book covers

Grunge

For grunge I have used a basic idea such as the classic style while adding a yellow gradient grungy background. It has a normal font that looks like it has been treated so some letters are off tilt and the letters have been treated in a way that it looks like bits are missing. This creates the right mood perfectly.

Futuristic

For futuristic I decided to have a City overlooking Many different planets. This Obviously portrays futuristic because we do not live in a world like this. The type I have chosen is again another light font. It differs from the others though by looking very much like a rounded square. Futuristic fonts have this characteristic of having a very rounded square look. Overlooking the city I imagine this is what Edmond would see coming out of jail to a futuristic world.

Retro

For retro I have decided to do a picture of half a mans eye with coloured silhouettes of a man and a woman close and a man shooting. This portrays both of the major Emotions or feeling in the book; love and revenge. The bright colours and the two D graphics help this poster have that retro feel. The type also complements the retro feel, having very bold rounded letters.

Aggressive

For the aggressive style of book cover I decided to have the image of a hand and a gun in a white to black in a white to black gradient. The type that I used is very aggressive. It’s almost screaming for your attention when you originally look at the book cover. Using bright red for the type also helps create the Aggression feel.

Monotone

For the monotone picture I decided to have a two d sword duel on the front. The book is essentially about Love, revenge and fortune. Having two men dueling on the front captures this idea perfectly. This book cover has no colours in it, with only a shade of grey and black. The Is bold and blocky also uses a very basic theme with a very basic un-expressionless feel.

The modern book cover design has a very contemporary feel about it. I think that the 2 parallelograms create this feel. Having a man in a suit with sunglasses also helps to create this modern feel, giving the book a James bond type of feel. The type is also very modern with thin, light and rounded characters. It is also noticeable that this font is Modern through the difference of letters to most other fonts such as the f. This definitely relates to the book with more of a minimalistic approach by focusing on the main character when he has become rich.

Dynamic

For dynamic I decided to have a gentleman in front of falling coins vectorised and then have the title up the top and the authors name down the bottom. I have tried to capture the Wealth that Edmund Finds and then uses for revenge. The picture captures the dynamic feel through the use of the coins. I feel that I have captured a dynamic Approach by having the coins colour drawn out to create movement. The text also complements this idea by being in italics.

Classic

For classic I decided to go with a Textured blue gradient background with an internationally known respected serif font. I feel that this creates the Classic feel perfectly. Many Famous respected books use this Basic idea for their book covers such as War and peace and the bible. I decided to replicate a similar idea to represent Classic.

Passive

The idea for passive was to have a view looking from the ocean onto an island. This relates to the count of Monte cristo through this island. The book is related around a man who looses everything though his friend betraying him. He then becomes exceedingly rich by finding a enormous treasure on an island. This is a vital part of the story and therefore is important enough to go on the front cover. The text in this book cover is very light and has a placid feel. It is not demanding your attention and does not conflict with the picture. The picture also creates a passive feel. Obviously the Overwriting colour blue helps to create this feel. Blue is known as a soothing colour, which helps to create this feel. Also Pictures of the water usually create a calming effect on people. All the factors help to create the Passive feel.

Water bottle design rationale & feedback summary

At the start of this Water bottle project I got neck deep in research such as if plastic bottles are harmful to your body, which types of plasic are safe, what are some statistics on water bottles and so on. Form the beginning I wasn’t quite sure on which angle to take and how much information was needed. My first ideas were to have a water bottle punching the earth characterized and then have a slogan such as say no to plastic bottles with a lot of facts on the side. The first concept that I came up and developed for a period of time was having a plastic bottle in the centre of the page in a black silhouette then having the slogan “just a bottle”. This was meant to signify that your not just drinking out of a plastic bottle, there is so much more than meets the eye. After having a critique with luke I discovered that my idea was not simple enough and did not have aethetics.

After this realization I decided to have a plastic bottle photographed with black water spilling out and having the slogan “say no to plastic bottles”. I felt that this would work and that black liquid out of a plastic bottle may grab peoples attention and turn them off plastic bottles and using other alternatives.

After many trials of photography I decided to scrap this idea and vectorise it instead. This proved successful but it felt that there was to much negative space spread in a unattractive way.

From this point I decided to photograph a tap and have another slogan Telling people to switch to tap water. In this way it drew peoples eyes down the page and finishing on the Switch to tap slogan as if they were saying goodbye to battles.

