Unit 4 Communication Through Art and Design

This is a sun and cloud design that we made as one of our first tasks using the program Illustrator. Making this design, we learned how to use the rotate tool, how to group items together and all of the other basic options that you learn first using Illustrator. I felt that this task was quite easy but one thing that I found quite difficult was using the anchor tool and learning how to duplicate and rotate items as I didn't know each of the commands properly. One thing I did enjoy about making this picture was using the gradient and opacity tool on the cloud to give it a good transition effect with the sun behind it. Overall, I really did enjoy this task and had fun with it and it was a good task to start off with for learning Illustrator.

This is a pear that we designed using the Pen tool during one of our lessons. With the pen tool, we were able to make curves to be able to give the pear its shape, we also had to change the anchor sometimes so the lines would be able to continue on the new anchor. We we're also allowed to design the pear with our own choice of colours, I decided to give these colours to the pear as I feel it makes it really stand out and look quite colourful and interesting for people to look at. I felt that this was quite difficult at first but I got the hang of it after a while by learning how to use the pen tool properly.

This is a Salsa logo that we designed during one of our lessons. We had to do many different things for it to make it's final outcome to look like this such as make rectangles using the rectangle tool, using the pen tool to design the writing, making the hands using the pen tool and much more. I feel that this task was much easier compared to the other two as it seemed a lot simpler and easier to do with the step by step and plus you could do it in what order you wish rather then having to start on a specific object first. I really like the colours on this logo as I feel it does make the logo stand out and flashy for people to see especially with the yellow colour on the letters for people to be able to read which is contrasting really well over the black circle.

After we did our designs using the main basic tools on Illustrator, we learned about how to be able to angle lines and how to be able to write on them as well. Learning these techniques allowed us to create this logo, we also learned about the opacity tool and how it can give a good shadow to a title for a good effect

During one of our lessons, we learned about different font designs and how it can impact a certain phrase or give meaning to something such as using quite a bold text to make something stand out like a sign or using a stylised font for something to look nicer such as a wedding invitation. We used different phrases listed below and took three fonts for each phrase and stylised them to make them suit the phrase and to make it stand out for people to read. I feel that this task was quite easy and fun to do as it allowed us to discover new fonts and how it gives a unique effect from the font style.

This is a piece of work that we did defining words and giving them their meaning and using all of the techniques that we did during the day to make it work. For my design, I done the words Life and Death, people associate life with a blue or another happy colour and Death with a red or a very dark colour. I also gave off the effect of Heaven and Hell by putting Life at the top and Death at the bottom to give it that Heaven and Hell effect. I enjoyed this piece of work as it allowed us to use definitions with words very well and gave off a good effect for if someone was to look at it.

This is a design that we made in Illustrator as a sort of test to show our skills through Illustrator and to show that we know how to use each tool individually such as the pen tool, pencil tool and the rotation tool also. I found this task quite fun to do as I quickly learned most of Illustrator and I managed to complete it in a decent amount of time. One thing that I did have trouble doing was drawing the cat as we had to draw it's head and body layout using the pencil tool which I was pretty new to but I managed to get the hang of it quite easily and managed to get it similar to the design that it was needed. Overall, I enjoyed this piece of work and would like to do something like this again.

After we learned about the tools of Illustrator, we learned about typography and different fonts and how it can have a certain effect on a design. We learned also how people have used fonts to be able to create little designs, our task was to create 18 different designs using fonts and to make people wonder what letters were used in making the designs. I found this task pretty fun as you could mess around and make some very interesting designs and patterns that would look quite appealing and using different typefaces to create these designs as well which made each pattern feel quite unique. Overall, I enjoyed working with typography and would like to do more of it.

 

During one of our classes, we learned about expressive words and how it can affect a title or a specific design, you see these sort of words in like movie titles where it plays on the word to create a unique title and something that's different from just a plain bland title. This is my collection of expressive word designs that we had to come up with in class, we first had to think of at least 30 words to write down and then use those 30 words and see if you can make interesting designs out of the words by making them true to their word, such as with my alone word with the 'E' being alone from the rest of the word. Another example would be with Flower and having the 'l' as a stem for the letter 'o' to be a flower. I find expressive words very interesting and makes you really use your imagination quite well and to think outside the box when writing these words. I really did enjoy making these words and I didn't find the task that difficult as it was quite easy to come up with words to express in an interesting meaning.

One of our lessons was that we learnt about haikus which are very short poems that consist of only using 17 syllables. We had to create our own based on some things we enjoy such as with mine I've based my haikus to do with video games and decided to research into haikus that were to do with video games and just gaming in general. I found four that I really liked and we then had to change the font, colour, size of some words, change the layout etc to enhance the haiku and to make it stand out and make the changes seem relevant to the haiku such as making something bold to show shouting or changing the colour to make it seem like someone is saying something in an angry way. I really enjoyed making these haikus as they are fun to mix and change around and to see what things you can come up with when using fonts and colours. Overall, I really enjoyed making these haikus and would like to do something like this again.

