Web Pages - Tickets + Merchandise Pages

The next two web pages I have created are for tickets and merchandise. This first one is for customers to buy tickets for the exhibition and this was quite simple to make. I didn't use any images and just wanted to include text for it to be informative. I included ticket options for adults, children, seniors, and students; as well as some 'info' space that would include terms and conditions if this was real. I also included the quantities that the user would decide. 

This next one is for merchandise and this was more complicated and time consuming to make, however I am happy with how it has turned out. For this I included images of my T-shirt design and four badges in order for the user to either order, or let them know what will be available at the exhibition. I had planned to include the main poster on this page as well and allow the users to buy this, however there was not enough space on the page and it looked to crowded. Furthermore, I may come back to this in the near future and rearrange the page so that the poster can be included as well.

Now the only page I need to draft is the welcome page. I have left one until last as I am still unsure of the design. I am going to continue planning it and play around on Photoshop in order for it to be effective. 

Web Pages - Find Us Page

The next web page I decided to make is the 'find us' page and this would appear last in my series of six web pages. To keep my design flowing from each page, I kept the main header the same, as well as the background and the home banner at the bottom of the screen. 

I inserted a map of the location of my design exhibition, the Excel Centre. I then put the address, contact number, email, and opening times to the right of this to give the user the basic information they would need if they wanted to contact the centre. If the web pages were interactive, the user would be able to click on the map and it would take them to Google Maps in order to get directions from where they are travelling from. I also included a further enquiries section for if the user wants to ask a quick question. 

Web Pages - Designers/Artist Page

This is my next web page I have created; this one is a page looking at the designers that will be featured in the exhibition. For this webpage I have added a banner at the bottom that allows users to click on which page they want to be on. I then added two graphic designers who would be featured at the exhibition by including a portrait of both of them, followed by one of their posters. There is then space for a short paragraph about both of them to the right and this would simply introduce who they are and what they are known for. 

There is a white arrow in the bottom right hand corner which the user can then click on to be taken to the next page of two designers. I kept two designers to a page in order for it to not be too crowded; furthermore, easier for the user to read. 

Web Pages - Contents Page

I have created these first drafts of my contents page for my first web page. I used the original background that is displayed in the pervious post and then inserted all the options that the user would have to choose from. These are ‘home, designers, merchandise, tickets, and find us.’ When the user clicks on one of these options, the word would slide to the right to show the selection. This page allows he user to decide where they want to be on the website first and it also directs them to particular sections if they are looking for a specific piece of information.

Web Pages - Drafts

After researching and planning my webpages I started to apply my ideas to a Photoshop document. Bellow is what will appear on each web page on a tablet; this includes the background and header.

I decided to keep the font straight, at the top of the screen in order to save space, however I changed the size and direction of one of the ‘L’s as I have done this on my other designs with the word ‘display’. I also positioned my main outline - that is on the poster, badges and T-shirt design – in the centre of the webpage as visually, this is a strong part of my marketing package. Moving on from this, I am going to carry on creating my other webpages on top of this design.

Badges + Stickers - Development x2

Since my last post about badges and stickers I have created a couple more whilst experimenting with different designs. I wanted to look at how the text would look upside down, inspired by David Carson. For the first badge I used the typography of ‘Grunge Display’ and then wrote this again but upside down. Furthermore, the next one is my favourite and for this I experimented with the sizes of the font as well. I repeated each word and places this underneath in a much smaller font. 

 believe that this badge was very successful and I am likely to use this as part of my final marketing package, as well as using it as merchandise on my web pages. I will continue to create more badge designs in the future in order to further experiment with typography.  

Web Banner - Development

Following on from my previous post on creating a web banner, I decided to change the design slightly in order for the banner to be the correct size of a website page. In order for it to fit on a page that was 1500px by 500px, I made the main font a lot larger and changed the positioning of the letters. I kept the words 'Grunge Display' inside of the image of the models eyes as  I like how this works within the composition. 

I also zoomed into the face of the model and everything is a lot closer together in order for it to fit to the page size. In this web banner you can see less of the pink outlines, however I like this as it allows the viewer to focus more on the typography. In the future, I will place this web banner onto a website that promotes my design exhibition. 

Inspirational Designer - Peter Saville

Peter Saville is an English graphic designer and art director, born in 1955. He is well known for album covers that he created for the record label 'Factory Records' where he worked with a variety of bands and artists. 

