Category: unit 1 and 4

The main research that I conducted in my work is research on different artists. Specifically, I covered the graphic design work of Stefan Sagmeister, Lester Beall and Saul Bass. I chose these artists due to the influence and prominence of the work that they have done. The main way that I have been able to document this information is through writing a few pages and blog posts on each artist, going over their most important work and the way that it has influenced my own designs. I interpreted this research by viewing their designs as a way to push myself, working in ways similar to how they did in order to create something unique. In my work, I referred to the mood of Stefan Sagmeister’s work a lot, due to the unique way that his work felt. The darker tones lined up well with my overall theme of “Midnight”, and therefore I found it fitting to link it in with my own designs as a primary influence.

 

One of the initial problems I encountered was with the direction to take my theme. From my mind map of ideas based on the colour prompt, I had a variety of ideas but initially had problems with narrowing them down. This was primarily a theoretical idea but it bled into my practical work somewhat when I was working on my designs for a finalised logo. The logo design was the primary reason that I was able to overcome the problem, since I used my variety in designs to narrow it down to one that I preferred the most. Then, from that, I was able to develop a consistent theme to base my entire project around.

 

I had a lot of personal issues with time management and planning as a whole, primarily due to absences at college. Since I missed a lot of weeks, I often ended up not being able to use my folder or time properly, and therefore a lot of my work wasn’t completely consistent with the plans that I had formulated in my folder. I did use my blog to keep a track of my work, but I didn’t use it to it’s full effectiveness. For the next unit, it would work better if I used it in tangent with my work so I knew where I was up to, and would then be able to use it to plan the next steps for my work, keeping me overall more organised.

 

In my practical skills, I focused a lot on working with patterns and colours, often using them in conjunction with each other to create interesting designs. One example of this is the study into Line, Tone, Shape and Texture. In this, I created a couple of designs for each theme and did my own spin on how to interpret them. The main example of this was the use of mono-printing, which is the method of using inks and different mediums to print a design onto another piece of paper. With this, I printed up the patterns that I had created which, when scanned, worked as a great base for backgrounds for my spray can designs.

 

In conclusion, I’m overall happy with how this project went. My own personal timekeeping was the main issue holding me back, but this is something I’ve fixed and shouldn’t be a problem in the times to come. I’m happy with the outcome of my final spray can design, as I think I worked well to make a good logo which complemented my colour scheme, alongside incorporating my practical work as well as my typographical research into the overall design. Overall, it took bits from all the work that I’ve done for my project, and produced a very positive result.

For my final spray can design, I decided to go with the third design that I had set up, as I thought it worked the best as a design for a spray can. The main thing that I liked about this design is the way I used the background, overlaying it onto a grey coloured background to make it somewhat transparent as a background, but it still was able to make an interesting pattern. As well as this, I prefered this logo concept the most out of the ones that I had done, primarily in the way that I was able to keep the “Mid” and “Night” separate. In some of my designs I started using the slogan “A  new way to spray”. This originally started as a way to fill in some space in the design, but in the end I enjoyed the way the slogan sounded and it helped make my brand sound unique, so I decided to keep it consistent in the majority of my designs.

This was the first design that I set up for my spray cans. Primarily, this was a way of experimenting with the background of the spray can, by using the Linear Light tool to overlay he background onto another version of itself, and therefore produce a very unique and bold outlook. The label and logo were more basic in this design.

This second spray can design was primarily used to experiment with ways of using shapes alongside the patterned backgrounds in order to create an interesting design, However, I felt this design fell flat as it was too plain and the font choices used were very uninteresting.

For this design, I experimented with ways to improve upon the designs that I had already done. I used the method of background and label from my first piece, but made it more unique with a semi-transparent white label overlaying it, making it lest bold but still making the new logo stand out from it.

In this design I wanted to try out a  design that didn’t use a label as prominently, instead focusing on ways that I can work it so that the logo and the background work together. To do this, I kept the logo in white as I had done in some of the previous designs, as well as keeping the entire background darker.

