Infographics styles

We were asked to consider how we would format 4 styles of infographic.
1 What to do when you wreck your car
2 The science of sleep
3 The internet of things
4 Sourcing sustainable fish

For each infographic, you need to consider the audience, the format, the purpose, any existing house style, tone of voice, colours, grid, image style, hierarchy, typography and colours. My artboards, below, were created in Illustrator and show colour swatches, typefaces for 3 levels of hierarchy, and the style of imagery to be used in a mini style guide format.

Character-based posters

Celebrity chefs

We were asked to design 4 posters representing 4 authors or books, where the focus is on the character, not the story or the subject. We look at Stylorouge's work and how they achieved this with the iconic poster they designed for Trainspotting. It was ground-breaking at the time (in the 1980's) as previously all film posters had a visual hierarchy of characters, with full colour, overlapping images. It spawned a million immitations. It worked so well because nothing like it had been done before with most films having stereotypical charcter shots, overlapping and arranged in hierarchical fashion. It shows all the charcters at an equal level of importance and focusses on them as people and characters.

I created posters for 4 celebrity chefs. I used high resolution photos from the internet, removed the backgrounds with a combination of Photoshop tools, and used threshold to achieve the look I wanted. I then used InDesign to layout the designs. I used American Typewriter for their names, and Antique Olive for the body copy. I felt these typesfaces complmented each other well. I chose orange as it contrasts well on the black and white areas of the images. The taupe sidebar was chosen to bring some warmth and contrast to the design. There is a clear hierarchy in the typography. The Jamie Oliver poster is the least successful as I could not find picture of him with suitably dark shoulders, with his head at the right angle.

My final design was changed by removing the sidebar, creating a box around the body copy and adding a visual full stop (the orange rectangle) which also acts as repitition. I think the designs now look more striking with improved contrast. The black box under the text makes the type legible now.

Stencils

Stencils in advertising

I really like this method of advertising - the stencil is applied to the pavement with a chalk spray which can be completely removed. The simply typography works well for a stencilled design on a rough surface like paving. Anything complicated would be lost, unless it were huge, which would be impractical.

Waitrose Fairtrade Tea

We were tasked with creating a stencil for a poster to promote a fair-trade tea brand of our choice. Below is one of Waitrose's adverts (http://www.waitrose.com/shop/ProductView-10317-10001-145696-Waitrose+fairtrade+green+tea+bags). I also wanted to try another style so I selected Clipper who also make fairtrade tea products. I looked at their websites and chose a slogan which fitted in with their advertising.

I mind-mapped a few word associations with tea, and sketched some thumbnails, below.

I decided I wanted to incorporate the texture of the tea bag, and couldn't find a suitable photo online, so I scanned a tea bag and used that image.  For my other poster, I chose to use a tea stained background. For both posters, I cut my stencils from stencil film and experimented with sponging tea coloured ink, and white opaque ink. 

I produced 4 posters in Indesign, which I stencilled over, producing the 4 designs below. I think the tea coloured stencils work best, and I prefer the single tones of the Clipper poster, bottom left, as it looks warm and comforting, just like tea. The Waitrose poster works well without the stencil.

Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition, in this context, is the idea of creating an image which challenges the word being represented. The imagery and text must have opposing and supporting connotations, depending on your viewpoint.

For the first poster, for the National Portrait Gallery's exhibition on beauty, entitled Ugly, I chose to use a picture of a beautiful woman, with underarm hair, as many people in western society would find this unattractive and even repulsive. However, in some cultures, and certainly in recent British history, it was considered attractive. The image represents the ambiguous nature of beauty and ugliness.

The image below is of artist and sculpturer, Alison Lapper. She stands out because she was not afraid to portray her disability, and an installation piece of her was exhibited in Trafalgar Square. To some people a naked person with a disability might not be typically beautiful, however, the poster tries to illustrate that beauty means different things to different people, through a controversial piece.

Poster submissions

Poster 5

Post-modernism - David Carson inspired design

After this week's tutorial, I decided to experiment with the designs we had studied, to see if I could design a poster to replace my fourth one which I was not happy with. My chosen quote is "don't mistake legibility for communication".

Inspiration for my work is my poster for Skate Somerset House, from the tutorial, which given the time constraints, I thought was quite successful:

Other illustrations of the quote found on Google images:

I really like the way he uses type as a textured background in Ray Gun:

 

 

 

The red and black of this poster are really stiking, combined with the hand drawn typography, and the multiple layers:

 

 



I considered how you could illustrate the quote, and decided that a handprint would work well as it relates to STOP, along with a no entry sign.

I wanted to include some of my hand drawn type, below.

Type and layout assignment 4 - fools

Eric Gill quote poster

For my 4th poster I chose to use the quote by Eric Gill, "There are now about as many different varieties of letters as there are different kinds of fools". Gill Sans was his most famous typeface which he designed in 1926. It was used extensively by newly nationalised British Rail in the 1940s onwards. Now the government and the Church of England, amongst many other British institutions  use it as their corporate font.

My ideas are sketched below:

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I selected the poster below as my design inspiration, featuring another, later font by a different designer.

http://webexpedition18.com/articles/55-surprisingly-beautiful-typography-posters-and-desings/


I absolutely love everything about this album cover design and want to incorporate the feel and colour palette into my design:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/klausspecktur/461973984/

The poster below is a modern day example of, in my opinion, a simple idea brilliantly executed.




http://www.pinterest.com/pin/12314598957155787/

I am going to incorporate the common background colour from these pieces in my design.

