Waterstones Project

Scratch and sniff gift tag and mailer

I have completed my designs for mailers and gift tags, shown below. The mailer is folded in half vertically, to contain the gift tag (front and back shown). The scratch and sniff panel is contained on the largest icon on the front of the gift tag, and the aroma relates to a recipe typical of the author. The photo texture on the gift tag infers the author's style of cookery.

They will be circulated in magazines, and sent to potential customers. In addition, they will be hung from a Christmas tree in the store window display, and a larger tree outside the store will have them displayed as decorations, so people can remove them to use. They can be exchanged for £1 discount from the author's book, and free gift wrapping.

I still have to create the gift wrap, and do a mock up of the Christmas tree, with additional decorations relating to Waterstones.

Finally, I moved the address and stamp to the back, and changed the brown (chocolate) which looks a bit dull, to purple, which still infers luxury and links to chocolate with Cadbury's.

Downton Abbey infographic

Informal infographic

Initially my idea was to focus on the scandals of Downtown throughout the series. However, there were just too many to include, so then I focused on just those concerning the family who lived above stairs. Even those were too numerous! I eventually chose to focus on the loves of the three Downtown daughters, Lady Mary, Lady Edith and Lady Sybil.

I wanted to make it interesting to people who hadn't followed the whole series, or to those like myself that had watched every episode but forgotten lots of the detail.

The infographic is sized for iPhone 5 and above, at 640px wide, as this kind of trivia is most often viewed on mobile devices while passing the time.

I researched colours used in the 1920s in interiors, and found the following image, along with the typefaces and glyphs (Nouvelle Vague Black,  Diehl Deco, Gill Sans and Nouveau Rocco Deco - glyphs).

The colours and imagery will reflect the era (from 1912-1925), embracing the Art Nouveau, but also the stately home feeling, but also incorporating a lot of typography and modern language. I used photographs as a useful reminder of the characters over the last 6 years.

All my information came from here: http://downtonabbey.wikia.com/wiki/Downton_Abbey_%28programme%29

My finished infographic:

House style

It is important to consider the audience when creating designs, and be able to appeal to a broad demographic, or a smaller-subset of your target audience, but still adhere to your house style. For instance, at Christmas, the following audiences need to be considered: families, religious people, children, secular audiences, those without children, etc. Different imagery and styles can be used to infer thoughts of food, gifts, religion, parties, homeless, elderly, etc. The style and colours of an image can infer expensive, friendly, trashy, loud, stylish, etc.

Below are screen shots of pages from my Waterstones book showing how I created 4 posters and an invitation.

Waterstones campaign

I decided to discard my ideas for a bag for life as I wasn't happy with how they were developing. I have revisited my concepts for a scratch and sniff gift tag, which I have developed further and will be continuing with for this assignment.

Waterstones - Concepts

Bag for life

I have further developed my plans for a bag for life as a giveaway with cookery books from Waterstones (perhaps if you buy 2). The first is a bag in the style of a wood-framed blackboard, with a velcro-detachable panel to write a shopping list on. A white wipeable chalk marker would be included with the bag, and food illustrations would surround the blackboard on different styles of background, for instance a gingham tablecloth, a wood table, hessian or a marble worktop. The write on panel would look like a menu, with areas to write meals for the week and sections for the different types of groceries.

Lunchbox bag

My second option is for a single book purchase the customer would get a insulated lunch box carrier, joined at the sides with velcro, which opens to form a wipeable picnic mat to put your lunch on at your desk or in the park.

Inspiration

I will take inspiration from the food illustrations below and will experiment with watercolours and with creating flat images in Illustrator. I like the idea of using white and black gel/paint/marker pens over the illustrations.

Book layout

Waterstones book

We were tasked with designing 3 layouts for a double and single page spread, considering all the levels of type hierarchy that would be needed.

I used many of my design books for inspiration, with particular reference to Fifty Typefaces that Change the World (Walters 2013), and Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton (2010). I have also looked at the styles used in my cookery books and magazines such as Kinfolk.

Below are two pages from Kinfolk Volume 12 (Ash and Verdugo 2014). I love the calmness created by their centre aligned type and font combinations. Although the typeface is very small (6-7pt?) is still still legible. The passe partout border compliments the type very well, fitting with the slow paced aesthetic of the magazine. They also use full bleed colour background for some pages of text which is very effective and helps with the pace of the magazine.

