OUGD504 and OUGD502 Dalton Maag Visit

We had a great workshop with a designer from the type foundry Dalton Maag. I had always thought that digital type and the less hand drawn type was less about instinct and more about measurements. In fact it was about instincts and what looked right. I found it fascinating looking at the over hang of parts of the letters and why some looked right in ratio to others.

This workshop got me thinking about type foundries as a possible job option. I know there would be a lot of work involved and I am far off the skill levee required but this is something that I am really interested in and want to continue working on. It is not the be all and end all of what I want to do but it is an option.

I also found a great video on their blog about the transition from letterpress to digital typography and typography in general.

Dalton Maag x Method present Typography in the Digital Landscape. LDF2014 from Dalton Maag on Vimeo.

OUGD504 and OUGD502 Studio Brief 03 A Brief History Of... Evaluation

I am really pleased with the way the exterior gallery has worked out. I had been struggling for some time with how to make some aspect or another interactive or allow some feedback from people who have gone on the walks. Pinterest is perfect for this because people can add to the search tag and even the board its self. This creates a community sense to the venture that generally makes the whole brans more likeable and accessible. It also means that people can get to the website through pinterest as well as the usual search engines. 

The transfer of the design to a mobile format website went really well and the simple icon usage really seems to be fitted to this function because they are just the right size to be tapped by a finger accurately. Once again the connection to pinterest  works in the mobile website context because the app for pinterest is particularly visually effective. 

I am happy with the general look of my website and quite surprised that I managed to keep it simple and clean and get the balance of earthy warmth that the subject matter deserves. I do feel that perhaps the hand rendered type could have been done a bit better but this is always the nature of hand rendered type, especially when I am still learning. The layout seems simple but when I started looking into coding I found that I would actually need a responsive design coded so that the thirds of the screen could shrink and grow and still remain proportionally correct. This would also be the case for the icon strands, they would always need to be in proportional thirds. This is imperative because the images need to be full bleed to have the impact that I desire.

General layout- like it but fully responsive coding would have to be used to do this properly (full bleed images)

The use of lower opacities rather than translucent overlays of colour or even flat colour saves me from using web safe colours which I am very thankful for as I have not found one yet that I really like. The differences in opacity are easily achieved through the use of PNG files, as introduced in our one and only coding workshop, so this aesthetic is achievable and functional.

One problem that I did encounter was the way the lightness of the sky sometimes got in the way of the icons being fully recognisable. I got around this problem by inverting translucent squares of a dark blue with a soft gradient down to transparency where the sky connects with the land. By putting tis bend the icon string it brings the white into contrast and makes them much more noticeable. This can be seen more clearly in the gifs below.

-sky has proved difficult

using all images communicate the beauty of the landscape.

Something that was mentioned in the earlier crits was the fact tat images of a place make you want to visit it and are important in convincing people to go there. I have acted on this idea by using photos as the lynch pin of the entire website and I think this has worked quite well. Apart from the obvious difficulties that full bleed images on a responsibly coded website, this is a website that would definitely make me want to visit these places.

At the beginning of this brief I decided that I wanted the feel of this website to be warm and welcoming, have the raw earthy feel of the places being referenced and be quite clean and minimal, so as to appeal to a yuppie sensibility. I think this has worked surprisingly well. The white type could have been too cold and clean but the usage of hand drawn type mediates this, making it ever so slightly imperfect in a very human way. The neat way that the information is tucked away mean that the first screen you see is very appealing without and clutter and the information in each page is accessible and useful. I have had a good look around at websites that do similar things and they just do not bring all of the resources into one place the way mine does, there is definitely a gap in the market.

The opacity of the squares framing the text is the only thing that was brought up in the final crit and I have experimented with increasing the opacity but just found that this felt too blocky and heavy on the page. Although at first glance it may interrupt the readability of the text, the light and airy effect of the reduced opacity is worth this slight compromise.

