Finally the compositions have come together!  So for this project I finally veered away from traditional (okay maybe not, a little towards the end) and went full on illustration style. Since it was a project to introduce our future jobs through 4 different typographic compositions, I figured taking a personal approach would be nice; sharing my story.

final

CONCEPT & MESSAGE

Concept of my project: Growing up, the different job aspirations I had.

The main subject matter for inspiration and spur of the job aspirations for this project was magazines. Magazines I grew up reading. 

Teenage when I was much younger. Actually I still do now only because I really love their editorial style and I’ve always dreamed of joining their publication if I were to ever go into an editorial job in the future. The first publication I’d want to work for. Also, more recently frankie, because of its content (art, design, photography, craft..) Both are lifestyle magazines.

teenage

Message of my project: Growing up, my perceptions and sensitivity towards things change. I paid attention to specific parts of a magazine which led me to the different job aspirations as shown in the four different compositions.


EXECUTION

#1 My name is Charlotte and I’m a Cover Designer.

cover-final

For the first composition, it’s inspired by that one time as I read my very first magazine, Teenage. I was immediately drawn to the magazine cover. You know how sometimes when browsing books in the library and deciding which ones to borrow? The factors for consideration were usually the synopsis, and book cover (though yes, never judge a book by it’s cover but you can’t lie. appearance matters yeah) So I thought to myself, one day I want to design the covers of magazines and this publication’s in particular.

Through feedback and suggestions received during past consultations, here’s what I ended up with. The final improved version. Used the simple vector shapes, a silhouette of myself that I came up with for the final 2D I project last sem (Ego In Different Settings) to depict/mimic the cover of a magazine. Teenage in particular.

#2 My name is Charlotte and I’m a Lifestyle Writer

lifestyle-final

The story behind this composition: Back in poly days for final year we had to take this online journalism whereby we wrote for a school publication, e-magazine (online). So we wrote lifestyle articles. I enjoyed the various categories a lifestyle magazine was made up of – film, reviews, music, entertainment, DIY & craft even. At this point, I felt like I paid more attention to the content in magazines, which what led on to this particular job aspiration I had.

So based on the conventional look of a keyboard; the characters on each key, I replaced them with the characters of my name taking the form of a byline with illustration of the various categories in a lifestyle magazine at the top row.

Following Joy’s suggestion on creating several stains on the keyboard or making the characters on the keys look faded so that the composition doesn’t look so flat, has more added meaning like I’ve been hard at work with this dream job of mine… I went with the latter suggestion. Chanced upon the technique online to create a ‘distressed’ look to objects on photoshop. It gave the effect of fading I guess which eventually worked well! (see below)

lifestyle-process

Step 1

lifestyle-process02

Step 2

That’s how I achieved the faded look on the keys and the site where I learnt how to: https://gomedia.com/zine/tutorials/distressing-techniques-in-adobe-illustrator/

#3 My name is Charlotte and I’m a Graphic Designer.

graphic-final

So after Teenage underwent a revamp in terms of the layout of their spreads, type of paper used for printing, style of publication a few years back I realised they started to have illustrations in their spreads which caught my eye. And ah, I also chanced upon frankie magazine where they had a lot of illustration based layout aesthetics and I started noticing those which led me to this job aspiration I had.

Following the suggested idea of having my name incorporated into a logo design, that’s (above) the final outcome of this composition! The idea behind my logo design is a combination of the things I love and see myself as – A nature loving artsy wallflower. Which explains the little nature looking illustrations, leafs replacing parts of my name, splashes in as the background.

Felt that I could’ve done better with the logo design especially with the colours. It looked alright on screen but when printed it came off way too light. Sizing was a bit funny too. During critique Joy suggested that the composition might have worked better if the logo came off as a half-done/unfinished one giving of a work-in-progress feel and I thought that was a really nice suggestion!

#4 My name is Charlotte and I’m an Editorial Designer

editorial-final

Final composition! I still feel amused at myself for coming up with the composition idea. This was the hardest to do too for me in terms of coming up with a design for it and how I could incorporate my name within.

As mentioned in the process post, I wanted the composition to resemble a back cover of the magazine, tying back to my whole concept and my realisation that cover design is covered under the job scope of an Editorial Designer too. I guess looking back now, present day I still really would love to explore the editorial side of a magazine publication one day. Especially working for the publication I grew up reading – Teenage.

