Alphabet Design

 Poster

Hand Painted Alphabet

For my final project before assessment my task was to design a typeface and a typographic poster to represent a word. We were given a list of words and I chose wild. I wanted to be really illustrative with this project and try to keep away from the computer to an extent. So I created this alphabet which I hand painted of all different elements of wild animals for each letter.

My alphabet is aimed at children, I think that it works well and it was nice to be able to paint and I really liked thinking about how the typeface could be used in context of a children's book etc.

I designed two 'a's because one is a juvenile 'a' which is how children write but now there is the option of the 'a' to see which would be more appropraite.

I wanted the poster to be quite simple, so that the main focus really was the letter forms. I decided to focus on writing the saying " The quick fox jumps over the lazy dog" because it had every letter of the alphabet in, so therefore you can see how the letters work together as a word or in a sentence. I also think this saying is really appropriate for the theme of my alphabet because when children learn to write in school, they quite often write this sentence.

Work Experience

Ok, so over my easter holiday away from uni, I got the chance to spend a couple of days working in the studio with The Hidden Dingbat Collective. I helped out on a children's book that they are currently working on, mainly doing some art work bits, to help speed up the process. I had a really good experience working in a real design environment, meeting and speaking to other people in the industry. I would like to thank the Dingbat's for having me and letting me help out. www.hiddendingbat.co.uk

Alternative Pub Sign

For this project my task was to create a pub sign that was lateral not literal, so in other words it couldn't be like normal pub signs where its called The Ram and then a lovely painting of a ram on it.

So I chose The Red Lion and decided to think about its main and how people say to you your hair looks  bit wild like a main, which I tend to get quite a lot so thats what triggered this idea. So I took this photography focusing on the hair and showing no idenity of the person.

I had tried putting a red tint over the hair, but I felt it looked too forced and the black and white photograph had better contrast with the banner at the bottom. I think the typeface works quite well.

I am reasonably pleased with how the sign has turned out, I think its a good photograph and works well, I chose this position for the model because I felt it showed the pride of the lion.

As I finished the project earlier than the deadline my tutor wanted me to do another pub sign as well with another one of my ideas that he liked as well. So that is on its way.

Google

This was google's header the other week. I just like it's simpicity of colours, so I thought I'd put it up :)

The Event Magazine

For this project my task was to create at least a 12 page magazine based on an event. I created this A3 16 page magazine on the event that I have previously mentioned on my blog called the Big Book Bang, which celebrated world book night. My Magazine includes photographs take on the night, my own set up photographs, interviews with the organizers of the event, information about slack space and a double page spread on the Hidden Dingbat Collective.  The centre page is like a feature page where the image is bigger than the rest of the book in width and folds out like a book bang.

I really loved this project and I am really pleased with how it has turned out. I will put photographs up soon of what the magazine looks like as a physical object as these images just shown them as spreads.

The Great Slack Space Book Bang

 Blue Book Cover

 Orange Book Cover

For world book night Slack Space held a book event, where people came and listened to readings and picked up books. As part of this event The Hidden Dingbat Collection were illustrators for the event and I was also invited to take part. We all had to create an illustration to do with the book 'The Life of Pi'. I did a book cover, focusing on the tiger but representing it just by it's teeth. I did the origional cover in blue to keep with the theme of Pi being stuck on a boat in the ocean, and then I did a second one in orange to pick up more on the tiger.

Live Project Posters

Generic Poster

These are the seven posters that myself and my two team members created to promote the MA courses at my univeristy. They still need editing and better photographs but this is the concept.

The idea is that its opening a door into the future, because these are being aimed at potential students. For the generic poster, advertising all of the courses, is the set of keys colour coded to unlock the doors for the courses on the individual posters. The key also is made up of the N from the NUCA logo.

The 6 individual posters have photographs of the facilities for each subject. This is just to show the idea and combination of illlustration and photography. Really the photos need to haev more perspective and be more dynamic. But I think these illustrate the idea well and show how they work as a set of posters.

Overall, we have been really pleased with how the posters have ended up and have worked really well as a team :)

Book Cover Project

 Mid to Late 19th Century

 1930's

1940's

For this project we had to design covers for a series of books called Short and Sweet. I had to design a logo, the cover and use typography to represent the era of the book. I wanted the series to look like a set so I choose to have the same style throught the designs but change the typefaces on the front cover to suit. I also chose different patterns for the boarders that fitted with the era of the books. I wanted to colours to be quite strong but also sophisticated, so I chose these musty dark tones.

I really enjoyed this project and I am pleased with how my book covers ended up, there were several different versions before the final ones.

A Conversation With David Pearson

For my contextual studies report I am writing about book cover design, focusing on Penguin Books and how technology such as the Kindle and Ipad are affecting the publishing industry. David Pearson a designer who has worked with Penguin. He has designed a number of their covers, such as the Penguin By Design book, which I have shown previously in my blog.

David recently gave a lecture at my uni and I took the opportunity to contact him by phone after the lecture, to give him a short interview about his thoughts and opinions on what the future of books will be, and how the Kindle etc will effect book cover design. David gave some really interesting and in depth answers, which really helped me with my report and got me thinking about what the future of books will be. I really appreciated his time and he was a really nice and chatty character.