Self Promotional Poster Progress

Here is some screen shots of objects I have created for my self promotional poster I have made these items by drawing out the shapes and then using them as a clipping mask over a texture. Each of the items are a part of a representation of me and my interests and my creative tools. I have created these items using textures and colours and simple shapes influenced by Manoou's geometric and textured style on Behance.

These are also some quick sketches I did of two poses that I might want to draw myself in. I might do a combination of the two and use the body or just the legs angle of the 2nd photo with the face and maybe torso angle of the first photo.

Web Portfolio

So I have put together my tumblr portfolio and here is what it looks like, http://anidesigns.tumblr.com.

I have uploaded some of my print work and I wanted to keep the page fairly simple and didn't want to over complicate it with graphics so I used a simple photo of the sea as my banner background with my tumblr page title over the top. You can click on the images to enlarge them and see the description.

I may work on making a personal banner later when I have decided what I want to use to portray myself and I want to try and see if I can display the entires differently. I also want to play around with typography and colours more and make my tumblr portfolio have a more stylistic theme and design to it but I am unsure of how to do this right now. Overall I'm happy with the simple layout and how it looks on tablet and phone size as it all stays central and on phone size each entry takes up the entire width of the page, making it less hassle to view and unnecessary to need to use the light box.

Inspiration for Web Portfolio

I have decided I am going to use Tumblr to create my online web portfolio as hand coding html and css isn't a strong aspect of mine. I google searched some ideas for simple portfolio layouts, themes and templates and came across a tumblr page which allows you to install and customise some set themes. I've narrowed it down to these 3 themes for my portfolio.

'New York'

I've played around a little with all 3 themes and I have decided not to use this one as It looks too uniform and plain and I wasn't keen on the font for the banner. I also don't think my images will need borders or so much breathing space.

'Geometric'

I've decided I will go forward with this one as it is less uniform and stacks the photos in a different way. it looks more tight and less spaced out and the font for the banner appeals to me and looks good against a photo for a background, and I also like how all the content is centred. 

'Koto'

I did like this theme a lot as it allowed you to put a little avatar picture at the top too though I also felt like this might seem a little less professional. I also don't like how the banner stretches right out to the edges and I don't think this will look as nice as a responsive portfolio as the image will stretch or scale. It has more breathing space around the edges but no borders and I dislike how it's not really all centred. 

Curriculum Vitae

The colour scheme I decided to go with for my CV is green, brown and white. I pulled the green and brown colours from the photo I have decided to put on my CV so that it all works well together and matches. I have left my contact and portfolio details at the top as an employer would probably like to see my work first before going through my CV. I've used green polkadots as my background pattern with an opacity of 40% and I have used white boxes with rounded edges to put in all my information so that it is clear and readable. I've used the bar idea for my skills and I have made little icons for my interests accompanied with text. I tried to be visually appealing with my CV rather than just having everything plainly written out so that is where I have decided to use icons or bar charts and timelines to display hobbies, skills and experiences and I have formally written out my profile and my languages.

I am pretty happy with how my CV has turned out and I hope to in future add another software to the skills panel such as final cut or premiere pro and maybe divide the CV into two pages where I can write a bit more about my experiences in detail.

After I finished this CV I sent it to my brother to check as he is an established designer and head creative at Jellyfish Brighton, I also asked my tutor about the content and she also gave a few points to change. These were the comments that they left me about the presentation of my CV and the content of my information, I will make changes to it with these points in mind.

"It's nice but a bit too themed I think, like it has a specific design theme so I think it's worth doing an alternate version which is more simplified, a simple design which is more suitable for agencies. Basically, I get a lot of CV's come through to me and if that came to me, I probably wouldn't look to hard at it because the design of it, doesn't suit the design we do here. So, by doing a simple version (with a cleaner design) It leaves it more open which caters for a lot more people / companies. Keep most of the colour neutral, then have highlights of green as opposed to the main colour being green." - Abb-D Choudhury, Head Creative at Jellyfish Brighton.

