Practical lesson task  (1 day)

• Design a book cover for one of the following:
  a.) “Rosemary’s Baby” by Ira Levin: use complementary colours to express anguish and uncertainty.
  b.) “Animal Farm” by George Orwell: use analogous colours with a contrasting accent to express disagreement and discontent.
  c.) “The Secret Garden” by Frances Hodgson Burnett: use secondary colours to express naivety, honesty and harmony.
• The book cover must contain the title and the author’s name.
• You must clearly make use of colour to express the desired effects.

I chose “The Secret Garden” by Frances Hodgson Burnett, this was a simple choice because of the book itself and the colors I had to use. I haven’t read the book, but I do remember that I’ve seen the movie from 1993. I searched on google to find some photos that could work with the colors and start working on putting them together to one photo.

It was a bit back and forth on how I wanted the finish result to be but I’m happy with how it turned out. I posted a few progressions photos on the forum to get feedback so I could improve the design.

The secondary colors I used was different shades of greens and purples.

And here are the photos that I used to make it. I used the first photo as the main background. The second photo with the wisteria I scaled down to fit in the top of the oval, then I erased the parts that I didn’t need and faded it so it barley showed.

The third photo with the lavender I made a new layer and cloned the lavender on to the new layer by painting it on around the stones. This layer I also faded to get the right look.

The last I did on the photo part of the cover was adding the girl and the dog. Here I found a photo, then I masked the girl and the dog and added it to the photo, I also faded this layer to get everything in harmony. I also changed the colors so it was more purple.

I used Photoshop to make the main cover photo.

Then I added the text on the photo in indesign. And here is the final result for the book cover.

Question 2
Practical lesson task (5 hours)

Use a colour photo of your choice and create the following colour effects . You should hand in four separate works of the same photo with the following effects:

• Create a fluorescent duotone using a Gradient Map Adjustment layer.
• Apply a monochrome look (this is not greyscale, choose a different colour than black).
• Split toning of the image (note that the tool in Photoshop for ‘Split Toning’ was changed to ‘Color Gradient’).
• Freestyle: Create a colour effect of your choice.

For this task I wanted to use some of the color schemes from my last task. The fluorescent duotone I used the Complementary Scheme, but I also added some magenta to make it pop a little more. For the monochrome look I used the Monochrome Scheme I made and the split toning I used a brownish and greenish to use the tones I have in the Triadic Scheme.

For the Freestyle image I first applied a hue/saturation layer to change the yellow color on the flower to a more orange color, then I applied a color balance layer where I applied a lots of red(+43), little bit of green(+4) and some yellow(-3). I also had a curves layer where I brighten it up in the highlights and darkened just a little in the shadows.

Original.

Fluorescent Duotone.

Monochrome Look.

Split Toning.

Freestyle.

Question 1
Research and written lesson task (3 hours)

• Having watched the video with Nigel French – describe, in your own words, what each of these colour systems means: RGB and CMYK.
• Make use of Adobe Colour and develop four different colour schemes. Please hand in screenshots of your schemes:
  • Monochromatic
  • Complementary
  • Triadic
  • Analogous

Monochromatic

Complementary

Triadic

Analogous

Task 1

Design a poster for a band’s gig. The band is called: “The Keystrokes.”
You can decide the name of the band’s tour and remember to include a date, a time and a venue.
You can use a visuals and/or typography to design the poster and remember to make the type work with the rest of the design. Show us your type skills in this one.

Use an A3 format at 297 x 420mm.

This gigposter was fun to make since I had to be creative. I googled gigposters and got some inspiration, I knew right away when I saw the name on the band that I wanted to have something with a piano, just because there is “key” in the name on the band. I made some sketches and started to work on one of them in Illustrator, I chose the last one because I had more room for improvemnts. I also drawed a piano with the pencil tool to make the “piano logo”. I posted the first poster on the forum to get some feedback.

The feedback I got was this:

Hi Tina

I think your poster has a very cool feel to it. I enjoy the rustic feel of the background and the way you have placed your piano in 2D/flat. I enjoy the treeline on your piano as well – this sends a nice secondary message and adds mystery and intrigue.

Your basic text hierarchy is heading in the right direction, as I can easily see your bands name first, then the tour name and then the tour details.

Suggestions:
– ‘The Keystrokes’: This is not bad. It can work as-is but try playing around a bit more with it. Try ‘The Keystrokes’ in Title Caps as well and see how you like that.
– Tour Name: This is competing with ‘The Keystrokes’ and needs to be made smaller and come down a bit so that it does not compete. Also, try different layouts with the text here.
– Your tour information at the bottom needs some work. It needs some more hierarchy and grouping. At the moment it is difficult for the reader to easily see key info like the dates and cities etc.
– Secondary font used for Tour Name and footer details: Try a more conservative secondary font as it, I think, competes a bit with ‘The Keystrokes’ font. It is almost as though the fonts make two contradicting creative statements.

