- End of Module Evaluation -

This module has been a test of my abilities. I have tried, learnt and i think succeeded in the new skills i have developed. Firstly in type and grid, i didn't know anything about layouts what so ever. I enjoyed the development of ideas through experimenting with thumbnails then applying them to the computer. I felt that drawing the designs by hand gave you useful visuals to pick out the best and most exciting design. Learning In Design i have felt is going to be very useful in the future. It was a little hard to pick up at first but i think i have the basics. This is evident in my lay out for the In Design brief we did, the end result looks quite professional. I don't think my layout skills are of a professional standard but with practice and time i will get up to a good level.

In the Speaking from Experience i experimented with video which was a first for me. I felt that imagining and drawing your ideas for the story board is much harder for a layout lets say because there is a lot more in a moving image than a still one. But i experimented with different shots and tried to imitate elements from other films. The editing of this video was also another skill which i developed. I found out that editing takes a long time and fitting visuals to audio can be a long process. I think i did well in the editing though, the music i chose for the video works very well and in my opinion makes the film.

My weaknesses lie within the type area i think. I have learnt alot about type since being on this course but i feel that alot of graphic design looks good due to the type used in it. In some aspects of my projects i feel i have done well with the type side of things. My speaking from experience brief led me to making a film poster in the style of 1970's b movie. I researched into alot of movie posters from that time and i think the end result of the font i used and adjusted looks like a genuine movie poster title font. But in other projects such as the communication is a virus brief i felt that the type wasn't thought out enough and it made the design of our calender look un-professional. I think next time more research and more variations for type is needed.

My favourite brief of this module was the Don't Panic - Vogue brief. This is because it was a quick brief and there was lots of artistic room for everyone to try different techniques out. It was also good because there was a chance of our designs being mass produced and put up in the the real world which is an exciting prospect for any young designer.

In the future i will try more visual variations for designs, think more about what type to use and work on the relationship between type and image.

- In Design -

For this project i had to make a double made spread about Alice Vine. I chose to focus on her love for watches.

Here is the final double page spread. I edited some of the single watch photos so they were long and thin and showed only part of the watch.

This was my first attempt of the layout. I didn't like the white back ground and the photo (top right) was quite bad quality so it was pixilated.
Here are a few of the photos i took for the in design lay out. I took individual one of the watches, and in groups.

I did some thumbnails to try out some different visual varitions. Alice's name works really nice because the A and the V are sort of opposites so i was trying different ways of intergrating them.

Here are Alice's answer to the questions i gave her.

- In Context -

Banner

I wanted to make the poster seem like it was a genuine film so i added a small banner like they used to do in the 70's showing the time and place of the showing.

I used an orange banner so it would stand out. The 'times' i put are the timings of the course. I also advertised the Alarm Clock pack bringing the products together. To make it look a bit more authentic i also hand teared the edges. This is because the people that would of promoted a film in the 190's would have printed a roll of these banners and just tore them when they needed them.

Here is the poster with the banner.

I also put it up on the level 4 notice board because this is where people advertise stuff on the course.

Internet

I also designed a longer thinner version of the poster as an advert for the internet. Lots of webpages have adverts so i thought it would be a good vessel to promote the products.

I tried 3 different variations of the design. The hierarchy of text in the first one is all wrong because the tag line is too big and takes focus of the title. The composition of the middle one works best because the illustrations are arranged more smoothly and the title is apart from the illustrations so it doesn't get lost.

I took a generic website, i chose Empire online because its a film website. I then placed my advert into the space where adverts go to show what it would look like. You could use this design on the 1st year blogs also.

Screen Print

I also wanted to screen print the poster because thats how it would have been done back in the 70's. The poster design would look crisp and the colours would be more vivid.

But i did run into a problem. I couldn't print out A2 CMYK black and white designs to expose the screens. This is because there was no space to print out this week. I may attempt this when the A2 printers are less busy.

- Poster Revisions -

I had idea of linking the floppy disks to the course by making them with the module titles. There are 3 main modules and 3 floppy disks on the poster. I first tried making it look like they had been written straight onto the disk with a marker pen.

