OUGD405 | STUDIO BRIEF 1 | FINAL CRIT

I put my final product into some frames to present them how they would look in the shop in a real life situation. Plain frames would have looked okay, but I thought the big, exaggerated and decorative frames in a solid colour would further enhance my decision to mix modern and antique/old style.

The others in my group thought this was a good idea as they looked decorative and complimented my design.

I got some good feedback on my final designs, it was said that the contrast of black and white and vivid colours worked really well. Alongside the contrast of dark, eerie gothic tones with bright colours, this was my main focus throughout the brief so it was pleasing to know that it was recognised and worked suitably.

I think if I could do this brief again I'd print them out better quality in the print room as my photos were a little more dark in real life than they were on the screen. Even though they still worked, I felt like the colours weren't as nice as they could have been.

It was said that the font I used was easily legible and catches your eye.

Overall I'm very pleased with how my pieces turned out, and the feedback I got was useful and constructive, and also encouraging to hear that it works well for the brief.

EDIBLE TYPE | FESTIVE BRIEF

For our festive brief, we had to create a food product based on or influenced by a typeface. This could range from cakes to savoury dishes. The deadline for this brief was 10am on December the 12th, and then it will be decided who has won.

Me and Charlotte began to do some research into examples of edible type, and some previous entries from LCA's edible type competition:

 After researching we came to the decision that we wanted to make a pie. The reason for this was because we liked the way the pastry left gaps and showed the colourful filling. A berry pie seemed the most fitting.

We tracked down a font called sugar pie and made a stencil with it, measuring out my pie tin and making sure it was accurate. The slogan we chose was "nice as sugar pie", in order to fit with the type and sound snappy and look visually pleasing.

On the thursday we went to buy ingredients and started to make the pie. I did a lot of the stencilling whilst Charlotte focused on baking. Here are some photos of the process:

Overall the pie didn't go as well originally planned, as it was fiddly to cut out the letters and then when moving the pastry onto the top of the pie, it warped quite bad. However when we tasted the pie it tasted good, and not too sickly.

PHOTOGRAPHY INDUCTION

Today I had my photography induction, it included information about ISO, aperture, shutter speed & white balance. We then had an hour to experiment with these settings to create different effects on our photos. Here are the ones I took:

OUGD405 | STUDY TASK 1 | CONCEPT WORKSHOP

Today we were asked to rethink a concept of an existing company. We were split into ten groups, split between the boys and the girls, and there was only 5 companies between us.
My group was given Monarch airlines.

Initially, we researched into the existing branding and website that they had, and discovered it looked a little bit like the disgusting colours UKIP use on their website, which immediately put me off. It could be said the rich purple and the gold/yellow are used to reflect 'royalty' tying in with the name however I thought something was just not right with it.

Our idea stemmed from the idea of monarch meaning royalty. Since Monarch is a cheap airline company, we wanted to give it a more classy look. We initially thought of having red and 'gold' as the colour scheme but this looked quite tacky in my opinion and didn't look effective. Along with the use of Helvetica, the whole thing just didn't work.

We tried a different approach, and as most airline companies have a predominantly masculine look to them, we thought of doing something a little different and trying to appeal to the female population.

We tried out using a serif font; Didot, in italics, which looked a lot more elegant and would appeal to higher class individuals. I thought an all black logo/branding would look good but some people in my group thought this was too depressing. So we tried out different shades of purple which everyone seemed pleased with.

We debating using the crown in our design but then abandoned this idea as it looked too similar to KLM and also Pandora as we had placed it on top of the 'O'. So we added a raven as we thought this reflected royalty and elegance.

This is what we came up with:

PHOTOSHOP INDUCTION | SESSION 2

In this session we began to create our own film posters using our own images and skills we've picked up from the sessions.

The film I chose was Donnie Darko as it's one of my favourite ones and I thought it would be easy to reproduce in my own style as I like using dark colours and themes and this would be really appropriate for the film.

I started off by doing an illustration of Frank the rabbit with ink, and scanned it in:

I wanted my poster to be dark, so I created a new document and made it black. I added the illustration  and used the healing tool to get rid of the smudges and marks. I inverted it, then switched it to lighten. 

Then I added some textures:

I made them black and white as it worked better without colour. Then I added the title, a quote and some of the main cast. 

I like how it turned out, and the light from the car on my second texture represents a lot of foreshadowing in the film for the character Frank (as his eye is bleeding/shot during one scene).

Overall I think I managed to make a good poster but maybe a little bit of colour or a nicer quote would have improved it.

