For studio brief four the initial task set was to write our own brief and decide what product we would want to give to the first years. I decided to create motivational posters depicting messages I would've liked to be reminded of throughout my first year.
Brief
To produce a set of four posters that will deliver an inspirational and motivational, yet personal message to the next generation of first years.
The four posters should work together as a set and carry a similar 'look'.
Background/Considerations
Make them specific to the target audience- either to the world of graphic design, to students or to the course/course content itself.
Consider use of image, is it necessary? Why?
Keep it simple.
Keep it informed.
Consider the tone of voice, how can motivation be achieved? Through humour, honesty, uplifting?
Make them memorable.
Make it something not only practical but physically beautiful, an object someone will want on their wall.
Tongue and cheek are good, but make sure it is NOT OFFENSIVE.
Sketches and Development
After researching motivation posters I decided I wanted to produce my final product in a 1950's style, I feel that these types of posters has a formal and yet friendly feel to them, the messages they convey feel optimistic and as if someone friendly were speaking to you and this matched the tone of voice I was attempting to convey in my final designs. So I researched and gathered a few examples of 50's posters in order to draw inspiration from the designs.
I also managed to decide upon a theme for all four posters as well as choosing the topics to convey in each of the four designs. The theme I went for was it: Your blog- do it, This course- you're on it, Your craft- enjoy it, Your work- love it. I also wanted to add some extra text, almost like a sub heading or an explanation to each 'title' that explained the title in a bit more depth: e.g. This Course- You're on it: Over 3000 people applied for this course and only 60 of you got in, trust me you deserve to be here.
So using my images as inspiration and with theme in mind I decided to sketch out some ideas, the key thing I saw from the 50's posters were a mis match of fonts (script coupled with block) and bright colours with simple patterns. I then made some more detailed sketches and mocked up a couple of designs digitally. I took these with me into the crit.
Feedback and Development
A lot of people agreed that the tone of the design was appropriate, however they didn't like the extra text used at the bottom, saying it made it look too crowded, I still wanted to keep the text on there as I felt it set it apart from the usual motivational poster designs. They did like the mixture of text and the colours that I used and definitely agreed it looked 1950's so I decided to go onto developing these designs further.
Another thing I mentioned was that I wanted to use a mixture of mediums to really make the designs feel personal as well as aged (digitally printing these designs would look a little empty). People agreed that I should try some different methods out- I'll talk about the successes and failures of that a little later on.
So I went through a few developments and variations of designs before I came to a comfortable choice. I began by trying block colour designs in order to create the strong impact that I wanted and using the small personal crit group made up of a few members of our course I posted my designs to get regular feedback on how they look and what changes I should make.
I took these designs to another personal crit session with Simon, he informed me that if I was intending to digital print these designs it wouldn't be enough work for the brief. I informed him I intended to do a mixture of mediums for the final designs and so booked a print slot for the backgrounds and exposed a screen to print the text onto it afterwards.
He also suggested changing the colours and format of the DO IT poster, saying that these schemes didn't work well together and that the words Do it looked as if they were blending into one entire word.
I fixed and tweaked these problems before preparing my positives for the screen printing session and exposing my screen.
The horrible attempts at mixing mediums
Before I settled on the idea of screen printing I had, had my heart set out on trying a new printing technique, however both new techniques I attempted proved horribly unrealistic and produced very sketchy looking results.
The first technique I tried out was lino print, I bought about 8 blocks of lino and attempted to try and cut the printed background into the sheets. I had intended to go down to Rossington street and use their letter press to print the text over the top afterwards. For this technique I knew I had to scale the designs from A3 to A4, so I began cutting out the lines from the 'Love it' design.
The results speak for themselves, I was so very shaky at lino print and left the print room feeling disheartened and deflated, the result was so patchy and awkward, printing these designs proved incredibly difficult indeed.
