Adobe Illustrator Workshops

From the Alphabet Soup project we developed our design using Illustrator. I attended a workshop for 4 weeks to learn basic Illustrator skills and create 24 adaptations of the chosen letter 'U', restricted to 1 colour. The workshops have proved really valuable, it has allowed me to create designs on illustrator, i've improved on the pen tool throughout the workshops and feel confident to apply these skills in other projects.

I adapted the letter looking at line, brush stroke, opacity, fill and style. I'm really pleased with the overall outcome as i found the shape of mine very difficult at first to work with.

OUGD101. Alphabet Soup Interview continued

From the crit i had a lot of positive feedback and help with how to improve my typeface. I plan on keeping the shape and style of the type but changing the colour as the metallic pen could not be seen from a distance and didn't give the detailed lettering the finish it deserved. Therefore i plan on using a black outline to my typeface to see if this improves the design. Although i was very daring with the colour used in my first design and it was in context with the 'glitter ball' idea i thought it looked quite cheap looking and would not be something i would normally have used.

A quick sketch to show how this would look, i have added another colour to see if the black looks better than the silver with another colour.

..add designs..

OUGD101. Alphabet Soup Interview

Todays brief started by collecting information about another student through the use of a constructed questionnaire given to us by our course leader.

From the information collected and any additional information we planned on investigating our brief was to design a Handmade type that reflected and communicated that person. This was similar to the summer brief yet instead of making type for myself i had create a type i thought would suit another student. The type had to be the full alphabet and include a series of glyphs.
: . ! ? @ £
It also had to be presented on a sheet of A1 Tracing paper in a 4x8 layout.

From the information gathered and additional questions asked i fount that Kim liked Photography, Clubbing, House music, 'the student life', drinking & socialising, nightlife and the city. I came up with 5 words which i would focus on to develop and design a typeface, these were:

Mischievous,

Fun Loving,

Clubbing,

The City at night,

Stylish.

I started by looking at night time photography to see how artificial lighting played a key role in these images.

I started looking at slow shutterspeeds, club lighting and tube lighting.

I researched club names to see what fonts they used, i found them to be simple fonts, some had been adapted to make them appear more sylish. I started to play around with the idea of light and type using simple fonts.

I like the stylish yet tacky elements of tube lighting, the way in which they flow and link letters and words wish garish colours.

 

I took a few photographs of different lights in clubs and liked how discoballs were used in many clubs to create illuminated patterns over the walls. I like how light reflected off of the mirrored pieces. They are an iconic image to disco's and clubbing.

I started to develop my work further by looking into the idea of the glitterball. Adapting type to take on its appearence.

I decided to stretch the letters so that they fit into the shape of a glitterball using Adobe Illustrator, i tried to make each letter follow a rule. It could only be stretched horizontally and had to touch the outer edges. Some of the glyphs proved tricky and the 'I' appears like an 'o' but looking at the 'o' you can see the counter.

Colour testing was vital as we were drawing our finished type onto tracing paper, i wanted vibrant, neon colours and preferably a metallic finish to resemble the discoball.
I made an A1 layout plan before drawing the final piece as a mistake would mean starting the whole piece again.

 

 

Thought i'd mix it up with some photography!

I thought its about time that i put up some of my work that i've done out of my degree.

I really love photography... i don't know that much about all the technical side of it yet but i just love 'capturing the moment'. Here are a few from a recent trip to Paris.

So yes its the typically train station picture from Kings Cross... but ah well i really like. I don't usually edit my photographs but i thought the blue/green hues worked well to bring out the colours in the roof, it creates an eerie, lonely effect as i find train stations to be very lonesome places. I like the silohuettes of the people as it adds mystery to the image, masking their identities. Look at me getting all fine arty ha.

OUGD101 Alphabet Soup- Part One

For this brief we had to produce a series of 10 Letterforms that explore and communicate your interpretation of a word chosen from the randomiser. My word was Deconstruct: To break down into components/ to write about or analyse. I started by researching images that show deconstruction, the images were that of building sites, deconstructed materials and construction plans. From this I pursued a few ideas to see which one would communicate the word most effectively.

I started my designs by manipulating the font Abadi Condensed, i tried to Deconstruct the letterform in several ways to put the letter into context. I think it is a simple and effective way of expressing the word but i would like to develop the ideas furthur. The recent Visual Language sessions helped to start generating ideas.

I also liked the idea of deconstructing materials to make the letterforms. I used crumpled paper and placed it in the shape of the letterform A, I like the interesting shape it creates and how it adds texture yet i don't think it will express the word as effective as others ideas may.

I've always been interested in architecture, i liked how i could express the word deconstruct through constructional methods. I took a series of photographs of buildings in the city and tried to find the letterforms they create, from this i could use the filled shape.

Following on from the idea of building construction i started to look at building plans and liked the variations of shapes created by the rooms, I tried to find the letters in the plans this was done by Desconstructing the Constructions.

After creating the 10 Letterforms i decided to push it one step further and make them appear like Blueprints, to do this i scanned in my hand drawn letterforms onto Photoshop and edited the line and background colour.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summer Type Brief

Over the summer I created an alphabet of type to express me. I started by writing a list of things to do with my life and my personality, from this list i decided to base my work on natural elements as i like working with these and it expresses where I live, what I like, what elements I enjoy working with and also reflects my personality. I made this alphabet by collecting and arranging flowers into the letterforms then photographing each letter and editing the background on Photoshop. I decided lowercase letters would work better as they are more rounded and natural, the letters i found the most difficult to make were 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z' etc. this was because i had think about how the flowers could be arranged to look natural yet follow a rigid shape. If i were to continue my exploration I would make sure the letters were all to the same scale, also base it on an existing type form as i think this would make it appear more professional.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second part of our summer brief was to collect 30 Letterforms for each letter in the alphabet, these had to be collected from various sources. We then had to sort the letterforms into an order, this could be based on the colour, size, style etc. We decided to base ours on colour and tried to show a gradual change of colour.

By showing small sections of the colour range we can see how the hues are similar.