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.

Youtube has the answer!

As one should've realized by now, I'm completely new to the art and use of Photoshop, Illustrator and other Adobe programs and I've been struggling a lot this term to actually find out how to deal with the basic tools on these programs.

BUT one thing that has helped me a lot during this learning process were video tutorials on Youtube.

You can find tutorials about how to use pretty much every single program, tool or effect and mostly these videos are very detailed and thus really helpful!

Luckily, the Sussex MFM(Media, Film and Music) department regularly uploads new Youtube tutorials that teach you how to use the basics in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and After Effects (because these are the programs that we had to work with this term). But there are also a lot of other bloggers in the Youtube community that regularly post new tutorials for all kinds of questions that beginners and even advanced users of Adobe programs have.

So, if your struggling with the programs, don't panic! Just have a look at different tutorials online and try your best.

These are screenshots of a very small selection of tutorials that helped me during this term's design project :

Experimenting 2.0

For my final portfolio, I also have to make a logo in different formats. So when I was working on my additional poster designs, I thought 'why not try designing a couple of logos'. 

So basically I just experimented again with the color halftone effect on Photoshop (as I also did in my poster), and this is what I ended up with. Although I can't use any of these in my portfolio, because they are not really related to my actual poster design, I'm quite satisfied with them, simply just because I feel like they don't look that bad and although these designs are ' just for fun' they once again really helped me to improve my photoshop skills.

Experimenting

In my final poster, I'm working with photography. And when I went to Brighton to take my Bandstand picture, a couple of weeks ago, I took a couple of other photos, and when looking at them on my laptop, I thought why not try some additional poster designs with these pictures. 

So I made two additional posters, one with a picture of the pier taken from the ferris wheel, and another one with a photograph of a friend of mine holding a blank poster,  inspired by a poster of an opera that I saw a couple of years ago. 

To be honest, I don't really like the second one, it turned out to be completely different from what I wanted it to look like, and I think that the contrast between the black and white photo and the pink and blue text is a bit too intense. 

BUT, I really love the first poster, although it is very simple. I think what makes that poster so special is the angle from which the photograph was taken. I've seen loads of pictures from the Brighton Pier, but I've actually never seen one taken from the ferris wheel. 

Working on some additional posters 'just for fun' has actually not been very useful for my final design portfolio, but it has definitely helped me to experiment with the different programs once again.

Typography : Why I chose Myriad Pro

As we're getting closer to the due date, I started reflecting on the different elements I used in my poster, and as I looked through several design books and websites, I became aware of the fact that typography and different typefaces play a major role in design. 

One quote especially got my interest as I was reading about the history of typography on a website : 'Typography is body language. It's what makes the first impression'(http://conversionxl.com/the-effects-of-typography-on-user-experience-conversions/). And if you think about it, this is very accurate! If people look at a poster or an advertisement that has a very blurry or unreadable typeface, they are probably not even going to make the effort to read the message.

However, I read an interesting article about a study in which different readers were given the same story but in different typefaces, the results were unbelievable and showed how different fonts actually influence in how far people believe a story or not. (http://theweek.com/articles/463196/how-typeface-influences-way-read-think)

So after this, I wanted to know more about the typeface I used and started to do some research about it. 

For my poster I chose, Myriad Pro bold, a humanistic sans serif font, which appeared very neutral and simple to me, which is the main reasons why I chose this typeface. And my research showed me that Myriad Pro is actually a very famous sans serif font that is also used by Apple, Walmart and some other big companies, who use it because it is one of the most easy-readable typefaces and thus attracts people's attention. 

And as I took a closer look at my poster, after becoming aware of the fact how important choosing the right typeface actually is, I realized that indeed the Myriad Pro font had a very strong influence on me, because it is so easy to read and because it's a sans serif font it doesn't seem as complex and official as a serif typeface, such as Times New Roman,  for instance. 

All in all, the history behind typography and the meaning of different typefaces is a very important part of design and thus should be taken into account whenever analyzing or even just looking at a poster or any other piece of design. 

Point, Layers and Transparency

As I am getting closer to finishing my first ever poster design, I thought it would be interesting to have a look at some theory from 'Graphic Design : The New Basics'.
So I first started reading about point, line and plane, which are the absolute basics of design that everybody should know about. But for my poster design, I thought that it would be important to concentrate on 'point'. I really liked the definition the book gave of point saying that 'a point can be an insignificant fleck of matter or a concentrated locus of power. It can penetrate like a bullet, pierce like a nail, or pucker like a kiss. A mass of points becomes texture, shape, or plane', because it points out that rather than being just an insignificant dot, the point is an important tool that can help to create loads of different things.
So why do I think the theory about point is important for my analysis? Well, as I decided that I'm going to use to different versions of a Bandstand photograph in my poster, the original picture in the background and a halftone version in the front, I think that the definition from the book is particularly helpful when having a look at the halftone picture of the Bandstand. As in the books definition this shows how 'a mass of points becomes shape', and in the case of my poster, it's the shape of the Bandstand.

