Research: David Pelham.

Ive been looking into different artists styles recently, and have come across a man named David Pelham. David Pelham worked as a cover designer for Penguin books, and the style he used is very much like Paul (something) in the way he used colours, and lines. It all looks very 60's, but not so pop 60's.

David Pelham has designed a few book covers, but famously designed the cover forA Clock work Orange (Anthony Burgess, 1962). This caught my eye because of how simple, yet how complicated the design was. He has only used block colours, and thick, simple curved lines, yet you really get a sense of forboding when you look at the cover.

He has also designed 4 books for a Science fiction series for J.G Ballard. They have the same striking lines and curves, but the colours feature heavy gradients on them, which is very effective, especially when pusing the idea of Science fiction. The way he has used shadows as well is very effective.

Research: What is Urban Regeneration?

What is urban regeneration? When we got this project, I was horrifically confused at what they where asking me to do, but after having a little look on google, i think ive come up with what I believe urban regeneration is.

Urban regeneration is the restoration, and improvement of inner city areas. The main focus of it, is to turn old, dirty, crime infested areas into nice, clean shopping areas, that are safe for the average lower middle class pedestrians.

I believe that the main target for doing this, is to be able to sell this idea to the kind of people who enjoy restaurants, and going out for a drink, and seeing shows, and watching live comedy. The brief asks for an age range of 18 - 39, which seems to have it it right on the nose, because they are the perfect age range that are more likely to have a disposable income.

My next post should be some example about Urban regeneration, and a look into in more depth.

Urban Regeneration.

Another project aye? A week to do the bulk of it aye..?! Well... Here we go..

Brief:

Inner cites changed enormously in the 90s and 00s, with run down areas of disused buildings and land, and in some cases substandard housing, being redeveloped into pockets of urban cool, featuring flats, shops, hotels, restaurants, venues and conference centres, with the intension of breathing new economic life into the previously derelict.  In Brighton, two examples of this are the area around the Jubilee Library and the New England Quarter at the back of the train station.  Further afield, the work of Urban Splash has redeveloped areas of English northern cities.

This kind of regeneration has slowed right down in the current recession, but for this assignment you have to imagine that London Road Brighton is being redeveloped into a gentrified urban centre attractive to the young and single or couples without children.  Flats, bars, restaurants, shops, a hotel and a club / music venue are designed to be attractive to the target market of 18 – 39 year old well off students and professionals. 

You have been commissioned to create the graphic design for the promotion of the London Road Brighton project.  You need to develop a consistent visual language across a range of print pieces, using typography and a graphic style in a way that creates a visually coherent campaign.  You need to produce a folding leaflet which promotes the project overall combining text and images, and a series of at least three magazine ads or posters which focus on a specific aspect of what’s on offer in the zone (such as a bar, the hotel and the flats).  The ads are for distribution as full page ads in relevant magazines including Time Out in London and Latest 7 in Brighton.  The posters are to be placed in London and Brighton bus stops and train stations, and London Tube stations.  You will need to create these print pieces at suitable aspect ratios and mock them up into a photo of a location or magazine to show their impact in situ. 

You will start this project by undertaking visual research.  As well as looking at existing posters, magazine ads and leaflets for their design characteristics, you will look into the visual presentation of architectural and urban regeneration projects, and you will also explore the work of artists, designers, design movements and images to select a visual language that will inspire and inform your work.  This research needs to be reflected in your blog. 

You will devise the concept for your campaign (inspiration, imagery, tag line, colour, font, layout etc) from research and design development processes including brainstorms, mood boards, sketches, mock-ups etc and pitch this concept to the group and your tutors for discussion.  Your design development work must be shown in your sketchbook. 

You will use any combination of Photoshop and Illustrator to produce the artwork for this project.  The leaflet must be laid out and typography incorporated in InDesign. 

You will show your completed artwork to the group for critique, justifying your design decisions and looking for potential improvements.  The crit feedback needs to be written up on your blog.  Once improvements have been made in response to the crit, you need to print your artwork to put in your sketchbook.  These do not have to be printed at full size for the poster; you can print at A3.  The leaflet printed double sided and folded.  You need to get your printing done externally at a print shop (Blow up in Brighton and The Print Room in Lewes are recommended). 

If I where to do it all again....

If I where to do it all again... I would do a lot more research at the beginning, and work my time better. For this product, i had an idea, and worked backwards. I have learned by doing this, that it is a bad idea. I found my self rushing towards the end.

Also, im going to use my sketch book a lot more next time, because i can see how it can be really useful to work between the blog, and the sketch book to develop ideas. If i work constantly, the times shown should show a well crafted and planned out piece of work.

I like how my product turned out, but if i WAS to do it all again, i would work a lot more with textures, trying to make them perfect, because i feel that it is the only thing letting it down. It did look good with the textures, but i had the wrong colour. After changing the colours, i was unable to get the right texture mix with the gradient that i had before.

