MAA - the presentation

This went really well- Adam and me had to present this to the clients. I was really nervous going into it, but they seemed really nice!

Personally i'm not good talking to people in groups- I get so nervous! So we decided that Adam would be a good person to present...he can talk for England, and is a real confident speaker. I did present our website though!

overall it went really well I think,we also got asked some questions about logo- such as the type, about rotating it, some really amazing questions - by kit mainly- which made me really think, and I think these questions posed were really good and thought- provoking.

Overall I got the impression that they liked our presentation we( then and there) got some good feedback - like the fact they liked our logo and thought out presentation was proffesional. 

So i felt really confident and happy... and a few days later I found out that we got into the top 3, I was so happy, I emailed Martin( on holiday with the good news).

So in  about 1/2 weeks we find out who the winner is, and overall even if we don't win i believe we all have some strong portfolio work.

Working with Adam and Martin:

Having worked on D&AD with Martin I already knew that I could work very well with him already, however I hadn't worked with Adam before, I know him but working in a group is completely different, but I found him quite good to work with- he has a lot of good points to make, and is quite decisive which is good because sometimes both me and Martin together sometimes we found it quite hard to make decisions. 

It doesn't mean that Adam made all the decisions, but it means that Adam gave us something to think about and made us think more and come to a decision quicker.

We also had so much fun - when it came to putting the logo into powerpoint and it turning into the eggs, and when we had problems with the simplist if things, like aligning the text on the letterhead to be placed in the middle. It took us longer to do this than the website. I found that Adam had almost given up, sometimes you can just tell, where as me and Martin just laughed. You could also tell with Adam if for example we was working on the website, and choosing whether or not to have the map on the background, I thought that we should have the map, and even on the homepage to make it consistant, but Martin and Adam said that we shouldn't, we decided in the end to have the map on the background,, you could tell Martin was happy in the end with this decision, and even though Adam agreed, I think that you could tell he wasn't so happy.

This is what we showed for our presentation...............

The Powerpoint template and the egg!

We created the powerpoint presentation for the MAA with only two simple slides

1.  This page had the logo in the centre

2. This page had the logo in the bottom right hand corner with a line on either side.

And for some reason when we saved the presentation and then opened it up again two eggs came up, on both of the slides- powerpoint must have split up the logo in two- but we had no idea why!?!

... then we saved it as a different thing and it opened up fine......so we went home.. and then a few hours later I got a text with Martin saying the eggs are back.

If anyone can tell us why this happened.. then feel free to explain.

PAL- live brief 2

PAL- Peer 

  Assisted

  Learning.

This is something that happens throughout universities, where by a group pf people, split into smaller groups help first year students organise/ talk about their work. What we have to do is to produce something in which they keep all their training work in/ things that help them/ make them organise their group. Sort of like a guide for PAL

I wasn't quite sure about this to be honest mainly because of the work I have to do already, but I thought it would be a nice little thing to do just as an extra thing. I thought it was quite a nice little brief and might be fun to do, also I would like to do something quite editorial based so I think this could be a good one to do. There are about 8 people doing this and we was going to work altogether on this, but after thinking about it i just thought that maybe so many people in one group, some people may be too overpowering and maybe not everyone would have the opportunity to speak and get their opinion across. 

So I spoke to Kit about my concerns and she did say this even in the briefing that if we wanted to that we could would throw this open to the first years and if you wanted to join them we could so I said that I would be more comfortable with this.

I think that really it will be better for me to do this I feel that in a big group some people would not be able to say what they think and it could be too overpowering, and although its good to have lots of ideas and opinions I think that it could be a potential that you could spend too much time talking bout ideas etc in big groups, whereas in a smaller group I think the time would be used more constuctivly.

I saw met my person!

Yay! Been so nervous about who it is..and I met them monday..jonathan daly..who seems really cool bearing in mind I wasn't quite with it. We just discussed about what we needed to do, and then said what we should do for next time we meet.

Good things..

Love how jonathan seems so into this and the fact he seems quite organised! He also said after- right I'll go to the library then and look through some type..which was cool! Wether he did or not was another thing but it was good as he seemed interested in helping me out.

Meeting 2

Didn't go so well as I was ill with the flu! So I just said what we should do for next time and emaield him with some interesting links that he could have a browse through, and that we should have an edited version of the text we needed to cut- so we could compare what we thought needed to be edited.