In 1979, whilst he was an art director for 'Factory Records', Saville designed the record cover for Joy Devision - Unknown Pleasures (displayed bellow) and this is one of his most well known designs. This cover was very popular and is still very recognisable for the band due to its simple yet very striking lines that draw the viewers attention. This was quite controversial due to its depiction of Christ's body entombed and it was released very shortly after Ian Curtis' suicide. 

Saville was heavily inspired by Herbert Spencer's book 'Pioneers of Modern Typography' and he found a chapter he found interesting, which allowed him to "find a parallel in it for the New Wave that was evolving out of Punk."

I find Peter Saville's work very inspiring and feel like it is influencing my work as it is based around the same era as I am looking at. It uses simple line work to create powerful designs, for example the one displayed bellow. This displays different coloured lines on a plain black background and draws the viewers attention due to the bright colours and then need to create a meaning out of this. My main design of an outline of a models face was influenced by Saville as I wanted to use simple lines, but powerful colours in order to attract attention. 

Web Pages - Planning

For this part of my exhibition I will need to create five or more web pages for a tablet and apply my own poster to design to these pages. I have created a storyboard to display my initial ideas for this task.

I am planning to create six web pages as I want to display a contents page, a home page, an artist page, a merchandise page, a tickets page, and a 'find us' page. I believe that these will cover all the information that the public would need to know before attending the exhibition. All the page headers would be in the same font that I used on my poster design and each page would have my main illustration of the male model in the background. I am most likely to keep the background of all the pages black, however I may try out some different shades of grey and see what looks best. On the merchandise page I am going to display my T-shirt design, badges and poster as these would be available for the public to buy. 

These are non-interactive web pages, however I have planned them to be how they would if they were interactive ones. On the contents page, each option that the user can click on would move to the side as they select it. Also, on the designers/ artist page the user would be able to scroll through the artists work by swiping the images on the page. 

Badges + Stickers - Development

Carryon on from the last two badges/stickers I created, I decided to experiment with some more ideas on Photoshop. Once again, I created one black badge and one white; this allowed me to experiment with the different colours that I placed on. As I previously developed my main print on the T-shirt design on the models face, I added this to a badge. Behind this on a different layer I placed the letter 'B' and made this slightly transparent so that the sketch is still clear. The simplicity of the 'B' balances out the detail of the sketch and makes the composition of layers of even. 

The other badge displays the words 'Grunge Display' in a white font and this covers the whole badge. I reversed the word 'grunge' in order to make the letters more difficult to read, therefore the viewer has to think more about what it says. I may develop this design further in the near future as I want to overlap some of the text and make the letters different sizes to make it more interesting.

Inspirational Designer - David Carson

Born in 1955, David Carson is an American graphics designer and art director, famous for his experimental typography in Ray Gun magazine. His work was big around the 'grunge' era, and his layouts, style and aesthetics were defines as 'grunge typography'. 

I find Carson's work very interesting and inspiring due to his typography and the composition of his work. The layout he uses makes the viewer have to think about what the words say, therefore making them think more about the meaning behind this. His quotation above "Don't mistake legibility for communication" reflects the ideas behind his work as he is communicating with the viewer through his typography, however he is not making his typography clear, therefore his meanings aren't clear. 

In this design bellow, the letters in 'David Carson' are all different sizes and this is an element I may add to my work. I love how it is as if chunks of the letters are missing, but the viewer can still read the words without difficulty. I also like the idea of having some words upside down, almost as a reflection and this is something I am going to attempt to add to my design. I may create a badge where all the words are upside down, in order to make it different from the others and add a different typography element to it. 

T-Shirt Design - Development

As I have developed my main poster further, I decided to have another go at transferring my design onto a T-shirt. This time I focused my main design onto the back of the T-shirt as I was inspired by T-shirts that I wear myself. I positioned the outline from my main design onto the back of the shirt so that this covers most of it; I then copied this onto the front left corner as this is where there will be a pocket on the shirt. The face with no eyes is the main part of the design as it has links with identity and appears 'edgy', which links to the grunge aesthetics. 

In terms of typography, I positioned the word 'grunge' in the font as I have used for my other products on the front, and then this continues to 'display' onto the back of the shirt. This, along with the main face links my design back to the original poster and badges that I have created. 

