Picture that…

For this weeks lessons I came prepared with a variety of sources to work through the day with. I had been looking for some stock images for my album cover, and planned to put together some quick sketches for each of the samples I had downloaded. This is just one approach I will be looking into for my album design. An example of this can be seen below.
On Wednesday morning we took part in a crit. session for our logo designs. I found that the feedback was good to obtain, but did not really dictate a clear winner. The feedback was positive about the electronic path which I had taken, which was apparent in all of my designs.

As I had to create a screen design for the following day, I needed to pick a logo design pretty quickly. I finally chose my ‘terminal jacks’ design, as it was the correct ratio, had a unique shape and kept its integrity at small sizes. I did however alter the colour to black, as the inverse colours made the logo look too childish. I did this to give it a stronger, more masculine feel, which would better suit the target market.

For my screen design I chose to keep a simple two column layout. I think that as this site is designed for others to work from, it has to be simple and easy to navigate and provide clear instructions. During our group’s feedback meeting, I found out that my website would be fairly easy to create in CSS, including the layout. Over Easter I will be putting some time aside to experiment with creating this. With a little help from Steve or John I believe this is an achievable goal, and will lead nicely into my self study for over the summer. My screen design is shown below.
Recently I have been working from the w3schools website. It is an excellent resource for all of the web based stuff, and it has easy to follow tutorials for lots of HTML, XHTML, CSS and more. They also have a feature where you can look at the code examples they give you, edit it, and instantly see the effect. You can find this at www.w3schools.com .

On Thursday afternoon I started putting together some ideas for business cards. I will be posting some examples of the designs over the next few days for a ‘public vote’. I believe that producing lots of the logos in Freehand and having lots of exposure with the DTP applications will be beneficial in the long run and also gives lots of evidence for the 1.2 and 1.4 learning outcomes. I find that every time I use InDesign I find some new tool to use, and this week’s was the ‘Align’ window. This allows you to select a group of objects and align them in different ways, much like the tool from Freehand. I’d encourage people to have a play in ID if they haven’t already, as it’s a very powerful tool for the corporate identity elements and is easy to make the transition to from PageMaker.

In Wednesdays lesson we found out our results for the A5 builder unit. I had achieved a pass in this, which I am fairly pleased about. As it was my first website, I wanted to concentrate on getting something that worked and to take in all the new information which I had to learn for the unit. Now that I have some of the basics, I am hoping to continue my web development in this A7 unit. Creating this website using CSS is going to be a big challenge, but I think if I shift a lot of the other stuff over Easter I should have enough time to concentrate on this when we return in a few weeks.

At the end of Thursday lesson we got the results for the Revert to Type unit. In this I received a merit, which I am really happy about. I think this grade came from collecting a lot of different examples of documents and annotating what I though of them, which is part of A2. I also did a lot of ideas generation for my presentation which helped to gain the M3 learning outcome. I also implemented my master time plan sheet, as well as planned all my tasks out, and this is part of the M1 section. It seems ages since we did this unit, and in this time I have already filled one sketch pad with sources and ideas generation, and am well into my second. I’m hoping that another merit will be on the cards for this unit.

Pen Tool Mule

The focus of this week’s activities centred on collecting resources for my album cover, and creating the logo for the record label. For the resources I took some pictures of different areas of the garden, including textures of various surfaces and pictures of interesting objects. After listening to the music I have decided that the album is more ‘Spring’ than it is ‘Russian’. I believe taking influences from nature may be the most constructive way forward.

Another part of my resource collecting included scanning various objects, many of them linked to electronics, music or in some cases both. This proved to be invaluable as my logo design has taken an electronic influence, with me putting electrical symbols and shapes into my rough drawings. On Thursday’s lesson I had a brain wave, and took one of the interesting shapes which I had scanned in and used it to form an Ambient World logo. The object (which was a speaker terminal cross over) was triangular, and had various shapes stamped into it. The object and the development of my logo can be seen below.
After various alterations to the orientation of the shapes, and some chopping and changing of parts, I eventually made an outline which was well within the 1:1 to 2:1 ratio needed for a logo. I also experimented with some colours which I picked from another scan I did. I had inversed the colours, and this gave it a glowing, electrically charged look which I thought was appropriate for an electronic music label.

I found that using Freehand was fairly simple. It has controls that are fairly similar to Photoshop’s pen too, but I certainly missed the convert point tool which allows you to bend the 2 axis on any given point. I am thinking that for my album cover I could combine both a bitmap image and a piece of vector work to go over the top. This is a technique that I have seen many times in pieces of digital artwork, such as the DR posters and in Photoshop magazines. I think doing some ornate foliage based vector work could be something which I could carry through all of the CD, from the cover to the booklet and CD label itself. I will source some pictures for my sketchpad to demonstrate this.

