Christmas Card Brief: Design Boards

Some design boards I made for the next upcoming Crit. I'm yet to print my design and make it physically which is something I need to do before the deadline. However these boards should display my process so far:

Christmas Card

  

Christmas Card Brief: Final Design

My final christmas card design - I think it's easily identifiable as the Blenheim Walk building and I've tried my best to make it look a bit christmassy. I think the image looks really atmospheric and heartwarming - I wanted to communicate the idea of 'lighting the way' and warmness/friendliness which was mentioned in the brief. I decided to use a rounded shape to reference snow globes, a traditional christmas decoration. 

This is just the on-screen design, however I want to develop it using paper cutting and paper folding so that it has a 3 dimensional and crafted feel. It will also have a rounded shape which I feel will make the card look unique, and further reference the concept of a snow globe. 

To Kill A Mockingbird: Development

To start developing my idea of focusing on the buildings within Maycomb that are symbolic of different themes within the story, I began to experiment with ways of drawing architecture. 

I quite like this style, especially the textural quality of the shadows, however I feel that they are still too digital looking and rigid. I think that the colour scheme looks slightly too dull/boring aswell, it doesn't really give the impression of major symbolism within a story. I do like the textural elements though as they create reference to children/children's drawings, which links with the children characters in the story. I think that these images also have quite contemporary, trendy feel to them which would help my cover to fit in to the current book cover design market.

Selection of themes form the book that I need to convey with my front cover:

Racism 

Good and Evil

Innocence 

Naivety 

Social Recluse 

To Kill A Mockingbird: Sketchbook

Using the Maycombe map I found during my research, I created some mockups of book covers that focus on the various buildings that symbolise each theme in the story. I really like the idea of looking over the town, and think that it would make an effective design also. Using the concept of the town as a whole, I think this leaves alot of scope for communication and symbolism within the book. Taking inspiration from the architecture book from nobrow, I had the idea of creating a continuous wrap around cover of buildings from the town which I will explore in more detail.

Christmas Card Brief: Development

This was an idea that I was playing around with which i think is quite effective in communicating christmas and leeds college of art. I don't think that this image conveys the crafted feel that they asked for in the brief however, it was a good idea to get down and does look highly commercial.

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I found these examples of 3D paper cut cards on pinterest, and thought these were really effective ways of developing an idea. I especially thought that the first example uses light really effectively and innovatively in order to create definition and contrast within the design. I like the immersive feel that these designs have, and turn them into something that would be like an ornament, not just a greetings card. 

I've decided to base my design on the Blenheim Walk building in my design because I think it's quite iconic with it's circle window, and to business partners etc, it would be instantly identifiable. I'm hoping to make the building look christmassy, which I will develop soon.

Reference image of the college building

To Kill A Mockingbird: Idea Development

After creating a load of rubbish sketches for my initial ideas, I chose to return to researching the story/town/characters:

Inspiration

I was really inspired by an infographic type poster on pinterest about To Kill A Mockingbird, in which it highlights the concept of each place/building within the town, being representative of a different theme within the story. For example, the Courthouse being representative of Prejudice and Truth. I think this is a really exciting idea, and although I don't really enjoy drawing architecture, I think the idea of focusing on the different buildings is really effective. 

1930's American Architecture

From my research I found that the book is set in the fictional town of Maycomb in the 1930's, however I was able to locate some images of 1930's American architecture in Alabama, which Harper Lee has expressed is where she got her inspiration from. This type of setting is used quite alot in visualisations of the book, however I would like to put my own illustrative twist on it. I think it's quite exciting how quaint the town is described, with picket fences and tyre swings etc, yet with so much evil running throughout it. 

Contextual Source - Nobrow Press' London Deco

The idea of architecture led me to think of this book that I have seen in the Library, which I think is visually beautiful. The book was published by Nobrow Press and displays a typology of London Deco buildings. I don't think the subject matter of the book is that exciting, but the craft and aesthetic of the images inside are mind blowing. I love the composition of each page, as if the buildings are side by side, which is an element I will take inspiration from in the development stage. 

Christmas Card Brief

Brief:

To design and make 75 Leeds College of Art Christmas Cards to be mailed out to key College contacts

Leeds College of Art works with a variety of businesses including governors, community groups, artists, suppliers, creative businesses etc.

As a seasonal gesture of appreciation and thanks, staff here at the College would like to post a Christmas card to those that we work with.

The card must have a crafted feel, but look professional and artistic. It must also have the College logo on it somewhere. You will be responsible for the production of the cards. The final cards must fit inside an A5 envelope
unless your proposal is more unusual and includes the production of envelopes.