So for a back cover, looking at past magazines I own I realised they are all if not mostly ads. Advertorials mostly of various sorts – food, products, lifestyle related basically. I had no idea. What kind of ad should I come up with? Joy suggested I could promote my “future publication/design company” hahaha. It was a really good suggestion but I thought it’d be nice to have something lifestyle. Name… name.. name. Not sure how or where to begin with this composition, I then searched the meaning of my name, the first meaning to pop-up was that my name’s some sort of a dessert that can be in cake form?! Okay so a food ad it is!!

The meaning I saw:

charlotte
ˈʃɑːlət
noun1. a pudding made of stewed fruit with a casing or covering of bread, sponge cake, biscuits, or breadcrumbs.

Embedded my name within a cake slice using the warp/clipping function (http://www.vectordiary.com/illustrator/warp-text-inside-a-heart-shape-tutorial/), felt it kind resembled the glaze/marbling of a cake? Similarly, I used lines to mimic the text of the ad so as to avoid the problem of typefaces and too many fonts used.

Feedback gotten on this during critique was that since the characters of my name were mostly longish, I could’ve used it to create the shape/outline of the cake or have it incorporated into the layers of the cake rather than having it warped into the top layer of the cake as it didn’t came off clear that it was made up of my name until I mentioned it.

Oh right, I also had the compositions printed on different paper types.

The “front” and “back cover” on thicker gsm paper – 230/gsm art paper partially glossy whereas the lifestyle writer and graphic designer compositions were printed on 160/gsm matte paper.

Not sure if they were obvious during presentation and yikes I forgot to mention this then.


CURATION

curation

For curation, I wanted to place my compositions as such that it looked like a magazine and I went in that order for presenting my compositions as well.

  • Front Cover
  • Spreads
  • Back Cover

And as mentioned from the start, I still couldn’t veer away from traditional. Couldn’t stop my itchy hands from doing a little bit of tactility haha. So since there wasn’t any restrictions on how we should do up the labels so long we had them for each composition, I purposely cut out characters from past magazines I owned, pasting together in collage style to spell out each of my future jobs to link back my whole theme/concept of magazines.

CHALLENGES & OVERALL THOUGHTS

All in all, this project wasn’t as easy as I imagined it to be at the start. The possibilities were endless and I struggled most at the start when conceptualising but slowly, the compositions came together so all’s good! First time going full illustration for 2D too! Something I’ve always wanted to try since I’ve worked mostly on traditional for the 2D projects last semester, especially the last one.

Can’t wait to get started on the next project since it explores the areas which I’m really intrigued in and wanna go into – Editorial and Publishing 😉 Plus exploring and working on a neighbourhood to put together a zine sounds like a really cool idea, hopefully everything goes well!!

 

Update time! Had to bid my favourite traditional approach goodbye this time round because of my concept. Bye paper cutting and layering techniques…☹️ Will be sharing more about individual and group consults we had for the project.

INDIVIDUAL CONSULTATION

The week after getting our project briefs we were already down for first consultation, individual first. Having a concept and message in mind for the project, we had to share them with Joy and bounce off some ideas. I roughly had one in mind already, going along the lines of growing up and how I had different job aspirations at different points in my life. However I was unable to establish a message for my concept and Joy gave me a few suggestions. Eventually went ahead with the message of how growing up, my perceptions and sensitivity towards things change. I paid attention to specific parts of a magazine which led me to the different job aspirations that would be shown in the four different compositions.

The jobs I decided on were:

  1. Cover Designer
  2. Lifestyle Writer
  3. Graphic Designer
  4. Editorial Designer

FIRST GROUP CONSULTATION

For the first group consultation in the following week, we had to come up with 2 done compositions and I did up those for Cover Designer and Lifestyle Writer.

More on each individual composition’s conceptualisation will be explained in the final post

Cover Designer

cover-initial

For the cover designer composition there was too many typefaces involved for the first cut as I tried to replicate the different features of a cover. I manage to resolve the problem by representing the text as lines and the features as simple shapes resembling the headlines etc.

Lifestyle Writer – for this I came up with 3 different designs, two of which were similar.

 I came up with the second design as based on the same job aspiration as I suddenly had an inspiration to have my curation to be in a magazine form: magazine spread. But the problem once again, clutter and too many typefaces going on at once.There was no focus. Here’s what they looked like initially.

lifestylewriter

Joy said I was taking a step forward going into the second project already because the next project involves layouts etc. Was asked to keep this as reference for our next project instead ?

lifestyle-01

The design i eventually went with.

