Design Skills Brief 3 - OUGD403

BRIEF - To design a typeface and six other glyphs that represent the character of a chosen partner. I will need to select a typeface that represents him and manipulate this so it portrays his character. 

My partner is Neil Gilchrist. After looking back at my research on him, I started to look into possible designs that could represent him:

For this idea above, I was thinking about how Neil is laid back and so thought of something simple. I have slanted the stems backwards to try and show this but I don't know if this is too simple to take forward and if it needs something else? I will need to experiment further.  

After looking at my research into painted signs, I took the idea on how some letters have a drop shadow painted on and so played around with this concept. It would show Neil's interest well however I am not sure whether this would work digitally or just look child like.

Above, I tried looking into the flow of painted letters and seeing if I could represent this. I do not like the result as I do not think it looks professional. It would also not work as a full typeface. This is the same for the idea below, I worked from one of Neil's favourite typeface but I do not like the end result as I think it looks childish. 

Below, are my favourite ideas so far. I was again looking into painted letters but others ways I could show this. I thought of adding a flourish on the stem on the 'H' which works well and then adding serifs on the other letters which made them more informal. I made them with a curve to try and represent the paint movement but also to relax them to try and show Neil' s personality.  

I then tried making the typeface more informal by curving the end of the stem. It also has the idea of not been reliable as the type could not stand up to show one of the characteristics Neil mentioned:

Again another concept on trying to make the type seem more friendly, by shorting the stem and making the bowls smaller:

Work after my Interim Critique:

After my critique, the overall feedback was not very helpful as all my research was on my blog. I was not aware this needed to be on design sheets. Although this was not very helpful with feedback it has alerted me to be prepared for any type of critique and will need to start creating design boards for these situations. From my feedback however, I started to develop and experiment combing two ideas which lead me on to developing my final: 

Above, I started thinking about having a shadow on the letter. The concept being, not only does this show the old style lettering which I found from my research, I also think it shows how Neil is laid-back, by having the shadow set back from the original letter. I decided to drop the opacity to show his introvert and quiet side of his personality. 

I then thought about my feedback and how it was decided to keep the serifs. The concept behind this was again looking at Neil's passion for old style lettering and this is a popular technique used. I added the flourish in the middle of the stem to create this concept. 

I thought about other positions for the serifs and how this would work for other letters:

I decided to combine the two as I think they work quite well together and visually communicate the side of Neil I am trying to get across:

 

Thinking back to the kind of typography Neil likes, it was all very chunky and bold and I could see a consistent theme. With this is mind, I tried to represent this further by making the two layers 3D like and giving them definition to show his interest in bold type. 

Final and Evaluation 

Below is my final typeface for Neil, I carried on the layers and serif theme onto all the letters and glyphs. I feel the shadow of the letter could stand out more but maybe this shows his quiet side more effectively? I think the overall concept works well with what I focused on with Neil's personality, and visually communicates this.

I think it especially works well with the drop shadow with the tracing paper:

I asked Neil's opinion on the typeface and what his feedback is:

- He thinks it is done well and it is a good representation of the painted signs

- That it looks elegant

- Thinks the drop shadow works well

Another part of the brief was to create a name badge for Neil with my finished typeface. I started developing possible ideas for this. I started off by slanting the type as most of the painted signs I looked at in my research were not straight. I also wanted to represent some of his personality within the badge and so thought of possible shapes I could use. I decided to try and represent a hexagon type shape as this is his favourite shape and explore the use of orange as this is his favourite colour:

 

This is my final name badge. I decided to go with the plain black and grey so it linked in with the full typeface. I also decided to use the rectangle rather than the hexagon as it was more suitable for a name badge:

 

Design Skills Brief 2 - OUGD403

BRIEF - To take one of my ten finished letterforms from Brief 1 and digitally enhance it further to create a full typeface. 

Below is my chosen letter I will be further manipulating into a typeface as decided in my critique:

Illustrator Workshop

Session 1 - In the first session of the illustrator workshops, it was purely learning the basics of the programme. For me, this session was not really helpful as I already knew what the session was going over, although I did understand the point of it. We was introduced to the pen tool and was given a couple of tasks to practise with it:

Session 2 - In this sessions I found it more interesting as I learnt some shortcuts and techniques that I had not previously known. Although to start with we where looking at the pathfinder tool which I have had previous experience with and so did not learn much with this:

A new technique I learnt, was how to create your own brush stroke. I found this interesting to learn as I now know this is an option for future work and a new technique I could use: 

Below we were looking at the rotate tool. I was always aware of this but wasn't fully sure on how to use it. After the session I am now confident with using it:

Looked into the live paint tool which will always be useful when working with colour:

After I had a few illustrator tutorials and as I was quite confident with the software anyway, I started to develop my letter form. I wasn't sure whether I should keep the design how it originally looked or whether to develop it further. I started by sketching some ideas and then scanning and digitising these in illustrator to see the result: 

I tried showing the 'forces' by including arrows on the letters. I also lessened the letter so it had a very thin line weight. I do not think this idea is visually effective and feel my original piece suited the concept better.

