Week 7; Birmingham!

This week was our second day of our production days so the class met up in Birmingham City Centre and walked around to look around the area for designs that caught our eyes, such as the building structures and artwork like graffiti. Underneath our just some of the pictures that I took that day, as there were so many pictures I decided to choose my personal favourite designs of that day.

This design is probably my favourite photograph that I took this day as the design is visually  stunning and truly beautiful. The artist of this design I would of believed would of used quite some time on creating this eye catching piece, the colours that are used make it look more visually dynamic as they are not the usual colours that are used for faces, using the different shades of blue highlight specific features of the face. Personally, I find the eyes and the mouth the most attractive on this design as they are very detailed and the colours are in contrast with each other.

This design was also on the same building as the previous image which I believe is obvious as the artist has his/her own style when it comes to their artwork as the same colours are used throughout the building. What I like about this design is that there is so much going on, yet each image is still eye catching and makes you look at each design individually and appreciate them.

This design I found to be the funniest image that I had taken as the artwork was designed around the satellite dishes, this was the only design that I saw incorporated this. The design has made the dishes part of the artwork by looking as they are the bit of the speakerphone. I think the artist used the dishes to give the design a 3D effect and to make it humorous as they also have drawn little working men at the end of the speakerphones.

I found this structure very, very, unusual and completely eye catching as the piece is so visually appealing, yet confusing. I think this was the aim of the designers of this structure as this was in 'The Custard Factory' which is known to be a creative area in Digbeth, therefore making the bridge look like this gives the place look full of creativity. The reason I think the design looks confusing as it's designed to as if it i a maze, the way the poles intertwine with each other. 

I found this design interesting as it's artwork was far more simplistic to all the other designs that I saw that day, although this design was on a van. I thought it a design with so much detail was unusual for a design for an ordinary black van, as the van wasn't a company van either. The use of black and white against the black van was an interesting choice, as you would normally think that this design wouldn't stand out in these colours. However the simplistic colours catch viewers eye in a visual non-aggressive way, as it doesn't demand a lot of attention as it would of by using colour. 

This design was one of a kind in Birmingham City Centre and was on a side of a wall where people seemed to just walk past and have no appreciation of how much effort and time would of been put in this design. The design was a mosaic tile art and was visually attractive as it was unusual to find it as part of street art due to the normal arts we see in this type of place. Another reason I found this to be unusual being in Birmingham was due to the mosaic being of John F. Kennedy, as he was the president of the USA. 

I chose to use this image in my blog as it shows several different types of structures that are all individually appealing. I found the use of integrating the old building structures with the newer buildings was an interesting choice as it contrasted with one and another, modernising the older structures.

Week 6; Trashion!

This week was the first day of our production day which consisted of working together in small groups to create a magazine in just one day. I found this task for be quite easy as a few weeks prior we had to work in groups to create articles that would be used for a magazine, this task was very similar to the task we had to do in the production day as in our groups we had to create a house style. This house style would be used by all the members of our small group for each magazine article. We were already given all the content and photos that we could use in for the magazine "Trashion", so we discussed what our house style would be so we used colours that was already used in our chosen photograph for the front cover. After creating the rest of the house style such as what fonts we should use and so on, we then began to create our own magazines articles using the content. When we were finished we all shown each other our work and agreed that they all followed the house style, therefore we were happy to put the magazine all together.

Week 5; Preparing Work For Output

This weeks lecture was discussing how professionals and how we should prepare our work for output. I found this lecture very helpful as I was then able to prepare all my previous work in Visual Design so that it would be ready for print. There are lots of specifications that should be met before output so as making sure there is a 3 mm bleed and that the colours are CMYK so that they are able to be printed. Professionally, there are forms that need to be completed before the projects are printed and he two forms are a verification and validation form. A verification form is created for a client and the designer as the designer needs the customer to sign off on their work before printing can commence, such as spelling and the payment. A validation form is written for the designer and the printer, as the printer needs the designer to fulfill all the specifications on their checklist such as the bleed and colours. This weeks DS was based on this as we had to create both a verification form and validation form that was specific.

