FMP WEEK 3 (WC: 14/12/2020)

To progress on what had previously been successful for my development of my FMP, I looked at what had worked for me in the past to fix a creative block. While on TikTok, I found a graphic design tutorial for Adobe Photoshop which envisioned how to create text that follows the formation of a stairs pattern. I found this visually interesting and therefore decided to give it a go as I wanted to expand on my skills in the Adobe Creative Suite by focusing on some individual tutorials and make some imagery that I could use for my sketchbook and blog as experimentation and development. I used some of my previous work to manipulate further and create some visually dynamic backgrounds to compliment the typography. This technique creates a sense of motion in the design, our eyes are following the ‘stairs’ going downwards which is an interesting detail to point out for future designs as it is essential to understand our designs from a viewers perspective.

The use of the background creates another dimension for the text to sit in. Glitched patterns and circular shapes symbolise a malfunctioning computer screen, could be from a different world, a virtual world or the future and therefore this design of the background compliments the text which say ‘distortion’. When attending a LinkedIn Learning class, they pointed out how it is essential for the text and the background interest or foreground subject to all be saying the same thing and exuding the same mood through their own formats. This creates a balance and shows the production process has been well thought out sand thoroughly designed.

The simplified colour palette allows the many textures created by the glitched background to be highlighted and not hidden in the shadow of too many elements contrasting with the design. The accent colour of the light green compliments the purple well especially when it interacts with the text and changes the colour of the section of the text to avoid the text sticking out on its own and not interacting with the design, which can be effective in some cases but for this poster, I aimed for it to be abstract and interactive.

I then created this collage as an experiment with my style to try to create some imagery that evokes a certain mood which I think was achieved with this poster. To elevate it further I feel as if some text or a main foreground image could add some more dimension and really tie the piece together, however this was a decent starting point. I made the background using the emboss tool on the filter section for images in Adobe Photoshop to create an outline to focus more on the forms that the lines create when placed together rather than the shadows and textures, which was successful for the main background interest as there were no details that got lost in the back.

The images shown above are some selected colourways of a series of different posters I made to embody some positvitty and creativity into my style of working for my FMP. Following on from my creative block last week, I decided that I wanted my magazine to embody different selections of my personality, all the things I am interested in which I can translate into a creatively directed platform, which led me to creating these designs as I had been focused on boosting productivity and mental health during this pandemic.

These designs had successful feedback from my friends which meant a lot to me as some of them saved it as their home screen. My intent was to simply make someone think for an extra second and smile but that reaction proves that I should implement his in my designs of the magazine and embed this into the ethos of the platform I will be creating.

This is a successful start however adapting these specifically to my brand could be more successful e.g. adding a border and logo in the bottom left corner to brand the work and almost watermark it in a way, make it more distinguishable from a distance from the presentation and layout of it which therefore makes it more scalable and adaptable.

As well as the images at the start of the post, these were also made with the help of a graphic design tutorial found on TikTok. This was aimed for Adobe Illustrator instead, and the aim of this was to warp the text together with a mesh warp which puts sections of the image into boxes which can be stretched out individually to create some new innovate shapes a group of text, helping the text become more abstract and psychedelic which suits the aesthetic of my FMP work perfectly and therefore was an appropriate method of gaining resources.

Transforming my skills from the previous designs, I used the same text mesh warp technique and applied this on top of a collage to create a poster print which juxtaposes some of my collages with some text to create a response to my research so far. As my concepts surrounds the idea of perceiving things a certain way, or changing the way you perceive things to suit your identity, I chose the texts “hiding from your vision” and “you looking at me?” as a way to embed my research into the way I produce my work to make everything I add relevant and consistent.

After looking at the collages from last week, I chose to take what worked in the inspirational images, which was a tactile collage by Broken Art Collage on Instagram which influenced me to create my work using that format as using what I found visually interesting in my own work keeps me interested and engaged with constantly transforming what I am working on to suit my current interests. This is highlighted in the last picture where you can see the tear marks and the texture which is created when ripping a piece of high quality magazine paper; I found this successful in adding a different appearance to my collages, especially as I further refined the quality of them on Adobe Photoshop.