WHAT IS A LINE?// El Cap Photography

I've collected some photographs I think I would be able to use in the magazine based on some quick plans I have drawn up. These were all taken in the summer of 2011 in Yosemite national park.
The great thing about being able to use these photos is that they were taken on a big slr camera and should be good enough quality to cover a whole double page spread.

WHAT IS A LINE?// El Capitan Design Styles

Ive just been experimenting with some styles I could use for the current brief. I want to develop a style that represents a mixture between Mexican and North American design.

This first idea harks to the design of an American muscle car. They had some interesting typography and transfer design down the side of them so I thought that I could translate this here. Although I initially like this design I feel that it does not suit the brief. It has some tacky American type but doesn't really speak of climbing or Yosemite. However I would like to develop this idea further sometime, perhaps for another brief.

The next idea looks a bit too constructivist for this brief by I knocked it up quickly to see what it could look like. I think I could probably transfer this idea into the design context publication for some of the constructivism puzzles.

This is my favorite design so far, it incorporates an image of El Capitan with some tall American Type over the top. The biggest problem I have here is that the design is near-identical to the example design for the font on losttype.com.

So i changes the colours a bit. I will do some more experiments to see which looks the best but at the moment my favorite by a long way is the steely dark blue of the first image.

I also used the image and put it behind the constructivist style design. It transforms the overall design and makes it look like a much more modern conceptual design. I like how it is confusing to work out of the design is white lines over an image or the image is in strips over a black background. Perhaps i could also add another image in there of a climber to cover the white space.

INTERIM EVALUATION

Problems identified during brief's:
I have encountered a variety of problems in the course of this year. Overall, I think that it has been fairly problem free but some issues have arisen. I suppose I usually finish the main design task early on because I want to manage the time I allocate to other projects, this has a minor impact on the overall outcome of the brief as I become bogged down in other work. This year has been fairly busy for me both in the studio and socially but with improved time management I was able to complete the most of the work itself to a pretty good standard. On one or two occasions I have not had time to book a print slot with James but I have not yet submitted work that has been printed at poor quality due to the drop in times.

Key considerations when investigating brief's.
The main consideration I took into account throughout the year has been the design style that I have employed. In the last module we focused heavily on research and gathering large amount of information, I collected vast amounts about Zimbabwe and Blood Diamonds. In 406 I did do research and made sure everything was correct before committing to my statements but focused much more of my time on design. My best work is produced when I start to balance a consideration for the audience with research and employ a good design style all at the same time.

Evaluate Research Technique.
My most common research technique is to base my work on something I already have some interest in, and therefore knowledge of. Usually this means that I have some material I can start with, be it in a book, magazine, internet or newspaper. After this initial base research I will always continue learning about the topic by finding resorces on the internet. Occasionally I will consult the public by means of a questionnaire but I sometimes feel that questioning the same people (college) over and over again would limit the work I do to a more narrow perspective.

Evaluate Secondary Research Undertaken.
Secondary research accounts for the backbone of my design decisions. I have always felt that Internet research is massively undervalued by older generations who perhaps did not grow up with the resource themselves and perhaps do not trust the media but I strongly believe that if you know where to look, the internet is the most valuable source of information the world has ever seen. For example there is no way I could have found 100 separate articles about blood diamonds by trawling old newspapers, but with the internet I was able to find, read and extract information from these 100 in about 3 solid days work. This meant the the content of my blood diamonds project was heavily based on slid research and good information that had been cross referenced over many different sources. Equally important is the access the internet has allowed me to the work of designers who are practicing today. Often I can gather inspirational styles from these designers and then get to work to a response with my own interpretation within minutes.

Evaluate Primary Research Undertaken.
I suppose in terms of making design decisions I make sure that the people around me are involved with my designs and that they can feed input into how I can improve and change designs. This also happens in our invaluable crits, where I can gather feedback from students and tutors and alter work appropriately. In terms of gathering primary research for information to include within the designs themselves, I find that I have not carried out as much of this research as my peers. Questionnaires for example have become a staple for finding out what the rest of the year had for breakfast but we are a unit of like minded people and I feel that gathering public opinion from them would be fairly bias.

Evaluate Initial Idea Generation.
Many of my initial Ideas I feel I can visualise in my head much better that I can draw on paper. This is usually how I come up with design solutions; I can picture a blurry final design, then draw down a basic interpretation for documentation, but also so I do not forget. This is probably not the best tactic because I have a horrible tendency to believe that the first idea I have will also be the best idea I have. In many occasions this year however I have proven to myself that this is wrong and that through healthy idea generation by drawing as many different ideas as I can before I start, I can create better design. This happened in the last brief. My first idea with the light bulbs over the queens head was the one I went for straight away. When I stepped back to think about my other ideas I ended up with a stronger one, both visually and conceptually.