Final product!

Here is my final product. I'm very happy with the out come, but again, i feel i could of managed my time a lot better. I think the NEXT project, I'm going to be on it.

Crit changes

After getting my crit, i decided to make my changed. I changed the font to make it look more old, instead of making it look like a new font, intended to be old. I changed it to a font called Kremlin.

I also changed my primary colour to red, to make it look a lot Russian.

Crit.

A few days ago i had my crit, and i got a few good points of feedback. The product that i showed everyone had a primary colour of yellow, which i see now was bad, because i wanted to style it in the style of russian propaganda, which used primary reds in it. Also, my font choice seemed to new. As in it fitted, but it looked as though it was crafted for that specific progress. I have now changed the colour of it, as well as the font. I feel now, its looking really good..!

Illustrator stuffs: Gradient tool.

Another tool that i found was great to use was the gradient tool. At first it was really difficult to get used to, but after a few practice runs, and adding gradient points to the paces i wanted, it became really simple, and gave a great looking effect, especially for this project, because a lot of old propaganda worked with hand drawn gradients, and a gradient and a texture effect really gave the hand drawn look. The most gradient i used in this project was in my stripes. I wanted to make the large stripes look as if they where popping out, but at the same time look flat enough to look hand drawn. I did this by making a dark gradient around the outside, and then adding lighter colours towards the middle. After that i added a texture using the effects pallet available to me on Illustrator.

The way i got to getting the stripes was by creating one, working with it till i got it how i wanted, then copied it, pasted it in front, and the used the rotate tool from the middle, and moved it where i wanted. I then copied both of them, pasted in front, and rotated from the middle. I did this until i was happy with the amount of stripes.

Illustrator stuffs: Pen tool.

For this project, i learned a TON of things on illustrator, and have grown to love it. The tool that i used most was the Pen tool. Its great for straight and curved lines, and makes drawing on the computer really easy. For example, on my final piece, Ive had to draw a large realistic looking looking hand giving a thumbs up, and the pen tools ability to draw curves came in handy! If i was using Photoshop, or anything else, i dont think i would be able to get as natural looking curves for the thumb.

I used the pen tool again when i was creating the glowing out line of the thumb, to make it stand out from the background. I used the same technique, but this time it was a lot easier, because all i had to do was trace what i had already done. That it was just a case of selecting the shape, getting rid of the stroke and filling it with white, and feathering it by going to effects, stylize, feather, and chose one that made it cling to the shape of the hand and arm.

Mock up.

Here is my first mock up. Im not keen on it yet, as it looks way to clean and pointy. I need to add more corners, and make it look older.

Colour schemes

I went into Kuler to look for colour schemes for my work. I typed in a few key words, like communits, russia, soviet, war, world war, cold war and so on. I got a lot of things back, but ive decided on one, and here it is... With my attempt of talking about it on the web..

This colour scheme works really well, because the era I have chosen is Russian world war two. A lot of the posters featured at this time in Russia, had a lot of blacks and reds. This may have been because ink was expensive, and red and black ink came cheap, but it was also because of the emotive connotations of the colours. Red is very strong, and can mean both compaction and brutality, and this is what the Russians wanted to strike into their country men. This colour scheme works only on the bases of the red, and the the rest of the colours are there to back up what the red is trying to tell us.

Web 2.0 and spacejam.

Web 2.0 is the expression used for new wave websites. What makes a website 2.0, is whether it has the capability to allow it users to customize, share, post, talk and so on with other users. Lets take for example Facebook. Facebook is a great example of 2.0 because it allows you to pretty much do what you like with it, apart from meddle around with the inner workings of the code, that would be insane. Instead, Facebook will literally let you where your heart on your sleeve. Or heart on your Facebook page.. The point is that it allows you to do more things than just look at the content, you are the content. web 1.0 didn't allow any of this. You would go to a website, ingest the information that was there, and then leave. A really strange example of all of this is to first look at any recent 2.0 website, such as here, blogger. Now take a look at the Spacejam movie website. Its like traveling back in time to when the web was new. Because it was. It was web 1.0.  Click here to see the Spacejam website.. Its freaky.

An Idea To End All Ideas!

I have come up with an idea that I feel will work perfectly. Using the Russian propaganda model of a fist in the air, I'm going to somehow combine that with the facebook like symbol. More posts to come about it.

More ideas.

Developing ideas.

Ive been doing some sketchbook work, pretty much doodling to ideas, and looking at propaganda posters and taking ideas from examples.

 When i saw this poster from World War 2, I thought that i could change it in a way that fitted my brief.

Poster analysis

This is a Russian propaganda poster from the cold war era. The text is talking about being aware of Americans offering bread, because they will eventually drop bombs. 

This is a British propaganda poster from world war two, showing how the Russia and Britain alliance will crush the Nazi's.