The second was producing a wood block of the text, possibly to use on my lino print backgrounds (if it hadn't gone belly up at the first hurdle) and in order to get the lines as clean as possible I wanted to use to laser cutter to produce this. I booked my slot and had a few third year graphic students assist me in setting up the document for print, however they also informed me if I really wanted to make these wood blocks then I would be there for a very long time.
'Nah it can't take that long surely!' I said.
'Well, yes, it has the engrave the design about eight times in order for the cut to be deep enough for a suitable wood block and considering the size of your design, you'll be here for a very, very long time'
And they were right, it took forever, I only managed to get two blocks done, and one of them due to a slight mishap with the laser cutting machine didn't even engrave deep enough to produce a suitable wood block and even after scaling the design down again from A4 to A5 it still took around 4 and a half hours to produce one and a half wood blocks. This method was certainly not suitable in the amount of time that I had left and I didn't have the luxury of sitting around with the laser cutter to myself for a long amount of time so I decided to abandon this idea I favour of the ever reliable screen printing method.
For the final designs I produced the four backgrounds in digital print and screen printed the text over the top at Rossington street print room. To make sure the text would be legible I did a few test prints on some previous digital prints and on white paper.
When the text didn't seem to come out legible I printed over it again in order to make it stand out stronger from the page.
So how'd it go?
I enjoyed this brief, even with the hiccoughs in production and print methods I still found it very enlightening and enjoyable. I learnt a lot about different print methods, time keeping and the importance of good and consistent and constant feedback.
I still feel like these posters haven't quite reached their full potential, there's still something missing but I'm not sure what… either way they do look 1950's and are currently my favourite piece of personal design.
I hope next years first years enjoy them as much as I do.
After researching motivation posters I decided I wanted to produce my final product in a 1950's style, I feel that these types of posters has a formal and yet friendly feel to them, the messages they convey feel optimistic and as if someone friendly were speaking to you and this matched the tone of voice I was attempting to convey in my final designs. So I researched and gathered a few examples of 50's posters in order to draw inspiration from the designs.
I also managed to decide upon a theme for all four posters as well as choosing the topics to convey in each of the four designs. The theme I went for was it: Your blog- do it, This course- you're on it, Your craft- enjoy it, Your work- love it. I also wanted to add some extra text, almost like a sub heading or an explanation to each 'title' that explained the title in a bit more depth: e.g. This Course- You're on it: Over 3000 people applied for this course and only 60 of you got in, trust me you deserve to be here.
So using my images as inspiration and with theme in mind I decided to sketch out some ideas, the key thing I saw from the 50's posters were a mis match of fonts (script coupled with block) and bright colours with simple patterns. I then made some more detailed sketches and mocked up a couple of designs digitally. I took these with me into the crit.
Feedback and Development
A lot of people agreed that the tone of the design was appropriate, however they didn't like the extra text used at the bottom, saying it made it look too crowded, I still wanted to keep the text on there as I felt it set it apart from the usual motivational poster designs. They did like the mixture of text and the colours that I used and definitely agreed it looked 1950's so I decided to go onto developing these designs further.
Another thing I mentioned was that I wanted to use a mixture of mediums to really make the designs feel personal as well as aged (digitally printing these designs would look a little empty). People agreed that I should try some different methods out- I'll talk about the successes and failures of that a little later on.
So I went through a few developments and variations of designs before I came to a comfortable choice. I began by trying block colour designs in order to create the strong impact that I wanted and using the small personal crit group made up of a few members of our course I posted my designs to get regular feedback on how they look and what changes I should make.
Initially the feedback for the shapes was good however it was suggested that I add some patterns into the designs like I did with my initial mock ups in order to makes them more 1950's style and more visually interesting.
I added a few more patterns based off of 50's design, however it was suggested to me that the stripes looked the most visually interesting and so i should try and add stripes to all the designs and after doing so i agree that the stripes looked the best, it was simple yet not so simple as to be boring and certainly less visually overpowering than the block colour on its own.
