Bethany Toft A2 Graphics Design Portfolio
Advertisement and Marketing Design
Pinterest Inspiration
Statement Of Intent I want to begin a branding and marketing project based around my local floral store. I will be receiving valuable feedback from the stores owner Melanie, I am looking for constructive criticism which will help to then develop my design further, I will produce a rough dairy of my process, ideas and developments to show Melanie where I am going with and at with my rebranding project which she will be able to take and make notes in for me, which I will then be able to look back on and take notes from. I intent on using both the traditional and digital methods throughout my project. I will use traditional methods to give myself an initial idea of what my logo will be and sketch up any ideas I have and then develop digitally. I want to achieve a design I am confident developing forward and experimenting with in my process to creating professional outcome such as business cards. I intent on experimenting with the lazar cutter and the folding of materials to create a unique product which is more interesting than the usual small square business card. I want to experiment with different materials, shapes and sizes. I will also consider the technicality of what I am creating; whether my products are suitable to fit in your bottom or comfortable to hold.
Melanie's Florist Research http://www.melaniesflorist.co.uk/about-us/ I found Melanies Florist online site to get a little information about the store I will be rebranding and gained some information that would useful when designing and coming up with a slogan. for example Something to do with being established for 22 Years could be involved in the slogon. “Your 22 years of floral experts” Something to do with guaranteed same day delivery could be involved in the slogan. “Received, Received” More ideas… “Creating lasting impressions” “Make an entrance, Make an impression” “Entrance, Impression, Melanie's Florist.”
Photoshoot contact sheet
enlargments
Draplin Draplin is a graphic designer that specialises in branding. He shared a video on YouTube called ’Aaron Draplin Takes On Logo Design Challenge’. In this video he shows some logo design books where he get most of his inspiration from, he explain that nothing is original, and that he often sees elements he likes in someone else's design and includes them within his work. We are then shown his initial design process where he very roughly comes up with ideas for the logo. Draplin’s process is very quick and very effective, he takes one idea and makes 50 other rough designs from that through small changes such as changing the thickness or spacing. However to start it all off he explain he always writes out the company name in both capitals and lower case multiple times to get a feel for the shape of the word and letters. He then shows how he Takes his favorite rough sketch and starts to develop that idea on illustrator.
Draplin builds up his logo designs using basic shapes and over layering them. As you can see for ever change he makes, he duplicates and continues making change to the copied version so that he is able to show the process of his design of go back to a certain stage if he isn’t happy with his changes.
Research source https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=zOPA0NaeTBk
Initial Design Process
16 pt
13 pt
Initial idea
Round Cap Thickened stroke
Digital calligraphy effects on illustrated
You can select certain paths and use the calligraphy effect on specific areas. You don’t have to use this effect on your entire design. An example of this is the middle design of the calligraphy effects. I might come back to the calligraphy effects but feel they are too overwhelming and masculine. These effect might be good to come back to and see if they add anymore to my near finished design.
Profile 3 Profile 4
I wanted to put my design into a circle and get rid of the extended lines
The pathfinder tool did get rid of the extended lines however has made the whole design one vector, this means I cant make the stroke on the circle any thicker or thinner than the stroke on my original design. At the moment, I’m not too fond of the entire vector being the same stroke I think it looks a bit bulky and masculine which isn’t my aim.
In my sketchbook I had the idea of creating a sort of floral designed silhouette which might look nice cut into the middle of this design.
By using pathfinder, without realising the tool made each shape in the original design a vector. These separate vectors then combine to complete my design, similar to a jigsaw. I only noticed after trying to move and drag the design out of the way whilst I began more slight alternations. So I created a new document and started pulling apart the ‘jigsaw’ design and came up with some more really cool developments. The whole design taken apart and separated
For this series of developments I simply selected and moved slightly of deleted certain sections of the vector.
At the moment I’m just playing around with slight alterations to shape and size to get a feel for the design. Here I’m adjusting the thickness (stroke) of the circle and my original design. My first intention was to thicken my original design so that it stood out in front of the circle but after trying the opposite and thickening the circle I really like the proportions and layout, It’s almost more central.
