OUGD 503 - Individual practice - Brief 1

A friend of my dad's got onto me about some illustration work he wanted doing for a personal project. Initially he wanted to create a poster that had all the football stadiums in england on that would be covered by a scratch off paint, so that when you had visited a stadium you could scratch of where you had been. The idea was aimed at children so he asked me to design some initial illustrations with this in mind. After talking through the project with him we came to a conclusion that using all the stadiums in england would probably be too many, considering this would be a number well over 50 or so. He decided that the premier league would be a good starting point to focus on. After choosing the style of illustration he liked from my initial sketches I decided to go about drawing all the stadiums from a book that he gave to me to use as a reference. 

This was a quick turnover project as he set me a deadline of about a week or two at the time, this project was also paid as we settles at a price of £15 per drawing. This included all the premier league stadiums at the time plus wembely. 

The illustrations were meant to have quite a hand drawn feel to them but once put through illustrator I would clean up the edges and add some smaller detail into them. 

These were the cleaned up examples of the illustrations I did, from the original pictures I tried to take the most simple aspects of the stadiums, I didn't want too include the supports because I felt this would make the illustrations too messy especially for the fact they were to be scaled down to fit on a sheet and some of the detail would inevitably be lost.

This was the first finished design I sent to the client, I was very happy with the outcome as I felt the stadiums were easily recognisable in the most simplest representation of them. The client liked the style but felt the lines needed to be thicker and possibly some colour to be added. It was suggested that the pitches should be coloured in and maybe some colour or shadow added to the stadiums, but not too much so thats it detracts away from the drawing. 

At first I was hesitant about adding colour because I felt the illustrations worked well without colour but as it was what the client was asking I needed to at least try it out.

I started by doing a few first to see how they looked together, I added line thickness to the stadiums and shaded some of the walls, I also added some colour that reflected the teams home strip, The green of the pitch was a necessary addition for each stadium because it really tied the whole image together. 

These were the final stadium designs, one with a ticker line quality to make it stand out more. From initially not wanting to add colour to the illustrations I think it works well as a series. I got good feedback from the client and he said he was happy with them, more work could be on the cards for similar projects if this one turns out ok.

A few weeks after I finished this the client contacted me saying the poster had been printed but there had been a problem with the copywriting for the scratch off technology so they were looking to find ways around this. 

This was basically just a mock up of the final poster design, this shows the layout and colours that will be used. I think for the intended target audience this works well as a sellable poster. I think the concept is quite strong and it would work well as a gift for a kid who likes football. If I had designed the whole thing I think it would look significantly different but I think this style of design takes its audience into account very well. 

OUGD 505 - Final Design and presentation

I really enjoyed this project towards the end, re-creating 22 posters in a swiss minimalist style came pretty easy to me. I took my initial inspiration from the swissted album art design and went from there. Throughout the posters I used elements of either colours of the host nations flag or the colours from the original posters. Using the simplest elements to create my posters had a really strong overall impact that I felt worked well with my chosen subject.

I decided originally not to go with with initially drawing up the poster ideas because I felt the process was much more down to trial and error, the first posters that I did were revised a few times as I got more competent with the style of design throughout the project. I was constantly revisiting posters to make them fit with the newest ones I created so there was a clear correlation between all of the final posters.

As well as using the flag and original poster elements for the basis of my posters I also included representations of the mountains the winter games were held in, I use diagonal lines to represent this often with colour overlays to represent sky and snow. I feel the development I have made throughout this project has been very competent, from the first poster I design to the final book I have created.

The first page in my booklet is the only page with any written information on it, I chose to keep it simple to reflect the simple nature of my designs, I used a numbered key so the reader can reference back to the originals to see how the new posters relate to the old. I also included a page for the flags of the host nation because I used aspects of these in each poster. When it comes to printing the book I want to have the flag page printed on possibly an acetate or tracing paper sheet that will act as an overlay to the original poster sheet so you get an even clearer comparison. 

For my presentation I wanted to give a few examples of the work I was using in my booklet to try and get across the simplicity of the whole project.

As shown in my presentation I want to print this booklet in a concertina so that the reader can reference back to the original posters easily without having to flick back to the start as you would have to do on a conventional book. I also proposed in the presentation that the book would be wrapped in a poster that could potentially change for each copy I made, the one I have chosen for my print out would be the 2002 Salt lake poster, I feel this will work well because it uses a pattern based design. 

For studio brief 2 I have decided to look at branding for the 2018 winter olympics in Pyongchang, South Korea. As it stands there isn't any branding for this winter olympics so it gives me something fresh to work with. Within the branding I can include all aspects of the winter Olympics, posters, individual event posters, logo design, way finding, stadium design, uniform and kit design. there are many things I can take in to consideration for the second half of this project.