After I had mocked these versions up I still personally felt that something was missing from them, they still looked a little awkward and clunky. Referring back to my initial feedback from the interim crit I decided to try some versions without the subtext, after mocking these up it became apparent that the titles on their own looks an awful lot better than attempting to cram unwanted text onto the page. In the wonderfully helpful crit group they also mentioned aligned everything centrally as it felt off having the text strewn about in all different arrangements, this, along with loosing the subtext produced a stronger looking design.
I took these designs to another personal crit session with Simon, he informed me that if I was intending to digital print these designs it wouldn't be enough work for the brief. I informed him I intended to do a mixture of mediums for the final designs and so booked a print slot for the backgrounds and exposed a screen to print the text onto it afterwards.
He also suggested changing the colours and format of the DO IT poster, saying that these schemes didn't work well together and that the words Do it looked as if they were blending into one entire word.
I fixed and tweaked these problems before preparing my positives for the screen printing session and exposing my screen.
The horrible attempts at mixing mediums
Before I settled on the idea of screen printing I had, had my heart set out on trying a new printing technique, however both new techniques I attempted proved horribly unrealistic and produced very sketchy looking results.
The first technique I tried out was lino print, I bought about 8 blocks of lino and attempted to try and cut the printed background into the sheets. I had intended to go down to Rossington street and use their letter press to print the text over the top afterwards. For this technique I knew I had to scale the designs from A3 to A4, so I began cutting out the lines from the 'Love it' design.
The results speak for themselves, I was so very shaky at lino print and left the print room feeling disheartened and deflated, the result was so patchy and awkward, printing these designs proved incredibly difficult indeed.
The second was producing a wood block of the text, possibly to use on my lino print backgrounds (if it hadn't gone belly up at the first hurdle) and in order to get the lines as clean as possible I wanted to use to laser cutter to produce this. I booked my slot and had a few third year graphic students assist me in setting up the document for print, however they also informed me if I really wanted to make these wood blocks then I would be there for a very long time.
'Nah it can't take that long surely!' I said.
'Well, yes, it has the engrave the design about eight times in order for the cut to be deep enough for a suitable wood block and considering the size of your design, you'll be here for a very, very long time'
And they were right, it took forever, I only managed to get two blocks done, and one of them due to a slight mishap with the laser cutting machine didn't even engrave deep enough to produce a suitable wood block and even after scaling the design down again from A4 to A5 it still took around 4 and a half hours to produce one and a half wood blocks. This method was certainly not suitable in the amount of time that I had left and I didn't have the luxury of sitting around with the laser cutter to myself for a long amount of time so I decided to abandon this idea I favour of the ever reliable screen printing method.
But now there's certainly a lesson learnt here, both these printing techniques take up a lot more time than estimated and if I ever want to produce a successful lino or wood block print I need to dedicate a lot more time and effort into the production of them.
Final Designs
For the final designs I produced the four backgrounds in digital print and screen printed the text over the top at Rossington street print room. To make sure the text would be legible I did a few test prints on some previous digital prints and on white paper.
When the text didn't seem to come out legible I printed over it again in order to make it stand out stronger from the page.
The final prints I am very happy with. They do look incredibly interesting and I certainly think the friendly tone is covered through the bright colours, yet the bold text means they don't loose their impact. I am a little disappointed with the readability of the DO IT poster and the colours look pretty awful together, it's my least favourite out of the four. The ON IT poster is my favourite, it has the highest impact, the best colour scheme and layout wise it's always, in my opinion, been the strongest.
The important thing is though that they look nice on the wall. And I think they carry the message appropriately and effectively.
So how'd it go?
I enjoyed this brief, even with the hiccoughs in production and print methods I still found it very enlightening and enjoyable. I learnt a lot about different print methods, time keeping and the importance of good and consistent and constant feedback.
I still feel like these posters haven't quite reached their full potential, there's still something missing but I'm not sure what… either way they do look 1950's and are currently my favourite piece of personal design.
I hope next years first years enjoy them as much as I do.
No comments:
Post a Comment