Proposal

To make us make decisions Amber made us write our proposal for this project which we have to stick to as best we can, it is better to make wrong decisions rather than no decisions at all. This is what I have proposed I will do for this brief, lets hope it was the right decision!

Opposites

 Definition of Opposite

Lots of Opposites

Opposites as told by the famous amongst us.

Design Is About Doing. Letter, Word, Sentence, Paragraph.

http://www.graphiccompetitions.com/jump.php?contest=typography-design-call-for-entries

For our first brief of OUGD103 we have been set a live brief for HOW publishers, its for a book being published in 2012 called 'Letter, Word, Sentence, Paragraph'. Our brief is to produce three posters visually investigating opposities through typography.

Screen Printing

For the Book Arts Fair in March I decided to screen print my books, my word was squares so I took that idea and looked at famous squares around the world. I spent two days learning how to screen print and this is a few photos from the process. We have to make 10 books so I have decided to do five different colours, doing two books in each colour. I will post more photos as the book develops.

Drawings for square book

 Prague

 Madrid

 Venice

 London

 China

 New York

This is how I need to print out my drawings to that when the booked is folded all the images are the correct way round.

Collection 100-Evaluation

1.  What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?

Skills I think I have developed throughout this module is the ability to develop ideas more, try out different processes and ideas so I develop a range of ideas through my project. For example in this project I learnt how to knit and to use quick time to make a stop frame, even though I didn’t use those processes for my final outcome, they are skills I now have. I think I have learnt a lot about time management during this brief, I prefer short briefs so I think my skills for assessing how long to spend on certain things and how long things actually take have improved through this module.

2. What approaches to/methods of research have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?

This module I think I have used a lot more resources when doing my research, I looked at a lot more books, not books you would necessarily relate to graphic design but helped my project, for example I looked at knitting pattern books, which then lead on to making info graphics. My primary research improved from the last module, I spoke to a lot more people, I e-mailed people I found on the internet which helped my development in this project a lot.

3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these? 

Strengths I can identify in my work is that I tried to do something different, I took the idea of info graphics but wanted to do something different with it. I have learnt in this module that it is okay to do different types of work, just because everyone else is working on the computer doesn’t mean I have to so I am going to continue with that throughout other modules and not be scared to try something new and different.

4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these more fully?

I think weaknesses in my work is that I took to long to make decisions which means that my work lacked in attention and detail as I didn’t leave enough time to do what I wanted. I also think I had to many ideas and I couldn’t decided on one. Next time I need to take an idea and go with it, it comes to a point in a project where that is what you have to do, you may end up hating it but you have to go with an idea at some point before it gets to late. 

5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these? 

1.    Manage my time better, know how long to spend on each part of a brief and when decisions need to be made, I think by doing this my work will improve.

2.    Do more design sheets and development work, I feel that the more development work and ideas I can produce the better my ideas will become and the further I will be able to push and experiment with my ideas.

3.    Keeping blogging, if I leave my blog then the work all builds up and I have to spend a long time scanning and organising all my work, if I blog my work the day I do it I will be able to keep on top of it all.

4.    I feel like I have improved and used my software skills thing module but I still think I could use it more, I do find Photoshop and Illustrator hard to use and sometimes I get annoyed at it but I think if I keep working at it I hopefully will get better.

5.     

Final Posters

Poster No.4-Layout

These are some of the experiments I did with the placement of text on this poster, these are the ones that I thought worked best, I like the sideways text, this also shows continuity with the the bar chart poster with the vertical text. The poster with the text indside works well with the opposite text colour to the shape colour, I think that is the layout I will use for my final poster.

Poster No.3-layout

The main issue I had with this poster was where to put the text, I tried it in different ways, I thought writing on the bars worked quite well but I thought on a bar chart the information is normally on the side against the axis, I tired writing it there but it didn't really fit and looked messy, so I rotated the text onto its side and lined it up with the appropriate bar and I think that was the design that worked best.

Poster No.2-Layout and Colour

Layout

Unlike the bar chart poster it wasn't so obvious which side the heading should go on this poster as there is equal amount of space on each side of the pie chart. I tried it on both sides and preferred it on the right, this would also keep consistency between the posters.

Colour

 On this poster I used black to show the percentages, this worked well however when it came to the black section of the pie chart the back text did not show up very well.

 I then tried all white which I really liked and showed up well on all the colours apart from the white obviously, which caused another problem.

 I then moved on to a light grey which you could see on all the colours but I didn't think it worked very well, it didn't stand out very well against the background and wasn't very engaging.

 I then changed them all back to white apart from the text on the white square, all the other colours worked and I liked the white text but the grey text still wasn't working.

So in the end I went for all white text apart from the white shape which is black text, I think this design works the best.

Poster No.1-Typeface and Layout

Typeface

                                               Gill Sans                      Helvetica

                                              Georgia                     Century Schoolbook                        
                                               

                                               Futura                               Thonburi

I experimented with different typefaces on my posters, I thought that Sans Serif fonts work best, My favourites are Helvetica and Gill Sans so I will use one of those on my final images, I am also going to experiment with colour, in keeping with the rest of the poster the type will either be black, white or grey.


Heading

 I have experimented with where I should place the heading on my posters, I definitely don't like the text going down the side so that one is out, I think the heading on the right hand side works the best, with the category underneath the heading festive jumpers, however it may not work on my other images so I will place the text on the others and see how it looks and if the design needs to be improved and altered.