Overall I am happy with what I have managed to design. I have enjoyed the process of transferring my very tactile and illustrative style into a fully digital format and I think that it has worked really well. However, if there was one thing I would have changed, it would have been to do more coding and push what I could have made real. Of course this was predominantly because the tutor that specialises in coding was away on maternity leave but I do think that I should have made the effort to start coding sooner. Then again I also feel what made this design good is the way that it is not very aware of the limitations of coding and that these thoughts did not inter fear in the design process. So, it is both something i would and wouldn't change if I were to do tis brief again.

http://b-taylor1316-dp.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Studio%20Brief%2003%20A%20Brief%20History%20Of...

OUGD504 and OUGD502 Brief 01 My Design Process Evaluation

Overall I am pleased with the finished result of this project but If I were to do it again there are lots of things I would change. My decision to use cartridge paper as I did was completely warranted because all the experimentation I did proved that it was best suited out of what was available. However, if I had had more time I would have like to research paper with completely different qualities on either side. This way I could have had a smooth almost photographic finish on the outside and the watercolour paper texture I liked so much on the inside. I am uncertain if this is possible but I would have liked to see if it was. I am really happy with the fold I used. If anything I would have gone with something more complex and tat dictated the content more, but in the end I think the simplicity of this fold makes it work ergonomically in a way that a more complex one would not. The thickness of the paper and the definiteness of the folds means that when you go to fold it back up it knows where it needs to go, side stepping a problem tat a lot of people in the class wrangled with. If I had had extra time I would have liked to have looked at etching for the reproduction of this print. I know very little about tis process and would have used this project to expand on my knowledge but I do think that the mistakes and errors of such a hands on process would have added to the scruffy essence of the illustration in a complimentary way. The time limit on this brief was restrictive in that it allowed a limited amount of experimentation time, meaning that deciding which direction to go in with it was dusting because you have not got a chance to go back and change direction. However, for me I think the was useful because it stopped me from procrastinating and motivated me to try and make the direction I had gone in work. One ting I would definitely change would be the way I have scanned it. I thought it was a fairly straight foreword process but I found that the light emitted by the scanner reflected off the ink splotches leaving some of them looking like they had apparently faded when it came to printing. I talked to James in the digital print suit and he suggested using the scanners in there because they used two light sources rather than one, allowing greater detail to be picked up and less reflection to occur. I would also have liked to have the time to make the final product neater in its finish because I feel that it is just not good enough for a second year submission. however, at this stage all I can do is say I am aware of this and improve on this in the next brief. I would have really liked to have made more inventive use of the belly band format on a three dimensional object; as was pointed out by a friend they read all the way around from numerous points. I would have liked to have made a more inventive use of this than i have. It also means that the title doesn't always read well, this is something i would remedy had I a chance to go back. At a commercial level the production would be straight foreword, making it quite a feasible product. Simple high resolution digital printing or even litho printing would be used for the main graphic and the belly band and the folds would be achieved by the use of a custom made dye cutter, all things readily available in the commercial printing world. Although there are many rings I would change about this product, I am glad I took risks on this brief and really learnt about my abilities as an illustrative designer and i am most proud of how different mine looks compared to others in the class (not that it's better) but I always think it is good to strive to differentiate from the road and strive to be different.

OUGD504 and OUGD502 Brief 02 Evaluation

I am really happy that I have changed the logo. It is so much more legible, which is so important for a brand that is just starting out. The striping back of the logo like this is something that I think I should do every time I have a branding brief, so that I can asses what is actually needed in a design. So, I suppose you could say that I am most pleased with the design process that I have followed during this brief, I really feel that I have learned a lot, both about branding and the expressiveness of simple shape and colour. The colour is something that I am particularly pleased with, simply because it is something that I have really struggled with before. My summer work has really proved useful in this respect by helping me to look at colours collectively as well as separately. In the end I quite heavily reduced the opacity of the colours, changing their nature quite a lot but using colours from plant colour schemes seems to be a really productive method. Especially when you consider that I was trying to convey the idea of something gender neutral-I used a lichen colour scheme, which is quite a gender neutral plant, unlike a rose or a daisy. The hand drawn type was quite a challenge because getting it to be legible was so difficult. It is shaped around my had writing, which was perhaps my first mistake. However, with much shaping and editing I think I got it to work. I really like the flexibility of this logo, provided particularly by the parallel lines. This shape is so simple that there are very few situations where it looks out of place, as shown by the web and twitter mock ups. Also the way it can be broken down into component parts, yet both can be a reference to the brand in a concise and effective way. One thing I would have changed would be printing it out much sooner, because everything looks different when printed. No paper can be as purely white as a screen as the opacity of the logo isn't quite as well registered on paper. However, I will go on to experiment a bit more with stock options to see if I can get the aesthetic I am looking for. The last thing I would change would be working around people more. I just work so much better when I can talk to people about what I am doing. To be honest this couldn't be helped so much because half of this brief stretched over the weekend but as soon as I got back into the studio things started to fall into place as i got feedback from everyone. Overall though I am pretty happy with what I have managed to do in a week.