I then tried it with the labels which they used to use on floppy disks which looked much better.

I finally changed the colour of the stickers for each floppy disk to give it a bit of variation and because i remember that they used to use coloured labels for organisation.

Here is the poster with the revisions.

- Final Products -

- Speaking From Experience Evaluation -

Self Evaluation - I found that the hardest thing about this course is time managment and that everyones problems revolve around time. I asked everyone on the course the question , What is the hardest thing about this course ? I found that nearly every answer was to do with time, whether it was getting in on time or the amount of time your in college. It was all about time. I think for this course i am a good source of research because i was a new student to this course and i remember how i felt about everything. When i came to the course i wanted to be inspired and shown that you could do things that weren't just based on type faces so thats why i came up of the idea of doing a film poster. I think this would show that this course can be fun (but time consuming)

5 things i have learnt about the design process

- I learnt how to edit video

- I learnt some basic motion graphics

- I learnt a lot about video in general

- I learnt that doing design sketches gives you lots of ideas

- That i really enjoy the illustration side of graphics

5 things i would do differently

-Spend more time on the packaging for the alarm clock package, it looked to bland and un-adventurous,(Picture of packaging below)

- I would spend more time on the video, i would try and make it look like a real movie trailer with clips from different scenes and characters.

- I would try a range of illustration styles rather than just one. Because the style i chose looks good on objects like cars or computers but i dont think its as strong on people.(Picture of illustration in the style i did of Ben and Sam.)

- Come up with a better design for the DVD. I wasn't that pleased with the end result.

- Tried a few more composition ideas for the illustration collage

- Time Stealers Poster -

- Time Stealers Development -

Here is a few pages from my sketchbook that have the responces to the question i asked everyone on the course. What is the hardest thing about this course. Almost ALL of the respnces revolved around time, 'getting in on time', 'getting up on time', 'the amount of time were in college' etc.

Here is a brainstorm on what i could use in the film poster using elements from 'TIME' and 'GRAPHIC DESIGN'
Here are ideas for the concept for the film and film title. I wanted to have the film about time and how you never have enough time.

All films have a tag line to.

I came to the conclusion for the film title to be TIME STEALERS

Its short and catchy and could defiantly work as a film title

and for the tag line. They thought they had more time.......they were wrong

Here is a a sketch for the sort of poster look i am going for along with a list on things that i could use in the poster
Here are some preliminary ideas for the lay out of the poster. For the main design i wanted a collage of illustrations of things and people to create a visually exciting focus for the poster.

Here i have split the title and the tagline up with the main illustration. The tag line doesnt work when it is split up but the title works quite well. This is my favourite composition for the illustrations.
The title font style with the 3d look looks like a real 1970's film. I think the main character looking at his watch encapsulates the film well with the theme of running out of time.
Here i tried the idea of all the illustrations with in a clock incorporating the hands of the clock.

The font used for the title doesn't work well because it looks like a sci-fi film title.
Using different elements from all my preliminary sketches i drew this final design. All the things within the illustration have links to either 1970's b movies or this graphic design course.

The car, explosions, helicopter and parachuting have been put in to make the poster look exciting. This makes it look like a real film because movie posters always have the most exciting elements of the film within the poster.

The pencil snapping, macbook, sleeping pens and clocks are relevant to the course.I researched into what font to use for the title i concluded that a thick serif font would work well with a 3d affect applied to it.

I also skewed the font slightly so it looks like its moving towards you.

In the middle you can see the drawing i did of the font with the 3d sides added.
I then scanned in the drawing of the title and added colour. I think it looks like a movie poster font and works well with black and red.

Here are some visual variations for the layout of the poster now that i have a basic plan for the tag line, font for the title and the layout for the illustrations.

This traditional layout above works best with the tag line then illustration, then title and then info if i want a retro looking poster.

In these pages from my sketch book i look into detail for the illustrations in the poster.

I looked into different types of helicopter that i could draw but decided to go for the HUEY helicopter design because it was used in the Vietnam war which took place during the 70's.