In this final design, I wanted to experiment with different backdrops to the text and ways that I could make it stand out from the rest of the spray can design. For example, the circle around the logo worked to  isolate it from the background while also making it stand out against all other highlighted information by keeping them separate.

For my next step in my design I decided to start working digitally. I thought a good place to start with this would be by working on the font choice to work on my overall brand. I decided to work on this first as it would be a good starting point to base my work around, as it meant that they would all have a level of consistency in the design allowing me to compare them better to see which later developments would contribute to an overall design.

Coolvetica

The first font I decided to work with was Coolvetica. I chose this font as it felt like a good general font that would be a jack of all trades, being able to work as a title and as the body text in any of my branding. In the end I decided that it would work well as a body text and a subtitle font, but I wouldn’t use it as the primary font in the brand for the logo or titles.

Riffic

I decided to look at this font due to its more bold design, as it stood out a lot when compared with other fonts that I had considered. An issue with this font is that it wouldn’t be something that would work as a general type, instead only standing out as a title. As well as this, the cartoon-like nature of the font is something that I thought wouldn’t fit the darker theme that I wanted to go for with my brand.

Lobster

The main reason that I considered this font was due to the semi-cursive design, looking formal but also clearly being informal, being a good middle ground font which could stand out in both aspects. In the end though, I didn’t feel like it fit as it was very clean in design, and wouldn’t have worked as well in the darker, more grunge theme I was going for in my brand.

The Bold Font

This font stood out to me the most as it is, as aptly named, a bold font. All the letters are large and stand out massively from anything else when they are used together. I ended up using this font to make one of my favourite logo designs, incorporating it in to the iconography to make a complete design. However, similarly to the Lobster font, I felt like it didn’t work with the theme I was going for.

Pussycat

This was a font that I liked the look of in theory but in practice I didn’t think it worked. I originally thought it would be a good idea similarly to Coolvetica as a general font for body text and titles, but when using it I felt like it was too small and compressed, and wouldn’t fit the theme I was going for as well as being difficult to read overall.

Fake Serif

In the end, I decided to go with this font as my main font in my designs, including using it in my logo designs and overall branding. I chose this font as I felt like it worked extremely well with the general design I was going for, not necessarily being too clean but also being readable. Not being too formal, but also a bit less standard. Overall this worked great for the brand that I was developing.

For my next step in development, I decided to focus on mono printing. This is a method of printing by overlaying inks with different levels of paper, giving you the ability to imprint your own patterns onto the paper. This is done by overlaying a plain paper over ink, and then the pattern over that. Tracing over the pattern with different materials imprints the ink, allowing you to control the intensity of the imprint by putting the pattern down softer or harder.

With this method, I decided to do the mono printing on my existing patterns that I previously designed, as well as a quick sketch of a logo idea that I had. The main pattern I designed with mono printing was the pattern involving the continents. With this, I decided to use different mediums or different types of continents, as a way of making them all stand out from each other, but with the printing still keeping the image look complete, as if they’re meant to be together despite their differences.

For the midnight logo, I first printed over a patterns that I had previously designed, specifically the one which was first used as a unique pattern to show off all the colours I was working with. In this pattern, there was a gap missing in the middle of the two sets of patterns, and I decided this would be a good place to fit in my logo. I wrote in my name, “Midnight”, in the space, leaving the D blank to fill it in with the reverse crescent moon shape that I decided to start working with. This didn’t give the most desired effect, as the lightness of the pattern blended in with the background, so it didn’t stand out very well. As well as this, when mono printing is done, the actual print itself prints backwards onto the paper, so the word “Midnight” is reflected.

For part of my practical work, I decided to experiment with different types of patterns in my design. This was useful as it allowed me to experiment with varying ways of using lines and colours, which gave me a range of possibilities and inspiration for designs to use for my can and the brand.