Our most recent lesson we have been learning about how people look at instructions and other rules in a visual design such as a cooking recipe, we have been learning about a recipe that we want to design and give a visual look to it for people to understand if they wanted to make it at home. 

We first had to do research about our recipe that we have chosen, my recipe that I've chosen is a British bacon sandwich, we had to research into where our recipe originated from to maybe give it a style. Bacon sandwiches originated in the UK and has been very popular in English breakfasts and as a normal snack as well, showing that it is very popular in the UK, they are also served hot which could give me a chance to mess around with visuals to see if I can create an interesting design and as there are different variations when making a bacon sandwich, it gives me the chance to make more sprites and choose which ones to use for my final design. This would give me the chance to make my visual design with a British style if I wanted to and can give it a unique feel to the design and could make it stand out very well. For my design however, I will be using visual techniques with a sprite art style as I am heavily into video games and would like to make my visual design as a gamer sort of recipe as it is a very popular snack for some English gamers. I will be making my visual techniques by drawing out the sprites first and then developing them on Photoshop and then using them to create my final design. As you can see below, this is the sort of design that I would like to go for as my visuals using sprites and to make them look like they could be added and used in a video game.

These screenshots above are our research into different posters that inspire us or that we like that could give us some ideas for our final posters and shows that we can deconstruct these posters as well to gain ideas and mix and match between posters.

These three screenshots are of different things to do with the festival that I'm doing which is TommorowLand as this is a festival that I'd really like to go to as it has the music I like and has what looks like an amazing atmosphere to enjoy yourself with.

We then proceeded to mess around with different typefaces and colours to see what could work for our final poster and shows development of us using different ideas for our poster.

This is my six initial designs that I thought could work as poster designs and was considering using most of them and then decided to use the two circled designs as I feel these are the most visually appealing and would work really well as posters.

I then proceeded to make these into final designs that I would use as reference for when I'm designing my poster digitally and would work very well as a reference. 
























These are my final designs that I showed previously to my class for them to get an idea of what they are planning to look like and would be a good reference for people to understand. I then got feedback also for when I'm still developing my final design by changing the colour of the font as it is quite hard to read which I then noted down and took it into consideration very well for when I'm designing it to finish it.

These are my final finished designs that I've handed in for marking, overall, I am really proud of these designs and feel that they give off the visual and typography theme to each of them (Left being Visual Design and Right being Typography Design.)

As some of our designs were quite bland, we decided to redo our designs and make them seems a little more appealing. Below are my redone designs for my posters.

Design Report Print

I’ve learned quite a lot from designing these poster designs such as my researching skills for when I was researching into different posters and different typefaces, program skills by working on Photoshop and Illustrator and just design skills in general as I’m really happy with my final outcome. I feel that learning these skills have really helped a lot and will help me a lot for if I am to design anything like these posters in the future.

I developed my initial idea by collecting loads of different posters for the genre of festival that I wanted to do, which was of a techno/digital music festival known, as TommorowLand and I wanted to get posters that are of similar festivals in the music genre. I then collected these posters and deconstructed them to see the core components of the poster to see if there are any similarities that could help me design my poster. I wanted to design my poster with a fantasy feel as a lot of the festivals in the same music genre have a fantasy feel that is quite strong and stands out very well in the poster and at the actual festival itself.  Once I had gotten an idea, I developed six initial designs (On the blog) and then chose two of them to use as my final designs, one based around visual designs and one based around typography and the look of the writing on the poster. Once we had developed our posters, we then made them digital using either Photoshop or Illustrator and then finished them.

As said before, I’m really happy with my final designs and I’m very happy with how they turned out. If I were to rate each of them, I’d rate my visual poster as a 7 as I feel it passes the criteria of a poster with a good visual design but could be a bit better and with my typography poster, I would rate it as a 6 as I feel that it again could be a bit better but passes the criteria of a typography themed poster. 

If I were to change these posters or do them again, with my visual poster I’d like to be able to improve it to look 3D and make it really stand out with the typography writing but feel that my skill at Photoshop wasn’t very good to be able to do it but I would of tried if I had more time. With my typography poster, I’d like to theme it more around typography and make more of a logo rather than an actual poster for it to seem good and seem unique. Other than that, I’m really happy and proud of these designs and would like to do something like this or just something new in the future as my skills in Photoshop have improved greatly and would like to improve them even more for when we do something similar to this task in the future.

By Jordan Cleverley

Blogger: http://jordaanc.blogspot.co.uk/