In Response to my Pitch

From my pitch, I have gained some feedback of my research and design choices. The good points of my pitch include valuable research and proposal. It was said that I have looked a good number of artists in response to the brief.
However, there was criticism of my design choices as it seemed to show that I currently have little direction with my designs. It was also a unanimous decision that my blocky, pop art themed design was better suited for my posters as it fits in with my research, and the poster looks more bold and eye catching. They said that the colour coming off the font was a good design choice so I shall keep this in mind for my future posters. The font going down the poster sideways was also called a good design choice.
From my feedback, I should go with the more pop art themed poster for my designs, and that I should keep all the design ideas I had from that poster as they work well together.

Sketches and Mockups

As of now, I am unsure of where to go with the two ideas I have planned. Both posters so far are advertising a club, although I have two different styles which I am having troubles choosing between.

   

These are the two font styles I have looked at, and the way they would look on posters.The first one uses bright and bold colours, which fit in with the pop art style I was looking at, and the second uses a more modern style.

I then created two poster sketches using a club/bar to see what they would look like:

 

The one on the left uses the style of text from the first mockup, as well as the silhouette theme from my research. The second one focuses more on line drawings than blocky silhouettes.

Other Advertisements

To get ideas for my own posters, I have looked at existing adverts which have a pop art style.
iPod

 










Vauxhall Corsa

Coca Cola

The iPod silhouette advertisement will help me with my silhouette idea that I have for my posters/ For instance, I could use the same flat colour effect on my posters.

Proposal, Colour Scheme, Fonts

As stated on the brief, the target audience for my urban regeneration project is younger adults between the age of 18-39. Looking at other things that are aimed at this target audience, and the fact that I have looks at pop artists, I think that I should try a go more towards the style of the iPod advert that I looked at and a mix of the artists that I have researched.
As I have looked at pop art, I should use bright colours to reflect that. It also goes well with the target audience, as bright colours are used on adverts targeted at younger adults a lot of the time.
The fonts should be bold and clear so they can easily be seen on my posters, but also fit in with the theme of the posters. As I am thinking of going with a silhouette theme, I was thinking of a more black font.

Colours

 

 For my colours, I have picked these from the artwork I have looked at. My posters should incorporate  these colours on them to fit in with my researched art. These are also very bold colours, which fit in with the target audience.

Fonts

 The two font I mainly looked at were Diminuto and Bebas Neue. I thought that Diminuto looked modern and would fit in with the target audience, whereas Bebas Neue would fit in with the boldness and pop art theme of my posters.

Looking at Logos

 

I have looked at these logos for inspiration for my own logos. They all share an urban theme, which is relevant to the brief.

Artists I Have Looked At

I have been looking at various pop artists for inspiration for my designs, as I think they would work well with the silhouette concept I would like to use. These are four artists whose art I have looked at for ideas.

Patrick Caulfield

 

Peter Max

 

Tom Wesselmann

 

 Michael Craig-Martin

 

 

Original Concept

This is an idea that I would want to develop further on my posters, it is the idea of using silhouettes throughout my advertising campaign. I have looked at the artist Wilhem Gross and his use of silhouettes on this particular piece of art are inspiring to me.

 

London Road

I went on Google Maps to first find pictures of the area, and then I went out myself to get my own photos. These pictures may help me with my research.
Pictures from Google Maps:

My own pictures:

 

Researching Urban Regeneration

"Urban renewal is a program of land redevelopment in areas of moderate to high density urban land use. Urban renewal may involve relocation of businesses, the demolition of structures, the relocation of people, and the use of eminent domain (government purchase of property for public purpose) as a legal instrument to take private property for city-initiated development projects."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_renewal

In my own words, urban regeneration is the plans for development in run-down urban areas, so they become more appealing to the public and make the area feel more lively again. This can be done by setting up new businesses, building new houses or redesigning the whole area to give it a more modern look.
Examples of urban regeneration projects include Urban Splash and Croydon Vision 2020.

Urban Splash is a company that has done many renewal projects, and it mainly specialises in renewing old buildings. These include old industrial warehouses, Victorian terraced houses, and other similar buildings. The renewal helps create new houses or places for businesses, so the area where it was built can grow in popularity.
These are examples of renewal projects by Urban Splash:

 

Croydon Vision 2020 is an ongoing urban renewal project which focuses on the centre of Croydon. It is a major project which was first put forward in 1999, and there are plans for many new buildings in the area, as well as renewing older areas. So far, there are planned drawings of what the new area will look like.

What Brighton is About

Starting out has been difficult, so I have made these word maps to help me generate visual ideas for what to put on my designs.

 

 

To make these word clouds, I Googled various websites that were about what Brighton is known for, and generated these on Wordle to pick out the main words from the pages.
From these images, I can see that the main themes about Brighton are the pier, hotels, the beach, and the pier. However, as this project is about promoting London Road, I should not be taking too many of these themes for my posters, and maybe use these more subtly so the designs still retain some of these themes. For instance, using them on the logo.

