Part Two : Portfolio Responses and Evaluation
The Brief: Your brief is to design a stunning and contemporary cover for one of the 20th century’s most acclaimed authors, HG Wells. Known mostly for his science fiction writing, HG Wells also wrote social novels that are still relevant today, covering topics such as the mid-life crisis, class, feminism, materialism, consumerism and love. Your challenge is to create cover designs for three of his books that work as a set and establish the books as timeless fiction. The books will be published in a paperback format and need to include the title, author’s name, publishers name and trademark. You only need to design the front cover and spine.
Responses:
The Brief: You have been asked to design a leaflet for an organisation, inviting people to volunteer for a task. (You can choose the task for example, school governor, fundraising or building a community garden). In addition to a title the information has been broken down into four chunks each of about 120 words. You will also need to leave space for contact and address details. Working with a sheet of A4 paper or larger if you prefer, and ignoring the actual words and subheadings, explore the different formats for leaflets that are possible. Consider and experiment with options for final size and types of paper as part of your visualisation. The organisers are particularly interested in trying to attract new people. Your job is to find a way to make people want to pick up the leaflet. Be creative and playful in developing a range of ideas. Will the leaflets be put in racks? Will they be handed out or sent in the post? You will need to do some research to see how other people have solved similar problems.
Responses:
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The Brief: Posters generally, have an image and one main line of text, most often the title, followed by additional essential information. Look around locally and identify a coming event – it could be a jumble sale, a local gig, concert or play, an exhibition or sporting fixture – and design two posters to promote it. Make the first poster full of details and descriptions about the event, when and where it’s taking place, what’s going on, how long it lasts, how much it costs and what to expect. Include all the details that you think your audience might need. For the second poster apply Occam’s Razor to pare back the information to a bare minimum – be extreme: how little information can you get away with and how few words can you use? Challenge yourself to be as simple as possible, but don’t forget the essentials or the poster won’t do the job it is intended for. Now ask yourself and other people if you can, which of the designs works best. What is the key information you need to include? How did the feedback help you with your final design? Make notes in your learning log. Redesign your poster using the feedback to guide you, creating a new poster that utilises the best points of both designs.
Responses:
Other experiments:
The Brief: Your local green grocer has asked you to produce a point of sale display to go above the fruit and vegetables in their shop. They want the display to be seen from the street through the shop window to attract passing shoppers in order to boost their trade. The shop is in a small precinct which also houses a baker, a newsagent, an independent shoe shop and is on the route to and from a well respected primary school. The final reproduction size will be 2 x A1 landscape so you will need to produce your artwork at a smaller scale. Either take photographs, create illustrations or use a combination to develop two images – one of fruit and one of vegetables. For each range you may choose an individual piece, dissected or partly sliced sections, or create a group of several pieces.
Responses:
The Brief: Create a range of cards for sentiments or events that are worthy of a greetings card, but are currently not catered for by card manufactures. The cards could be linked to other calendar events, obscure Saints days, sporting calendars or any other happening that is worth celebrating or commiserating. You may wish to explore some of life’s other landmarks that currently don’t feature in greetings cards, like getting your first grey hairs, being released from prison or any other personal landmark someone might want to share.
