Cherill Hopkins Design 2012: Week 4

This week we reviewed the 2D Designs of the students in the class, we then discussed Design Exploration and Design Challenges.

Task 1: Experimentation: Exploring and Challenging

Work by Keiran Ryan

We firstly looked at two pieces of work by Keiran Ryan, a sketch and a digital drawing. The digital drawn was more developed so we decided to critic it.

by Keiran Ryan

original character

http://starlightspark.deviantart.com/art/Starlight-Spark-213230073

Design Exploration: (We're asking, "Did they explore all the options?")

Keiran used photoshop for his creation, except for the rainbow which was created in Illustrator to achieve the smooth lines. Keiran used the brushes available in photoshop, they seem to copy the original character well, it would be interesting to see the difference with original brushes. Keiran chose his colours from the original character, here he could use, for example, Kuler to look at different colour options.
It was difficult to find areas the Kieran could explore as it seems that the character is well researched.

Design Challenge: (We're asking "can you see something that might be a problem?")

Keiran enjoys drawing other people work, a challenge might be finding the inspiration and originality to draw his own.
Original brush work and colour selection might also be a challenge.

Work by me

As a second option we reviewed my pop art presentation of the fish.

by Cherill Hopkins

Design Exploration: (We're asking, "Did they explore all the options?")

Here I used Illustrator to live trace an original photo before applying original pattern and re-sizing the patterns for greater colour effect.

Further colour exploration could be used here to better define the fish, it's too blue.

Design Challenge: (We're asking "can you see something that might be a problem?")

The picture is too blue, it makes it difficult to see the fish so the challenge is to define the picture clearly when using pattern. The picture is appropriate as a background, however if it were to be used as a piece of art it would need a focal point. The challenge here is to start with an interesting photo and ensure the focal point is well defined.

Task 2: Design Exploration

My favourite design concept is how a persons house, or more specifically what's in their home, defines them. Here I explored this with a 2D design representing a house with (illustrated) photos of collectables, it is a contemporary shadow box.

People like to represent themselves on the internet in social media, this is one picture, I wonder how this compares to the picture of their home that I think also defines a person. For example, your Facebook page might show you as a fun outgoing, adventurous person, your home might show you as a homebody looking for the quieter life.

If you ask a person to show you their 10 favourite items, items that reflect what their life is about, these items would give you a snap shot of that person, what is important to them, who they are. I wonder if you had these snap shots and a gallery of photos, would people be able to match them? Maybe you could have a snap shot of their Facebook page, or blog page or just a photo of them to match.

Two Experiments

Option 1: When researching web designs I found the designs of Willy Bravenec R001, of all the students on this site I chose Willy because he looks like a real person with a story to tell. I try not to be too "girly" in my views and depiction of the world so I thought he would have something to inspire me.

To my surprise, filed in his "Event Posters" was my concept displayed without the shadow box ... a much simpler design to draw your attention to the items rather that what holds them. These posters were used to advertise an event, a book club social gathering.

Option 2: A second option for this concept would be my original idea of representing items in a conceptual house and then compare or match items with a photo of the person. This process would encourage people to discuss what they see, challenge their ideas of what they think people are about.

Pros & Cons

Option 1

Pros: Clear representation of items

Cons: The story ends once you have looked at the design

Option 2

Pros: The design becomes interactive, fun, thought provoking as you think of what times might represent you.

Cons: It might be too busy with the house concept, maybe a combination of both options would be better.

Choosing & Refusing

I think a combination of both designs, using the simplicity in the presentation of option 1 with the added photo of option 2.

Research on 2D Design

There are three colour options I would like to consider, using Kuler (R002) I can demonstrate them.

Kuler colour selection "water"

Option 1: I chose "Water"as it is a neutral calming colour, and like life it changes constantly.

Kuler colour selection "Pacific Beach"

Option 2: I chose "Pacific Beach" for its neutral tones appropriate to both males and females. The addition of earthy tones will also represent the vulnerability that each person will be expressing by sharing their personal information.

Kuler colour selection of "30's Package Design"

Option 3: As an expression of the style I like, retro, 1950's I also chose this colour combination.

Now that I have limited my selection I tend towards the "Pacific Beach" option because the dominant colour is neutral, the colours also support the 1950's style I like. I'll trial this colour palette in a draft of my 2D Design.

I also need to decide on a size, for assistance I googled this info and found a great summary of poster sizes.
http://www.uprinting.com/standard-poster-size.html
I decided to use the 18 x 24 in as this is commonly used in shops and for music bands, artists and celebrate posters. The photo size will be the standard 4x6 for ease of printing. So the result will look more like this ....