Earth Artifact Development Booklet Rebekah Hollins
Before starting with creating my designs, I looked for inspiration at the different kinds of layouts that I was hoping to achieve, some characteristics that many of them have in common are the coffee stained pages, rough layered style, different directions of handwriting on the pages, not always ledgable, extra bits of paper stick in and added to the designs, hand drawn factors as well a textures and real items stuck into the pages. I will begin by digitally experimenting with some designs to create this kind of effect and then I may take this forward into creating a physical design, somewhat like the final digital layout I come up with. This will give a more realistic example and allow the viewer to fully experience the sizes and texture of the piece. For this reason, although I am able to play around with the scale of the flowers to get them to ebst fit on the page, I will try my best to keep them as to scale as possible toc reate a more realistic example of what the flowers look like.
I decided to focus on flowers and plants as the main part of my documentation. This is so that I can produce the highest standard of work and sample the kinds of layout and design work I would use to create the whole folder of different catergories if I were to take it forward. To begin with I photographed some of my own flowers to provide a base to work from structurally. I decided to focus on the appearence and anatomy of flowers in this case and really focus on the shape and form of the petals. I took these particular photos against a white backdrop to ensure that all of the details were at their clearest, unfortunately I dont think the white balance was set up correctly, causing the images to have a blue tint to them. This can however be easily fixed using curves and saturation. I photographed a range of different flowers to show a variation in the forms of the petals, stems, leaves and also the colours in each type of flower. I may consider taking some designs forward using these flowers and will also be collecting different ways that I can document flowers to show some varation in my work. I am really happy with the detail shown on these pictures as I think it gives a really good sense of the texture and feel of the flowers which is the kind of thing that I am wanting to get across to my audience.
Out of the photos I chose to edit a few, to do this I reduced the blue by altering the RGB curves and also the saturation of the image. I also increased the contrast to enhance some elements of the flowers and cropped them so that the flowers were centered in the frame to draw attention to them. I chose a variation of angles of each flower to ensure that the viewer can see the different formation of the flower and the way that it is constructed. This gives a more realistic representation of what the flowers look like.
To begin with I created some physical mock ups, these were difficult to work with as I have a very perfectionist style and the writing was inconsistent, the flowers would not lay flat and the paper did not work as well as I had hoped it would. I think that the best approach would to create a digital version which would allow me to scale the flowers up and down adn work with the alignment of the document, however ensure that it is given a more scrapbook appearence.
From the previous pages I have shown that I have collected a range of different pressed flowers and scanned them in to work with digitally, this will allow me to experiment with different layouts and scales as well as adding different typography to the designs and putting textures and layers of detail into the designs. Here I have began to experiment with a few different ways of presenting the flowers and how they might look aesthetically appealing to the viewer, however I may consider using a more natural approach to layout and present the flowers as if they have been stuck in a scrapbook.
Using some brushes I downloaded for photoshop, I began to create textured backgrounds, adding layers of coffee coloured pages and masking tape strips. It was difficult to choose the correct colour to represent how I wanted to get the page to look and also the masking tape brushes were a little difficult to use as the opacity they were created in was a little too low but I think if I continue to experiment with this I will create something really interesting. I think at a later stage I may also consider collecting and scanning in some of my own paper samples, with different textures and colours, maybe even consider making some of my own brushes for photoshop if there is time to do so.
After creating some backgrounds I began to add some imagery to the designs, using photos and also the flowers that I had collected and scanned in I began to layer up the design and create some really interesting layout ideas to take forward into further development.
Although this font is not very bold and may in some cases be a little difficult to read, I may consider using it in my designs as it has a very natural flow to it and could be incoorperated into the work some way or another. I think the slight rightwards lean of the letters creates a really comfortable lean through the text and is really effective when paired with the kinds of designs I am working towards.
I really like the natural handwriting appearence of this font, it’s not too perfect however the letters are clear and interesting. The font is bold enough to be seen over the dark and somewhat busy backgrounds that I have created and the loopy style gives an interesting appearence for the viewer to engage with. This is a very interesting for to consider in the use of my designs, I think it would work really well with the style that I will be using.
Although I do really like this font, the perfection of the letters gives it a very computerised look and this takes away from the intention of my designs being very natural and scrapbook styled. In addition, the font is not thick enough and some letters do not seem to fit withthe remainder of the font, I will probably avoid using this font in my development work.
This font, although having the appearence of being handwritten, appears very scruffy and does not fit with the kind of thing I am looking for in my designs. The crosses on the lager letters are far too overexagerate and the uppercase letters are a little too big. In addition to this, the letters are not bold enough and in some cases difficult to read so for this reason I probably won’t use this font.
This is a really nice alternative to the font above, although it is not joined up, it still has a very natural flow to it and the style of teh font contrasts with that of the font above. It may be an option to combine the two as though two different people have taken notes or alternatively just experiment with both fonts and see which fits best in the design I am working with.
Despite my previous font experiments I still decided to use the font I had said would not work. As you can see in the design it looks far too digitalised. This particular design was jsut a mock up and is not particularly well composed, the text comes off the bottom of the designated area, the flowers and masking tape are disproportionate and the overall design is too small.
This font is better, but still not the best it could be, I experimented with writing on the masking tape as I had seen in the research I did of scrapbooking. I think this could be really effective if developed and taken forward. This image has far too much space in the bottom left and appears empty, also the daisies should stay in the secition to the left rather than overlapping.
The design on the left was the original mock up of this piece, I thought that the centralised writing did not resemble how writing in a sketchbook would look as you would not centralise your notes. For this reason I changed this. I also reduced the opacity of the masking tape across the flowers as it was taking away the detail of the petals, I reduced the size of the petals to make them more proportionate and aso centralised them a little more to fill the pagge more efficiently.
I am not happy with the composition of this design as tehre is far too much space around the text and imagery. The layout looks messy and unorganised and there is not enough information or content to work with. I think this could be improved by adding some layers and texture as well as filling it out with a bit more information.
This composition is much more effective as there is much more information and detail filling the page, giving the viewer more to look at. It could still be tweaked slightly however the layout is much more interesting than the one to the left.
In this design I moved the text onto the area with the flowers to create space on the right hand side as it had become too crowded. I also moved the flower in the top light so that it is nolonger overlapping the masking tape and rearranged a few of the flowers in the rest of the design, spacing them better.
I then reduced the size of the dasies so that they fit better in the composition. I removed two of the flowers so that the design wasnt so busy and also moved about the text and flowers a little.
I do like the effect of the text going in different directions however I felt that it filled the page better and was more aesthetically pleasing facing the right way so I rotated that. I made all of the text bigger to futher benefit the viewer and also fill some of the space on the page and I also moved the dancing lady flower and added a title to finish the composition.
I decided for my outcome to be a set of the three designs that I finalised, however once I had put them together I wasn’t 100% happy with them as a set due to the varying colours and font sizes. On the following page is my final outcome where I have added titles to each and altered the background colours, I recreated the two designs on the left using a similar layout however I repositioned the text and tweaked the layout a little so that it was the best it could be. The designs look really effective together after the changes had been made and I think the outcome is really strong overall.