Responses:
This part of the module has started to make me experiment with styles and techniques that I perhaps wouldn’t have encountered in the typical approach that I would have taken to a project. One very key example of this is through the different intentions of the brief. Having to communicate something to an audience has obviously always been important however, with book covers, posters and greetings cards, the message needs to be more condensed and easy to read. This relies on the use of signs and symbols to enforce the message in a more cohesive manner without anything requiring too much reading. When there is a high level of reading required from a book cover, it distracts the viewer and they are going to expect the book itself to also be a heavy read. This isn’t the impression that any book should give, there are other written aspects that are made for this. Instead the cover needs to entice readers which relies on visual communication instead of written communication. One skill I can therefore say that I am starting to develop is my ability to pear things back and not necessarily simplify everything to its basic form, but make sure that I am more effective in my use of signs and symbols. This is something that I won’t just be able to solve after one part of a module, it is something that I will continuously work on as knowledge and understanding of visual communication develops. However, the steps taken in this part of the module form a strong starting point for this development to take place. Alongisde this, I have started to develop my skills in illustration. This is something that I wanted to work on as I have never been a strong drawer and I am unsure of some of the techniques, techniques that I know would help me as part of my graphic design. Encouraging myself to draw the silhouette on the book cover task was a small step as part of this, as well as doing some digital experiments during the POS task as well. Although this wasn’t a technique that I ended up using, it is clear from the comments made in my learning log, that I was still able to learn more about the technique from the small sketches that I did. I still want to be able to improve these drawing skills but like I mentioned before, this will take time and isn’t something that I can quickly fix. It is going to take a combination of both digital and physical experiments to understand the composition of such elements. This is something that I am going to try and encourage myself to do on further tasks or even just on the side of this to make sure that I can understand the principles for future projects. In terms of what I have learnt about visual communication here, once again, as each task is designed to do, it helps me to consider the different ways in which text, image and colour are all combined in order to portray a message. The poster task was one that definitely made me consider how easy it is to change the perception of something not only depending on if text is added, but also the quantity. The image here was supposed to be the main focal point and although it always was, the effect of the image was lost when there was too much text. Equally, trying to make too much of the photograph, by creating the reflections, turned the image into something it wasn’t. This isn’t how the images will be presented at the exhibition so why should they be presented like this on the poster? Researching in Gestalt theories in some brief depth helped me to understand these visual communication techniques a lot more. Often I was able to say to my peers that I knew something didn’t work but I wasn’t sure why it didn’t and after researching into these theories, it explained a lot. I don’t want to continuously use theories to explain my work because sometimes I will become so engrossed in this that I will forget to have fun and experiment. However, I do want to research more into these theories as having these at the back of my mind will help me develop more successful designs in the future. This research needs to not only look at basic analysis of each theory but in depth, academic research that explains the effects of each theory on design, finding ways that these theories can then be combined in different designs without becoming over complicated. These tasks are helping me to discover how the use of text and image in different combinations and scales also effect the way in which you read the information. This is something that I know that I can continue to play with throughout different tasks and my own personal work but, when designing the inside of the greetings cards, the way in which the text was highlighted inside in comparison to the techniques used on the front varied so much, and this was because of something as simple as the background colour.
Throughout these assignments I am building up a list of techniques that I know I can trial in the future in order to develop my designs further and find solutions to any problems that I may come across. However, it is important for me to note that these techniques aren’t a universal solution, each project will require different solutions and this is where the importance of experimentation comes in. I always do enjoy experimenting but sometimes I don’t experimnet as freely as I perhaps should. I give myself a limit, whether this be how many responses I need to create or how much time I have to do this and working under these constraints is not the best way to approach a task. Perhaps what I am more concerned about is the way in which this experimentation will lead me. Often when I am given free reigns like this, my designs get out of hand, they become too much and a lot harder to read but this is something that I will work on further so that my experimentation is still controlled in some way. Therefore, these assignments aren’t just making me think about visual communication and the way that I am learning to communicate better with an audience, but it is also making me consider my own process more. We all learn in different ways and I always thought that I understood the way in which I work however, during this process I am learning what I need to leave myself more time to do. Writing down my whole process is sometimes helpful but this is more as notes to myself. Using post it notes was a great way that helped me during previous courses so maybe I should start using this again. Quick notes on what did and didn’t work against various mock ups is a simple way of reflecting on this. These are easy for an audience to read if they need to see this but equally they are helpful to move around and keep small amounts of information on. Reducing the amount of time I spent on this reflection, although it does help me, it isn’t reflection in an effective manner, means that I can spend more time on experimenting. Some projects in the industry will have tighter time constraints and being able to work to these is effective however, I don’t want to become so tight on this that I cannot have time to fully develop designs to their full potentional. For example, I will not be able to fully understand the Gestalt theories under short amounts of time, and I won’t be able to develop my drawing overnight. Maybe instead of doing experimentation that has to be involved with a project, doing random experimentation that doesn’t link to a project could help guide my skills more.