CLASSIFICATION OF STAMP IT BRIEF

Systematic Approach
Every design I do has a systematic approach which is very clear to see on my design practice blog. For every brief I tend to design in illustrator on multiple art boards. Every time I make a change I start a new art board so I can clearly see when I have been and where I can go next. Also I can take old art boards that may be better and ask other designers around me which one they like for their opinions.

Stimulated Approach
My stimulated approach is fairly laid back. I like to think that I take inspiration from movements and broad styles rather than individual designers. Most of this inspiration comes from internet sources, as this is the modern way to gather inspiration and is also the most unchained and diverse resource there is. However I definitely use magazines and other print based design to help my design considerations when it comes to truth to materials and stock choices.

Intuitive Approach
I liked my intuitive approach during this brief. As I had printed the stamps by Wednesday lunch last week I was basically making decisions on how I wanted to construct my stamp book without any sibliminal direction coming from others in the studio. I also interpreted my own design of the royal mail logo so it would be more appropriate.

STAMP IT// Stamp Book

Using the new layouts I managed to print and cut the stamps and book cover earlier today. I'm pretty happy with the overall result and they have received some positive feedback so far. My only concern would be that the stamps are too dark and depressing. This is a problem I tried to overcome earlier in the brief but the more I researched the more I came to terms with he fact that these maps are the truth about state of the planet and the brief was not aimed at a cotton wool audience but at stamp collections who might appreciate the design and message.

The lino cutter follows a line path from illustrator, the line itself was not printed and a bleed was added to colour which reaches the edge in case the cutter did not cut a perfect line. 

After initial concerns about the precision of the cutter at such small scale the stamps came out perfect. The notches are all nicely cut and the back of the sticky paper could be removed easily to leave the stamps.

The print quality was good but I do worry that the pollution map is fairly small scale to be readable. Stamps do have a surprisingly small scale when you considers some of the other special designs so hopefully this will be acceptable. The only other issue I have is that the colours clash a bit. I knew this would happen because you can tell from the digital designs, I don't really have a problem with it but it would be something to consider if I want to take this work further.

I printed the booklet on satin paper which is a nice cross between gloss and matt. The solid colour with white looks a bit 2000's to me but the aim was to keep this simple so it actually looks like a stamp book.

Inside I arranged the stamps to four a page. I used double sided tape to get the paper sticker paper attached to the booklet. This worked very well looks pretty seamless when held.

This is the back cover of the book which reiterates the message of the booklet.

STAMP IT// First Day Stamp Cover

Here is my first day stamp cover:

STAMP IT// Final Layouts

These are the final 30x41 mm landscape postage stamps for print. I have had to do a slight reshuffle of the text and maps to that they can fit on the stamp as well as delete the thick black outline. I have replaced this with a vector line which a lino cutter machine will follow after the stamps have been printed on sticky paper. The aim is to remove the sticky plastic that surrounds the stamps and leave the stamps stuck to the paper. This will also remove the paper which accommodates the bleed in these designs.

This images shows the art-boards I have used to get the stamps to this stage. It creates an interesting story of how I work and how the idea has grown and developed.

STAMP IT// Stamp Book

Using the same colour swatches as the stamps I designed some stamp books to hold a total of eight first class stamps. The designs are very simple and aim to look like stamp books instead of being overly unique in design.

 I used the imagery from the happy birthday planet earth idea on the back of the stamp book with the simple but horribly usual reduce, recycle, reuse, slogan. Most of the design is just aesthetics.

I also designed a royal mail logo to make it simple and less garish.

...and experimented with some different colours to see which ones I can use for print.

Overall I think i kept this design deliberately simple. This way the stamp book looks like a real stamp book without distancing itself from the stamps which you find inside.

STAMP IT// Map Stamps Air Pollution

 The final stamp will map the levels of air pollution covering Europe. Used the same method of finding several maps and then using a select few to develop the map for my stamps.

 I also developed a new colour pallet for this stamp. There has been a red pallet before but I felt this was too light so it made a dark version here. This image also shows now i have mapped out the areas of high pollution. The original image is a heat sig but here I have overlay my red map to show how the maps are constructed.

This final stamp is a little different to the others. The text has been shifted to allow for the longer words to fit on the page. This isn't really noticeable.  

STAMP IT// Map Stamps Ice Caps

The next map about the destruction of the world will be the infamous melting ice caps. I found several scientific journals and news articles mapping the melt so after some research I went for the two that were most up to date. 

Again it hardly took any time at all to trace out the map and add some colour. The colours have too be a higher contrast here because for some reason different shades of yellow seem to be harder to distinguish between. Also I do realise that it is difficult to tell what part of the world this map is focusing on orientation wise. North America is on the left and Russia on the right.

STAMP IT// Map Stamps Rainforest

 The second stamp in this series will be about the Amazon rainforest, more specifically about its rapid depletion. This is fairly well trodden ground but it is surprisingly hard to find a map visualising the data we hear about all the time.