Over the next week I will be creating my 4 logo designs in Freehand, as I think that getting as much experience as possible with this program will be useful – even if some of my logos are discarded. I will also be putting together some initial rough sketches of the website which we have to create to show our style guide. I believe this will take a simple form, as I still have a lot of technical web related stuff to learn before I can create professional looking pages.

Logo Roco

After a refreshing few days break from doing assignments, it was back to the coalface on Wednesday of this week. In the morning we had a lecture on generating logos, an area which I didn’t think had so much theory to it. After break we had another ex-student visit us, and this time it was Marc Bowers. He showed us some of the work from the Real Radio website which he creates pages for. Once again, it was emphasised that the pace of work is pretty relentless – always something to keep you on your toes. After the exam at the end of A6 I can imagine how full on it must be to do that day in, day out. I'd like to thank Marc for coming in and sharing his experiences with us.

During the afternoon we received the brief for the new assignment, A7. This unit brings together all of the stuff we have done this year, from using Photoshop to creating web pages.

Firstly, we will have to design a logo for the Ambient World record label, and present it in a vector format. Secondly, we will be developing a corporate identity and style guide to be put into a web site. Thirdly, we will choose a Fax label album, and will be creating a CD booklet, inlay, body and pre-flight document for it. Finally, we will of course be creating an evaluation on our progress through the unit.

For this unit I am aiming to bring together all the elements from previous units. For my sketchpad, I will be continuing to put in lots of examples of both good and bad design, and annotating what I find. On the time planning front, I again have created a master time plan, and will add a recorded time plan to this. This document will allow me to note down how long particular tasks have taken, so that for future reference I can plan better. I will also be adding more research to my blog and sketchpad, as well as using more non-web sources, which I will make notes on in my sketchpad. A picture of one of the album covers and how I have annotated it is shown below:

On Wednesday evening I collected around 28 album covers to stick in my sketchpad and annotate. One observation that I have made is that many of them use uppercase typefaces. I believe this could be because album covers are fairly small, and people need to be able to see the name clearly when hunting through rack upon rack of CDs. I have also notices that many contain photographs as the base of their design. I don’t think using a photograph in my design will really push the envelope much, so I’ll have to create a full range of ideas from vector and bitmap based tryouts.

During Thursday we went over what should be included in the style guide. I like the idea of the style guide, as producing documents from them takes all the heavy lifting out of the design, yet each document you create looks consistent and professional. However, actually making the guide itself and removing any ambiguity from it will be a challenge. As this has to be presented in a web page, I will have to improve my skills for creating this. I am planning on learning some basic CSS, as I think this will make the creation of the page easier. I believe I will stick to a simple, clean and functional design to make the production easier.

On Thursday evening I managed to find some samples of my chosen CD (Pete Namlook & New Composers – Russian Spring) on Itunes – I have to say I really like it, and it is already formulating some ideas in my head. The music sounds quite airy and very listenable. I can’t wait to hear what it sounds like on the ol’ Quad.

Between now and next week I will be continuing to find resources, and may do some experiments with putting different materials onto the scanner and seeing what I can do with them in Photoshop. I will also be taking some photographs for more texture ideas, and probably pictures of the garden which could come in handy for my ‘Russian Spring’ album.

A6 Unit Evaluation

In my feedback for the A4 assignment I knew that the typography unit would be essential for my design skills development. As some of the typographical elements of my A4 banner designs were not particularly strong due to a courier font being used. This type of font is usually the default font on a printer when no other font can be found, so it might be conceived as being an error in the printing process. In retrospect I should have used another typewriter font instead of courier.

At the start of the unit it was given Neville Brody as the typographer who I would have to do a presentation on. I initially searched the internet to find out the basic facts, before buying the Neville Brody design book to aid me in the construction of the presentation. I found that this book provided me with a wealth of information, and actually found it very difficult to cut down the information for only 5 minutes of presentation time. I decided to segment the presentation into a cross section of the work Brody had produced.

Firstly I decided to look at what influenced Neville Brody, before moving onto his early work. I discovered that key elements such as economy of design were apparent in the first pieces of work he produced. This was a theme I could keep referring to through out the presentation. I also looked at designs he did for products, as this would allow me to show how Brody used typography in different contexts. I think that this range of media gave the presentation more depth, and I should repeat this process when I do another presentation.

When the first task came I felt anxious about what we would be given. I found that I coped fairly well with the tasks, and doing a small amount of time planning for each one really helped me to set mini deadlines for the completion of each section. This ensured that I had plenty of time to evaluate my own work and make changes to areas which I felt uncomfortable with. As this method proved effective, I continued to use it through the other timed assignments. As everyone else was doing the same task, I found it awkward to ask for feedback, as I felt that I could not disturb them from their own work. I believe this was just a quirk of the format, but at least there were several points during both design and construction where I realised I would need feedback if this was a real life task. There were some feedback comments which I added to my roughs, but they did not match the depth I would want if the task had been real.

