Activities: Week 1
Colour wheels & Bauhaus squares
Before attempting to paint a colour wheel, I wanted to understand the colour relationships better. I found a colour wheel guide on Delux. Although fairly basic, it explains the relationships and connections well.
https://www.dulux.com.au/how-to/how-to-use-colour/how-to-use-a-colour-wheel/
https://www.dulux.com.au/how-to/how-to-use-colour/how-to-use-a-colour-wheel/
As a first step, I recreated a digital colour wheel to help match up analogue paint colours
Attempted the colour wheel a few times, Had a few issues getting to grips with acrylic paint. 2nd colour wheel attempt is better, but greyscales are a little unbalanced in shade. Colours were really hard to get right, especially the secondary/tertiary blues to reds.
Had more success with painting the Bauhaus squares using acrylic, especially with the 6 themes.
Collage composition activity
Themes:
Threatening
Storm at Sea
Sensual
Autumn
Mumbai
On the Ice Shelf
Threatening
Storm at Sea
Sensual
Autumn
Mumbai
On the Ice Shelf
Digital Activity
1. Scale (using Helvetica)
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With scale, I wanted to produce letterforms that showed decreasing size as the distance progresses. Using perspective worked well for this. Tried having the letters different shades of magenta, but ultimately kept them all the same colour for uniformity/consistency
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2. Playful (using Calibri)
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With playful, colour plays an important part, more so than the actual font. Chose to use Calibri, as the font has a softness to it unlike the others; perfect for playful. Kept the background white, with all emphasis on the letters being bright, bold colours. C's arranged at the bottom to represent trampolines, so it looks like the other letters are bouncing in mid air.
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2. Power (using Myriad Pro)
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With power, it's important to show dominance using letterforms, so the A towers over the U. used a V to add a lighting effect behind. Colour again is equally important. Comic books of the past used to use mainly primary colour palettes with certain superheroes (Spiderman, Superman) to portray a sense of power and righteousness (see below).
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Examples of comic books using the primary colours:
4. Pattern (using Clarendon)
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For pattern, I've decided to play around with font positioning to create pattern from the shapes. Just moving around different characters can give some fancy patterns, especially when using symmetry. Originally wanted all text to be on a white background, but the white wasn't doing the text justice, so inverted the black characters and white background.
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Interestingly, it was bugging me where I had seen the Clarendon font being used in the real world (particularly with the letter S). Upon looking, discovered that the technology conglomerate Sony uses a version of the font extensively for their branding.
5. Feminine (using Bodoni)
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For feminine, the Bodoni font seemed the best fit. Oddly the italic variant of Bodoni doesn't match the rest of the weights, however this worked greatly as it has a better curvature to the font vs regular. Originally was going to have the characters different shades of pastels, but using the colours on the background seems to sit better with the whole narrative.
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6. Masculine (using Rockwell)
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I decided very early on that I would use the Rockwell font for masculine - it seems so befitting. Rockwell has a certain heft to it, which is perfect for the topic. Colour wise I chose a deep contrasting blue as a background with predominately complimentary colours, with white as the contrast. The palette has a patriotic feel to it, which wasn't intended but it does seem to fit the idea of masculinity.
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I setup a separate sheet with colour palettes and fonts on, just so I could get a idea of what font to use with which colours.
ACTIVITIES: Week 2 (Book Covers)
Research
El Lissitzky, Russian Artist (Constructivism movement), 1890-1941
Graphic Design Pieces
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Russian Constructivism
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Russian Avant-Garde
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Typographic-heavy Pieces
Experimentation - El Lissitzky style
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Lissitzky's work is quite easy to recreate using digital technology. His work is quite simplified, and appears to be more composition based rather than technical. The 'barcode' texture used on some squares is the only contradictory piece of technical on the image; recreating this would have taken considerably more time.
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Recreation of Broom vol.5, no.4 1923. Used the words 'cumbria uni' and a more different typeset to add a modern spin on constructivism. Letters laid out differently to accommodate more characters.
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Vaughan Oliver, British Graphic Designer, 1957-2019
Interview (Snub TV), 1990
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Experimentation - Vaughan Oliver
For Oliver, felt it's important to use some form of textures. Spent some time finding different textures to use on the final outcome
Recreations using Adobe Photoshop
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I've used the textures that Oliver would use along with composition of different objects and space. Concentrated on playing with the background rather than fiddling with text, as getting textures to work together is complicated compared to text overlays.
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Peter Grundy, British Infographic Designer
Grundy design booklets
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Experimentation - Grundy style
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Recreated the flat front-on perspective effect used by grundy using a different object (orange). Effect is difficult with fully circular objects, as it appears to elongate the upper circle.
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This style of Grundy really suits my own style. miminalistic and flat. Grundy tends to lean towards composition over complexity similar to Lissitzky.
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Week 2: Outcomes
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Really happy with all three outcomes. Feel that they all capture the essence of each artist's style well.
PROJECT 4: Storytelling
Research
Imagery from various typography books
Dani Molyneux
Viktor Hertz
Jon Hicks
Development
Booklet thumbnails
Graphics created for booklet
Initial Draft
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Project 4: Final outcome
Good Technology Booklet
In the end, I decided on changing the colour scheme to a limited pallette, as the use of a full colour range made the booklet appear a bit disorganised. Selected black, red and white as they have a good composition when used together (and also, because 'red' guitars).
Feedback response
It was noted that there wasn't enough variation in colour throughout the booklet, so I wanted to play with the colours once again. From the initial draft It was obvious that too many colours made it look jarring, so instead of reverting to a full colour pallet, I'm going to try adding just one more colour (yellow) to the White/Red/Black scheme, at different points to create interest, along with using a CMYK colour palette.
White/Yellow/Red/Black Palette
Adding yellow as an accent to most pages has helped to add focal points to the booklet, without overpowering the composition, however the full yellow page appears slightly out of place when flicking through the pages. Featured on the 7th page is also a splash of purple in the electronic items, a subtle change to break up the colour.
CMYK Colour Palette
I wasn't expecting much from using the CMYK colour palette, but it actually looks quite good. It was challenging to get certain colours to sit next to each other (yellow and white), however overall the booklet appears coherent. The tv is the only place where a different palette was used, styled in the colours of RGB (did this as tv's don't use CMYK colour models). It's also the focal point of the booklet.