Meeting 3

This I thought was quite a positive session! We discussed the fact that the end produc needs to made for under £5, as I forgot last time that. I had edited most of the text given to us, and explained the fact that when i read through it, the text was explained so simply, almost like a dummies guide to PAL, I just thought that it seemed so silly considering as uni students we are supposed to me more professional and  talk about things in a amore professional manner. Jonathan had also looked through the links i sent him and pulled out something that interested him, he said that maybe we should do something square, but its hard to design around this. He also looked at possible colours-grey and yellow, i mentioned red, but we both thought it was quite typical, and then we thought about the fact that we might not neccissarily make a book more of a folder or something that folds out like a poster, make it more interactive.

Graphichug/typography

1st one Jonathan pulled out, looking at colours, good type. This he pulled out an its good because it showed a style he like straight away

We thought about colours and I emailed Sally and she said the colours were not changing on the logo-so do what you want. Next time I meet him we are going to show some thumbnails of layouts- images of interest, and crack on,,, we really need to start because I'm worrying about time on this , but I think we have a good start and good images, but I'm also worrying about the other group working on this, the ave some very strong people in this group and seem t be working very well on this a s group in things I red on Emily's blog they have organised themselves well, and like I said really strong people , as having seen there work I believe they are even though they area big group they have very strong team....I'm just hoping we can pull this one off- I want this soo bad! I feel like the competiton is really there and as part of hat I really want to do later I would really like to get this one! 

MAA- Live brief

Brief- MAA- Multi Area Agreement

They want a new logo, powerpoint and web template, The MAA works with Dorset, Poole and Bournemouth, the MAA brings these people together, this is the one thing that brings these people together. I decided to work with Martin who I worked with on the D&AD brief with and Adam in my class.

We first looked at creating the logo,  firstly looking at the colours of all three logos ad decided to use green, blue and a light orange. These colours were used in all of the logos combined. We already had a pre- idea of using a tri-logo, either hands or legs, and then we thought of a globe, which would represent sand, the land and the sea. We looked at images / things we could do with this such as changing the shapes of where the lines meet. We also looked at how we could present this logo- be it changing where the type goes, we even looked into using either MAA or Multi Area Agreement. For this I did some quick initial experiments in how we could do this.

Powerpoint Template

The first page was simply just the logo and in the second page we had to think about presenting the logo to give enough space for the information to be presented. We experimented with this, either by using a border or just a line at the bottom of the page. The end thing I thought was quite nice, as we had the Multi Area Agreement written underneath the main logo design we came up with incorporating this, as if it was part of the line. I thought this was a nice simple idea, as it look quite sophisticated as it was presented well.

Web Template

Homepage

For the website we generally kept it quite simple, for the homepage we simply kept the logo in the middle.

Buttons 

We got quite stuck on this..maybe not stuck but it took a while for us to choose the final layout. First we just had the the simple colours, of the words Homepage, About Us and Contact in the three colours used in our logo. We then looked at creating small rounded rectangles around the words, and then kept the colours of the words and then changed the stroke the match the colours of the text. Then we looked at filling in he rectangles with the colours of the logo, looking then at the oppacity, but we decided this didn't look as good as the bolder colours. We also hanged the colour of the text which was another decision we had to make, we looked at making the rectangles have a white background, but decided that the bold colours with white text was the best.

We then looked as we did initially of using a line (like the powerpoint presentation). We used lines connecting the three rectangles, or just on either side. But then decided that having a line wasn't the best way.

 I think the layout made it easy for MAA, if they wanted to have more buttons, and therefore more information.

About Us

For this page yet again we kept this very simple and modern. We kept the logo in the same place as our powerpoint presentation. Then used a coloured square with the white text in the middle. For the buttons on this we kept them above the text and then made the same colours around and then joined both coloured squares togethter.

 The contacts page had the same layout.

Th web continued- next we decided as it would be quick to create the web with the working buttons for presentation purposes.

Letterhead

For this we just placed the logo and the contact information centrally.

Though you wouldn't think this would be a problem -it was! 

We had so many problems just placing the text centrally- I don't know why but the text just seemed to be ever so slightly to the one side. We finally figured this out, but it took us forever, we printed out loads and it just wasn't right! But god it was funny- the simplest f things and it took us that long!

Professional Project

The next thing to think about for our crit was where these illustrations will go, I went in the library yet again to do more research based on illustration.I looked at View 2 a fashion magazine, only to find an illustration style I had already used for another project. What they must do is hire an illustrator per season, (when the magazine comes out), and then they do the magazines illustrations for them. It's a series per issue, but they are so good and simple, photography of models down the catwalk, with tracing per over the top with line drawing of the photo behind it. with shapes cut out of the tracing paper to reveal some of the photograph. Very good!

