PROJECT REPORT OUIL505
PROPOSAL Design a series of 6 repeat patterns as illustrative material to be applied to multiple products, with the aim of encouraging students to cook from scratch.
INITIAL IDEA & GENRE CHOICE
university Freshers Fair, encouraging students to cook. I then decided on soup as the food, as its easy to make in bulk and can be suitibly represented as a pattern (mixture!). I then proposed additional applications to support this initiative, including recipies to follow.
STYLE DEVELOPMENT
My starting point, after product sketches, was to decide how to illustrate the patterns. I was very invested in developing a style that felt like my own, and also adhered to the concept of the project: home cooking. Connotations that came from this were rustic, imperfect, textured, colourful, homely and personal. This impacted the media I experimented, including linocut which was hands on and most related to chopping ingredients with its harsh edges. Monoprint and ink textures were created to mimic The decision to make soup packaging sauce splatters and muddy, organic came from my reasoning not to create vegetables. a brand from scratch, as this wasn’t During group crits I pitched the a graphics project. The illustrations different illustration styles to see are the focus, and the end product which worked best, and although should be able to be applied to a feedback was not conclusive in brand. I wondered how a brandless initiative could opporate, and decided terms of one winner, I saw in interest in the more refined monoprint/ to create material for a stall at a texture work. Initially I wasn’t sure which industry focus to choose, as I was so eager to write a brief to many of them. However, throughout my time at university I have wanted to create food packaging and patterns, which I managed to dabble in during Responsive, however as it was a collaboration for a brand I couldn’t make it truly my own. I decided to choose Retail & Packaging in order to design a porfolio piece that I would want to draw in clients, displaying my interest in illustrative packaging design and repeat pattern.
Polly Vadasz
259578
TEXTURE
VECTOR / TEXTURE
Applied Illustration
PHOTOSHOP DEVELOPMENT
REPEAT PATTERN
OUIL505
APPLICATIONS TIME MANAGEMENT I realised the style that worked best quite early on in the project, however, probably too ambitious anf feeling as though I had missed out on experimentation until now, wanted to keep playing with media. This took me into the intense time period where I needed to focus on Responsive and COP submissions, and unfortunately this project didn’t progress for a number of weeks.
Balancing so many projects at once reduced my ambitions for the final applications greatly. After hanging in the other projects I decided to stick with the textured illustration and close repeat pattern style, starting development on the recipe zine. The zine took the majority of the project’s time, so naturally became the focus as I realised its potential as such an informative product, and the help it could be to the target audience. The soup packaging became a side application, aimed to promote the recipe zines, and a simple, pattern based design followed.
ZINE DEVELOPMENT
I feel as though I really let myself down, as I had developed quickly at the start of the project, eager to deInitially the zine layout was to have velop my skills in pattern making. the pattern on one side of the spread, and the recipe on the other. I found, however, that this wasn’t an interesting enough application of the pattern. I designed the patterns as transparent object repeats so that they could be easily deconstructed, with elements used on their own, so bagan generating ideas on how to illustrate each soup, utilising the patterns, in a more engaging way.
INSIDE
OUTSIDE
This lead to ‘feature pages’ which alternate in style throughout the zine, displaying the ingredients in either
Polly Vadasz
259578
Applied Illustration
OUIL505
APPLICATIONS a soup style circle, on a chopping board, a baking dish and around a kitchen knife. This points to how each soup is cooked, and aims to be fun and engaging for the reader, again with the purpose of encouraging them to cook. As the zine developed, I drew additional material to support what made up the original 6 repeat patterns, including kicten utensils and decorative elements for the recipe pages. Texture was applied to the background, and brush textured annotation style lettering, to again support the idea of rustic, personal, home made cooking, Some repeat pattern is included in full as beginning and end spreads, tieing the range together. In order to create a professional, functional recipe zine, I took photographs of two of the soups, following the aesthetic of the project.
Polly Vadasz
259578
Applied Illustration
OUIL505
APPLICATIONS ADDITIONAL APPLICATIONS During the final mega crit I explained my limited time, and asked for feedback on additional applications that were feasible to complete. It was suggested that I made tea towels out of the patterns. I was really pleased by this feedback as after mocking up some versions I saw that they could be functional too, and large scale ‘feature pages’ from the recipe zine worked well. I had digital prints made as physical mockups and feedback on these has been very positive, with digital print colours showing up well and scale working.