Week 4; Grid & Composition

In this weeks lecture we learnt about how important grid and composition can be in visual design, such as in magazine and newspaper articles. The grid is what helps organise the layout of a page and to keep it in a structure, although I also learnt how breaking the grid can have more of an impact. The case studies below show two examples of how effective making and breaking the grid can be.

Week 3; Colour & Image; CD Cover

CD Cover Evaluation

In this brief evaluation I will be critiquing the front cover of a CD that I have created myself by using InDesign, firstly I will begin to discuss the image itself in terms of licensing. To obtain this particular image I used the stock image online library Flickr.com, whilst searching for an image to use I had to follow the Creative Commons Licensing that Flickr has as I needed an image that I could edit in terms of modifying and adapting the image. Therefore I had to use the advanced search where this was applicable, without this is was difficult to search for an image that I could use for my CD cover.

Before I began to look for a usable image I researched into unsigned artists and bands, this is where I came across an R&B singer called Dick James. After listening to some of his songs I began to know what type of music he produces which led me to the image that I have now. Some of his songs were sad and focused of loneliness such as the song I chose to use as the album cover’s name, “Don’t Need Nobody”. It was this particular song title that made me use an image of an emotional looking man who is sat alone, I believed that this image was appropriate as after listening to the song in my mind I had a visual image of a man all alone which I wanted to portray on the CD cover.

The original image was bigger than the one I use as I decided to trim it down so that the man covered the majority of the cover, whereas the original copy showed more of the background, I still wanted to keep some of the background ad it added to the setting of a lonely man I thought. I chose the image to be in black and white as it made the impact of loneliness more dramatic and obvious to its audience as colour can sometimes create emotions. I wanted to avoid the use of using more emotions than the one I had already created and another reason was due the fact of the genre of this music, as R&B covers make use of the impact that black and white can create.  This also had an influence on the colour I used on the font as I used black again as it fit in with the man’s clothing and stood out against the light background. The font I chose for the text also suitable for the R&B genre as they often use thin looking serif fonts on their CD covers, which I wanted to follow this “rule” so it would be associated with this type of music. I wanted the artists name to be central and above the image of the man as this also follow’s the convention; however as the name was quite short it never looked quite right so I changed the tracking of the letters increasing the space between the letters. Although I did use this same technique with the album’s title, I decreased the tracking so that the letters was closer together to make it look visually better. I chose to emphasise on the sizing of the text to add to the visual design so I made the first letter of each word bigger than the word that followed, I used this technique as I wanted this text to stand out and look subtly eye catching. 

Week 3; Colour & Image; Case Studies

This weeks lecture was focusing on colours and image, what I found interesting was when we focused on how brands some how own certain colours that represent their company. The presentation below shows two case studies that represent this ownage of colours, also there are two other case studies that show how photography can be incorporated in advertising.

Week 3; Colour & Image; Sourcing Images

Report on Souring Images

In this brief report I will be discussing how to source images as there are millions of images on the website, however when using images there are certain rules that need to be followed due to copyright obligations. There are numerous stock image libraries that people can use images from for their own reasons and there are licenses that you have to permit to use them; depending on the image they are different ones, such as on Getty Images there are two licenses.

These licenses differ as the royalty-free license is based on the size and it means that you have unlimited use of the image you want once you have obtained the license. The other, is a rights-managed license which is based on usage of the image and it means that these images are from the premier collections and have a high production value. Both of these licenses also differ in terms of pricing, as the pricing for the rights-managed license is based on the usage specifications whereas the royalty-free pricing is decided on the particular image you use.

Another stock image library that is often used is Flickr; once again they also have their own Creative Commons licensing which need to be obligated to. There are 4 licenses, attribution license allows people to use your image as long as credit is given to the owner and the non-commercial license again gives permission for usage for non-commercial purposes.  The no derivative works license prevents people from editing/changing your work and only use the exact copy of the image unedited. The final license is the share alike, which allows other to distribute copies of the image but is overseen. Flickr is an easy website to use as the advanced search engine allows you to have the option straightaway of using images that use the Creative Commons license and allows you to manage whether they are to use commercially or to be used and edited.