The final one I went with after suggestions from the group is the one just above (the one with a close-up on the hands and keyboard).

FINAL GROUP CONSULTATION

Final week of consults before submission week! By then, we were supposed to have 3/4 of our compositions test printed (if doing digital) or done up (if doing traditional). The additional composition I came up with for the consult was the one on being a Graphic Designer.

graphicdesigner-initial

Suggestions were given by Joy and friends to play around with scaling to create more focus and perhaps have my name incorporated into a logo form to further to bring out the job essence as it would be something you’ll associate with a Graphic Designer’s job scope. Rather than having my name appear/stretch across various items that a Graphic Designer usually would use and work with (printer, pantone swatches, notebook-pencil, post-its etc.)

As for the revisions on the first two compositions as suggested in the previous week… for Cover Designer, it worked well after changing the text and features to lines and simple vector forms.

cover-improved

But new problem. As I was trying to replicate the title style of the magazine referenced (there’s a meaning behind it, more explanation in the final post!) the kerning suited the title of that magazine but not my name. My name started to look a little different and off because of the kerning. The ‘r’ , ‘l’ and ‘o’ looked like joined alphabets – ‘l’ and ‘o’ was starting to look like a ‘b’. So the suggestion to increase the kerning further was given by Joy for the final composition if not that was pretty much good to go!

How I tried to replicate the style of the magazine title:

As small as this may seem, I sure felt like a million bucks when I managed to figure out the similar if not exact same font and character style they used for their magazine’s title. Oh, the magazine I’m referencing is Teenage Magazine, the very first publication I bought with my own savings.

cover-designer-typography

Playing with kerning and using the font Century Gothic

As for the Lifestyle Writer composition sticking with the composition where it’s the close-up of supposedly “my hands” typing on the keyboard, Joy mentioned that the design looked a little… flat.

lifestyle-01-draft

She thus suggested that I could make the characters on the keyboard slightly faded or add some stains to the keyboard so that the composition doesn’t look too static. The final look to be revealed in the final post!

For the final composition, Editorial Designer was still a work in progress. I was still unsure on how to go about it still but already had a visualisation that I’d want it to resemble a back cover of the magazine, tying back to my whole idea of my job aspirations being influenced by magazines and also my late silly realisation that a Cover Designer job doesn’t exist but such a job scope is covered under that of an Editorial Designer whereby they will oversee the appearance and layout of a magazine.

More to be shared in the final post!

Hannah Höch

hh

Still one of my favourite artists I’ve come across last semester for 2D while researching for technique inspirations for our final project (Ego In Different Settings). I love how Höch uses the photomontage and collage technique to create those abstract yet quirky looking artworks of hers.

The overlapping of images, and different compositions/angles of the different pieces of the photomontage helps to create some dimension and a dynamic feel to her works which is definitely something I can explore once again in this project since I really enjoy working with textures & tactility.

hh1


DADA

To sum up, an art movement that was meant to go against the values of culture of what was believed to have caused the First World War. DADA eventually became recognised an a type of avant-garde art which included works in mediums of visual, literary, music, collage, cut-up writings and more.

One famous DADA art would be the Fountain (1917) by Marcel Duchamp

dada

But in this case for our project, I think the more relevant forms of DADAism that we’ll be able to adapt would be the collage and cut-up writings technique of creating art. Back to artist Höch, she too had works that likened to the DADA art movement. Below are more examples during DADA:

dada2 dada1


Paper Cut-Outs

papercutAnother technique I found interesting and a possible exploration for this project, paper cut-outs! They can help create some sort of spatial depth and achieve a really cool effect. Not sure if this would work for the concept I’m going for but definitely keeping this in mind 🙂 I particularly like how it creates texture and at the same time a minimalistic feel (for the designs below)

papercut1


Layering

The last technique I found interesting, pretty much the same idea of treating surfaces but in this case it’s layering – Done through various mixed mediums. For example, it can be all embroidery based (layering threads over one another layer after layer to achieve more dimensionality) or doing it through painting.

Basically it’s just going over layer after a layer (if that makes sense…)
This technique just screams tactility and textures 😀

layering1 layering

 

So after much researching, what you see above are the artists, art movements and techniques I found interesting for this project. As I enjoy exploring the idea of tactility in my works, guess the research below would be helpful!

Seems like I can’t escape the idea… but treating the surfaces to achieve tactility in my compositions would probably only be for one or two as I intend to somehow create a link between the technique used with the job I’ve selected – Saving the further explanation for the process post later on!