The Final Chapter

My portfolio is nearly finished and I'm about to write the last words of my critical introduction, before handing everything in tomorrow.
Time to reminisce I guess…
If I had to describe this term in three words I would probably say that it was informative, nerve-wracking and exciting.
This module has been completely different from what I expected it to be and a couple of months ago I wouldn't have believed anybody if they'd told me that I would design posters, a T-shirt, etc…
I learned so much this term, not only about the different programs, but also about design in general, about the importance of typography, colors, etc… Things that we never pay attention to in our daily life have suddenly become different because I started to see them from a different angle once I started looking at the importance of details.
After the first class of Communication Design I was literally desperate and I thought that I would never be able to design a whole portfolio. But here I am, finishing the last bits of my work.
My design has turned out to be completely different from what I expected it to be, but I guess that is a good think, because comparing my first design attempts on Illustrator and Photoshop to my final project, one can clearly see that although I will probably never be an outstanding designer, my skills have seriously improved.
I've given my best this term, I've spend days and nights at the lab trying new things and experimenting with the programs. I've done loads of research on all sorts of topics concerning my poster design and although there were moments when I wished I could just change course and learn Russian, I have to admit that after all this course has teached me a lot.
My final design isn't perfect. It is very simplistic and compared to others there's probably a lot of improvement possible, but one shouldn't forget that this was my first time ever working on a design project and especially working with different Adobe projects, which was a really hard challenge to be honest!
I've done my best this term and I'm satisfied with my work because I know that I did the maximum to improve my skills and design an interesting poster.

Halftone, CMYK & more

Before, starting a final summary of my whole process of designing a poster and other items, I thought I'd share some more theoretical knowledge that I gained while researching for my critical introduction.

So basically what I did before starting to write my critical introduction was, looking at every single part of my poster in detail. Color, transparency, layers… I analyzed everything, and one element was particularly eye-catching as I took a closer look at it. What I'm talking about is the modified picture of the Bandstand. I used the color halftone tool on Photoshop to change the original photograph, but I didn't really know what 'halftone' actually meant. So I started doing a bit of research online about halftone, pointillism and CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black).

'Halftone is the reprographic technique that simulates continuous tone imagery through the use of dots, varying either in size or in spacing, thus generating a gradient like effect. ''Halftone can also be used to refer specifically to the image that is produced by this process' (Wikipedia).

This means that the dots in CMYK produce a black shape, in the case of my poster the shape of the Bandstand, but when having a closer look at it, one can clearly recognize the pattern of different dots and different colors.

I think this color halftone is a very impressive phenomenon because it is a kind of optical illusion and creates new shapes simply by combining dots in different colors.

But first coffee

For my portfolio, I have to to 2 additional design elements and right from the start it was pretty clear that I was definitely going to do a T-shirt design, but it took me some time to find another cool item.
I tried to design, lanyards, wristbands and pens, but none of it looked really nice.
And then I thought about all the free stuff that companies were giving away during freshers fair and I immediately had to think of a mug I got from some taxi company.
So I decided to design a mug, because it is just something everybody can and will use.
I basically did the same thing with the mug that I also did with my T-shirt, I took the halftone Bandstand image and just placed it around the mug. And, as for the T-shirt, I used the 'BDF' abbreviation with a pink B. Moreover, the inside of the mug is also in the same transparent pink tone.

Dress to Impress

My T-shirt design  is actually one of the things that I'm quite proud of! When I started working with the T-shirt template I was just sitting in front of the laptop for hours trying to figure out how to include elements from my poster into the T-shirt design without actually just copying the whole poster. 

So I just took the halftone Bandstand picture and divided it in the middle, in a way that one part of it is on the front side of the shirt and the other one is on the back. 

Additionally, I added a little pocket template on the chest so that I could also included the 'BDF' (abbreviation of Brighton Digital Festival), and color the B in the same transparent pink/purple color that I also used in the poster. 

Furthermore, I also tried to change this initially design a bit by just covering the Bandstand with a transparent pink layer, but personally I didn't like this second design that much and that's also why I'm going to use the first one in my portfolio. 

iPad Storyboard

The title of this post might sound interesting, but personally this was probably the most challenging part of the portfolio for me and I'm not really satisfied with my result. 

So another thing we have to do for our portfolio is designing a storyboard of four webpages for iPad.

So I basically just tried to stick with the colors that I used in my poster, and just experimented a bit with different shapes, thus I mainly focused on bubbles, because I think it looks very modern and a bit extraordinary. 

So I did two designs which are pretty similar, the only difference is that for one of them I used bubbles and for the other one I stayed with rectangles just as in the poster.
Another difference that you might recognize between these two storyboards is the color. I used the same color in both templates. Seems impossible, doesn't it? You might wonder how it is possible that there is such a huge difference between the colors although I used the same one.. Well the answer is pretty simple. In the first storyboard I used RGB and in the second one I used CMYK, the difference is enormous, right? That's why I included this second design in this post, because I think most people aren't aware of the huge difference between these two color modes and to be honest I didn't know about it either, until I started working more and more on my designs.

In my portfolio, I'm going to use the design with the bubbles, because I just prefer that one and I think that it is a bit more extraordinary than the second one.
One could criticize that I used bubbles although I never used anything alike in my poster or my other designs, but I think that nevertheless the storyboard totally relates to my general theme, because I'm sticking to the colors and to the Bandstand photograph.

Logos

Besides my poster design, I have to do some additional work for my portfolio. This also includes three versions of a 2D animated logo. So what this basically means is, that I had to create a logo and put it into three different formats, which I then had to put in motion with the Adobe After Effects program.
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to figure out how to upload these After Effects videos on my blog, so I won't be able to show them to you. But instead I uploaded the three different logo formats.
The first one is in a film&video format, the second one is in a 1:1/square format and the third one is a Web banner.
As you can see the logo is pretty similar to the poster, but I haven't been able to design another logo which included enough elements of my poster, so I just resized the poster and used that version as logo.

The Big Final

As I have to hand in my final portfolio with all my inspirations, designs and different elements in 4 days, I thought it would be the right time to finally show everybody my final poster design.

It has been a very long way to get there, and I can always only underline how much I was struggling with the programs, but eventually I've managed to design a poster that doesn't look too bad.

This final design is completely different from what I expected it to be when I started this module, and to be honest I'm far from satisfied with my work, simply because I'm a perfectionist and thus I always think that I could've done better. And of course I could've done a better poster if I've had more time and more experience with the different programs, but I think that at this stage I can be kind of proud of myself because this is the absolute maximum of what I could've reached this term.

I did my best and this is it.

You may wonder why I chose this pink/purple color as background and why I didn't stick with one of the numerous other colors I tried. I think this color is perfect for the poster, because it attracts people's attention. Although I used a pretty high level of transparency, the color is still quite strong. Some people may say that this is a color that attracts women rather than men, because it is very similar to pink, but personally I think that thanks to the transparency this pink/purple color is kind of 'genderless' and thus the poster should attract different kinds of people.

But I think choosing the right color is always very tricky and thus if this poster would be a 'real' promotion poster for the Brighton Digital Festival, I would probably use all kinds of different color backgrounds.

Another questions one might ask is why I didn't include more information about the actual event in the poster. As we're living in the 21st century, in a world that is constantly online and connected, I think it is more useful and more interesting for people  to just look on the social network page of the event for more information.
Often people don't even take the time to read the details on a poster, so I thought it would be easier to just include the different icons from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram because most people are familiar with those and especially young people prefer to check out an event on social media than to read a poster or a flyer.