Drawing 5 - Constructing Alphabets

This session involved looking further into typography by producing three different rough sketches of typefaces. we would then choose to finalise one of these ideas and produced a refined version of the typography for our final typography session. i enjoyed this task as it allowed me to produce some quick fire typography ideas. this session allowed my mind to work fast and draw freely as the sketches only had to be rough. I made sure the designs i produced were very different styles so i had lots of variation to work with.

 My first rough typeface was very circular based. i wanted to keep all lettering within a 3x3 gridded circle to retain the style. I enjoyed creating this font as it was very different to conventional typefaces. one thing that i struggled with was creating this type quickly producing each letter , this proved to be fairly difficult and took quite long to create. i particularly struggled with getting each part of the circle equally spaced to retain the shapes consistency therefore i will most likely not be continuing with this font style.

 This typeface is a more simplistic Sans serif style , my aim was to not connect any of the parts of the type and use only straight lines and curves to create a sleek looking layout. This type reminds me of something that is stencil based and could be spray painted onto a wall. this font was a lot easier to produce than previous typefaces and i feel that it could be adapted into becoming quite a consistent lettering style.

This is my final typeface that i produced for the quick sketches , i wanted to try a more cartoon style typeface. this font gives off a muddy/slime feel to it , i added lines that made the text look as if it was melting in places. i feel like i will take this font into the final stages as i get the feeling that it could be adapted to different pieces and made into a more refined typeface. when creating it in final form i do need to retain letter sizing and a more consistent build in order to give it its best effect.

this task allowed me to work freely , under no pressure and really get a feel for type design. this was key as been new to type i needed time to get inspiration and explore possibilities. one thing i would like to do is take my type digital and start to play around with it as a vector image.

After Effects 5 - 3D Type

This session was a further development from the last session that looked at a specific typeface. The session began with a video to give us inspiration for our pieces that we were to create. The video 'BBC Today - Stephen Hawing' shows how the camera can be used in after effects to give a sense of motion and atmosphere to the animation. In the Stephen Hawking sequence the camera travels through different words and phrases while also taking us on a journey through , what it looks like , a blackboard full of work.

 

For my own piece i decided to use lyrics from The Smiths song : Still Ill. I didn't try create a specific atmosphere for my own piece as i wanted to focus my attention on learning the new skills with the 3D camera. Before finalising my design it had a very messy feel , i couldn't get my text to align in the final frame due to the camera pacing through the text too quickly. I solved this problem by working backwards and arranging the text before adding the 3D effect.

I felt that the alternative above view came in very handy when creating the animation as you could see the exact motion path of the text as it moved throughout the text. The camera tool came with a series of transformations just like shapes and vectors do. These included options such as Depth of Field , Positioning and zoom.

My own animation consists of the camera moving backwards through the text , i used a depth of field to create an atmosphere when the text passed close over the camera. I used different weights of text to draw attention to specific words. I added the flip transformation to the word 'Mine' to draw attention to it. My favourite part about the animation is how it all sets in to one neatly arranged grid.

If i was to improve this animation i would add a background with a texture as it would add add more of a feel to the animation due to it been basic colours such as black and white. I feel that a photographic or textured background would work effectively , preferably one that would relate to the song.

Drawing 4 - Inspiring type

Moving on from the object drawing we now started to look into typography workshops. This session involved inspiring ourselves to create different styles of type , eventually leading into creating our own alphabet. The session began by picking different illustrations and photographs to base our type on. The image i picked was an illustration of a man with psychedelic hair. I chose this as i felt there was a lot of potential for development , the hair provided flow and could be morphed into various shapes and forms.

We were given the letters ANESG to work with as they provided variation. i used the strands of hair to build up each letter , i made sure they flowed well and retained the style of the original illustration. I then began to adapt the hair to the illustration and started to use typography as the hair of the figure. I feel that one thing i would improve with this piece is colour , the colour adds to the psychedelic feel of the illustration , providing the vibrant characteristics. My type lacks this but could be easily adjusted. My type feels relatively messy in these stages as typography is a new thing that i have done before and never gone into it with this much detail.

In this stage my typography was only an experiment , i favour sans serif fonts as i feel they look cleaner however in later stages one of the things i hope to explore is serif fonts , mainly because i think they are more skilful to produce.

Photoshop 1 - Basics

Photoshop is one of my strong points within graphic design as i have self taught myself and been using the software since high school. Unfortunately on the day this session was held i was ill therefore i have had to catch up and produce the work in my own time. Photoshop is the software used mainly for working with high resolution images. Unlike Illustrator , photoshop works in Bitmap therefore scaling an image will result in lower quality resolution. I feel that photoshop tools are easier to locate and get the hang of , although most of these tools are present in illustrator they work slightly differently or are hidden in many of drop down menus.

Our first task was exploring the different colour modes of pictures. This was done through the Image > Mode > Adjustments then selecting an option. We first changed an image of our choice to greyscale.

