OUGD 602 Dr.Me - 1 day brief - 3 briefs

We had a visit from a pair who run a studio called Dr.me in Manchester. They started by giving a presentation on how they came to be and the sort of work they were producing. I liked there style  of work because it was mainly produced by hand using techniques like collage and hand drawn type.

The briefs we were set were to design 12'' vinyl sleeve for a band who had outlined what they wanted the sleeve to contain in the brief. We were paired up with a partner after the presentation so I got Jane.
The idea behind the briefs were to complete them quickly as you might have to do working in a studio. Overall we had around 5 hours to complete the briefs creating a couple of examples for each one. For the 12'' sleeve we were told to represent the clicking noise that featured in the track that originally came from an old Russian defence system.

Me and jane started to look at old Russian images of satellites with the intention of creating a collage of images to use for the 12'' sleeve. After finding the images we liked we printed them out and started to arrange them. I went off to the library to do a quick bit of research on Russian imagery and I found a book that inspired me to create my collage. I noticed that a lot of old Russian adverts and propaganda we mostly made up of collaged images and I was told to look at a Russian designer Alexander Rodchenko.

Because we had so little time on each breif we had to work quickly and efficiently, we couldnt only generate a couple ideas but I felt they worked well. Me and Jane decided to create a digital version and a more hand rendered version.

This was the album cover I created which I was pretty happy with. I used the red dots in the grid to represent the tapping noise that featured in the song. I used a scalpel to cut out the images before scanning them in a finishing off in illustrator.

This was Janes digital version which I also think worked well.

For the second brief we had to create a poster for a band which were playing at Krack studios in Manchester. We were already in the rhythm of created a work fast so this brief was easier than the first.  This was another case of looking at the already existing poster for the band and also listening to there music. The music was pretty hectic and pretty much unbearable to listen to, Jane decided that thunderstorms would be a good starting point for the poster. We also identified that throughout most of the work done for the band contained concentric patterns.

For the poster i decided to use clouds as the background which I manipulated the colour in them to express the crazy nature of the music the band created.

The last two are examples of Janes work

The final brief was just to create a piece of art from anything, the only constraint in this brief was that it had to be printing a certain size piece of paper. the brief said be risky so I drew an illustration of a womans face and put it on an image of a topless woman, just because I felt like it.

Overall i thought the day was successful and I got some good work out of it, I also got some good feedback on the work I produced.

OUGD 602 - Children's book brief - Research and development

My grandad used to tell me stories when I was a little kid, one of the stories he told was about a pirate called captain Jake. A couple years ago he started to write the stories down and asked me to do this illustrations for his book.
Choosing what sort of illustration style to do for a childrens story book is very important to the actual story. Pictures help visually describe a story as well as make it more engaging for a child to read. I have started to look at classic childrens books to  see how the illustration and layout work together.

I remember reading the Hungry caterpillar when I was younger The layout is very basic, the simplicity is key to this book. The illustrations are simple yet very nicely done so there is a strong theme running throughout this book.

Green eggs and ham was probably one of my favourite books when I was younger, its aother example of simple layout and design. The books was written and illustrated by Dr Suess, I really like his illustration style its simplicity is brilliant for telling the story. 

Where the wild things are is a book I never read when I was younger but I have seen the illustrations before, they are famous in they're own right. These books in terms of layout are all very simple something that for my layout I would like to experiment with a bit more.

This is another book I remember from when I was younger, this book was pretty crazy with its illustration and layout

These examples demonstrate more creative layout in the use of type and illustrations.

I also found some interesting articles on the internet that go into more detail about the basics of childrens book design and layout.

http://www.designofthepicturebook.com/
http://www.wordsandpics.org/2013/08/picture-book-basics-sketches-and-layout.html