But I tried to find other illustrations and most of them were just computer generated. So I looked through and in the magazine they had clothes laid out not on a person so it didn't have any figure, but just laid out, it made me think whether I could do this, most illustration is on a figure, so it's all thin, so maybe this could be a nice contrast  to what is out there already?And I could have the heads legs and arms coming through as one of those thin people.  So I got a few of these images collected. Just another thing I could do!

Now I want to design.............

At the start i just did some illustrations based on some images I had collected from fashion magazine View 2, whereby there were clothes just placed so it wasn't on a figure, but i thought this was quite nice as looking into fashion illustration it is al on figures, made to look typical, but I thought this would be a nice contrast to the norm?!

So I just started drawing some of these in my style.

For this I needed to look at the fashion Graveyards I had been looking at. I created a list of 15 in which then narrowed down based on the research that I had done in looking at each of the things on the list. I mainly took put things because i just couldn't find enough images based on each fashion graveyard and some mainly because i didn't think they were that bad like boho style, and some I just thought maybe boring to illustrate.

So i gathered these images and now I can really get stuck into this.

We also had a crit based on concept before wee split for easter..I managed to find my final place to put this in.. Originally I was thinking about The Guardian, but in looking at View 2 I found that they have a newspaper section of about no more than 8 pages, but I thought that this would be a good place as I'm just so sure about putting it in a newspaper and not in a magazine...So I told Mike and he said it was a nice idea but to put it into a Guardian format, as Vie 2 is just A4, whereas The Guardian is  nice size which has been recently changed 470mm by 315mm. (18.5 in by 12.4 mm), The Berliner.

What am i Illustrating...

Fashion based on worst trends according/in the Guardian a section called fashion Graveyards, I made a list of about 15, and narrowed it down to 8, they are;

Nude Clothing

Sass and Bide Leggings

Roberto Cavalli- Leopard Print, bejewelled necklines and skyhigh slits

Gareth Pugh

Tulip Skirts

Manty Hose

Clyde Shoes

Union Jack Clothing

Footless Tights

So Far I have done illustrations for Gareth Pugh; These seem to be going really well to be honest, I could do a whole 8 illustrations based on his clothes, i love the use of pattern and texture, its just great, and getting all that detail i think has made mt illustrations good, as its nice to see little details.

Nudes; I've just done 1 illustration for this, but I really like it, its so simple and I may just keep it, unless I have more time at the end. Though this is in fashion graveyard, in some way I like his clothing, though I wouldn't wear it I think his clothes are just different, more experimental and some people just don't like its difference.

Roberto Cavalli: This has been a a bugger, I drew one that had a really different stance on the model, I like it, but I keep looking at it and not being certain, but I've been drawing others and they just aren't good, but I'm willing to continue, its just finding the right images to work from

I was having a conversation about this with my sister, about what is in fashion graveyard- and I just said at the end of the day, its all opinionated. I mean whose to say Gareth Pughs are bad?

Tulip skirts- why are they so bad? Personally I love them, but I think the point was on big people they don't look good so this is what i will have to show on my illustration. Footless tights why are they so bad? I mean the are in look as a fashion must have or something, the don't look so bad to me.

Illustrating this was quite easy, I found several images on this, but it was a case of which one to illustrate, I found a lot with not a lot of pattern, so the images seemed to be lacking. But I finally found one with pattern on, when I finished it though I thought it looked a bit half done- like I spent a lot of time illustrating the skirt and then half-heartedly doing the top half. I gave this a rest just to see if later I could work over it/improve upon it

Sass and Bide leggings-  For this I looked at many images generally on the web, and then I looked at the Sass and Bide website, where I found several good shots of clothes with the leggings, with the models in different positions which would make the illustrations more unique, and strong. Some were quite hard to draw- for instance this one:

But others I found not so difficult, infact I've just found some others in different patterns;

These are quite interesting, zebra rats ( as they are called), pvc rats, and some that just show them off pretty well.

Footless tights- This one I have found quite difficult to illustrate, mainly due to the lack of research I could find, some of the image were pretty boring, but I tried to make the best out of it. I found when I was illustrating one of them , the model was wearing black shoes, so its hard to differentiate where the leggings end and the shoes begin.

Back to nudes- I found some other images on Style.

These were quite more detailed, they had more pattern though simple, throughout the means of illustration make a impact or change. I drew one of them, but to be honest prefer the previous one I did previously.