Colour schemes from the 40s and 50s when Gill Sans was widely adopted:

Type and layout assignment 2 - grids

Poster 2 research - grids

I wanted to use imagery to convey the idea of a graphic design grid, but without being too literal.  I had the idea that I could use the words National Grid (a play on the electricity distribution system of the UK) over a map of the country. I wanted to include a reference to one of the forerunners of the graphic design grid, Wim Crouwel, so I chose to use his typeface, New Alphabet.

 

Some inspiration I chose to use was this image:

Another gridded image I like is below.  I would like to incorporate the feel of this piece in my design.

Something I found on Pinterest which is similar to what I want to do.

Wim Crouwel's new alphabet harks back to one of the founders of the modern grid and is the typeface that I want to use for my design.

I researched which colours to use to represent the 4 countries of the UK, and looked at their official flags. Scotland was dark blue, England red, and wales was red on green, so I chose green.  Northern Ireland doesn't have it's own flag, but flies the Union Jack, so I chose white to represent it.

Monotone

One colour printing - spot colours

Single spot colour printing is cheaper than CMYK 4 colour. To create the poster below I selected a Pantone spot colour for the text in InDesign - swatch, new colour swatch, Pantone.  I also made tones of this colour and saved them to my swatches. In PhotoShop I changed the image to greyscale, then selected Duotone.  Only colour (the same one as in InDesign) was chosen, making this a monotone image.  I edited the image in curves to make it more contrasty.  The image was saved as a TIFF then loaded into InDesign. The text was coloured using the Pantone spot colour at 100% opacity and also at 25% in the reversed text. In hindsight, I should not have inverted this text as it fights for attention with the title.

Visual communication

Pathos, logos and ethos

The above thumbnails were generated to design a poster to increase the number of 18-25 year olds who give blood.

The main reasons this group do not donate are:

• fear of needles ("it's not really a hassle, it won't hurt and it's not scary")
• too busy (book online, takes 1 hour)
• don't know how (website)

bandwagon/everyday - everyone's doing it - make it the norm - don't be the odd one out

celebrity endorsement - David Beckham in second thumbnail

pathos - feel guilty for not doing it when 1 in 4 will need blood, die without it

logos - it takes less than 1 hour, book online

ethos - if you give blood you'll have something in common with David Beckham.

Week 4

Idea generation

We had to draw thumbnails for branding for two companies.  This is Smile Style Dental Practice. In such a short amount of time you can't really sit and think about words or shapes you associate with the theme, so I just came up with smiley lips and toothpaste.  I played around with the text and came up with the idea of writing the name Smile in toothpaste.  I wanted it to feel clean and reassuring, two things you definitely want from a dentist.

Posters

Creating so many posters in a short space of time was very challenging.  I only managed 7 out of a goal of 30.  I didn't want to crop the photo in the centre, as this seemed a bit obvious, so I chose a side crop which left space at the bottom as well as at the top for the text.

I was intrigued by the number of combinations that are possible, even with just a few elements. Leaving in the illuminated word 'skate' was not the best idea.  I chose the main font because it looks crisp and sharp, but not too formal - to reflect the formal setting, but informal activity, and the cool, crisp temperatures and the sharp blades of ice skates.  My favourite two posters are where the text is set vertically which looks more dynamic.  I think the text on the left is easier to read and it looks like the people are skating out from behind the word, but on the right indicates movement.  The least successful is the orange on white banner. I prefer the word 'skate' in white and 'Somerset House' in light blue.

Week 3

Portraits and type

We were given a list of phrases and black and white portraits to use to create posters.  All posters were full bleed, except "a man must learn to forgive himself".

I completely cropped the subject's eyes out of this picture to make it seem unnerving - if you can't see the eyes, it is hard to read a person.  There is something slightly unhinged about what he is saying, so 

I wanted to elude to that with the crop. I chose the font because it is clinical and characterless, to match his words.  The gradient on the last word is a literal interpretation.

The expression of the man, with his tongue sticking out indicated childishness and immaturity which went well with the words.  I chose Courier as it is an immature and basic typeface.  I wrote over his eyes as the whole combination of picture and text seems a bit wacky so placing the font in an unusual position seemed to fit.

This man has obviously had a very hard life - he appears extremely impoverished and neglected. I chose to make the word "why" big - like a silent shout across his mouth, and the other words small and fractured to reflect despair - a quiet disbelieving voice. I have put darker transparent blocks at the top and bottom to suggest he is incarcerated and peering through a small gap in the door.

I did a very close crop on the picture below and selected a solid friendly looking, but masculine, typeface because to reflect the man's appearance. I chose to place the text at eye level as he has a trusting face which links to his eyes.

For the two pieces below, I chose to use white space to focus on the picture, and to produce some tension or rhythm.

The girl is attractive but has no obvious character - I chose this text to contrast with that image and make the reader feel curious about the statement.  Placing the text sideways forces the reader to engage with the work as they much turn their head or the page to read it.  The suffixed word is the only unusual thing about the piece. I am Helvetica is very plain, like the typeface, but placing the image and text to the far right makes you want to turn the page.