In related to my profile and experience sections Shirley has said "Not state what you are becoming stronger at as it starts to look like a weakness which you don't want to show. You want to show your strong points so you should go straight into what you are doing/studying and what you are good at and talk about your influences and inspiration. Your experience section can maybe be moved up into your profile and you can talk a little bit more about what you did in those jobs and what skills you have built from it."

Based on these points I will revise my CV and make changes to it later and save an alternative copy, but for now I like my CV the way it is.

Inspiration for CV

Here are some graphic design CV's that I took a look at for inspiration for my own CV. I have noticed that there is a common colour scheme between most of them which consists of white, grey, black and either blue or teal. I like the way all of these are laid out and how they use graphical images and typography such as the way the skills are displayed as bars or wheels and how the interests sections are made up of little icons. It looks very appealing as the CV will be the first thing an employer see's from you as a designer, they can already see from your CV what you are capable of creating visually. Some of these CV's have used subtle textures as the main background such as crumpled paper, recycled paper or a simple pattern such as lines. I want my CV to come away from the common colour scheme of blue being used as I think it's too common and if my CV uses a different colour scheme it will stand out from the stack.

Copyright

When it comes to the design industry it is important to know about copyright when creating. Here is my understanding of copyright which I have considered whilst putting my designs together.

What is copyright?

Copyright is a form of protection that allows the creator of their own original work claim exclusive rights to publish and distribute the work. Copyright is automatic though you need to register for legal reasons. The main legislation dealing with copyright in the UK is the Copyright, design and patents act, 1988.

What does copyright protect?

Anything that is an original creative piece of work for example; music, art, software, photography, footage, scripts, novels etc.

Literary works
dramatic works, dance
musical works, including musical notes themselves
artistic works
motion picture and audiovisual works
sound recordings
architectural work
typographical arrangements of published editions, e.g.. layout or actual appearance

What isn't protected?

work that hasn't been fixed in a tangible form of expressions (needs to be in material existence to be copyrighted). Titles, names, short phrases and slogans; familiar symbols and designs.
Ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, concepts, principles, discoveries.

What is fair use?

The acceptation to copyright. Something that doesn't change the works value in the marketplace.
Reproduction of some work may be considered 'fair use' when used for:
Parody, reporting, teaching, critical comments, scholarship research

Limitations
fair use is only a guideline not a law. The effect of the use upon the market values of the copyrighted work (competition for the original?) The purpose and character of the work (commercial or not profit?)
Credited work
The amount of work that will be used (the heart of the work?)

What is the public domain?
Content is no longer owned or controled by anyone, items in the public domain may be freely:
used
adapted
distributed
used for any given purpose you like without having to seek the permissions of any copyright owners.

Creative commons
free liscences you add to your copyrighted work making it easier to share and allow other people to build upon your work.
multiple different liscences exist.

Brochure content

Connor put together a draft template and table for us to fill in for a brochure, we were each to have a double page spread with a little profile and social media info as well as a print of 1 piece of chosen work. When writing my profile I wanted to try and keep it professional rather than personal as I don't want to put in unnecessary paragraphs about my life story because honestly employers don't really care about that and are just interested in what you do, and what your ambitions and skills are. So I kept it short and simple.

The art work that I put forward for it was again my YCN coffee poster design as it is the print work that I'm most proud of that I've done so far.

Business Card

I took a look at some examples of business cards as I was unsure of how to layout mine. All I knew what that I wanted my business cards to have a triangle and geometric theme with that same crumpled paper texture as the background, similar to the branding poster that I did. 

This design uses the similar triangle pattern background that i've used as a pattern for my triangle objects in my poster expect it has a nice scratchy texture and the colours are complimentary and different rather than all the same colour in different hues. I also like how the the white shape in the middle is made up from 6 triangles that were within the pattern and filled in white instead, making a nice logo for the name to go in the middle. The ribbon bands that poke out of the sides are also lined up cleanly against the corners of the triangles in the pattern.

