Dark (KitKat)

Category: Gothic

Production: Block/Silicone

Classification: Semi Serif

Character: Shadowy, Simple, Modern

Kit Kat

Category: Gothic

Production: Lead/Wood Block

Classification: Serif

Character: Bright, Bevelled, Tall

Jammie Dodgers

Category: Script

Production: Silicone

Classification: Sans Serif

Character: Bold, Wide, Fun

Chocolate Cake

Category: Gothic

Production: Lead Block

Classification: Sans Serif

Character: Modern, Simple, Rounded

Mini Rolls

Category: Script

Production: Silicone

Classification: Sans Serif

Character: Fun, Rounded, Playful

Cake Shop

Category: Script

Production: Sable

Classification: Sans Serif

Character: Dark, Fun, Playful

Oat Cakes

Category: Gothic

Production: Lead Block

Classification: Sans Serif

Character: Plain, Simple, Readable

Ready Salted

Category: Roman

Production: Stone

Classification: Serif

Character: Plain, Simple, Generic

Jumbo Hot Dogs (Mmmmmm)

Category: Roman

Production: Stone/Sable

Classification:  Serif

Character: Big, Bright, Clear

Frosties

Category: Gothic

Production: Silicone

Classification: Sans Serif

Character: Playful, Fun, Narrow

Bisto

Category: Roman

Production: Wood Block

Classification: Serif

Character: Large, Loud, Simple

Salt Container

Category: Script

Production: Bone

Classification: Sans Serif

Character: Light, Playful, Simple

Quote Poster

Category: Gothic

Production: Lead Block/Silicone

Classification: Sans Serif

Character: Laid Back, Tall, Bold

Quote Poster

Category: Gothic/Blackletter

Production: Silicone

Classification: Sans Serif

Character: Plain, Computerised, Quirky

Anti Anti Gay Law Poster

Category: Gothic

Production: Lead Block

Classification: Sans Serif

Character: Bright, Bold, Narrow

Quote Poster

Category: Script

Production: Sable

Classification: Serif

Character: Shiny, Dark, Narrow

LCA Creative Commute Poster

Category: Gothic

Production: Lead Block

Classification: Sans Serif

Character: Calm, Dull, Simple

FIFA 13

Category: Gothic

Production: Lead Block

Classification: Sans Serif

Character: Simple, Fun, Narrow

Mario and Sonic

Category: Gothic

Production: Silicone

Classification: Sans Serif

Character: Bright, Loud, Fun

Risk

Category: Roman

Production: Wood Block/Silicone

Classification: Serif

Character: Bold, Wide, Powerful

Monopoly

Category: Gothic

Production: Lead Block

Classification: Sans Serif

Character: Simple, Clear, Wide

Cluedo

Category: Gothic

Production: Lead/Wood Block

Classification: Sans Serif

Character: Bold, Clear, Fun

Yahtzee

Category: Gothic

Production: Silicon

Classification: Sans Serif

Character: Fun, Bold, Loud

Film Poster - Final Crit

This morning was the final crit for the film poster brief, my final poster is shown below. I really enjoyed this crit, as I feel that this is the first crit I've had this year where I've genuinely gone into it feeling confident that my work was suitable and was as good as it can be, which I think shows my progression from the beginning of the year from when I used to be intimidated by crits. It also helped that everyone else's work was fantastic as well. 

I gave a brief synopsis of the film and spoke about how each of is identities were necessary for certain things to be achieved in his plan, and the only thing that brought them together was the fact they all wore glasses, which is one of the things you associate with assassins. I also spoke about how I liked the theory behind Bill Golds use of text in his posters and how I wanted to implement it in my work.

Questions About Design Decisions

This was the first crit I've had where I've felt like people have asked questions out of intrigue as apposed to being out of criticism, but I see this more as a reflection of my work than my course mates. 

I was asked about my choice of colour and choice of font. With regards to colour I spoke about how I needed to use something neutral for the hair as each identity had different coloured hair, and by keeping it consistent you bring the identities together as one person. I also wanted something quite cold to reflect the heartlessness and brutality of the character, so grey naturally leant itself well to these requirements. This then left the text and glasses needing to be the same colour, which meant I couldn't pick a vivid or vibrant colour, as I didn't want the text to overshadow the other use of the colour because I wanted the glasses to be the iconic bit. It also had to be a colour with a darker tone than the grey. It seemed like the natural and most sensible choice was black because not only did it fit these requirements, but it complimented the cold feel of the grey by keeping the poster monochromatic. 

I chose to use Helvetica as my font because like I spoke about with colour, I needed something simple so the text didn't overshadow the glasses. I also wanted a font that's cap height was the same as the ascender height, as this keeps the text looking tidier which aids me in not detracting from the glasses. I experimented using Gotham as well, but it seemed a bit too wide to me whereas the shape of the text fitted the shape of the hair more when I used Helvetica.

General Feedback

The feedback I was given was very complimentary in general. People said that:

• I'd communicated something about the film in a discrete way as opposed to going down the obvious assassin route of using guns etc. 
• It was good that I'd been influenced by existing work but not to the point where I'd just straight up copied it.
• They could tell that time had been spent adjusting the composition.
• The general feel of the poster reflects the general feel of the film, and that I'd got the poster spot on.

In truth, I'm very pleased with my poster and was hoping for good feedback because I felt I deserved it, but it went a lot better than I thought it would.

