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Saturday, 25 January 2014

Evaluation and My Final Design

My sketch books helped me to develop techniques that were then used in my final design. Through researching into different artists and materials I chose to develop my most successful and the methods I most enjoyed to create my final design. For my final design I created oversized lolly heads with a digital packaging design. The lolly heads were all coloured differently and embellished with heavily stitched text and illustrations of strawberries, apple and lollies. The lollies were then stuffed and had PVC to make them shine. The digital element was designed on illustrator and each design was related to the lolly head in terms of colour scheme. The logo I designed earlier on in the project was interpreted so my final design was more purposeful and could be used as a piece of merchandise. My final design was based on the theme of packaging and advertisement, nearing the end of my project I created many mini outcomes which inspired me to elaborate on them. Packaging within a business can be very important and all designs have to be bold and exciting for the audience to appreciate them. Hattie Newham and Charlotte Farmer were the artists which inspired me to look into sweet illustration and develop sweet packaging. In my Hattie Newham research I made PVC houses which then influenced me to make my lollypops with PVC, the stuffing made it more exciting; it also allowed me to experience a new technique during the making of my final design. Different materials were used to show a diverse range of textures and colours. For the lolly heads I used calico and then painted coloured ink which blended the colours together to show a rendered effect. I then on top stitched the design; I used bold text and illustrated sweets/ fruits to make the lolly head detailed. Outlining the text allowed for it to stand out. To enable me to stuff the lollipops I had to add an extra layer of calico behind the original design to then trap the stuffing. These were stitched together along the spiral guidelines. I chose to use these specific materials as they worked most effectively with consideration to the bright and bold effect I wanted my final design to have. I simply printed my designs from the illustrator software and onto the printer. My final design is how I imagined it to be, the lolly heads were developed into an exciting stitch piece and the digital wrappers matched the colour scheme well, if I had more time to improve the designs I would consider making a new design for the wrappers, I used similar layouts and colours that were used in my mini outcomes and I feel that I could’ve experimented with different approaches if I was given more time. If I could go back and start the project again I would print some designs onto the calico rather than stitching everything, I feel that this may have finished it off a little neater.

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final blog word count- 2,624

Monday, 23 December 2013

Unique Desings

When I originally saw the design of the twisted boxes I was instantly intrigued to how they were made. Through researching appropriate origami I was able to find videos which taught me through the process. The measurements of each section was vital so each fold was sharp and exact. I made a few practice boxes before measuring the final. I drew a net on Photoshop with I then drew the design upon. Following the lollipop designs I wanted to use the repeated text. To begin with I had them all the text all the same opacity, however once the black text was placed on top it was hard to read and therefore I changed the opacity of every other one, I am fond of how this looked once printed. I wanted to use a more exaggerated colour scheme this time, with inspiration from Hattie Newham I used, bright green, blue and pink for the boxes. Printed on quality card the outcome felt professional and folded correctly as a result from the exact measurements. 
       

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Relating to the Theme

Before creating designs for packaging I had to think productively to which ideas would be most successful, how I would create them and what they would be packaging for. One of the ideas I came up with was sweet bag covers. Through trial and improvement and reviewing and refining I was able to decide what size they would measure to be so I could determine the size of the canvas on Illustrator. The logo had to be placed to ensure the audience were aware of the purpose to the packaging. To overcome gaps in the design I placed all the known criteria and then filled the blank spaces with appropriate media, whether it was a small illustration, a striped background or appropriate text with relevant fonts. I decided that I would design three covers, different colour with different sweets in. Once they were printed I found that they were a little too big in comparison to the size the bags were made to. This is an example of how my work is improved and designed correctly through the process. I printed them smaller and then stapled them. Photographing the packaging with a white background allowed for a professional display. 





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Extending the Outcome

When designing the posters and business cards I knew they would be developed into bags from the beginning, baring this in mind I ensured that the design would look appropriate on the front of the bag. Using colour schemes inspired by Michelle Kettle I began the creation. I researched some fun, relevant fonts which I recognized from sweet shops, or other traditional shops. Downloading these fonts meant they could be installed onto Photoshop so I could use them for my poster. My favorite font which I feel stood out most was the ‘butterscotch’ font called ‘Mesquite Std’. This bold font really stands out and I feel without it the poster would look incomplete. I placed the logo on the art board and designed it into a banner. The small sweet illustration added that little bit of illustration needed to contrast against the vast amount of text. Overall I am pleased with how I overcame the font decisions and the size of each word. The mind map helped me chose what words to use. If I designed this again I would do it on Illustrator to avoid the pixilation once it is enlarged. 


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Beginning of my own Development

Advertisements are all different. The simplicity of some and the attention to detail on others are applied to products and brands appropriately. For outcome development I will be looking at the design and style of the advertisement of sweets. Before I could design any advertisement for the sweet shop I had to create a distinctive logo which would be the recognisable logo for the brand. Through experiments I developed my final logo, a traditional logo with the relevant information of the shop shown. I discovered the font ‘Helvetica Neue’ which I know will be used in the outcomes. Through the refining and reviewing of the logo I created an elongated logo which would fit nicely on a shop window, although simplicity is very effective in the creative industry I feel that the final logo challenges this with positivity and looks just as professional with more technique and skills required to make the logo. 














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Developing into Outcomes

From the illustrations designed through the research of Hattie Newham and Charlotte Farmer I created a mug illustration. The colour scheme was inspired by Hattie Newman’s houses. Although I already had some of the illustration material I felt it was necessary to duplicate and edit a few colours, and design a cupcake and lollypop too. All of the final illustrations have the same quirky colour scheme and the composition of the final layout is proven successful, the spacing and size of the sweets were considered when designing. Printing it onto a mug is evidence of how illustration can be digitally placed onto merchandise. This is why I fell digital work is more vast, it provides the capability to edit, merge and enlarge images to create other, sometimes more purposeful work. 
To make this outcome I placed the already made illustrations onto an art-board in Adobe illustrator, grouping the components of each illustration meant that I could easily resize them. On a separate canvas I drew the lollypops and the cupcake. These didn’t require any rendering or highlights due to the style I was aiming to achieve, which was a solid, cartoon illustration. Illustrator uses vectors, vectors don’t involve pixels, which means you can resize anything on the canvas bigger or smaller and it will not pixilate the image. This is used for large scaled advertisements. Once the illustration was complete I exported it as a high JPEG file and uploaded it to the Asda website. The final outcome of the mug looks professional and bright. 

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