Que Sera: Process

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!

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