The Design Process: Week 2

Day 1: Using InDesign/ Photoshop 
Aim of the day: To produce a film poster for the movie, 'The 33' to be displayed in the London underground by manipulating existing imagery and type.

I found this day quite enlightening as although I am interested in the movie posters as they are vital in communicating the important factors of a movie, I have never actually considered the designing aspect of it. Looking at the treatments of different film posters provided a great deal of insight and helped inspire my own design. Fro my research I found the 'Argo' poster one of the best designed as all the graphic formal elements complimented each other well and I found that it captured the movie really well.

In terms of designing my version of the movie poster I set out to make mine as different as possible by putting my own style into it. I made the decision not to use images of the miners as I felt the focus should be on the the other elements of the story, such as the families of the miners and the fact that the news could only tell the world so much, our knowledge about what the miners actually felt was quite limited. This influenced my choice to use two images, one of a young buy and one of a birds eye view of the mine at night which are quite ambiguous. I edited these images on photoshop which was challenging in terms of having to make a decision on how I wanted to layout my images as this is a crucial element of the poster as the images tell a story. I also found trying to incorporate image and type on InDesign difficult; as I experimented with different layouts/ typefaces I found that it proved to be a lot harder than it looked. The placement of typography is an essential element of the poster as it is what communicates the content of the poster to the audience. 

Overall, I think my poster was successful as it clearly captured elements of the movie and also exhibited my ability to manipulate images on photoshop and to work with layout on InDesign. If I had more time to work on my poster I would have created a photo montage using more images as I think this technique is quite effective. 

Fig.1 The 33 film poster (authors own, 2013)

Day 2: Study zone research 
Aim of the day: To research a chosen topic within the field of graphic design and create a penguin book cover as well as a double page within the book with the information gathered. 

I chose to base my research on the topic of advertising as this is the area of graphics that I am interested in. I found this task interesting as I found a range of books that covered different areas of the topics which was beneficial to not only my research but also my book cover as it helped me form my ideas on what type of book I would like to have visually. The main problem I had with this task was my time management as I spent too much time researching rather than thinking of ideas for the cover of the book. After speaking with my tutor I decided it was best to keep my cover simple both visually and conceptually. I then deiced to use an image of one of my favourite print advertisements of recent and title the book 'The best of print ads 2013'. The purpose of this book is to feature the best print advertisements visually as well as conceptually. I chose to take this approach to the book as I felt featuring all times of adverts is too broad. I struggled to decide on the content (back and internal double page). This was due to the fact I hadn't really thought about the importance of what the book actually says. This led me to consider if the book should be predominantly text or image based. 

Overall, I think this task was beneficial as it enabled me to consider the use of image and text in a given context and the importance of communicating certain pieces of information rather than others. If I was able to improve on this design, I would have spent more time on developing the book cover and would have taken a different approach by creating my own series of adverts for example. 

Fig.2 Advertising, book cover (authors own, 2013)

Day 3: 3D/Laser cutter
Aim of the day: To gather an understanding of the equipment in the 3D room and put this into practice by using the laser cutter to produce a final piece.

I found this day interested as I enjoyed being able to use different materials. I feel as though with the majority of my projects I am limited to using specific materials such as paper for a poster. Being introduced to other materials broadened my horizon as I will be a lot more experimental with my work in future projects. For my piece using the laser cutter I was unsure what design I wanted to create. I therefore chose to keep it simple by referring to a quote I used earlier in week from a book (A fault in our stars) "My thoughts are starts I cannot fathom into constellations". Initially, I  wanted to make this quite an illustrative piece, however due to restrictions on time I settled for a simple treatment using type. I think my final outcome is successful, to an extent. It works as a graphic piece nonetheless it is very boring and underwhelming which isn't something I would want to represent me as a designer.

Fig.3 Laser cutter design (authors own, 2013)

As a whole, these past two weeks have been useful as it led me to consider the basic principles behind the work I create and to look at the processes from a different perspective. It also taught me the importance of the process as although the final outcome is important the process determines the outcome.