I was having a little play around with the pen tool and began using curved lines to connect areas. I think it’s worked really well, I love the geometric aspect to this. It gives the design more attitude and makes it more ‘fancy’ in a way which is the direction I’m wanting this design to go.
Design 1
Design 2
I went forward with my silhouette idea and did a quick floral sketch using the pen tool to try it out. My process was quite straight forward, I filled and made the outline white, and multiplied various copies, altering the rotation and size, I then placed these design over my black original design and created, what I’m happy to say as an overall design. I wouldn’t like to just leave it at this and call it finished just yet, I think it would be good to experiment with this design on the laser cutter, see if it will be able to pick up on the small intricate details.
I made the slightest alteration to my design and used the paint tool in white to make my floral sketches feel more connected/ joint to the black space and get rid of the prominent edge that you can see in my first design.
Here I have filled my floral design back black and placed it differently. I then got rid of the circular base design and played around a bit looking back at old and new ideas.
Floral design on its own.
Developed
Looking back at an old idea
Experiment
Micael Reynaud Reynaud is a freelance design and stop motion animator who creates animated gifs. I have chosen to look at creating my own gifs as I think this would be a quick and effective method of producing a digital banner which could be used on the Melanie's Florist website. Reynaud create his gifs using video techniques like slit-scanning, time lapse, and various forms of masking to create what he refers to as “hypnotic very short films�. I chose to look at Reynaud specifically as he creates his gifs from his photographs rather piecing together illustrations which is another method of making a gif. What I like most about Reynaud's work is that his film is constructed very smoothly and doesn't jump between each image so it almost appears as if he has just filmed his source. This enables him to put together images to create a video which wouldn’t be possible to capture on film. An example of this would be his gif of the cooking pizza. He has done this by putting a pizza in the oven, and has used a burst effect to capture the stages of it cooking and has repeated this process after adding more toppings. He has then takes his shoots and constructed them together using different digital effects and masks.
TRIANGLE STUDIO – try angle paper 02 TRIANGLE STUDIO is an arts and graphic design group for Branding Editorial Illustration. I have came across a project of theirs where they have used a sort of marbling technique for a background on a business card which I think would be a good experiment to try as I am moving towards outcomes. There are allot of different marbling techniques witch I could explore from marbling with oils to fluid painting with acrylics. I want to produce my own series of marbling experiments for a business card background to photoshoot and use as one example when I next visit Melanie.
Digital Liquefy effects After looking at the different methods to traditionally marble I know want to have a look at how I can create a similar morphed effect digitally using tools and effects on Photoshop. Here I have taken an image from my earlier photoshoot and by using the smudge tool on Photoshop morphed the image that much that the image is unrecognisable and I am left with the colours which are involved in the photograph. It’s allot like painting with the colours involved in the photograph to create an abstract piece. This effect would make a nice background to work on top of. Using different sized strokes of the smudge tool gives you allot more control and enables you to make shapes in the colours, for this piece I used allot of circular motions which gave me this result which I think works really well. Because this effect is done digitally you also have more control over the colours, in this piece I was happy with the colours already involved from the original photograph however if I didn't’t I would be able to go to image adjustments or effects and alter the colours.
I’m going to take this one image and explore with which techniques in photo shop I can distort it to create an almost liquidised, morphed effect.
I opened up my image in photo shop and went to filter and distort. In the distort option there are numerus options on how to digitally distort your image. I will look at these effect individually and then attempt to collaborate the new effects I have learnt using masks and layers to create a liquidised effect which I can use as a background for my business card
Experimenting with the shear distortion filter option to liquidize/ morph my image into a marbled/ abstract background.