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OUGD504 and OUGD502 Studio Brief 04 Evaluation

I found this brief quite difficult, both because I fell ill in the middle of it and the Christmas holidays sat directly over the end of the brief. This meant that I had to step away from the brief for a while, and when I returned to it, I was back at home, isolated from all the resources of college. You can say this is bad planning but when you are really ill you are incapable of thinking about these things. Considering these problems I am pretty happy with what I have managed to produce both in the restricted time frame and in these circumstances. Originally I had planned to do the salt lettering on the table sticker with the help of a laser cut acetate stencil but due to illness I missed my laser cut slot. So, when it came to producing the salt lettering for photographing I had to get a bit creative. I wish I could have really got it right and legible just by hand in the sugar granules, but I would have needed to produce it very large and then comes the problem of the ratio of scale between the granules and the letter forms; it may not have been recognisable but it wouldn't look right for the granules to be tiny in comparison with the letters, which is what would have happened had I done the design larger. This meant that I had to make considerable use of digital tools instead. It was difficult to find the balance between the legibility of the design and the texture of the granules but I think I just about managed it. The three dimensional look of the lettering is really interesting and creates the impression of spilled salt, just as I wanted it to. This is predominantly down to the photography and the decision to photograph on a neutral grey rather than black, this allowed me to maintain the shadows of the grains in later digital production. Photography is normally something that I really struggle with but this time the pinning down of exactly what I was using the photograph for and how I wanted it to look like really helped me to achieve it, rather than stabbing in the dark for something that might do. however the salt lettering is still something that I feel I could have done better with a bit of extra time and practice, I hope to pursue food lettering a skill later on.

Compared to this the other two print outcomes didn't pose as much a problem. However, the functionality of the magazine insert was quite difficult to achieve and could only be done through lots of trial and error and mock ups. Working out things such as the orientation of text and the order in which information is communicated proved to be most difficult to negotiate. In the end I think this is an interesting format choice because, rather than deciding the format and shaping the content around it. I think this produced something that performs its purpose in an interesting way, which contributes to its effectiveness as an advert. When it came to the coaster designs the main problem I encountered was a way to fit in the augmented reality design that was intrinsic to the overall purpose of the design, without it being a pointless gimmick relying on the technology to wow. I simultaneously considered augmented reality design for the other two print outcomes but felt that it just seemed to forced with them. Where as, with the coasters, the location of delivery (bars and cafes) meant that people would be more likely to have a moment to kill and the wifi to make a good use of the interactive element. I used an idea that had come up in a crit during the web design brief, which was that images of beautiful places make you want to visit them. So creating a location gallery that you view through the knot hole in the coaster seemed not only to have the best chance of getting people out on walks but also more engaging and informative than a pointless video or similar. 

The visuals of the interactive element are also a strong link to the original website design. This link between the advertising campaign and the website design is something I set out to achieve from the very beginning. I am confident I have achieved this because I had to use a number of visuals, such as the logo and some of the landscape images. However, there is a tangible evolution of the aesthetic from web design to the printed format. Although I have brought over the visual theme of white vector graphics over images, I have brought in the close up image of the untreated wood. This addition of an image that has a much closer field of focus than the landscape image creates a greater sense of depth to each of the designs, creating a distinction between the digital design of the website and the tangible grounding in the physical that print inherently has.

The delivery format for each outcome was considerably limited by the location specificity of the website subject matter. In many ways I found that very useful because it really made me think about how the target audience would interact with my designs and where those young professionals would actually have a chance to interact with my interactive print. The instant two answers to this are: when they are socialising (cafes and bars) and when they are at home. What cemented these locations was the discovery that applications such as Layar needed good wifi to work at all. This in turn gave rise to each of the format choices. 