Content must include ‘Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Leeds College of Art’

Tone of Voice

• A friendly and informative tone of voice should be used.
• It should be professional, considered, and innovative whilst portraying the College as a leader in art education.

Concept/Ideas

Please consider and reflect these words in your concepts and ideas:
Christmas, friendly, creative, vibrant, specialist, independent, unique, innovative, quality, and contemporary. Please refer to the Colleges brand guidelines for further assistance.

Initial Ideas:

This is going to be quite a quick turnaround brief due to the timescale given, so organisation will be key, though I feel like it's a good bitesize brief to handle at the moment, especially with the focus on COP. I'm quite excited about the idea of a christmas card, I like making cheesy things which I feel this brief is all about, and I think that greetings card design is another oppurtunity to create a product using illustrative and graphic design processes.To start, I looked into some examples of crafted christmas cards online, as that will be an element in this brief:

 

I've never really used paper cutting as a medium in my work, however I feel that it would be a really effective way of pushing my images further. I really enjoyed collage last year in Applied Illustration, so that's definitely something to consider. 

My initial thoughts are creating something to do with the LCA mosaic logo, as I think it's really unique and is a key part of the college's identity. 

InDesign Refresher: How to make a book

- Always work with actual size digitally
- Document set up, preset sizes and custom sizes
- Columns and Margins: content and composition guides 
- Gutter: The space between columns
- Margin: The border around the page, if you don't work with margins the page is full bleed.
- Bleed: used to compensate for any inaccuracies when trimming sheets. Should always be a consideration. Generally about 3mm.
- Slug area: another area you can set that sits outside the page. Generally about 2cm. Enlarging the print area to include things like registration/crop/printers/fold marks.
- How you are going to print it? Always consider page size. If you are printing A4 spread, needs to be printed on larger than A3. (Digital Print room - SRA3 - Oversized A3 paper)
- How to arrange pages in print spreads:

- When printing larger amount of pages: Print in sections. e.g 64 pg book, print in 2 sets of 32, 32. or 4 x 4 sheet sections. Heavier stock, you would have fewer pages. 

- 2 up Perfect bound 

- Creep, too many pages so middle will sick out. Creep Value: if you are concerned that creep will be an issue, adjust creep values. Make a mockup and measure how much middle pages are sticking out e.g sticking out by 5mm, type in -5mm.

Photoshop Image Preparation

- Resolution of 300PPI

- Actual Size

- CMYK(near as possible to actual print) or greyscale

- Save as tif. or psd. not .jpeg

- Load image in indesign File > Place 

- Changing size of image in indesign, changes resolution of image. Scale Percentage - However much the image has been enlarged or reduced in indesign. Make sure Resample is ticked when adjusting height/width of image. File > Save, and image will adjust accordingly. 

- File > Package: gathers everything your indesign layout needs to print, into one folder.

- Press Quality is best quality for commercial printing. 

Printing Websites

- https://www.newspaperclub.com/ (follow guidelines available on website)
- www.blurb.co.uk

To Kill A Mockingbird: Cover Initial Idea

This was an initial idea I just had to create straight away. I chose to create a perspective in my image that is not seen in the book, of Boo Radley, a social recluse who watches the 2 main characters grow up from afar. 
I really like the concept of the image, especially the small details from the book, e.g the soap dolls. I think the image overall though is quite dark, which looks slightly misleading? To me it looks like it belongs in the crime genre. I think I want it to have more of a warm atmosphere. Also the use of red text reiterates the crime genre. 

I don't think the quality of the image is very effective either, I don't enjoy that it was obviously created digitally which is something I'm trying to avoid. I want to incorporate alot more texture and expressiveness to communicate a warmer more authentic feel within the cover. 

Also in comparison to my research, I feel that my final outcome needs to be alot more symbolic of the storyline. Boo Radley is a part of the story, but not really the main aspect. Perhaps this would work better as an illustration inside the book?

To Kill A Mockingbird: Initial Sketching

I really just wanted to use my sketchbook as a way of idea generation, drawing speculatively. I just wanted to get all of my initial ideas down on paper, such as characters, buildings, and visual metaphors like cats and birds. I think the cat and bird idea is quite effective in terms of communicating, however I think it's been done many times before and i'd prefer to think a bit more outside of the box. 

Another idea I had was about focusing on the character of Boo Radley, the social recluse in the story that watches the whole story unfold. I like this kind of perspective/point of view idea, seeing the story from a different angle, and it relates to the quote from the brief about finding a fresh take on the story.