I considered the benefits of using columns or a grid. I then looked at fonts which I thought worked well together, which were different enough to create contrast, along with the sizes of the typeface. I then thought about how I would lay out a standard set of pages, and what colours to use. I decided to use grey as it goes with any colour of imagery, but I may introduce colours on some pages. I chose to use rules for some added interest.

I chose to work with a 6 column layout to give flexibility across the pages for different layouts, depending on the number of images and the length of the body copy. I experimented with layouts based on the gold section and have decided to go with a symmetrical layout, but to combine this with left and right aligned text (not centred).

Colour will be monochrome, initially, with perhaps some subtle colours added depending on the image colours.

Layout one

This is my first design. It was inspired by the layouts in Basics Design 07:Grids (Ambrose and Harris 2012), although the font choices are my own. I chose Droid Serif for the heading and subheading, Antique Olive for the large body copy, and Franklin Gothic Book for the body copy. I wanted to use 3 fonts which complimented each other, by combining a serif and sans serif. I decided 10% black border as a graphic device  and a 3 column layout for ease of reading.

Layout two

This layout looks more contemporary, and is inspired by layouts in 100 Ideas That Changed Graphic Design (Heller and Vienne 2012). The bold rule really draws the eye to the title, and allows the heading typeface to be smaller than without it. The combination of users of two different serifs for large and main body copy and and sans serif heading compliment each other well. I'm not so keen on the italic type used for the running head.

My version below, uses the Antique Olive family for all text except the running head and the picture captions, which are in Droid Serif Roman and Italic. I like this bold layout, again using 3 columns, and with the use of rules rather than the border (layout one).

Layout three

This is my preferred layout, in part because it uses only serifs. Bree, a slab serif, is used for the heading and subheading, and Droid Serif for the remaining type. Droid is an easy to read typeface, its serifs leading the eye gently across the page.

Further development

I am considering creating a square book but will apply the above template for layout three to the new format, with some slight changes. I will work out the margins based on the golden section. Some images will be full bleed and others with a passe partout. The reason for choosing a larger book is to be able to use plenty of white space and give the images (particularly the featured images) room to breathe.

References
AMBROSE, G and HARRIS, P (2012) Basics Design 07: Grids. 2nd ed Lausanne, AVA Publishing SA
ASH, R (2014) The Case for Crying. Kinfolk Volume 12 p123
HELLER and VIENNE (2012) 100 Ideas that Changed Graphic Design. London, Laurence King Publishing Ltd
LUPTON, E (2010) Thinking with Type. 2nd ed New York, Princetown Architectural Press
VERDUGO, A (2014) The Case for Crying. Kinfolk Volume 12 p122
WALTERS, J L (2013) Fifty Typeaces that Change the World. London, Conran Octopus Ltd

Assignment feedback review

BA Graphic Design Year 1

Summary of areas to improve (including feedback from lecturers)

Research: need to expand number of sources used. Need to reference all sources, including on blog and work other than assignments

Web: keep type line length at 10 words

Wed: use ID identifiers for page to limit number of classes used

Web: evidence testing with screen shots and include in workflow

Web: broaden frame of reference, consider different approaches

Theory: need to assimilate theories, rather than repeating them

Theory: consider audiences more

Theory: ensure an effective conclusion is drawn

Incorporate more illustration and traditional mediums

Ensure a range of products flows well

Include industrial processes when considering materials

Company branding

Branding for my own company, as part of the Professional Practice module:

Generative design

Holger Lippmann is one of a group of digital artists who use computer algorithms to create their designs which are then printed for exhibition. I'll let him explain:

the e-pastel TAR_GRID series consists of a X Y axis grid of bezier vector curves. a seperate vector curve class defines all vector properties such as color, transparency and/or stroke weight. to later position them within different grid arrays. different keyboard input values are used for a layered image build up; coloring, sizing, transparency, count and density of star pedals

Complex but fascinating: http://www.lumicon.de/wp/

Lomography - analogue to digital

Lomography is an analogue photography craze that has a huge online following. The company have recreated, or sourced, cheap retro plastic cameras (Diana, Lomo, etc) and expired film, and used all their faults (light leaks, colour casts, vignetting, etc) as a marketing tool to make people want buy into retro look so popular now.