My feedback from Luke at the start of second term on our water bottle posters was that my poster was way to complex and that it lacked hierarchy. Looking back at the water bottle poster I would have to agree, I think that I made the poster way to cluttered, it had no room to breathe.­­­­

Water bottle project roughs

The design solution

Although our client did not make any decision so far as to which poster he would like to go for, i think if he were forced to make a choice on mine he would choose these two, they have been the most widely welcome poster ideas

Generating Ideas

After my initial research, my first idea for graphic design was to have the words Graphic Design in a Logo and then have information underneath it. This however did not work and I had to rethink my Concept. The other idea that I had at the initial stage for Graphic design was to have a typography piece in serif type font. These ideas I felt advertised graphic design well.

After showing George the initial concepts he looked like he didn’t like them at that stage and would like to see them when we had come up with computer-generated ideas. We felt that designing for George on thumbnails was really hard especially for networking considering we had a lot of source code in our ideas. At this stage he told us that we needed to do more research on networking which was no surprise to us considering we found nothing out there concerning advertising networking through posters.

In the second stage. He liked our ideas for Graphic design but felt it was not appropriate for him to critique the graphic design concepts. He liked my first poster for networking but felt it needed more work on making the background look better. Both of Annabelle’s posters were really liked. From Luke’s point of view (the person we were referred to critique our Graphic design posters), he felt we needed more concepts to give him variety.

In our Second final meeting all our posters were liked by George. He just asked us to give him print outs for opinions from everyone else. From our Graphic design class Annabelle’s posters were approved and mine were considered to safe. And lacked strong hierarchy. Our final feedback from George was he liked every poster and wasn’t going to make a decision on any.­­­

Undertaking research to inform the design solution

For networking there was not much out there advertising for cources. I did however find that my original idea for my networking poster was on very simpilar line to the microsoft website which is why i focused on that idea for networking.The small picture of the Graphic design logo was where i received my first concept idea from.

We also researched some students from a Network class. These are the questions we have asked them to get a better perspective on networking. They were what interest you? What visually attracts you? What aspects of networking do you enjoy most, what would you like to see in a poster? What made you interested in networking to start with? From these questions we got little results. We discovered that the main reason that people get into networking is for money and that most Networking advertisement done is through the use of photography. We did however

Defining the design challenge

In our initial meeting with our client we discovered that our client hade lots of ideas about what he wanted and wasn’t very firm on specifics. When questions were asked about colour, style and themes, he did not have a certain answer. Our budget was set at $1000 to $1200. Our initial Target was to create poster ideas for Networking and Graphic design/digital media. However he wanted to know what we could do, initially he wanted to go as far as we could take it. He talked about designing A banner for his 3rd story balcony, designing Big posters for the room welcome room in networking, Redegning for the a wooden desk in the welcome room and designing advertisements posters to go around other Tafe’s and Wagga. We eventually came to a decision that we would design two posters each for Networking and Graphic Design and He could put them wherever he wanted and at whatever size he wanted. The only details or direction that he gave us was to have source code on one of the networking posters and he wanted directions to find more detail. I then undertook research for Graphic design/digital media and networking. I do not think that George was prepared or know what he wanted; he was relying on us to come up with our own ideas, which ended up working out in the end. I feel that both George and our team were very professional in our intitial meeting, he was never rude or arrogant and neither were we.

The Squad

The Squad are a group of creative people based in Sydney. They specialise in branding, digitsl marketing and traditional media creative.
The team consists of Chris Armstrong, Jessica Langton, Tessa Conn, Ben Hopkins, Matt Web, Dan Harvey, Michael Smith, Ema Webb and Tamie Wong.

What Squad Does...

-New branding development
-Corporate ID
-Brand Refreshes
-Logotypes
-Style guides

-Digital creative
-Banner campaigns
-Animation & multimedia
-E-learning tools and EDM

-Small brochure sites
-Large CMS backed and
-E commerce websites

-Social media campaigns
-Applications for iPhone, iPad and other mobiles

-Press ads and publications

-Promotional marketing pieces
-Point of sale (POS)
-Packaging design and production

-Brochures
-Posters and
-Flyers

Their previous clients included Fisher & Paykel (banner ads, mini-sites, landing pages and POS items), Victoria Bitter (VB) (visual treatment for Bloody Legends Campaign), Toyota (legal and billing documents POS, advertising material and brochures), Westpac (concept for Westpac Rewards Program) and Nestle (visual treatment for the Nestle Free iTunes Song Promotion).

Style

The squad uses a lot of vector-based illustrations in their work. Their opening page features vector based graphics of their team. A lot of their work on websites such as the VB Bloody Legends website features vector based illustration. This is one of the main aspects that seems to contribute to their overall style. They are exceptionally good at designing vector based illustration suited for a playful website.

