Indesign 2 , Year 2

Typography and Layout 2

for this workshop we set out to create a series of posters using typographic styles to communicate a certain feeling to the audience. we were given different sets of rules to follow for each poster and had to design them as quickly and as effectively as possible. our first session focused on how typefaces can effect different mood and now this session focused on bringing this into practice via a series of briefs

Brief 1:

An established acoustic night that has been running for over 10 years, wants to attract a more student led audience and new acts. “Acoustic Club” is a laid back, respected night for gigging musicians, novices and people who play every week or every now and then.

Not just one type of music is played, so we need to look at something that is representative of acoustic sound and the variety of the people who play here. Capturing the laid back mood is important and that it is an open mic format. 

i chose to use the simplistic shapes to create the body of an acoustic guitar , the bar plays varied types of acoustic music therefore i used to simple but recognisable shape that wasn't bias to any specific genre. i ordered the type with the venue being the biggest as it is important that the venue catches your eye , then the event title , followed by location information. this is because the first largest type should attract the audience enough to read the rest of the poster.

Brief 2:

The Hudders eld Craft Beer Expo 2017 takes place for the rst time next year! Featuring the best independent
brewers from all around the UK, this new festival will aim to attract beer lovers from around the North of the country — we want to look cool, friendly and fresh. 

For this design i stuck to two colours . i picked the pale orange colour as it is a very common colour in beers and ales. i layered the orange type upon the main text as it felt like it was filling the text like a glass. i attempted to create a bottle out of type however i felt that it didn't look very effective and was a very common idea amongst the group. if the poster was a final production i would have the orange part printed on by a letter press to get a craft hand made feel to the poster.

Brief 3:

A poster to advertise “Wilson's Republic 6: ”; a design network for Hudders eld. The audience for this are very

design literate, and you need to attract them whilst also creating something that ts within the style of the previous event posters.

The overall theme for the evening and talks is: "Resilience". 

The concept for this design was that Resilience means to bounce back or change to suit conditions. i chose to use a red ball , the colour of Wilson's republic , to depict this. i chose the 3 different size balls to show the motion of the ball bouncing like a burst image.

Studio Project 2

Brief 2

For a second brief of the year we were presented with a choice of live briefs , these briefs were set by YCN and the RSA and involve real life briefs from companies that involve students from national universities designing to win placements and prizes but most importantly to get their name out in the industry.

I took a look at both websites to gain an inside into what i wanted to look further into:

YCN
These Briefs were all heavily linked into industry and involved a more graphic design approach , most of the briefs were about packaging , campaigns or social media involvement.The briefs that stood out to me the most were;

Greenalls Gin - Creating a campaign involving classic British moments and gin.

Orchard Pig - Using Social Media to make the brand known as the only craft cider

The Grown UP Chocolate Company - create packaging for a personalised chocolate range

RSA
The RSA was more focused on creating a product to tackle environment or ecological issues. These briefs were of higher standard and you had to pay to enter however this award was more recognisable and was worth more in the long run. i looked over these briefs however i felt that non jumped off the page.

http://www.ycn.org/awards/ycn-student-awards

http://sda.thersa.org 

Business Lecture 4 , Year 2

Buyer Behaviour/ Business Issues

To Start this lecture off we were shown various advertisements that thought outside the box , these ways of advertising products were smart and involved using the surroundings to their advantage , this showed us that advertising doesn't always has to be print based through flyers or billboards and can be done smarter , this would achieve better connection with an audience. One of my favourite examples of this was the Rimmel - Quick Dry nail polish. The designer had created a surreal piece of art which looked like the the bottle was floating , the message it was trying to get across that the nail polish would dry as soon as it left the bottle! (as shown below)

Buyer Behaviour is how the buyer thinks before they purchase a product and how we can tailor a product to spark various points in this buyer behaviour resulting in a purchase.The chart below shows how the mind process flows within every buyer.

Buyer issues showed us that certain things can effect the buyers behaviour weather this be age or even mental issues, These factors can effect the demand for certain products but also create gaps for new productions to be tailored around these issues.

Process and Production 2 , After Effects 2

Rotoscope technique

This workshop focused on rotoscoping. Rotoscoping is one of the oldest forms of animation. traditionally It involves live action images to have a light shone through them to allow the animator to draw over them , multiple images could be use so the animator can trace movement of the character or object easily. Although this was a successful early form of animation it proved to be very time consuming and was quickly replaced by easier and more advanced methods.

Personally i struggled with this workshop , i feel that this was because it was a more complex form of animation and i was used to animating using simple vectors and path techniques. The creation process involved using a piece of video that we had recorded of a movement and turning it into a rotarscope effect animation. One of the main reasons i struggled was because the video i used involved complex movement. if i was house this technique again i would use a more simple movement to allow myself to concentrate on getting the detail of the masking.

The process involved using the pen tool to create a mask on each frame of the video , once the figure was naked out i would move onto the next frame and so on for the rest of the clip. After effects generates the movement between the masks on each frame to allow the masks movement to flow smoothly between frames. Once the whole clip was masked we used different textures to get a background and a texture for the character. 


Rotarscope from Ben Moulson on Vimeo.

Seminar 3, Year 2

The Research Question

This lecture focused on identifying the research question for our presentation. After a weeks think when struggling to produce a point of research i have finally selected 'How did Russian Propaganda in the 20th century influence modern graphic design?'. I felt that this subject had a lot of history to it and has very direct links to modern design , it is also a subject that I'm not very familiar with therefore will give me to opportunity to discover new things.

I had a quick research into the propaganda and found:

Alexander Rodchenko

http://assets.thecreatorsproject.com/blog_article_images/images/000/038/735/COnstructivism3_detail_em.jpg?1354569682

Shepard Fairey

http://www.geekexpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/SFUADMural-1.jpg

Self Publishing 1 , Year 2

Drawing Skills 

This Process and production session focused on Zine illustrations. The Zine 'Short for Magazine' Involves a group of people or a single person creating a publication that can contain anything. Zines are not regulated by an editor and are usually published to convey self expression about an issue or event thats happening. Zines are normally non profit or are very cheap. A traditional Zine would be created on paper then be photocopied and duplicated as a low expense way of producing multiple copies.

I wanted to create a zine that had a very quirky and different feel , lots of zines have little stories which is what i wanted to create. My story was about Dogspotting: A large Facebook group that involves people taking pictures of dogs and rating them online. I felt that this had enough illustrative value for me to create an effective zine. 
The GIF below shows my publication.

I thought that my zine was visually connecting with the audience and looked good to the eye. I used different shapes to create an abstract feeling to the background. If i was to improve anything it would be my typography skills , i feel that when drawing quick typefaces my style can be sloppy and not look perfected , although i had little time to complete this it is something i will need to look out for in the future.

Studio project 1 , Session 3

Studio Session 3 - Development

This studio session focused on developing our ideas further. By this point we should have got an idea what we wanted our project to look like and what we needed to do to work towards the final outcome. In the seminar we were required to present sketches or a mock up of vaguely what our design should look like.

Above is my mockup that i created , the images i used were stock images however in my final pieces i will be taking my own images with models and editing them in a similar way. when i presented this mockup it received very positive feedback , praising its originality and that the concept of the idea was easy to understand but had technical. something i was given to improve on was how could i make each piece different , could they have different personalities? 

To expand on this session i have got the studio booked to take photographs of different models and equipment that should be ready for next week for final hand in. i have also created a research and development booklet to support my ideas. My final piece will be printed.