Hope that helps!

After this i started to work more on the poster. I changed the fonts on the tour name and dates, I also changed the tour name to the name I had on my other sketch, “annually summer tour”.I also put the tour name inside of the piano.

Expand your design to include a pamphlet that outlines dates and further details of the tour i.e. merchandise available: T-shirts, caps and CDs or a promotion – Free drink on arrival.
Remember this design must be consistent with your poster design. The pamphlet can be any size or format. Have a look online for inspiration.

I wanted to make this as a flyer that you can fold three times, I left the dotted lines to show where you fold it.

So this is the backside.
Fold-in panel – Back cover – Front cover

And this is the inside of the flyer.
Back of front cover – Back of back cover – Back of fold-in

Question 1

Create a new word; one which has no dictionary definition and a meaning that only you know. For example, the word we came up with is “roleean”, it doesn’t appear in the dictionary, but it means, “round and leaning to the left”. You could decide on your own word with its own meaning. With regard to our new word “roleean”, this might involve emphasising or dramatically enlarging the letter “o” within the word, and using italics, allowing the letter to lean to the side.

You can start your project and explore ideas by tracing letters, cutting and pasting computer-generated words, photocopying or photographing; be inventive. Take time to consider the various options; don’t just do the first thing that pops into your mind. Explore all possibilities for enhancing your ideas.

I had some different words that I put together:

• Excited + Exhausted = Exhaisted
• White + Mountain = Whimount
• Winter + Vacation = Wintvac
• Bright + Future = Brifut

Of these four I chose “Whimount”.

Question 2

Now choose two extra words from the list below:

• Fluffy
• Falling
• Slimy
• Agony
• Sailing
• Rock-Solid
• Loading
• Pizzaz
• Accelerate
• Elevate
• Create
• Inspect

Create three different compositions, showcasing your three words, one word per composition. In each composition, arrange each individual word to express its meaning, using only the colours black and white. Consider all and any means at your disposal: dramatic scale contrasts, cutting, repetition, letter spacing, etc.Each composition should fit onto an A4 format. You can play with the size, spacing, placement and orientation of letters while being cognisant of how the word(s) interact with the entire format.Consider the entire format as an important design element: use all available space; don’t simply centre the word – think of this as an opportunity engage the viewer throughout the entire layout. Experiment. Play. Push to the edges of the page. Repeat elements if it helps to get the meaning across. Choose a very simple creative solution, if you find this direction more appropriate.Make sure to only use one typeface for each composition, noting the suitability of the choice of typeface to the individual word; you can experiment with various styles (light, bold, condensed, uppercase, lowercase). You may repeat, omit, slice, block or overlap words or letters.

Out of these I chose “Slimy” and “Loading”.

With Whimount I wanted to try to get a illusion of mountains in the text, so the white is the snowy mountain but the black makes the whole letter complete.

With slimy I obviously wanted to make the letters slimy and drippy. And here I made a gradient colour fill, white to black just to show that slime even more.

I had some different ways I could go with this, but I felt it looked better with a solid black colour instead of stripes.

Question 3

Now that you have done your planning and sketching it is time to finalize your designs from Question 1 and 2 and post it to your blog.

You will need to supply all your preliminary sketches and ideas along with the final layouts from Question 1 and 2 – the foundational process of drawing by hand is important.

Optional: You can use a program such as InDesign or Illustrator to rework and refine the designs if you have the time, to get some practice with the software. Please do not use drop shadows or similar computer-generated effects.

Here is the final look on all three words.

You are briefed to do an illustration for fruit juice packaging (orange and banana flavour). The name of the product is: Loose Juice.

• Draw at least 15 scamps (they can be A6 size each) of what the label will look like. Remember to include the fruit, the name of the flavour and the name of the product.
• Choose one of your sketches and draw the label, using Adobe Illustrator. The artwork can be A6 (landscape or portrait).

This week we learn about sketching techniques and how to draw without the pen tool in illustrator. I’m not completely finished with that tutorial so I have to watch the rest tonight.

I started with watching that tutorial and read some of the text in the books before I started on some sketches. The first sketch I made in my lunchbreak at work, before I finished up the rest later that night. I made the minimum of sketches because I struggled a lot to try to come up with new ideas, and I’m happy that I actually came up with 15 sketches.

Here are the sketches:

When I was finished with my sketches I went over them and decided on witch I liked the most, but I was struggling to choose between three of them. Then I just made those three quickly in Illustrator to see how they could look like.

Then I just made those three quickly in Illustrator to see how they could look like. The third sketch I changed that the dripping was on the underside and not the top.

I ended up using the last of those three. I noticed when I was sketching that I liked the dripping effect I had on that one a lot, and just the shape of the design. I started to work a little more on the design to get satisfied with the whole design.

And here is the result.