Urban Regeneration - Brief

"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"

For this project, I will have to make at least three posters and a leaflet to promote the London Road area's regeneration.
To start off this project, I will undergo research about Brighton, and various artists that inspire me. From there, I will start to design my posters and a leaflet design. 

Evaluation

Overall, I think that this project went better than the first. Although I struggled at the start of the project to think of a strong idea, when I found the British propaganda I got many different ideas to choose from. I think that choosing the website Myspace over more popular options such as Facebook or Twitter will make my idea seem more original.
When it came to making the actual poster, I did not come across that many problems aside from the initial Illustrator learning process. After I learned how to use the program more effectively, I found making my poster rather simple. I think that I learned a lot of drawing techniques by using Illustrator.
As for time management, I think that I wasted a lot of time o the research as I found it difficult to think up an idea for my poster in the first place. Although, after coming up with some ideas I found it easy to keep up with the project and I got my poster finished on time.
In my opinion, I think that my finished poster looks good and it similar in style to the original. Things that I would change about it would be refining my image so it looked a bit less messy around the sides, although these are minor changes.

Final Poster

This is my finished poster. As I have said in an earlier blog post, I changed the note shapes and and colours so it would look more like the original poster. I also fixed minor errors with my drawing, such as the speakers as they looked too sketchy in my original version of my poster.

Changes I Made

The main changes I made to my poster were on the musical notes. Firstly, I changed the angle of the notes slightly so it looks like they were moving in the same way as the planes. I then changed the colours to a dark grey that was used on the background imagery so I would look more like the colours of the planes in the original poster. 

            I also added more shading to the speakers in the background so they looked more detailed and less flat.

Class Crit

The feedback I got from my class on my poster was mainly positive, and I got told that my idea was strong. The main points of criticism were on the musical notes, as they did not look like they were moving like the planes in the original poster, and that the colours used on them were also not that fitting. To improve on my posters, I shall rotate the notes slightly and change their colours, but I shall also add finishing touches so the final poster looks more professional looking.

Finished Poster

This is what my poster loos like finished:

For the other objects I added in my poster, I used the same technique as i did with tracing the woman to make my vectors.

I will show my work off infront of my class for extra feedback.

Shading

I wanted to replicate the shading style of the original image, and to do this I used various brushes to emulate the style.

This is the initial shading I did with the blob brush tool. When I added all the basic shades, I then made a series of brushes to give a dithered look on the shading.

These are my brushes that I made. I did this by making small dots with the blob brush tool and selecting them all to make a scatter brush. This would make the brush strokes very dotted, thus adding to the dither effect.

These are two examples of the brushes to blend the colours. On the black, I only used two shades as the original poster has two shades on the woman's clothes. For the clouds however, I used many different shades of brush so they would look much more blended.

Gradients

For the sky in the background of my poster, I added a gradient because the original poster had a blending background so I thought a gradient would be the most fitting blending method.
To do this, I made swatches of all the colours I needed for the sky, and then used the gradient tool to fill in the selected area with a gradient.

These are the settings I used for my gradient. I have three different colours blending as there were three main shades on the original poster. I also changed the angle of the gradient to it looked similar to the original. With this effect, I think that it makes my poster look much closer to the original and fits with the style.

Adding Colour

After having my base sketch, I then drew over the woman in the orignal poster so my design would match up with the original image.

I started this process by going over the whole picture of the woman in black so I could have a basic outline of where to add the colours on my picture. From this, I duplicated this layer for each colour I needed and erased the unnecessary part for each of the colours. Eventually, I ended up with a layer for her clothes, skin, hair, etc.

This is an example of one of the colour layers, which is the skin. I added arms from the original picture as I was going to give the girl on my poster a shorter sleeved shirt, so I had to improvise by making the arm shape myself.

This is what my image looked like after finishing the initial colouring. It still has the same pose as the original image, but the clothes were drawn from scratch so they would fit on the woman better.

Starting My Poster

To start off the creation of my poster, I sketched out a rough outline of what the girl on my poster would look like. I think I may change the style of the clothes at a later date however, as these do not fit in too well with the "emo" theme.
I used the blob brush tool to draw this rough sketch.

Font Choices

For my poster. I have looked at three different fonts that would fit in with the style.

The first font I looked at was Franklin Gothic Heavy. I chose to look at this font as it is bold and easy to read, but I thought I would look at other fonts as this one doesn't fit in with the posters that well.

After doing a search on dafont, I looked for fonts that fit in well with the ones used of the propaganda posters, like these fonts:

The font Bebas Neue is a good replacement for the "Come Into the Factories" poster font, so I have chosen this for my font for my poster. The other font, Big Noodle Titling, fits better with the "Join An Air Crew" font, but because the first slogan if from the poster I shall be basing mine off of I think that Bebas Neue is a better choice.