Month: February 2021

FMP WEEK 12 (WC: 15/02/2021)

I have been continuing to make creative content these past few weeks. I have found that producing visual work frequently has been improving my technical design skills as I have been refining and improving my professional abilities on software and applications such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. The more I practice, the more different skills I learn by trial and error or just by making first-hand as this is what helps me more as opposed to just watching videos on how to do something. Finding out the way that I work best and retain information most effectively is essential for my professional design practice, therefore I will continue to produce my work in this experimental manner as I have been doing before as this leads to more positive and successful results.

My tutorial this week was really successful in making me more motivated to do work, as I have really struggled during this pandemic in terms of equipment and resources, functioning Wi-Fi and lack of access to Wi-Fi (as the connection issues in my house will interfere with me doing work or stop and start frequently/lose connection) therefore hindering my ability to create and therefore affecting my motivation to produce work which is up to my standard. However, after showing my tutor and the people in my group my work, I gained some positive feedback on my presentation skills as well as being able to manage my time affectively as I have been producing a lot of content which I had been praised for. We had to present the concept of our magazines and my feedback was that Sentient Magazine was very unique and unlike most magazines that are popular on the market as well as being praised for its authenticity by staying true to my own style. This is one of the reasons why I used myself and my closest friends from home as my customer profiles. Mainly as I was able to gain some primary research from the people closest to me and therefore this would create a more authentic magazine. But also because this is my final university project of my third year at university; and being in education my whole life, I wanted to dedicate the magazine to myself mainly. The importance of being proud of your work and making content for yourself is something I am very passionate about, it has been the way that I have produced some of my best work, such as the magazine and illustration project in first year of university. The success of that project is what influenced me to create this magazine, as my tutor stated to find the project you enjoyed the most and create that as your starting point for your FMP as this makes the most sense. I found it appropriate use myself as I wanted the customer to be me, I want the magazine to be something that reflects not only my personality, but my interests, design style and influences which is why I also want to seek out some of my friends to use as interviews. I placed these at the beginning of my sketchbook for the viewer to understand the content being produced is for a specific target market which has been researched and refined.

I made this pieced titled “Connected to Each Other” using an image from Unsplash, a website recommended to me by a tutor, which has copywrite free imagery to use within commercial or personal projects. And as I stated before, I did not want to produce too much photographic content, as this personally is not my favourite thing to do, however I needed some visual content for my magazine, and I found that this was a perfect solution. However, I will sill be using my own imagery in my magazine and within my collages; I aim to utilise resources like these recommended by teachers for an extra dimension and to access imagery that I would not be able to make by myself anyway. Usually, I edit the images and mix them around with my own designs anyway that they become a part of something completely different. They become transformed into my own style, similar to what I did with the mood boards of the magazines I researched for visual content for my magazine a few weeks go.

FMP WEEK 10 (WC: 01/02/2021)

After creating some of my own work, I decided I wanted to research more and refine the sources that I was gaining my inspiration from. I used the information from my customer profiles that I made using my friend’s details as direct customer market research/primary research and sought out some interesting visual sources to base my research off of as these were considered very important for making a magazine. I researched into Wired Magazine, which caught my eye due to the old school style graphics which has heavily influenced the basis from my magazine; I aimed to have Sentient Magazine as a modern magazine with a retro design twist which is what Wired Magazine has turned into, mainly as they have been running since the 80s/90s. The logo in particular had me hooked as it was very different to other magazine fonts, Vogue, Elle etc have a very similar serif style thin font which would be all the same size in black whereas Wired magazine has different alternating shapes for each letter which emphasises the uniqueness of the magazine and adds a character to their logo; this improves their character of the magazine as a whole. As I had previously used philosophy Magazines as the starting point for my collages (as seen in a few blog posts ago), it made sense to research into an actual magazine which has some philosophical articles to influence my magazine and gain appropriate and relevant sources of research from.

I also researched into Analogue Magazine for similar reasons; the font was very unusual from a normal magazine that I would research into, such as Dazed and i_D, therefore it is nice to gain a different type of research. I have found that seeking out research sources that are more specific and unlike my usual sources, I am gaining more unique analysis techniques and able to get inspiration by completely different sources to my peers; allowing myself to really refine the projects that I am working on. Analogue magazine is not a fashion magazine, which is why it may have proven to be so useful for me. The content they produce is science fiction however the whole aesthetic and style of the front covers is what allowed me to create some mood boards inspired by the general design to help try and influence my own.