Furthermore, to develop this further in the future I am going to experiment with also creating a T-shirt design that is black, and the typography would be white. I believe that this will also work with my exhibition I have used the monochrome colours throughout. 

Badges + Stickers

I have started to look into creating badges and stickers for my graphic design exhibition and the two I have created are displayed bellow. In total I will create four different designs to be on stickers, however to start off with I decided to only create two, just to get an idea of how it will be to create these and how much research I will need to put into them. 

My favourite one is the first that I created (on the left) due to use of black and white across the badge and the compositions. The way I have displayed the text and colour has created a strong contrast that makes the typography stand out and attract the viewers attention. I have used the letter 'B' as that is the first letter of my exhibition name, and then I have also inserted the words 'grunge display. This is to suggest to the viewer what the style of the exhibition is. I will continue looking into badge designs in the future, in order to give me ideas and create a variety. 

Web Banner

This is my first attempt of creating a web banner; I converted the poster that is displayed in my last blog post into the banner bellow. This could be used a Facebook or Twitter banner/cover photo on the page for my design exhibition. 

To do this, I took the eye section of the main poster, and recreated the main lettering in a different order. I overlapped the different letters in the title and put used different layers in order to create the look of transparency different textures. I then inserted the words 'Grunge Display' to the right hand side as this is what the design exhibition is about. I slanted the 'L' in display as I like how this looks aesthetically and matches the grunge theme. 

Moving on from this, I am next going to convert my poster into 4 different badges for my exhibition. My idea for this is to create different shaped badges, instead of circles however I am going to experiment with this in my next post. 

Poster - Development

I have started to develop my main poster idea, by looking more into the grunge aesthetics and also adding a exhibition name, location and date. I decided to use the same font as the main header for this, however I changed the direction, colour, and size of the font on different letters. This makes the poster look more 'rough' and links to the theme of grunge. My favourite bit on this is the way I have placed the letters in the typography of 'Grunge Display'. This is because some of the letters are horizontal, some are vertical, and some are slanted and larger.  

This was really enjoyable to create as I was able to experiment with the typography sizes and positioning. I also used elements that I learnt through previous tasks, such as the texture task where I overlapped fonts; and the hierarchy task where I placed words in a way to make them appear more important. The main problem I have going from here is developing this design onto different products, such as the badges, website banner and t-shirts. Furthermore, I will need to experiment with how I am going to do this to complete a successful marketing campaign.

For this poster, I was inspired by this 'You are not special' poster that was created for the independent film, Fight Club.

I find this poster inspirational due to its grunge aesthetics and its use of the pop of colour. The main colours in this poster are monochrome and this is conventional from the grunge style and era. It also uses one main image of the main character from the film, which is bold and strong due to the contrast created through the dark colours. The pink font used for the film title in this poster inspired me to use the colour pink to outline the portrait in my poster. This is because the bright colour really stands out and attracts the viewers attention in front of the monochrome background. This is really useful and effective for this poster in particular as it is the film title and is needed to draw in viewers. 

T-shirt Design - Draft

Now that I have created a few different designs, I started to apply one of them to a T shirt design in order to get an idea of how it would look and how I would have to position the different sections. I used the website CustomInk to create this T shirt design. I chose a black T shirt as this follows from my aesthetics from the original poster. 

I then added different layers from my poster design to the T shirt in order to create the same aesthetics that I created originally. 

Moving on from here, I am going to continue to create more poster designs inspired from designers I am looking at to create a more developed T shirt design. I am happy with the first draft of this poster, however I am not happy with how it transfers onto a T shirt as it is not easily transferred onto different products. My aim is to create a design with aesthetics that will look effective on multiple products. 

Transparency

In graphic design, transparency is used to create "dense, layered imagery built from veils of colour and texture". You are able to change the opacity of any image on image editing software such as Adobe Photoshop. Before a transparent image is placed over another image, it appears faded; this will allow the second image in the background to be seen through this. Transparency allows you to create different layers throughout the design, creating a background, foreground and middle ground and allowing there to be dominating elements. 

For this task, I used an image that I have previously taken, and created some typography to create different transparencies in one design. 

I used two copies of a portrait of a male model and places one image in the centre, and one in top right hand corner to create a sense of movement across the page. I then used typography that says "insert inspirational text"; I used four copies of this and placed it in different positions across the page, making sure they were all on their own layer, and some were in front and behind the main images.