I looked at different vintage car designs but decided to draw the Cadillac design because its a famous design and looks 70's

I decided to use people from the course within the poster because then it has direct links to the course rather than just a 'character'

These page shows the pictures i took of the people on my course and some the drawings i got from them.

I had drawn these 2 running men prior to the decision to put students faces in the poster but i added there faces on after.
I took different photos of the the 'main' characters in the poster being Josh and Ailsa. I liked different elements of different photos so i cut them up and stuck them together using face book and then drew them from that.
Here is the process i took when drawing and adding colour to the illustrations.

I tried different colours on the car so see what it suited it best. I decided that blue looked best because its quite traditional and not too 'in your face'

I started with a blank canvas and added the not yet coloured illustrations i had to give a feel for the composition i wanted.

When i had coloured the illustrations i started to arrange them. Also added the main 'characters'

I wasn't happy with the colour of the floppy disks so i made them a closer hue. I also flipped the side of the helicopter because it didn't look right above Ailsa's head.

I added another clock in the background and tried it being the circle background which everything was composed around but it looked to messy with too much going on.

I added clouds to fill up some of the space that hadn't been used, i also revisited the parachuter and made him look more realistic. I made the clock in the background smaller. I also changed the colours of the running men (ben and sam) so they were both wearing grey suits. I did this mainly because the blue and brown suit didn't look good. I also added arthur.

I added a red circle because you couldn't see the shards of the pencil braking when it was in front of the cloud because there was to much going on. The colour of the circle also links back to the title.

With the circle in the back ground i decided to add the same colour as the title to it because then it would link together.

After composing the poster i had to add the info at the bottom which all posters have. It has the actors, writers, producers, directors etc.

I researched into film posters and the type that they used at the bottom. I found that they all used different fonts but ALL of them squashed it together to make it long. This may be because they need more room to fit in all the information needed.

I used Georgia font because it looked best when squashed.

I thought it would be a good idea to have members of staff to be the producers of the 'film' so i put Fred as director, Amber as producer, Lorenzo as screenplay and John as casting director.

And the students i used in the poster as the starring 'actors'
In the final composition i added a few little touches to make it look like a genuine movie poster.

I added a R rating icon, which is an american movie rating system.A Vistascope and Cinemaphonic Quadrovision logo. Which is a real and also fictional type of film that they used in the 1970s.
Here are some design sketches i did for the dvd sleeve.

Here is the dvd sleeve final design. I think it works well because it is very like the poster design which links them together.

Back of the sleeve, i kept it simple but added a bar code and 'copyright' to Leeds College of art to make it look like a real dvd package.
Here are some of the designs i did for the dvd. I went for the simpler design (middle right) because the other designs looked to busy and didn't look as professional.

I bought a traditional bell clock that was a prop in the trailer. I thought i could use it in my range of products and also use the box to house the poster and dvd. It also works well with the theme of time and the new students could use the alarm clock to help them with time management.

I wanted to put the time stealer logo on the clock face but i couldn't get to it with out braking the clock.

I used photo shop to show what it would appear like if it were possible.

This is the box i got the clock in, i designed some packaging to wrap round the box so i could use it as the the vessel for all my products.

I tried to keep the design of the box simple and intriguing, i put a list of contents on the back of the box.

I had an idea of including a cinema ticket with in the pack. This works well with the them of movies. I tried to imitate the style of old style movie tickets. Which had the name of the theatre, where i put our college and the place, where i put Yorkshire. The price seems a bit high for a cinema ticket but it is the price of this level 4 course.

I tried grey and black and made the black look a bit worn because all the vintage tickets i looked at looked old and faded.

Here i tried it with a blue back ground and white writing. The white didn't look realistic because they wouldn't of used white ink on the old tickets

Looking at the vintage tickets closer i noticed that they all either had red or black ink. Some times with both. I tried the boxes in red and the font in black with a brown background.

Taking elements for each design i put together this final design with the red boxes and worn black font and a grey background. I think it looks like a real old 1970's cinema ticket.

To make it even more realistic i cut out semi circles from each side because that is what the old tickets used to have, to make it easier to tear out the tickets from the roll. I used my scalpel to make little cuts and then i teared the excess of to make it appeared cerated.