Union Jack- Now this was hard to illustrate, I looked a lot for any signs of Union Jack, the main ting I got was shops selling single items, I wanted to find something that was on a a model already ( as this seems to be for me the best way I can illustrate, when I can see the actual actual figure, i've tried illustrating figure and portraiture before, but I think this way I can get a feel for the lines and curves I need to draw). I found some images, where Kate Moss wears Union Jack clothing probably for Vogue;

The first image I illustrated (first one of Kate Moss), I drew but the proportions were a bit off, strangely I liked in tho in all it's weirdness, the second one I drew(second image of Kate Moss), I drew it but in looking at all the other illustrations I have done, it does to seem to fit in, to be coherent. But I do really like it, there's quite a lot of detail without being over the top, I also like the difference in composition, but I don't know wether it shows off the Union Jack theme enough.

But then there are others in which I think as a fashion they won't work like Mantyhose, but some people may love them. To me fashion is just so opinionated today.

Editorial illustration

 

I have looked at a few pieces of editorial illustration, mainly in newspapers such as The Guardian. Most of them are just cartoons done by an artist. others I have looked at I found in British best editorial. The first one I looked at is a really nice hand drawn illustration. There is a kind of collage style bout it, as there's several things put together, i also like the limitation in colour, using black and white with red, i think this is to represent the heart (love). The style of illustration is quite simple, doesn't look stylized, just drawn as the illustrator would do, but stylized in the way it all comes together as an image.

The second one i looked at is more digital, like a series of photos in a collage style. I love how it all comes together in layers, as to be made too look like a city. The colour works well too , yet again just the one colour with black and white.  I like how slick it looks, mainly due to the image and media. In terms of interpreting the text into imagery, it works very well based on architecture week, which the illustration portrays.

The third one simply because of how the type has been worked in to fit around the image works well. Using a mixture of both photography and hand drawn techniques to produce this illustration works well combined, and how one leads from the other.

The fourth one, the illustrations are very simple hand drawn imagery using black and white on a colour background. I like how it's set into strips, some heavily illustrated an some less, but focussing on the same subject matter.

Newspaper Cartoons, looking into these and reading the stories, most of the illustrations are interpreted by the head line, they are so clever in how they work, using imagery that you wouldn't first think of, maybe like the first one with the piggy bank representing a bank, maybe you'd just think to illustrate notes, or the flight slump being an illustration of a bird, very clever in how they work and funny.

Fashion illustration

Francois Berthoud

I looked at this illustrator as a main point of interest. I thought that the use/ way to look like it's textured works really well, i love this textured look, just by using pattern, this is something I really would consider when coming to my final illustrations, but how could I achieve this- there are so many ways, using materials, lino cutting, layering, using smooth materials, sewing, there are so many ways. This is something I am going to have to think about.

David Callow- this is a person I got recommended in the last crit, before easter. i looked quickly, I like the combination of hand drawn, and then what could be card around this, some of the colour is quite intricate. i like the style of hand drawn illustration too -it's very light, but highly detailed, Even thought the colour is intricate, only in places and the simple solid colours give off a good contrast between intricate detail of the people.

Designing the final outcomes:

I  have now almost finished ll of my illustrations, I need to just complete the 7th one and then do the 8th one which I already have my image chosen;

The second one mainly because of all the texture on it. Which I have illustrated but the proportions aren't right.

After this I have scanned in the images, I then took inspiration from the Wonderland talk we had, where they used bright colours and black and white photography ( which will be my black and white illustrations), before this I felt a bit hesitant about finishing off these illustrations- about how I would go about making them what I want, I think this talk with the person from Wonderland inspired me. He was also talking about the headings they did, or he did for each story, he said about using fonts that didn't really go together, and though my strong point really isn't type, I decided to look into this. 

Before this I used the concept of colour, I cut out the background in Photoshop and then some of the white spaces I drew with the pen tool in indesign, and made each of these a colour, like this one below, i cut out the circle on the clothing, I did do the same with the other one, but then added a larger circle, which I do think works well, makes it stand out and I think brings out the illustration more. (Gareth Pugh).

The second one took me ages to use the pen tool, I did have less brown shapes at the start but I didn't think it looked right, but I'm still not completely sure on it now. I did also have the small font gold at first but when I chose my colours for the large text, it just didn't seem to go, so I opted for the grey which works well with the purple. but I'm still not sure that some of the white is still exposed?! When I printed this out too, I think maybe the type looks a little large but as I printed it out A4 at first it may look fine on an A3.

Just Plain unflattering; this one I think i like the most, I'm trying to represent the image by the type, and I think this one does exactly that. It's quite a soft illustration- uncontrolled with no real harsh shades,  I tried to reflect that in the illustrations using what to me is an old looking font, but with a modern twist on the colours. For this also I found it hard on the image which colour to use, I did make it brown but I think the turquoise works well.