With the paint tube task I felt that the lack of knowledge about printing techniques limited how I could design the label. As I did not know the problems from being used with techniques such as using a reverse, my design was initially highly flawed. After these errors had been made clear, I was able to quickly redesign the label into something which worked. I was very impressed with the final design I made, as I used a mixture of sans-serif fonts for the technical data, and a display font for the name of the product. The font I chose (Isabella) gave the oriental flair which the design required, while being set at a size which could be read. I also chose a centre alignment, as the cylindrical shape of the tube would mean that the label would be obscured if the viewing angle was slightly offset to the viewer. I feel that this is one of the places which centre alignment is acceptable, as it easier to read and matches the alignment of the brand logo which we were initially given.

The next task was to create a Vodafone advert for a newspaper. Again, not knowing the limitation of printing on newsprint, I found it a challenge to make a design which would be acceptable. I decided to keep the design basic, which I feel is often the best option when designing under pressure. Once again I implemented some basic time planning, which allowed me to explore possible solutions, produce a document, then evaluate, redesign and reproduce an improved product.

One part of my design was to use symbols to provide a visual feature to the design. After gaining feedback from peers, many people thought that they were not correct. I strongly disagreed with his, as I felt that they added a more eye catching alternative to simply using bullets. My argument was that as it was for a creative job, the advert itself had to show more than just traditional elements, ie bullets, and that I should use symbols instead. I think I was right to stick with them, as at the very least it allowed me to explore the use of them. I believe that I should use them again in the future, but I will remain contextually sensitive and only use them where appropriate.
The last task was to create a grid for a newsletter, and then place some content into it. I designed my grid and header with a 3 column design. I thought that this gave enough flexibility, while giving coherence. I think that if we could have implemented more of a style guide, I could have used a 6 column layout, and then imposed rules such as only allowing text to go across 2 columns. This would have added flexibility, while providing structured guidelines to the project. I also reused the “skyscraper” design from the A4 assignment. I could do this because we were allowed to use stroke lines, which gave the same effect as using vector graphics like I did in the banner adverts. This shows that I took the interpretation of the brief and used it to get the most out of the design.

Again, I was impressed with the deployment of typographical elements. I used a drop cap, pull quote, and Brody influenced stroke lines to bring my design to life. If I was to change any part of the design, it would be the title, as I think it looked too playful for a document of this type. Changing to font to something like Franklin Gothic would have been better, as it would look more formal. I would also change the stroke lines on the folio into a thick/thin arrangement, as 3 separate lines looks to excessive.

On the day of our presentations I felt confident that I would be able to reproduce my presentation to a similar standard as in my practice. However, after my presentation I felt disappointed with myself that I had only done 4:10s, as before my presentation lasted 5:32s. I think that under the pressure I rushed parts of the presentation. Next time I think that I should learn some relaxing techniques so that the same does not happen again. My disappointment was compounded when I was asked a series of typographical questions at the end of my presentation. I knew many of them, but the tone and amount of time it took me to answer them did not make it convincing that I knew the answers. This was all my own fault as I had planned to revise them after my presentation, when I had several hours free before the final exam. I think that with the next units I will continually look at any theoretical terms we use through out the unit, not just when they are required at the end.

I was impressed with the look of the presentation, and I felt that the ideas generation was well done before my presentation. I did rough designs of the layout of the presentation slides, then did many roughs of the custom made titles, side bars and bullets that I would place on the page. This made production quick, as I could put the parts together in Photoshop then place them into the design.

For the final exam I felt a little better prepared, as I had taken time to learn some of the typographical elements. Again, better preparation in the weeks before would have aided me greatly in this, which I will ensure I do for the next unit. I thought that the brief and the time we were given was very challenging, but as outside projects using InDesign had taught me how to quickly put documents together paid dividends in this task. Again, I kept a simple design so that I could focus on the typographical knowledge.