I again tried a thin line weight to what I had originally planned and tried the letter as a single line form. I do like the overall look but again, I feel my original letter above suites what am I trying to communicate the most effectively. I feel this is due to the idea below not communicate a force or showing the letter is coming away from itself. 

After today's illustrator sessions I started creating my full typeface with my chosen piece from my 10 letterforms. I decided to keep the original design from Brief 1 as it was the most effective. Below I have started on creating a couple of letters and now will start to develop more of them:

I have begun more letterforms but focused on the straight structured letters first. I have found it difficult to create the rounded letters as when using the pen tool I tend to make them out of proportion. I am going to use the last illustrator tutorial to ask about technique and see where I am going wrong:

The main problem I have faced when digitising the typeface was creating the rounded letters. As shown  below, I have not been able to get the hang of rounding letters and have needed to practise this over the weeks in the illustrator tutorials. The problem when creating the letter is it has a dint in them:

I also struggled with showing them in proportion, with this 'Q', I tried copying and pasting a correct curved line and the overall look came out completely wrong:

However, after the tutorial sessions and after practising on a previous pen tool task we were given, I managed to get the right look I wanted for rounded edged letters and so could start developing the typeface as a whole:

Final and Evaluation

This is my final typeface. It shows the forces within physics, represented by the gaps in the letterforms trying to show the letter pulling away from itself. I feel it overall works okay, but if I developed this further, I would consider trying to represent the letters in a 3d physical representation instead of printed. I feel it could communicate my word more clearly if developed but it was the most effective out of my ten letterforms to take forward for the creation of a full typeface.

 I also played around with this slightly with the idea of a 3d physical representation using tracing paper but again it did not entirely communicate what I intended:

  

Introduction Brief.

BRIEF - To think of 20 problems a freshers could encounter when moving or starting university in Leeds. 

Following on from our brainstorms we started thumb nailing possible ideas for flyer's playing around with layout and deciding whether we have type, image or both.

 

We started to talk about flyer's as a group, so I started thinking about possible folds we could try to make the product more interesting. I tired out a few, the first is a book like fold which I though could be quite nice:

Another one I tried out way a triangular type fold out, which I really liked and thought would work extremely well and with it being different could attract students as something new. However when I tried showing the rest of the group I don't think most either heard or saw this.

 However they did see this mock-up I created, I do not think it is interesting as the others as I think the majority of flyer's out there would be made like this however the rest of the group liked this idea and so we are going for this type of flyer below to show 'How to work with and meet new people':

After we all settled on a fold out flyer, we looked at research and the majority vote was trying out the black and white photography with the colour / text overlay and so half the group went out and took photos around the university that would illustrate are contents for the booklet. The photos then were turned into black and white, shown below:

Then we tried the overlaying onto the photos which worked quite well in a variety of colours, I think the opacity within these is right and it works but we felt the bolder colours stood out more and would be the best to use for when we applied the body copy.

We then made a start developing our pages. We made a master template for one and then re-used this for the other pages. On a majority vote we had decided to do alternate pages of photography and plain pages so it wouldn't look too crowded, which turned out to work quite well. I feel at this stage the blocks of colour need to link more together and need to be in colour also.

On the reverse side of are information, quite early on in the designing process we had decided to place a poster as a incentive for students to keep the product. There was a difference when it came too designing the poster. The left was taking all the colours used and playing with negative space and the other (right) would be the same as the front cover of the flyer/booklet so it all links together. We all decided the poster showed below, right would be the best one to go for.

 We also changed the 'How to...' to 'The How to of Netwoking'

After are Interim Crit we made the necessary changes to are booklet.

After we had finalised are design we started to think about printing and what kind of paper would be appropriate for are flyer but we also had to think it doubled up as a poster too and so we tested out a series of different stock:

Matt (Thick) & Sugar Paper

Normal Paper & Matt (Thin)

Above are our four different experiments on different paper. We tried out a sugar paper due to seeing a flyer done on this in out research and though it would suite it well however as shown the poster side looks washed out and unattractive compared to the matt paper but I personally did not like the booklet side on this.

Also with the sugar paper, due to us wanting to print doubled sided the paper was getting too wet and so was ripping - this then decided for us to print the final on matt.

Final and Evaluation

Below are pictures of are final piece. Overall I think the colours have come out well but I feel the booklet side looks too bright and perhaps there is too much body copy on it which if we could refine it we probably would have changed this. I think all in all it has come out okay and answered the brief.