Another point of research for me was Toiletpaper Magazine. I was immediately blown away by the visual content, and as my market research led me to having to expand on my visual content (as everyone said they look for exciting visual content) I felt it was very appropriate to research into Toiletpaper Magazine further. The use of bright colours as the backgrounds for their shoots really emphasises the comedic and dynamic style of the content, they produce content with close ups of juxtaposing images and although I do not want to create a lot of photographic content, I find that utilising these images as the basis of my graphic design work is very important.

I created some mood boards of the visual content of these magazines, to inspire my own personal graphic design work for this course, while seeking out sources of research that were appropriate to my style and aesthetic of the magazine in the current moment. The mood boards were a good way of allowing myself to utilise small parts of other designer’s work to build upon my own style, which is why I chose the three magazines I did, as all of their styles’ individually differ far from each other, yet all of the mood boards follow my distinctive style which I have built from doing this.

 

FMP WEEK 9 (WC: 25/01/2021)

FMP WEEK 9 (WC: 25/01/2021)  

 

What I have been doing 

  • Improving my visual content and digital technical abilities for my FMP has been my main priority over the past few weeks; experimenting with layout design and various software to push my aesthetic has been useful for developing my skill s. I have been constantly adding to my Pinterest board for inspiration and have been using resources like LinkedIn Learning or various YouTube tutorials. To build upon my work in more depth, I should be applying my learning to my FMP work for context. I have been feeling as if my productivity levels could be improved as I have not been improving as much work as I could be. This leads down to organisation; once I have caught up to do with my blogs and implemented some further research into my chosen specialism, I could really start to improve on the content I am making for my magazine. 

 

  • As my inspiration board has been successful in stimulating more interesting content and seeking out more appropriate research for my FMP, I chose two personally eye-catching images to analyse and reference within my work. 
  • The first image is a graphic poster for USAID it seems, disregarding the current context of the images, I was drawn to the many elements harmonising together in the form of complementary fonts, use of a black border, the fonts interacting with each other like the layering of the titles at the top of the page. My style of work is predominately of a similar visual style in terms of less negative space with fairly frantic and chaotic backgrounds, which is most likely why it appealed to me. The poster is essentially a digital collage of fonts with an interesting layout; there are several sections but the fact that they are not boxed off with border or different colours allows all the different parts of the poster to stay uniform and work as a whole rather than splitting the page up into different sections. The addition of the flag imagery to be placed within the poster adds a three-dimensional interest in the right two thirds of the image, making this the foreground interest as the colour is different from the rest of the poster too. The blue of the flag is complimented by the recurring use of blue in small quantities which is distributed around the page evenly, allowing the foreground interest to connect with the chaos of the background in a way which compliments each other. The layout of the poster is clever in which they have used negative space and white areas but filled them sparingly with smaller blocks of text or individual icons, allowing the viewer to constantly be darting around the page, increasing the engagement with the art piece and allowing all the small details of the design to become recognised. 

 

  • This leads me on to the second image; I was drawn to this as it was also chaotic and busy yet in a much more simplified manner. The use of typography is something that I was intrigued by as I would love to incorporate typography further into my work which is essential if I am going to be doing magazine and layout work as well as creative direction. Following forward from this, I may set myself a series of typography trials and small tutorials to follow as this could stimulate content creation for my magazine, Sentient. The page of the left uses a hand drawn font, could have been creating digitally using software and brush or pen tools virtually or by hand by taking a more tactile approach to type design, either way would be a great starting point for me to start developing my knowledge of the different elements of typography and how this can enhance the design of my magazine. The small text at the bottom stands out even considering its size, which is due to the contrasting shapes, the main font is bold, thick and in a bright colour with imperfections made from the hand drawn quality of it whereas the text below is in a simple sans-serif font, in black and with thick sharp lines which distinguishes its own identify from the main text. The text on the right is reminiscent of the same layout yet uses a clean, blocked out sans-serif font which has enough similar qualities in terms of positioning on the page and sixing which relates to the image on the left, yet more digital which transforms to look of the text but keeps the two pages in harmony. 

 

Shown below are some collages I developed on from last week.