I managed to get 3 pages done, each one filled with typographical terms. I found that using the layout itself to explain terms, with the aid of captions, quickly name checked many of the terms. I feel that the outside projects using InDesign were most valuable for this, and I pity those who had to do this complex task with any less InDesign experience as myself. I found it extremely difficult, and I was an early adopter of the InDesign program. I will certainly continue outside project to make me more proficient in using the programs on the course

In conclusion, I have thoroughly enjoyed this unit, even if the last day of it was slightly disappointing. I now feel very confident of creating professional desk top published documents. I found that collecting many examples and annotating them in my sketchpad helped me to visualise the real world use of all the theories we learnt, and I will endeavour to improve on this further for the next unit. Improvements for the future will include designing a document where I can record how much time it takes to do tasks, as well as recording when to do them. I will also continue to add more research to my blog and write about it in my sketchpad, as well as offer more feedback when people put their designs on their blog (as I did on Craig Burgess’s post including his newsletter design). For the last unit I want to bring together all the improvements in time planning and sketchpad work to really push for a good result in the final unit. I will be improving my work output so that I am able to do this over the remaining weeks of this year.
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Keep pedalling

After returning from a busy and frustrating half term, it was back to the coalface on Wednesday morning. Over half term I had been focusing on my presentation, which became infinitely more difficult when the second Neville Brody book I had bought failed to materialise. I was incandescent with rage about this, and had to alter the focus of my presentation onto the earlier work covered in the first volume of the book. In a way it actually allowed me to explore in more depths Brody’s typography in different contexts, such as product design and article layout. More on the presentation progress later.

On Wednesday we had a visit from Jonny Haynes who talked through some of the work he had been doing at Technophobia. Although a lot of the stuff about CSS went over my head, I could see that the work he had done was to a very high standard, and appealed to me more than the Design Mechanics stuff from several weeks ago. It made me realise how much there is to learn between now and this time next year, and only made me more determined to do some comprehensive self study over the summer. I believe this is the only way I will be satisfied with the work I produce next year.

In the afternoon I continued to make amendments to my website. I altered the colour of the buttons on the pages which they corresponded to, as I had had one or two comments saying that people did not know which part of the site they were on. I chose white, as it highlights the text well and stands out against the darker surrounding colours. I should be uploading this over the weekend, should my shaky internet connection not let me down.

On Thursday afternoon it was our slot for the presentations. My group, consisting of Mirhad, Scott and myself went through our presentations in the order we were going to do them on ‘the big day’. I was of course first, and felt a bit more confident about the presentation than I did with the colour ones. I believe this was because I had a lot to say, having acquired a lot of research. Once I was about 6 slides in, Steve said “that’s 4 minutes” and I had to rush through the remaining slides. I believe this was because I was adding too much to what I was saying, and will have to cut it down slightly for the real thing. There were also a few errors on my slides which I will have to correct before next Thursday.

Overall the feedback I got was good, and Steve said that it was one of the better ones so far. Between now and next week I should learn exactly what I am going to say which is not on the slides, so that I don’t run the risk of going over the time limit of 5 minutes. I will also be making amendments to my handout sheet, as I now know it can be over a page long. I believe I will treat it as another piece of typography work for my folder, just to top up the examples of my typographic skills. Some of my slides can be seen below, along with my handout sheet. No pinching, James!

After we had done our presentations, we talked about our thoughts on the next unit and what our thoughts on next year were. With the next unit being heavily print based, I am really looking forward to it. I believe that finding out how to make document ready for being sent to a printers will be invaluable, and may encourage me to find clients for small pieces of work over the summer. Now that I have made progress with my time planning in A3 and A4, and my sketchpad work in A5 and A6, I think I will bring it all together for this last unit of the year, kind of a ‘swansong’ for the end of year one. If I aim for the higher grades and do well, I believe it will give me a great confidence boost for my self study work over the summer.

As for next year, I believe that it going to be a huge challenge for me. Not only does the quality of the work have to increase, but the learning environment is more focused on us. Again, I think with me planning self study over the summer will allow me to improve on these skills, and could make the second year a little easier to complete. I do feel anxious that I will find the more technical aspects hard to understand, and I know only hard work will get me through these. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

In Jonny’s presentation on Wednesday, he mentioned the importance of creating work outside of the college environment. I’ve always been a believer that this is highly valuable experience, and have always given things a go, like the DR-esque picture I did, as well as various other projects. This week I decided to create a product movie for an acquaintance of mine, Todd Cannon of Cannon Simulation Technologies. This involved demonstrating one of his products, and creating a video to put on YouTube. This website is a great tool for small businesses, as it allows them to demonstrate products cheaply and get them shown to a large audience. Features such as embedding also allow them to be placed on their websites.

I decided to pool together a range of techniques, including my self taught and rather limited video editing skills, Photoshop skills and Typography work to make a “picture in picture” product demonstration. I used a digital camera to record the actions of my feet, and Fraps video capture software to record the action of the simulation. I brought these elements together, and then added the company logo (which I had remade in a larger format) and added captions which could be clear to read for viewers. As per usual, this was a variant of Myriad Pro. I also cut out a picture of the product, and added a glow effect to highlight it. Overall I was impressed with the quality of what I had made, but unfortunately YouTube puts the picture and audio out of sync in its own conversion process, which is rather annoying. Anyway, the video is embedded below. Watch me control 400bhp of simulated American muscle – in my socks.