I like this card design as it's simple and clean and uses only 3 colour which work well together. The front is simple and stands out with it's slogan and logo and the back has all the info on it. The blue and the black really stand out against each other which makes all font legible and becomes part of the design rather than over killing it with imagery or graphics.

I found this business card quite interesting as it takes a different approach on the front. The colour scheme is only black and white and though I like the idea of the images on the front I don't really think it properly tells me what the business is. The font on the front isn't very legible so from the image I can't really tell what the person is trying to promote with their card.

This is the first design I came up with for the front side of my business card. This design was intended for only single sided printing and i have used the triangles from my poster and added extra triangles in the background with just a simple dashed stroke. In the end I decided not to use this design for my business card as it looks too busy and crowded and the layout for the text is kind of awkwardly placed and angles as they are inside the triangles making space quite limited.

This is the 2nd and final design I came up with for the front of my business card. I decided to stick to just white and blue for my colour scheme and I kept the crumpled paper background. I kept the blue triangle and enlarged it to use as the space for my name in the middle. The space above my name felt awkwardly empty so I added in two feathers which are the feathers I drew for my self promotional poster. I also kept in the two dashed lined triangles in the background and changed the colour to blue.

This is the back of my business card with all of my contact and social media information, I chose to use the blue triangle pattern as the background but also give the pattern the texture of the crumpled paper. I used my feather again at the top as a kind of logo and underneath I stated the titles of what I do and my info.

I ordered 100 business cards from vistaprint with a premium matte finish and this is how they have turned out! I'm quite pleased with the quality of the card and printing and the price is also reasonable and affordable. I think they turned out really good.

Work I have put forward

The 2 prints and movs I have decided to put forward are my book cover design and martin luther king speech from last year and my YCN poster and Latest TV animation from this year. Although I have put my movs forward I only really want my print work to be on display as I think print is my main focus area and my print designs are far stronger and more appealing than my motion projects.

This is the poster I made for the YCN Awards for Nescafe's Azera instant coffee. The idea behind this poster is to promote the coffee as something that's high quality yet instant making it convenient for an audience with busy schedules such as business men/women. The theme of the style was coffee paintings which are painting literally painted with coffee. I tried to recreate this style digitally by using water colour brushes and brown tones for the colour scheme to look as if it was painted with coffee and giving it a canvas texture.

Here is the book cover I design for The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler for the Penguin books competition during my 1st year. I'm quite proud of this design so I'm putting it forward for print for the show. The art style is inspired by a french artist named René Gruau who often created paintings of pin up girls, fashion and women from the 1920's.

This is the video I filmed and edited along side a famous speech in a 1st year project. the speech I chose was 'I have a dream' by Martin Luther King and the idea was to put together footage that was to accompany the speech, but not have imagery that was literal to the words in the speech. We are also supposed to include some kinetic type somewhere in the video.

This is the opening title sequence I created for Latest TV's Postfeature Film show. The story board follows the hosts of the show who drive through the city in a taxi and pass by several characters and references from classic movies. At the end of the sequence is the 5 second sting which is a shield with moving elements that depict icons of cinema and film such as a clap board and box of popcorn etc.

2nd Branding Poster - Experimenting

Here I just did some testing for what square designs to use for text to put in the info and title. I like the red square on the left most as it has a simple design compared to the others and has more space in the centre where the text can be legible and stands out against the simpler design. For these squares I tried out a red and blue galaxy theme as I wanna use the same colour scheme from the original branding poster the class has selected.

Another interesting theme I tried is sea and sky theme as the exhibition is in Brighton and the sea and sky textures represent brighton as a sea side city. I prefer this theme to the starry themed squares as the colours work well together and it looks more harmonious.

In the end after some discussion with another class member we decided not to go through with a 2nd branding poster as even if I carry out a similar colour scheme and the theme of squares it's still just going to look completely different to the original branding and could throw the show branding off balance so instead i'm now going to continue with creating a promotional poster for myself in which I can put up on social medias, on my web portfolio and possibly print as a flyer instead of business cards to give out to possible clients on the day or for my double page spread in the brochure.