 Now I have a template to work to it is very easy to design the other stamps. For the map of amazon depletion I found an existing map hidden deep within the bowls of a french scientific mapping journal. I then used the pen tool to develop my own map in two tone. Showing the difference between 1970 rainforest and 2012 rainforest. I updated the colours from one of my previous colour swatches and updated the mini-key in the top left. I also created a stamp outline to give myself a quick idea of how the stamps could look....

STAMP IT// Map Stamps

 I have decided to continue with the maps idea. This is because I feel that it is a serious topic which can be interesting as well as visually beautiful. I also like the idea of producing a series of very simplified colour coded maps. My plan is to find four things to map out, at the moment this is; ozone depletion, air pollution, amazon destruction and ice cap melt.
All of these topics are fairly depressing really but I wouldn't like to make light of the situation in any way and I think that at the end of the day these stamps will be a good collectors item like the brief requires.

 Firstly I have shifted the stamps from portrait to landscape. In this layout I have room to add text and the queens head next to the map without too much conflict. I have decided also that the blue colour will also best suit this design, its a rich and deep blue which sits well against the white. I also decided to use Gill Sans for the text because of its British heritage and also because of its symmetrical balance which fits nicely within the dimensions of the stamp.

 I also worked on some different versions of the queens head. I'm pretty sure that the queen has to be the highest object on the stamp so by making her slightly bigger on the design the rules are kept and the design stays in balance.

I messed about with some very minor changes to the design to see which one fits best and also tested some more colours on the designs I was happy with. This yellow is really rich but the different colour stages are less noticeable.

I added some text to the designs here. I used the saying 'Reduce, Recycle, Reuse. I chose this because it is nationally recognised and gives some context for displaying the maps. The maps reinforce the sentiment of the slogan with some nice visuals.

Just playing around with the style of the text, these versions are much more clear but they are still pretty plain looking here, I want to add more style to these designs.

Here I added some perspective to the design in the form of a choppy mountain range style footer. The rest of the design sits on top pretty nicely, I like to think that its looks like a view of the earth from the eye of some one standing on the moon...

I have thickened the line of the land to make it stande out more, hopefully people will notice the shape of Antarctica and recognise what is going on in the image. To help I ave also added a small key to the top left. The word 'Hole' sits next to a block of colour which matches the hole on the map.

What is Visual Literacy?// Newspapers

This time I am collecting newspapers and cutting them up, rearranging them and hopefully discovering something about type hierarchy here. Once again I hope that the newspapers I consider to be well designed contain a limited amount of fonts and colours while the papers I consider to be messy will have a more free-for-all approach to type.





GOOD

I would consider the FT to be a well designed newspaper. They follow a strict grid rule and try to keep the tones low key and easy to view. Despite these facts, the FT is a pretty daunting read, not because of content but because of the fairly confusing layout. Inside the paper there is so much non-stop text that it can become overpowering, this might just be my dyslexia talking, but I feel the paper needs more breaks, wider margins perhaps...

Suprisingly after cutting out all the fonts it is clear that there are way more that you would expect. I do suspect that the majority of these fonts come from the ads on the front page, but this still should be considered as part of the overall design so this is an unsuspected outcome. On another note there is an interesting type hierarchy here, the papers name and the main article titles are the largest point size, this is followed by the advert type. This must be because the heavy type really stands out against the tiny point size the FT opts for.

In my type hierarchy of importance I have only shifted the ads and the body copy around. I feel that the titles and article headers are all well represented by wither an increase in the weight of the text or its point size. 

AVERAGE

This is what I would consider to be an average paper. There is not too much interesting stuff going on here but the page layout follows a set grid which is stuck to im most places. The paper is a student housing newspaper so I suppose its a no-thrills sort of thing.

This is the type laid out in order of point size. It is clear that this layout designer felt that the more important the information the larger the text should be. There is so little variation in text in the page that there is very little to mess around with of comment on here.

I've only had to switch over the article for the writers names and page number to sort this by importance of information.

BAD

This is what I would consider to be a poorly designed newspaper. There is a lack of or disregard for a grid and colour, type and image all clash almost uncontrollably. For some reason text all sits in the bottom right and images fill the top left of the page, I wonder if this has something to do with the human eyes natural path across the page or if this is is just coincidence and the designers have simply not considered balancing any of the type or image evenly.

Again another surprise, this time there is much less variation in type, even compared to the FT. Although I will point out that in this newspaper they use many different typeface families rather than just variations of one like in most other papers. Having laid out the text in order of point size and weight it is clear that small commentary and remarks are more of a mainstay in this paper and it relies much less on the body copy to do all the talking.

After reorganising in terms of importance I have shifted all of the rubbish commentary to the bottom and decided that the main text would be more of a priority to me. Its is also interesting to point out that the papers name, one of the smallest pieces of text on the page is something I would find quite important to bring more attention too.