Sometimes I found it hard about which sections to make into a colour, how and what looks better?!

On the second one I found that you can write within a shape, I haven't done this on some ( like the rat leggings), but  I think the hanging in type works well on some and not on others.

4th one: this one I have found quite difficult to work with, especially the main type/heading. I just really didn't know what type to use, this type on the piece just dosen't look right to me, so I have changed it a few times, but I think I'm struggling with this.

But we have a crit today so it's something I can raise.

This crit went bloody awful if you ask me, Neil said about the illustrations even, he said what I could do now (bearing in mind we only have 2 weeks till the deadline), he said to take photographs, and then re-create these, but to be honest some of them are quite hard to do such as; Roberto Cavalli, Sass and Bide Rat leggings etc.

Then the other thing was the type, he said maybe you don't need it, but I this is something I was simply working on at the time, he said that maybe it would have been good to do some hand type. I felt like I just almost needed to start again.

But after I just thought with the time left to concentrate on the type, as I thought this is the major thing that would need changing. I must admit myself, as being not the strongest at type, I thought I would give myself a bit of a challenge,, so at the weekend I decided to make some finger paintings of type, or anything else that I could find, and then take these in monday and arrange these on the illustrations, which is exactly what i did. On monday I scanned in the type and started arranging it quite large over the illustrations I did, I continued this through tuesday and then most of wednesday. I thought that I would then ask one of my tutors to look at my work, so I asked Kit, I went through what my project was, and the main concern seemed to be that some of the text wasn't clear enough, so she said you could do one of two things:

1. was to make the text really small- put it in a corner or where the its not as obstructed by the illustration.

2. Or to put the text behind the image, so then the main thing isn't the text- as it felt overpowering when it was large and over the top of the illustrations. The illustrations are so delicate that the type was just more dominant , and this wasn't the point!

So I looked at the second option, me and Kit did a test in Illustrator which worked quite well.

However when I came to using the lasso tool in photoshop on my laptop it didn't seem to cut out when I placed it into illustrator. So I did the second one on y laptop, which in all honesty I think will actually look better, as some of the drawings I don't think would suit the second option, and I completly get the simplicity of the images as a whole.

Kit did say to try both of the options, but today I just set myself as an ultimate deadline, as I have to put these into an editorial. I still didn't finish one, footless tights, which I have scanned but I need to scan in the type and then arrange this, but I will go in early tomorrow and do this.

I want to show Neil and Mike these, and then I will get these printed.

8, A3 images.

I spoke to Kit after I had done this, she said about the geometrical shape, in the freak show (Gareth Pugh) one, she asked what the relevance of it was, I said it was mainly because it just seems to work on this one. She said that a possibility was to make a geometrical shape on each illustration, I tried doing this, but it just didn't seem to work so well on others, and some of them I just couldn't think in how to place a shape.

I then had a small crit with Mike, he said mainly about how I could present the spreads, and I also mentioned the geometric shapes, I said about getting rid of them as they just weren't working on some, he said my illustrations alone were better and there's no point to them which I agreed. He then said about presenting my spreads, he said you can have the illustration, and then have the text going around, there was two ways in which I could do this;

1.To make the text, like real text, articles that you find yourself.

2. Or make the text lines or any text,as to just put it into context.

This was something I hadn't even considered doing-just putting lines as text, just to represent a layout- I knew I could find relevant texts anyways on each fashion disaster.

I said to Kit that I had scraped the geometrical shapes, she said that it was probably best to do this. Before I had printed the final illustrations. I found one little hting wrong with the Roberto Cavalli one, in which I had some of the computer generated text still one there, when I didn't want it to be, so I just tweaked this.

I looked back at View 2 magazine, looking at the magazine spread- in the newspaper section, to get some inspiration for my layouts.

I started this on the thursday the week before my deadline- I did feel a bit pressured by time, but I think if I work hard on this I can get it done- afterall I am just showing how these illustrations would be put into an editorial. The style of the View 2 newspaper section is very simple, but very bold.

I think the main probelems were the type- there was one in View 2 that I was looking for, but I couldn't find the exact one- but i found a very similar one so I was quite pleased with that.

The other problems I had was the length in some of the stories- they seemed very long so I had to cut some parts out, cut the end off some of them.

The other problem I had was there wasn't much information for the RIP UNION one, so I just used many stories, and combined them for this one.

I managed to get most of this ready by the weekend- so it took me a few days to finish/almost finish my final pieces, and although I didn't spend a lot of time actually putting them into editorials, the main point, which i spend a lot of time on was the illustrations.