For this effect I have used the Shear distortion option which so far is my favorite morphing technique. It is very similar to the Wave technique with the patterns and shapes you can creates however you have much more control with the shear option. With the markers (points) you are able to plot where you want your image to ‘stretch’ and you can plot as many of they markers as you want to give you either a really exaggerated distortion or a more simple one. These distortion techniques are all very similar but give you a different morphed technique to the smudge tool which I used in my earlier experiment. With the smudge tool the colours in the photograph almost combine to make separate solid colours. Where as the distortion effects keeps the colours separate which I really like and feel it is more towards the marbled effect I am trying to achieve.
This distortion effect isn’t one I would really use. I don’t feel it makes much of a morphed effect as my previous experiments. It almost create a melted effect to my image. The only problem I have with this effect is that I can still identify what the original image was and that’s not one of my aims. However i do feel differently about this effect when zooming into certain areas.
Experimenting with the ripple distortion filter option to liquidize/ morph my image into a marbled/ abstract background.
For this I used the polar to rectangular option. This option almost melts your image and creates a sort of drip like effect which I really like.
For this I ued the rectangular to polar option. This option gives you an almost 360 degree distortion.
Both of these outcomes came from the same Polar Coordinates distortion filter option. With this option you don’t have much control at all, you have two option; the Rectangular to Polar option and the polar to rectangular option. You can’t alter these options as you can with the other techniques which makes it a hit and miss sort of method as I could work with one particular image and not another.
In the Filter bar tool there is a liquidity option which gives you a brush that allows you move the image around and has so far given me the best digital marbled effect. With this technique you can use different brush sizes which gives you different result and you can always go back into your work after and move areas with a different brush size. Which is what I have done here, I have taken the same image and worked into it 3 times using different brush sizes and motions.
Lighter Colour
Soft Light
Colour Dodge
Here I have taken my last liquidized image and duplicated the layer, rotating the duplicate 90 degrees and experimented with the blending options to see what effect this would have. What the blending options have done is make the top layer and bottom merge so that you can see part of the bottom layers come through. I have chosen my three favourite blending option which I think have worked best on this piece.
Infographic mini project Marking scheme
Analysis
This is my favorite infographic design due to how creative and imaginative it is. I like the idea of little people constructing your burgers, I also love the idea of a giant burger too. It’s a really fun way to present and design a recipe. However, the best thing about this design is that it is clear and organized. Still interesting and still fun, but quit minimal‌There's not a ton of texts, you could literally scan your eyes over and understand what its getting at or what the purpose of the design is for. I Like the idea of having levels, its adds a flow to the design and makes the whole design more connected and central.
My mini project is to create an infographics design for the grade marking scheme. My idea is too create a design that involves mountains and shows clear hierarchy and order. I’m going with a similar style to the burger infographic design that I previously looked at and want mine to be connected and show a clear journey.
Colour schemes Base Shadow highlight
This is my favorite colour scheme. I plan on involving these colours in my mountains.
Mountain Construction I want my design to be really simplistic so I designed my mountains by using the Pen tool to draw a rough shape of a mountain and filled it in with a base colour. From there I used the pen tool to make smaller filled shapes of either lighter or darker tones to represent shadows and layered them over the top.
The light blue background is working with the mountains. However the white text has become a bit lost in the light background and the colour of the ‘grading path’ isn’t working. I feel it’s too dark for the light background, perhaps darkening the background.
A*
AO1 Idea generation!
AO2 Experimentation!
Develop ideas through investigation of other artists and sources.
A B
AO3 Analysis!
Exploring different medias and technique. Recording, reviewing and refining ideas.
C
Reflect critically on work and progress
AO4 Response! Present a final peice that reflects your previous work
A* - EXEPTIONAL ABILITY A - CONFIDENT AND ASSURED ABILITY B - COMPETENT AND CONSISTENT ABILITY C - EMERGING COMPETENT ABILITY
The background colours not working, I think I'm going in the right direction with the grey but the shade is too dark and if I go any lighter the white text is lost and I don’t want to change the colour of the text because I think having some text black and some white makes is more of an easy read and separates the text up. I’m going to try next adding a gradient to the background, my only concern is that it will be too overwhelming.