Experimenting Manoou Style

I decided to experiment a little with geometric shapes, textures and images to create the same sort of style as Manoou from Behance and I was to recreate this style for my 2nd branding poster. I've taken some of the elements from my first branding poster and adding textures to them as part of my experimentation.

Here I have drawn out a feather shape in illustrator, I then pasted an image of blue feather textures into photoshop and on a separate layer I gave it a pink gradient and gave it an overlay blending mode to give the feather a purple to blue gradient. I pasted this into illustrator and then used the feather shape over the image and created it into a clipping mask giving the shape this colour and texture.

I also used the triangles from my first branding poster and applying the same process I played around with the wood and cosmic space textures. I really liked the way this has turned out and I think it'll make my poster more intriguing and give it an interesting style in comparison to my first poster.

I tried applying the same technique to the lips and beads from my first poster also by giving the lips a red glitter texture and the beads a black wood texture, I prefer how this looks to how they looked originally on their own. For my 2nd branding poster I am going to follow this style and make 2 copies of the poster with different colour schemes one being mostly red and blue to follow the show's branding and one being teal and purple which follows an alternate colour scheme poster that Jess made for the show's branding.

Manoou on Behance

I cam across this french artist on Behance.net by the name Manoou who makes geometric vector art for print using textures as her colours for the shapes in her imagery such as wood, sky, cosmic space, feathers washi paper, fabric textures and much more. Most of her illustrations are of animals and many of them have a symmetry or mirror concept going on. I'm thinking about making my 2nd branding poster with geometric shapes using textures like this but in the theme and colour scheme of the show's chosen branding.

I really like this smoking deer piece of work because of how the smoke kind of looks like a thought bubble as it is made up with many circles that merge using the galaxy sky texture. I also like how she has used a plaid fabric texture for the deer's shirt and how his coat seems to shatter into triangular shapes at the bottom as if it is being diffused of pieces of him are falling off like shards of glass, almost as a hidden message to smoking being bad for health and slowly rotting away your lungs.

I really like the teal, grey and purple colour scheme of this image as it kind of represents the cosmic space kind of theme without having to actually use the image of it as a texture. The textures used, especially under the grey shapes really remind me of metal with scratches and dents. I also like the symmetry used in this piece with the owl's face and the feathers and it looks very bold and central.

The combination of different textures in this image is very appealing and works well with the imagery. I think the wooden texture paired up with the film camera gives with piece a very vintage feel and almost  gives off an appreciation for the simpler life. I also like the use of the cosmic pattern on the birds as well as on the lens of the camera as to me it's almost like the birds represent the photos taken with the camera.

This particular image is a piece of fan art she has created from the animated movie 'My Neighbour Totoro' by Studio Ghibli. I really like how she has used a grey wood texture for the body of totoro though i think it also could've worked really well with grey fur texture. I also like the way there is a gradual but faint gradient of green rising from the bottom of the image in the background over the textured paper background that she consistently uses in all of her artwork.

Branding Poster

This is the branding poster I pitched to the group which I created from my sketches and inspiration from some of the geometric artwork I've been looking at. I took the lips idea from my sketch and instead made it into lips with stringed beads which come from the mouth, though I feel this kind of imagery has no relation to the name of the show. I used the geometric triangle pattern as my colour fill for my objects and I was going to have a plain white background but it looked too plain, yet I didn't want to use any colour or patterns on the background as it would draw attention away from the triangles and lips, so instead I used a white crumpled paper texture.

I couldn't decide between including the grey shapes on the left image to show the outline of the chin and neck or the right image which leaves it without, but I think I will discard it as it just seems like that step to far in my design and draws attention away from the triangles at the bottom of the poster.

At the end of the discussion we decided that we would go with Jess's design for the show's branding theme. A tutor suggested that I should create another poster design using some of the branding from Jess's design (colour scheme and squares) as well as some of the geometric theme from mine so that there is a variety in art style to promote the show instead of just one poster image and it will show the potential and varying styles from some others in the group.