Another thing that I thought would be interesting to have a look at in relation to my poster, is the book's definition of  layers. Since I started working with Photoshop and Illustrator I knew that I wanted to work with a lot of different layers in my poster because I think it is really interesting to see things overlapping, fading into each other,etc…
However, what is particularly interesting in 'Graphic Design : the New Basics' is that it also talks about layers in relation to transparency, a phenomenon which I also took into account while working on my poster.
'Transparency and layers are related phenomena. A transparent square of color appears merely pale or faded until it passes over another shape or surface, allowing a second image to show through itself'. 
This explains exactly what I am trying to do with my poster. I took the originally black and white Bandstand photography as a background and then put a pink rectangle with a transparency value of more or less 60% over it.

Although normally one should do this kind of research before starting to actually work on a design, I think that in this case it has helped me more to look at the different definitions and design tools after I nearly finished my poster, because it helps me to understand what I did and how the things that I did influenced my poster.

Aram Bartholl&Post Internet Art

Today I did a presentation on Aram Bartholl and Post Internet Art in class. At the beginning of term when we had to choose the topic we wanted to present, I had no idea what Post Internet Art actually is, and I only chose it because it sounded kind of interesting, especially as I am studying Media&Communication and hence constantly get confronted to the Internet and the digital world.

As I started researching for my presentation and tried to find some information about Aram Bartholl and Post Internet Art, I slowly began to explore a totally different kind of art that was completely new to me. 

In his work, Aram Bartholl explores the intersection between the virtual and the physical world. He turns digital objects into physical ones and asks not only what people do with the media, but also what the media do with people, a question that, I think, is essential in the 21st century. 

The thing that fascinated me most about Aram Bartholl's Post Internet art is probably that he involves other people into his work, by organizing different workshops or, as in 'Dead Drop', putting USB flash drives into walls,buildings and other public spaces and thus inviting people to find or drop files on a dead drop in the middle of a city. 

And although Post Internet Art doesn't really have anything to do with graphic design and probably won't help me to find further inspiration for my poster, I can definitely say that I have learned something new and I will definitely keep an eye on Post Internet Art and Aram Bartholl in the future. 

Getting closer

So after deciding that I definitely want to work with a photograph of the Bandstand in my poster, the first thing I did was actually going to Brighton and taking a picture of the Bandstand myself, which I then edited a bit to get a really strong black and white contrast. 

So I guess this will probably be more or less my final poster design. 

Before, I was only working with Illustrator because I didn't really know how to deal with Photoshop. 

But after trying for hours and hours to get along with both programs I finally managed to figure out the basics in Photoshop.

So I did the background on Illustrator, then went over to photoshop to halftone the Bandstand photograph and put it into Illustrator, over the original photograph of the Bandstand, to make it look a bit as if the halftone picture would kind of flow into the real photograph. 

I'm not sure if I'm going to stay with the transparent pink as background color or if I should experiment a bit and try other colors, but for now this is more or less what I wanted to do, and I have to say that I'm quite satisfies so far, even though it isn't perfect yet.

Changing ideas

In the last few weeks, I was thinking a lot about whether my initial idea to work with different typefaces and colors wouldn't be too easy. So I had a look at some other poster designs, hoping to find some other inspiration for my poster. 

However, I thought this poster looked very interesting, because of the different layers, the colors and the pixelated background. 

Of course this is completely different from my initial idea, but I think this is a bit more interesting than a simple white background with some letters on it. 

Furthermore, trying something completely different, gives me the opportunity to experiment a bit more with Photoshop and Illustrator and thus also learn how to use different tools and styles. 

So using the 'Drawn Together' poster as inspiration, I started thinking about how I could use this idea for my 'Brighton Digital Festival' poster and it came to my mind that it could be interesting to use a photo of the Bandstand as it is one of Brighton's famous landmarks. 

Working on this design, I really got a feeling for Illustrator and Photoshop and I found it particularly interesting to integrate a photograph into my poster. 

As you can see, I used the bandstand photograph twice in my poster, in the background in a very transparent rose tone, and in the foreground in black and white. 

I really like the fact that due to the different layers and levels of transparency, the pictures overlap at certain points. 

But although I'm already fond of this design, I think that I will continue experimenting and I will try to get even closer to the initial 'Drawn Together' poster inspiration.

Practice Practice Practice

So this was my second try on Illustrator. It is still far from what I want my poster to look like, but I think that I'm slowly starting to get a bit of a feeling for the programs. 

I experimented a bit with different colors in these posters. I mainly focused on pink and yellow though, but I'm thinking about trying out other contrasting colors such as blue and red for example. 

Moreover, I will try to use different backgrounds, because I think that with the simple black or white background, the posters still look a bit boring. 

First Try!

 So as one can see, I messed around a bit with Photoshop and Illustrator. 

 I know that these are no masterpieces, but I think that for my first time ever working with one of those softwares, these posters are not that bad after all! 

But I have to admit that I had quite a lot of trouble figuring out how to deal with the programs! 

I did these two posters on Illustrator, because I used quite a lot of different layers ( especially for the first one) and had some problems dealing with the layer tool on Photoshop. 

Personally, I prefer the second poster, because it is a bit more decent and still has something extraordinary due to the letters 'falling' into each other. 

Inspiration

Already a couple of weeks ago, I started to look for some inspiration for my poster on Tumblr. 

By that time I had no idea what I was actually looking for, but as I found quite a lot of posters using a variety of colors I immediately knew that I wanted to do something alike. 

As you can see, most of these examples are very simplistic, but I think that it is this simplicity that makes them eye catchers. 

This last one, probably inspired me the most. 

I really like the use of different colors and layers and  the transparency of the letters.