Polly Vadasz
259578
Applied Illustration
OUIL505
EVALUATION Applied Illustration has by far been my favourite project of this year, allowing me to focus on improving my personal illustration style and developing multi disciplinary skills. It has unified my practical interest in product, packaging and layout design with an illustrative focus, and has been a suitable project to tie together my first year on an illustration course with the applied knowledge I have from my graphic design education. Although I thoroughly enjoyed this module, and the outcomes showcase, in my eyes, the most professional work I have produced for university so far, I have had multiple issues with the production. I quickly and eagerly began the project, outlining the concept of a business that handed out free soups at universities, with recipe cards showing how to make them from scratch. I wanted to utilise the workshop we had on repeat pattern, and have recipe specific, pattern based packaging. I began experimenting with how to illustrate the elements of the pattern, and remained undecided for too long. I was determined to take time to experiment with new ways of working, as I wanted my personal style to develop during this project, in a way that I hadn’t given it time to in others. Unfortunately my group crits didn’t provide me with a
conclusive approach, so when we entered into March and April, where I had to dedicate time to other projects, I was still stuck in the experimentation stage. In hindsight, if I had made a decision earlier, I would have been able to start applying the patterns in ways more advanced than the final resolutions. This leads onto my mistake with time management, where I greatly overestimated how much development I could do between Easter and the deadline. As the project developed, I decided to make a recipe zine, professionally finished with full recipes, ready for bulk production, which took a large amount of time. I could have left the repeat patterns as they were for the feature pages, however, with the student target audience in mind I wanted the zine to be as engaging as possible. The additional illustrations and compositions that were made, along with setting up two food photography shoots, took up a majority of the time. Towards the end of the project I realised that I had little time left to work on an animation, so decided to focus that time into the zine and other applications so that those resolutions would be to the best of my ability, instead of a short, unrefined animation. This final rush also lead to me neglecting the blog, which I am usually good at keeping up to date with.
Polly Vadasz
259578
Applied Illustration
OUIL505
I think this was because I spent a lot of time on development, after making the overarching concept decisions early on. I created issuu documents to show this development process, and with their annotations, they form a substantial amount of my written process. Another issue I faced was realised at the very end of the project, where I looked back at the submission requirements and saw that a visual journal was required. Through this project I worked on loose sheets of paper in multiple sketchbooks, as I did in Responsive, scanning in what I needed for the blog and digital development. Although I should have known by carefully reading the module outline early on, it just isn’t in my nature to keep a single process sketchbook as my work tends to be small, refined and mostly developed digitally. I’m really disappointed that I haven’t been able to provide a proper visual journal for the submission, as I’m very proud of the outcomes, and again due to my poor time management, the final submission doesn’t reflect the work, ideas and industry competence that went into the project. Because I had to narrow down my final resolutions to meet the deadline, there are a couple of application concepts left undeveloped. In hindsight, I would have liked to improve my AfterEffects abilities by creating a
series of GIFs to go alongside each recipe for an online version of the zine. These could be displayed on a landing webpage. It would have also strengthened the project’s concept to develop material for the Freshers Fair stalls where the soups would be given out. It could be eye catching, matching the range, with a large patterned table cloth featuring one of the repeats. I could have also developed signage, featuring the patterns and the annotation style lettering. Again, these two applications would better display the original project concept, and would have been developed if I had enough time. Overall, I must remind myself of the initial aims I had going into this project: a portfolio piece that represented my multidisciplinary approach and developed personal practice. I do feel this has been met, through the addition of layout design, photography, and textured illustrations, something I mentioned I wanted to learn how to do at the very start of the year. I am especially happy with the zine and tea towel designs, which I aim to continue to develop and release as products in my shop. This is something I can follow for PPP, and shows that I have been able to apply the initial repeat patterns in a commercial way.
Polly Vadasz
259578
ONION
VEGETABLE
Applied Illustration
OUIL505