Studio Brief 2 - Spreads 2 and 3

Today I did more work on my spreads for Brief 2. I started

the hue and tone page. I started by adding two circles and

 two lines as guides to use for my layout, but I soon found

that the thumbnail I'd decided to use was impossible to

implement onto my grid because the splitting of each page

into 3 sections completely goes against the separation of

the grid into 4 rows as shown below. Hence I will have to

re-think this page completely.

The grid system page was a lot easier to produce, as the

content I have fits the thumbnail I produced perfectly, even

down to the amount of text I'd gathered fitting the sizes of

my modules well.

1 Day Branding Brief.

Today we were put in groups and had to re-brand one of Leeds Uniteds sponsors. We were given Enterprise Insurance, a fairly dull insurance company, as shown by their website below.

 In all honesty, we spent far too long discussing what our logo to should be given what we ended up with, a dogs head, but the concept was strong.

The dog is a symbol of trust, as dog is a mans best friend, and it is important that a customer should trust their insurance company. We chose a Golden Retriever specifically, as they are European dogs and the company is a European company, they are also used as guide dogs, which builds on the element of trust.

Unfortunately, we spent so long on the dog, that we didn't really do much application of the brand. We showed the logo on the Leeds shirt, the website, and a letter.

Studio Brief 2 - Finalising My Grid and the First Spread

Today I created my grid from this exercise in InDesign. The result was this.

Initially I was happy with this, but then when I tested the rows using placeholder

text, I discovered that the text didn't align horizontally across the rows, which is

something I was upset with as a bit of a perfectionist, as shown below.

To get around this I had 2 options. The first was to change the font size and/or

leading of the text to make them align, but I'd already decided that 10pt text was

the size I wanted to use, and the 10pt leading fits that nicely. So I had to take up

the second option, which was to alter my grid slightly so that they aligned.

The above image shows how the text looks when it's all aligned. I also out in some

headings to make sure the body didn't encroach too much on them, and I was happy

with this, so my final grid is shown below. It isn't much different, I've just adjusted the

horizontals above and below the automatic row lines. 

As you can see, there's no immediately noticeable difference.

I only realised the difference this made when I added the content for my first spread.

I'd checked that body copy didn't encroach on the sub-headings, but I hadn't checked

if images encroached or not. I soon found that they did, as shown below.

The obvious solution to this was to make sure that I stuck to my initial grid when it

comes to images, which I reverted too below, and as you can see, it looks a lot

better due to the lack of encroachment.

Film Poster - Improving My Vectors

This morning I've been trying again to improve the vectors for my poster. I'd previously had no success in trying to improve them digitally, so I tried improving them manually.

I started by drawing each character again using a variety of styles. I used black pen because I wanted to try and re-create roughly how it'd look when it was printed, and to further this I drew them at the same scale as they would've been when screen printed. The problem that arose from this were that the only black pens I had were either fineliners or sharpies, which meant either the lines were too thin to realistically attempt screen printing or were too thick to provide real detail. On top of this, I had massive problems fitting the pen lines on top of the existing vector because I'd drawn them independently of each other.

Also, the large amount of black in the hair lessened the impact the glasses had on the poster, which is something I desperately wanted to avoid. Because of this I decided to try another method.

I drew on top of the print-out I'd used for the crit, but I used a red pen instead, purely because it was of a thickness in between that of a sharpie and a fineliner. This way I hoped to get more detail without the lines being too fine, whilst at the same time I knew the detail would match the original vectors because they'd been used as a base.

But even then I wasn't happy with the results that produced.

So I decided to go back to using a digital method to improve my vectors, and just put highlights on myself, as this way I could control the thickness myself, the results of which are below.

I'm unsure on if I like this sort of style yet or not. I think it looks quite over-developed by itself, but it gives me a lot more room to play with layout and composition, as using this sort of style will allow my to overlay the characters hair without them looking like they've merged, as the highlight breaks up the block colours. Using white instead of black also stops the black of the glasses from loosing their impact. On top of this it would make the screen printing process simpler as well. I'll make my decision of weather to use them or not based on composition, which is going to be the next stage of my development.

Film Poster - Improving My Vectors

Building on yesterdays crit, today I started looking at ways to improve my vectors for the film poster idea that I'm carrying forward. I spoke to the IT Technicians about this and the way they suggested I do it was this:

Crop down the image to the area you want to focus on

and make it black and white and use the levels and curves

to try and create variation in the light and dark patches in

the hair.

 Rub out the rest of the image and the use the cutout filter

to reduce the number of colours in the hair.

Take that into Illustrator and vectorise it. It's important to

do it manually as opposed to using live trace though, as live

trace makes it just black and white, you lose the light and

dark and end up with a silhouette.

This method seems ok, but isn't really what I was after, as it didn't really show enough detail to overlap the silhouettes because there's still a lot of block colour involved. Another problem this threw is up is that you have to have good quality images to start with, which meant that I wasn't able to apply this method to all my images for a few reasons. 

1. The image on the left is too dark. I couldn't get a better image of that particular disguise, and so I would be very limited to how I could develop that image.
2. The character in the central image never has his full hair in shot unless he's stood at a distance, meaning I couldn't get a good screenshot.
3. The character in the image on the right is only ever looking down the camera in this scene, where there's some tinted glass over his head, which again limits what I could do on photoshop. 

I looked online for tutorials on how to create hair in illustrator and only ended up being dis-heartened. Most of them were on how to create vector art, which doesn't have to two colour restriction, or were very extravagant and were completely inappropriate for me to try to create given the time scale and my limited skill/knowledge of illustrator.

Clearly improving my vectors directly on the computer isn't going to improve them in any sort of way in the time scale I have available.