OUGD405 | STUDIO BRIEF 1 | FINAL PRODUCT

These are the final pieces for the photo paper brief. I've tried to create a visually pleasing image that combines creepy, black and white photos featuring nature, with circles in bright colours. I felt that this would appeal to those who shop at places such as Urban Outfitters as they do have a quirky feel to them.

They will be placed inside a decorative frame once printed out. The only issue I think I may face is I have worked in RGB mode on Photoshop, and they may print out a little more dull than on screen however I wanted to work in this mode as it was nice to experiment with the brighter colours. They may look a little different once inside the frames though but nothing too major. I have decided to create CMYK files too, and altered the saturation levels in order to make them as vivid as I can.

OUGD405 | STUDIO BRIEF 1 | EXPERIMENTATION

Next I began to experiment with my images further by adding context. For example I wanted to add text to display the measurements and also incorporate some shape. I chose to use a circle, the reason was simply because I think it will work best and it's my favourite shape.

I started off by working with the same ideas that I had already done:

I wanted to create a gradient effect using images of trees, the first is simply one image, however the second is about 3-4 images layered over each other in different opacities and adjustment layers.

Here I have messed around with the colours and also the type. I changed where the type was set out and also mixed different fonts to see which is best. I decided on using Ostrich Sans as it's a really bold yet sleek font that looks very good and is legible.

I also tried out some ideas with colour, but even though they do look nice aesthetically, I think black and white contrasting with the vivid colour circles looks the best.

OUGD405 | STUDIO BRIEF 1 | PHOTOGRAPHY

To further develop and experiment with ideas, I went to a really foggy, heavily wooded area to take some of my own photos as I think this makes it more personal than using images I found.

I then edited them so they were black and white, and played around with them looking faded and grainy. Messing with the exposure settings allowed me to create the right tone I wanted for my images.

Here are some of the photos I took:

OUGD405 | STUDIO BRIEF 1 | INTERIM CRIT

After undergoing a bit of market research, I decided my target consumers would be those who shop at places like Urban Outfitters, as their homeware is always a little bit quirky and even obscure. Since my focus is to add a little element of eeriness/creepiness, I think that this would fit in well there as a product.

I began to use some images I found on Tumblr as an experiment for this crit as I hadn't got chance yet to develop my own images; something I'm planning to do as soon as possible. In order to get a feel for the tones and image style I was going for, this was my only method at this time. 

I made these 3 examples on photoshop and added really vivid circles to them to contrast with the faded black and white tones.

The feedback I got was really encouraging and useful and helped me in deciding what to do next to further develop my process. Here are some of the suggestions and comments on my work:

The next step is now much clearer, this weekend I will go on an adventure to obtain some eerie images in a heavily wooded area that I can use on some similar designs to the prototypes I have produced here.

PHOTOSHOP INDUCTION | SESSION ONE

In today's Photoshop session we were introduced to the basic tools and functions that the software can perform. I have used Photoshop a lot in the past but I'm looking forward to finding out and learning new techniques and short cuts.

For this session, we also had a go at blending multiple film posters together and experiment with the different tones and colours. We were given a few images to use however you could use your own if you pleased.

 And from using these images above, I edited the colour and used the selection and eraser tool to create this image:

OUGD405 | DESIGN PROCESS | STUDIO BRIEF 1 | RESEARCH

Today we were briefed for the first brief of our new module, and for this we must design images for the backing paper of a photo frame.

These must be in a set of three; A5, A4 and A3. (4X6, 5X7 & 6X8) and must be created on Adobe Photoshop.
After having some initial thoughts on the brief, I decided I'd like to take some of my own photography for the frames. I'd like to have a nature theme, such as trees and flowers and general wild life.

I began to research some frames that can be found in the high street today. I started off with Urban Outfitters as I know they have a funky selection of homeware.

I found these frames on Urban Outfitters, and I really like the silhouette block effect of the deer.

I found this on John Lewis, since our brief involves shape, I noted the use of the circles in this frame, the colours seem to work really well too as they're sunny and bright, omitting happiness which is usually an emotion contained in a framed photo. The light, uppercase type appeals to me as well. 

I then found the following frames on Dunelm Mill's website:

 Although I don't really like the gold frame, these two photos have a textured, grainy feel to them, I also like the black and white. I definitely want to use black and white photos for my frames as they look serious and elegant.

Disregarding the photo paper on this frame, I especially like this style of frame for my theme as I think it will really match the dark, eerie black and white tone I plan to create in my images.