After changing the colour to grayscale the menu opened up the duotone option. This setting allowed two-four colours to pass through the image , acting like a filter. This would add a slight tint to the image making it more interesting than just black and white. Other effects we looked at was Hue and saturation which would change the colours of a whole picture , for example you could make a lemon turn purple without ruining the image. Levels and curves also came in useful for editing photographs as you can alter how intense certain colours were in the image. 

Our next task was to create a non destructive self portrait. We achieved this by using different layers to merge a picture of ourselves with objects or landscapes. I started out by picking a suitable image of myself to merge with another image. I then duplicated the image and placed a forrest scene picture between the two pictures , this was the image i was going to blend with my self portrait. To blend the image i used a rubber with 0% hardness so i could feature away at my portrait that would slowly expose the trees into my face. 

Finished Piece

After Effects 4 - Typography Facts

Previous animation sessions have focused specifically on character design , for this task we had to pick our favourite type face and create a short informational piece about the typeface. The typeface i chose to research was 'Roboto' , i chose to use this font as i used it in my first project and instantly fell in love with it , my favourite aspect of the font is that it is available in so many different weights and styles.

Roboto is a sans serif font that was created specifically by google for the android operating system. This font style has been used in thousands of mobile devices and android products. Google describes the font as "Modern , yet Approachable" and "Emotional".

My aim for this piece was to create an animation that flowed into each key scene smoothly , i felt that this was essential to my animation as simplistic type isn't very interesting to look at on its own. this session allowed me to combine my knowledge of animating shapes with keyframes and animating type to create a more advanced piece of work.When choosing colours i stuck to black and white for the main sequence , however when mentioning 'google' i used the specific colours of each letter to add characteristics to the text. 

Originally i had difficulty trying to make the colours flash up separately for the word Google so i settled on bringing all the colours in all at once. Although i seemed help asking how to do this it proved to be too complex for the amount of time i had to complete the piece.

Towards the end of the animation i used the same shade of green that the android branding uses for their 'Android' character, i felt that adding this character would give the animation some more personality , making it more interesting for the audience and providing a direct link to android.

Illustrator 1 and The Creative Cloud - Basics

This session was an Introduction to the Creative Cloud as a whole , We started off by creating an account on the creative cloud , in my case i already had one. This was to show the power of the cloud and how it could link all devices together. We devoted our attention mainly to the Adobe smartphone apps , such as Adobe Capture; Adobe capture is an app that image traces photographs and sends them directly to the cloud for you to use in photoshop or illustrator , this is useful as you can see what images will look like as a vector while on the go. This app proved useful to capture inspiration. Another useful feature of the app was that you could photograph and object and it would allow you to import it as a brush stroke , making different types of patterns when using brush tools in photoshop or illustrator. Another useful tool that adobe capture provides is the ability to photograph a subject and sample a selection of swatches from the photograph. This is very useful when creating colour schemes that need to relate to the subject or giving a piece a specific feel. This application can also help inspire the colour range and channel your mind into looking into different schemes.

We then moved onto illustrator skills , i feel that illustrator definitely isn't one of my strong points in the course therefore i was excited to listen and learn about the softwares potential. I had basic knowledge about some tools such as the pen tool and other vector tools. We began by importing an image of our choice to the dartboard. I chose a photograph of myself as it was easily accessible. We then proceeded to use the image trace tool , this of which i had used before , however i learnt that they're other options when tracing such as 3 colour , 6 colour and low fidelety image trace options. all of these allowed my photo to have a unique outcome with many potential for editing.

after making my photograph become image traced we looked at other creative cloud software like 'Adobe Typeset' , this software was basically a font extension book which provided thousands of developer made typefaces that you can download to your devices via creative cloud. 

I feel that my final image turned out well as i used all the skills that i have been taught in todays session. I found this session extremely helpful as it allowed me to brush up on my illustrator skills , something of which i haven't had time to do yet. I hope to look into illustrator in further sessions and learn some more advanced techniques.

Prequel / Sequel

The lectures main focus was that nothing is 'original' , and that every piece of design has been inspired by or has certain similarities to other pieces. however this does not mean that your designs can't be original , all it means is that we need to channel our creative process in the right direction in order to achieve this. This is become apparent as when we begin the creative process we need to take inspirations from items around us that we have already seen. Technically making everything copied.

"Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing." - Salvador Dali

The first subject of the lecture was internet Memes. this was a key example of prequel sequel as they are funny however they lack value due to the unoriginality of the work. this parked questions about plaugurism and how memes arent classed under copyright regulations.

this lead onto our next topic which was a 30 minute video. The video 'Everything is a remix' Specifically looked at music and how artists have sampled beats from other songs in there own musical creations.the film discusses different laws and regulations about these beats or could it be that people just share the same creative output?

"Legal remixing is fine, illegal copying is not - if your work fails to distinguish itself enough then you must attribute!"