DESIGN PROJECT 3 TECHNICAL BITS

Design Project 3 heavily involved coding (using Arduino and Processing), Illustrator drawings, physical making, stop motion photography and video editing. So lots of technical studies there. All on the blog. http://www.tleecitizensensor.blogspot.com.

ILLUSTRATING BLOG TITLES

New header images for the DT101TL Blogs, drawn up with Illustrator.
Cooper Black and Helvetica Bold.

Design Project 3 here http://www.tleecitizensensor.blogspot.com

[GRAPHICS] CONDEFENCE LOGO

Again, this is just simply finding an idea and drawing it on Illustrator. I've not come up with a final look, but I do think green is the right colour.

Straight or playful?

Does the football work? Player? Brain?

Emphasise the wordplay? Too much?

For sure it's a difficult process. My way of working would be to keep trying and visualising until something feels right. But I haven't yet. The day wasn't long enough.

[GRAPHICS] WEB WIREFRAME

I've been thinking about a business concept for educating footballers. It's not the most thought out plan in the world ready for launch tomorrow, but it's certainly an idea that has been lingering for a little while, and may fruit some day. Don't steal my idea.

Condefence.

Great name I think. Here's the rationale.

And then the wireframe. This is essentially the mock up of the website. How the home page looks. What buttons link where. What each page looks like. How the hierarchy stands. Like a site map.

[GRAPHICS] STYLE SHEET MENU

Using several Styles, our task was to design a menu for an Italian restaurant, made up by Avni.

The background course title is one paragraph style.
Each item title is one style, each description one style, prices one style.
Header title and footer notes were independently assigned.

[GRAPHICS] INDESIGN STYLE SHEETS

Style sheets allow for a specific setting to be saved and selected where needed. For example, a paragraph uses font Helvetica at size 11 in #456001. If I want another paragraph somewhere else in the same style, I can just select my pre-made style instead of setting each element every time. It's a time saver.

There are two types: paragraph styles and character styles, each window found under Type & Text. Paragraph styles are useful for batch text (ie paragraphs), whereas Character styles apply for individual letters, for example in the case of drop caps at the start of each chapter, or for ligatures, etc.

[GRAPHICS] MANUAL TRACING

For more complex images, we can trace manually, using the Pen tool. Clicking adds points, shift+Click adds curves and the Anchors are adjusted for right angles. I took this image from our JFC photo log and chose to trace an outline of the boys.

And by using the Layers, I can control individual lines and layers by selecting what to view and what to hide. In this case, each boy and the ball (blue, orange, black) are all independent Layers, as are the green borders and strap I added. The original photograph is also a Layer itself, positioned at the top to cover the rest, and hidden also.

[GRAPHICS] LIVE TRACING

Bringing in a JPEG image from the web, in this case the new adidas Euro 2012 football, the tracing tool automatically blocks out the image into colour patches it reads. As these 'blocks' are all independent, I can then change the colour of a certain block. Potentially very useful.

DESIGN PROJECT 2

(Illustrator. A4 size. Typeface Helvetica.)

DESIGN PROJECT 1

(Illustrator. Typeface Garamond and Britannic Bold.)

(InDesign. Split into eighths. Booklet making ref:Methods & Processes.)

DESIGN PROJECT 1 GRAPHICS

[GRAPHICS] PHOTOSHOP + ILLUSTRATOR

ILLUSTRATOR https://learn.gold.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=47477
PHOTOSHOP https://learn.gold.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=47476

[GRAPHICS] SIGNPOST TASK 2

I thought the hand action was ok, but the guy's face was ridiculously bad, no? Literally looks like a beginner drew it up on Illustrator. Now, mine clearly doesn't solve that problem, but I wanted a sign that was more symmetrical and have a sense of sensible authority. So, it's an authorised person blocking you entry. Some drawing flaws of course, but I think the builder's hat, ID badge and fence make for a bold clear message.

This is the Car Wash at Sainsbury's. Not a huge change, but I think my rendition is cleaner, brighter and more inviting. It's just an arrangement of circles, rectangles, straight lines and a trapezium, but I find its simplicity is appealing, in comparison to the free irregular lines from the builder in my other sign.

[GRAPHICS] SIGNPOST TASK 1

Using Adobe Illustrator for the first time, the task was to collate some 'odd' signposts from the New Cross area and improve or make our own versions of them. Having learnt the Pen and Anchor tools, as well as constructing simple shapes, it was an opportunity to put them to practice.

Here are some amusing ones I found out and about.

It's almost like, 'this way for a holiday'. 

Yes sir. 

If a dog is caught fouling, he shall be given a yellow card. 

You might die.

Yep. Five is too many. 

Say it in a deep manly voice.

[GRAPHICS] BOOK COVER TASK

On day one with Avni, we looked at books and the design that goes into their covers. Because let's be honest, we all judge a book by its cover. Otherwise what purpose is the cover serving, right? I think so anyway.

So in partners, we made up a book for which we would design a cover.

We were using the library computers, onto which we saved the relevant files. Turns out you're not supposed to save it there, because it doesn't actually save it. Yeah. So I'm afraid we lost our work. The cover was nice though. We chose a square canvas for the book shape and filled it with a cute shot of a toddler enjoying ice cream, editing it on Photoshop to give it a bit of sepia tone and cropping it. We even designed a publisher's logo on Illustrator, which I think was rather effective.

But yes, the main lesson here was not to save onto the computers, instead to use a personal USB. Damn.