forward. I feel that shape helps to centralise and frame the entire logo, giving it a lot more structure. Overall I can not help but feel that, for a staff bistro, the logo is not entirely suitable, it seems to rigid and simple, it does not link to healthy food at all, and the cutlery in the center looks somewhat out of place. Hopefully, in future projects I will be more educated in Illustrator and Photoshop, and therefore able to try to develop more unusual ideas, and when couple with greater knowledge and a greater source of inspiration, I will also be able to think of a wider variety of initial ideas.