The first one I did wasn’t as much a pattern but was more a way for me to experiment with the different types of colours that I was thinking of using, giving me a visual idea of how they worked together. This was one of the main prompts that I had to use the yellow a lot more in my designs due to the way it stood out from the rest and therefore made me think about the way it would make the Midnight colour stand out in my designs.

The next pattern that I worked on was a way for me to experiment with light, by putting in a central object and then creating a basic gradient of colour around it, gradually getting darker the further away it got from the middle. To fit in with my theme of midnight, I decided to make the light source in the centre a moon. Then, to fit in with the overall night theme, I used a variety of colours in shades of blue, while also having slightly different shades, such as a turquoise colour. Overall, this pattern was good as it let me also experiment with colour and shading in an interesting way.

The next pattern I used was a lot more different than the rest as I used a completely different medium, focusing on drawing in chalk rather than in pen. This let me get a set of completely different colours and gave the design an overall softer theme. The change in colour let me consider my work from a different point of view, and the different mediums that I could use to design it.

The fourth pattern that I worked on was more of a landscape design. This let me see how it compared to an actual landscape and the ways that the colours worked together comparatively. The primary example of the way that it worked differently was due to the increased visibility of the contrast of colours. In a normal landscape, all the colours will tend to blend together naturally, creating a perfect composition of colour and depth. Since my work was completely different looking from an actual image, that showed me that the overall colour theory for my palette wasn’t as up-to-snuff.

The fifth pattern I worked on was an attempt of working with patterns, and the way I could use colours to make certain patterns stand out from the rest. Primarily I decided to use a lot of lines in my pattern design, creating interesting crosses and swirls. I think the desired effect was achieved with this, each colour stood out in it’s own way and no pattern was too plan to not be clearly seen on the canvas.

My final pattern was an interesting one I did where I decided to work on a design based on the continents. This is placed in the Atlantic ocean, so pattern itself involves mostly Europe and Africa, but with a small section of Eastern South Africa on the bottom left. I decided to make each continent stand out by drawing them in different colours to the ones that are normally in my palette – using warmer colours such as red, brown and orange as a stark contrast to the colder blues and greens I typically use. This was done as a reference to the moon aspect of the Midnight theme being about controlling the waves, representing this idea by drawing the ocean and the waves in the same blue colours.

 

With my prompt colour, I also wanted to take a look at other colours that I could use to connect to it, focusing on ones that are complementary as well as ones which contrasted completely, and I evaluated which would be the best choice to use alongside my Midnight colour in order to create an appealing brand.

The colour that I was given was a dark, almost navy, blue colour. This colour I would consider very cold, so that was an important aspect to consider when thinking about the other colour options that I had. For example, when considering which colours worked the best for contrasting against it, I was able to focus on more warm colours, such as orange and yellow. The use of contrast in my work was important as it allowed all the colours to stand out more, and making the blue stand out was one of my main goals from the prompt.

The first colour that I considered using was orange. Orange is known as a complementary colour for blue, meaning that when they are put together they both stand out a lot more. This was a good option in terms of purely colour theory, but the main issue that I came across is that I couldn’t think of many ways to appropriately make it fit in with the blue. Overall, orange was a colour that links a lot with light. I attempted to use it slightly in my brand, but in the end I focused on other colours.

Since orange didn’t work out too well, I tried to work using yellow. Although similar, the lighter shade of yellow meant that it was more appropriate for a lot of the general themes that I had come up with for my mood board, such as being used as a colour for the moon, and therefore linking more to the general idea that I had for experimenting with space as a whole. In the end, I decided to use yellow a lot in my branding, often found complementing the blue.

I had found a complementary/contrasting colour, but then for the rest of my designs I wanted to use a colour which worked well alongside the blue but didn’t exactly make it stand out to the level that the yellow did. In the end, due to focusing on my space theme, I ended up using a range of pink and purple colours. By using a light gradient, I could incorporate multiple levels of colour while still keeping it all similar in a theme. I primarily used these colours in the space areas of my branding, which mainly kept it confined to the background of the image rather than directly in the label itself.