Although a lot of their work features illustration, they can also have a very professional approach for more serious designs. We can see this in such websites as the Westpac bank project. For a lot of their more profession projects where illustration is not used, they have a very clean crisp feel about their work, with the focal point often being on a image or a photograph.

They also specialise in motion graphics and animation. Motion graphics is well displayed in projects such as cieam project. The main feature for this project was to advertise through motion graphics. This project has a very business type feel to it which displays the message well I think. Animation features in most of their website designs which also captures the playful idea

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Rhythm of life

Rational

1.The questions that I think that I would need to ask are: What style would you like for your booklet? Are there any colour themes you would like me to incorporate?

What information would you like in your booklet? What paper thickness and type would you like the document? What photography would you like in the document? Are there any pieces of your work you would not like to exhibit? Is there any scale of size you would like your pieces at? Do you have an high-resolution large photographs of your work. What is your budget? I think that the more guided you are to completing your task.

2.It is vitally important that you meet and clarify your design regularly with your client. After all it is for the client, what the client wants is the most important thing. To avoid designing what the client doesn’t want you must meet with your client to direct them to what they want and therefore direct you.

3.The research that I have done before and while continuing on the project was to primarily research Geoginas work and get a style for her work. The main objective was to promote Georgina Harts work through an artist booklet. The best way possible would be to first Surround yourself with her work and get a feel for her style, then design for her. It is also important to see what others have done for your client. In this case, Georgina has had only one-person design for her through a website. We need to look at the Aesthetics of this medium and assess any aspects that need to considered when designing the booklet. E.g. what things the website excels at and what things need to be improved on. It is also important to see what others have done for artist booklets. It is vitally important that you know what other people have done and get a feel for what artist booklets look like and how they are set up, not just what get a feel for the artist work itself.

4.As far as the brief is concerned I would just ask Georgina to be as specific as she possibly can be about what she wants and not just leave it up to the designer. If she can be precise on what she wants and clarify as much as possible what she doesn’t want, an end result will be achieved as a lot more quickly then if she was to give just a basic overview.

5. Though talking about limitation of design. The document is set up as an a4 booklet, which also limits us to our design rather then making up a custom size. Through having a size it confines us. We also may face limitations in the final product when concerning what the client’s budget is. This will affect what stock will be used.

6.There are many different options you have when setting up your document in Indesign rather than in Photoshop. For instance you have the option to include bleed, slug and gutter and margins just in the start menu, which is vital to designing an artist booklet. Indesign is also superior when designing this booklet through such tools as paragraph styles, character styles and object styles just to name a few.

7.The document needs to be set up as a pdf in process colour. If the document is not set up in process colour and instead set up in RGB the colour will not be the same as your document. It is also important that make sure that your document is set up to the correct size. You should also check for grammatical and spelling errors. After you have checked this before the document goes to print make sure you get a printers copy just to double check that the document is perfect.

Printers Quotes

From wirlwind.com a standard art paper booklet with full colour on matt art paper will cost the client $2867.40. For my client I think that this will be sufficient assuming the clients budget. I think that matt paper will help the booklet fell more refined and professional. The booklet itself should be well suited to Georgina’s work. However this website did not say that it included delivery.

On CMYK online for a saddle stitched booklet on paper thickness 150 gsm for a 1000 copies it costed $1146 delivery included. I decided to choose the thicker paper because I think that it will compliment Georginas work more.

Zoo

Zoo Advertising has been around for over 10 years, working out of their Canberra based studios.
The team of designers have quite a number of years experience working in the Graphics Industry.
Although there isn't a lot of information about the formation of the studio their web site is beautifully produced, with a finish that keeps you going back and looking for more within it.
Their portfolio of work is very impressive and the quality of the work is very clean and attractive. They offer skills of design, branding, web design and corporate image. Their logos and poster work are exceptional and very creative. There work also includes interior design work as well as work that is seen outdoors (such as banners and posters), one of the designers has also created his own clothing brand (Spader) where he incorporates many of his designs. They also pride themselves of typesetting which is apparent in most of their portfolio
Much of the work the agency does stems from local and federal government agencies although it is not limited to this area.
The design team has a vision of where they want to be in the now and in the future and they do this by keeping abreast with current trends and having a dynamic team of creative minds who want the best for their clients.
Zoo is considered to be one of the best agencies I camberra

My opinion
Zoo Advertising has a very classy, clean style, their work is beautiful in its simplicity when required but can also be out their and innovative. I love their logo work because of its use of simple typography rather than clutter with images. They seem to be really in tune with the clients needs.