Branding Poster Idea Sketches

These are some sketches I've done for my poster branding for the show. I'm not quite sure what kind of imagery I want to use in relation to dots per inch as it's not something that can be objectified other than doing something cliche such as using circles or dots in the design. I'm inspired by triangles and geometric vector and I know I want to make a geometric piece of art work as my usual art style is commonly over complicated and detailed and usually takes to long to complete.

This is one of the sketches I've done with the eye idea similar to the art work I found before with geometric shapes and pattern flowing out of it. The idea was that this was going to be a pair of eyes instead angled in a way as if the person's face was at a slight profile angle and the eye were looking in the direction of the centre of the poster, but after I finished outlining one eye I realise that doing both eyes were probably going to be over complicated and take a long time to make in illustrator so I decided to stop there and scrap this idea as I think the geometric patterns also contain too many different shapes and that I should just stick with triangles instead.

These are just some of the patterened geometric triangles that I came up with for my design, my idea is to use these triangles as the main elements of my poster and give them the triangle pattern as an overlaying pattern or texture and have them in different colours, kind of like the triangle pattern I tried on the lips below to fill in the actual shape of the main triangle except by using different shades of the same colour instead.

Since I decided that the eyes were too complicated to do I wasn't sure what I could put in it's place that could be fairly simple to make so I thought about a pair of lips with the tongue sticking out and the logo for the show could be on the tongue like a postal stamp. 

Geometric Vectors & Art

I'm not sure what I want to put in my branding poster imagery wise or what the idea behind it is but I know I want to create a poster with a geometric art style consisting mostly of triangles. I have decided to take this approach because I want to try steering away from my usual art style which is commonly over complicated and detailed and usually contains a lot of textural elements which take a long time to finish. I want to try making posters that have a more geometric style and look more like vector graphic design rather than illustration. I have been into geometric artwork and posters that use block colours and little shading lately so I want to experiment with the a similar style.

I found this poster of an eye with geometric patterns and shapes flowing out of it. I did think about using an eye or more likely a pair of eyes as my main image as I thought I could put digital or cyber/technology patterns within the eyes such as little square to look like pixels or neon blue lines and circles that follow a similar pattern to something like a circuit board. I also thought because we use our eye to absorb creativity and inspiration as well as using our eyes to project our own visuals into our designs by paying close attention to detail and visualising what in our heads to a physical piece of work which is then received by the eyes of others.

As I am heavily focusing my artwork on triangles I thought this poster for type was interesting. I was thinking about how I should do my typography for my poster, if I should use regular font or make a bold geometric font which is also made up of shapes. I like how this poster has used triangles of different sizes and shapes to make up the entire letter T. I also like how there is a gradient on the triangles as a whole object in the shape of the T and gradually changes, I think these's colours work nicely against the night sky coloured background. The colours in the gradient also remind me of the colours of the sky during different time of day such as dawn, midday and sun set etc.

The same artist has also done a series of images of geometric fruit made up of triangular geometric patterns and sometimes using other shapes such as circles and drops. For most of theses images she has used a complementary colour scheme like the image above which uses mostly green and red. In a lot of her work she tends to personify objects by giving them cute faces. I may use a similar triangle pattern that she has used in her work and change the colours using them to texture my imagery instead of using just plains of colour.

On Behance.net I came across this designer who illustrated a series of objects on black backgrounds using triangles in different shapes, sizes and shades of colour to make up a 3d looking image of an object. My favourite one was this skull as it is all just one colour in different tones ranging from white to a dark blueish grey. The fact that he's used tones with a blueish hint instead of just greyscale gives this image a cold atmosphere and makes the skull look almost like a crystal or ice.

This is another piece of work I found on Behance.net which is a pattern primarily made up of triangles and some circles and hexagons. This image reminds me of aztec style print that you can get on bags and clothing which usually have shapely patterns and zigzags with a consistent use of repetition. I also like the simple scheme of 3 colours using white and a neon blue over a dark teal background makes the print look kind of futuristic like the blue lights you see in the Tron movie.