But many of these people still want digital image manipulation so combine their love of film with all its quirks, and the flexibility of Photoshop, by shooting on film and scanning their images to edit them further. 

There are a huge array of apps available to recreate a similar look digitally with a camera phone, but it doesn't quite get there. Instagram is the most popular. Will people still love this faux-retro effect in 10 years or will they wish they took all the shots without those dubious digital filters?

lomography.com

Eloise Renouf - Illustration to print

Eloise is a successful designer and illustrator whom I admire. Her work begins with sketches and paintings which are then manipulated in Illustrator to create contemporary prints, cards and fabrics designs:

littlepaperplanes.com

Andrea Lauren - hand printing to digital print

Andrea Lauren is a printmaker I have followed on Instagram and on her blog for sometime. She uses linocut and screen printing to create her initial motifs for fabric, cards and print, and these are manipulated in Photoshop and Illustrator before being printed digitally.

andrealauren.com

Gordon's Gin assignment

I've finished my packaging project for Gordon's Gin and included ideas of two of their other flavours - Sloe and Elderflower.

Gordon's labels

The bottle labels:

Design with materials submission

I have finished my 4 pieces for my shop window display for Paperchase:

Marimekko presentation

I decided what subjects I wanted to talk about, and what the content of my presentation would be. I put these headings on separate sheets of paper and read through all the material I had used for research purpose. I made notes, according to the topic, on the relevant sheet. 

Once I knew what information I was going to use, I wrote the slides for the presentation. I felt it was important to include lots of Marimekko's designs in my slides, to show the company in context. I used their patterns as backgrounds to slides, and imagery of their clothing on separate slides.

I printed out the slides onto handout pages, and used the blank space to make notes to prompt me during the presentation.

Now all I have to do is practice what I'm going to say!!

Annotated bibliography

For my presentation on Marimekko, I spent a lot of time tracking down relevant material.

There was not a huge amount available on the college Journals database, just a couple of reports, but I found relevant background material on Scandinavian design which was very interesting for putting design into context.

I bought two books about Marimekko which contain lots of detailed information. Marimekko: Fabrics, Fashion, Architecture is an interesting collection of essays, and Patterns: Marimekko is a brilliant visual resource. Both have lots of relevant content.

I then looked at information online, including Marimekko's own website and some of their retailers.

The popular press had some published articles on the internet on Scandinavian design history which I can use.

Finally, I looked at the company's financial statements.

Gordon's patterns

These patterns were created in Illustrator and are loosely inspired by Art Deco and will possibly used for the 4 varieties of Gordon's Gin. I referred to pattern books and books on art history to give cues for the designs. I have also read a lot of books on digital pattern design recently, and spent a lot of time learning how to create different types of pattern in Illustrator.

Fabric

Surface pattern design on fabric

These are some of my fabric designs mocked up onto cushions. I'm really pleased with how my first attempt at pattern design worked out. I have noticed that in Illustrator the edges of the repeat sometimes show as thin lines, although when they print they are fine. I'm not sure why this is, because I made sure my artboard was exactly the same size as, and exactly underneath, the tile. And when you zoom right in, the lines disappear.

Photography research in London

Gordon's Gin assignment

I spent a day in London looking for ghost typography, which proved to be very elusive. I also photographed lots of interesting brickwork, some of which I will use in my Gordon's Gin design.

I read about the history of Gordon's Gin on their website, and researched buildings in the Clerkenwell area where the distillery was located. The latest incarnation of the distillery building is still there, but this was a relatively modern building as the previous one was destroyed at the beginning of the 2th century. The building is now one of the largest data centres in the UK.

The first photo is looking east along the Southbank towards the Oxo Tower. I love the colours and greyness of this image, coupled with the red of the building on the left.

The next 3 images of of some ghost typography that I found whilst wandering round Clerkenwell, where the Gordon's Gin distillery was based for over a hundred years. The photo on bottom right is the beautiful Art Deco windows on Tate Modern.

Art Deco buildings really inspired by design, as it conjures up images of when people drank gin and tonic in the roaring 20s.

I wanted to use textures of bricks and concrete to reflect the urban nature of where Gordon's Gin originates.

Photos of brick, tiles and limestone I shot in London.