As well as the augmented reality interaction the magazine insert has physical interactivity. The clear injection of thought into this aspect of the design instantly makes the insert more desirable. I also think it fits completely with the conceptual content of both the website and the other print outcomes. The way it gets readers to really do something physically, is exactly what the website is trying to achieve at a larger scale. 

The commercial print possibilities of these outcomes are high, mostly because of the small numbers that would be needed to enact the campaign in real life. This means that digital print is feasible for all the outcomes. The only slight hitch would be the necessity of paying for the inserts to go into magazines and for cafes and bars to use the coasters and the table stickers  which is hard to predict without actually having to do. 

Overall I am pleased with the outcomes for this brief, but do feel that little irritating errors such as typos could have been avoided if I had been at college for the duration of the brief and had the time to be really careful by printing tests and similar.

OUGD502 and OUGD504 Salt Lettering

I have recently been working on some salt lettering for an advertising campaign. I really struggled with making this work. The balance between communicating the medium and achieving full legibility was quite difficult and I still don't feel that I have fully achieved it. However, I found it a very interesting process because of these difficulties and had a fascinating time experimenting withe the way different materials responded to letterforms and vice versa. This is something I want to revisit in the future with other materials that are outside the usual Graphic Designers repertoire and see how they tie in to my typographic practice.

OUGD502 OUGD504 Visiting Professional G.F. Smith

Matthew scharff visited from G.F. Smith to talk us through what they do and what we can get from them as designers.

I was quite surprised to find that they are in fact a third part that buy and sell the paper on but add finishes and touches along with their brand. Their range can be separated into:

Coloured

Coated

Uncoated

Textured 

Special

This is a very simple way of looking at a very large, very varied range of paper. This doesn't include the options of creating layered or duplex papers specific to your needs. They have a very small minimum on orders which allows for small print runs of high quality. They also have mechanisms to ensure that you are getting the paper you need for the job that you are doing. For example, they have a machine that you simply feed a pdf into and it will cut out a packaging net and even score it so that you know the weight of paper will do what you need it to.

Matthew gave us a lot of advice. Perhaps the most obvious but the most useful was the idea of thinking about the stock you are going to use from the very start of a brief because it effects the look and feel of a project so drastically. He showed us a lot of examples of money saving book folds and binding that were really inspiring and possibly usable as an inspiration for the program design for the Leeds Arts Party Program as part of my responsive module.

I had no idea about this but apparently you can buy paper directly from G.F. Smith but perhaps the best way to do so is to tell the printer the specific stock that you want used and they will contact the paper supplier because they know all the technical details that you might not for the printing process.

The colourplan range is one of the most popular ranges that G.F. Smith has on offer. They even have a downloadable colour pallet that you can work with digitally so that you can mock up designs against the colours of stock available through colourplan. Suprisingly they only stock 2 coated papers one of a more grained organic look and the other more classically photographic.

They have a new service where they make one of books to specific specifications. This will coast around 100 a pop but is good possibly for a portfolio or something that you want to keep forever. There is a cost calculator online to allow you o work out the specifications you want to achieve. The best way to order small paper samples is through the papersmith section of the website.

Although I couldn't find an image of it he showed us a map from one of their exhibitions. It was cleverly using layered colour paper that folded up in a three dimensional fashion to show the location of parts of the exhibition. This could be a great inspiration poit for the map I need to design for the Leeds Arts Part conference. 

OUGD504 and OUGD502 Reflection On Branding and Illustration

After doing both briefs one and two of the first studio module, I have found that I have realised things about my own practice. I found that I absolutely loved the illustration part of the first brief, the freedom and experimental process of the whole thing was loverly but I found that I wasn't that pleased with the outcome. Where as designing the logo was a real slog. I had trouble coming up with and refining ideas but in the end I was real happy with what I had produced. Perhaps these instances were just one offs but I think I need to find my own way of melding hand drawn elements and digital processes in a way tat allows me to really enjoy the process of design and create a finished product that I am happy with.