Final photographs - a bit of photoshop editing...

A few photoshop edits of final photographs 

Here i layered a cloud like mask over the image to give it an ice like quality, and reduced saturation around the ice cube as the colour of the wood was distracting from the centre image.

Here i went a bit further, using a cooling filter to give it a blue tone. I saturated the actual ice cube slightly as there seemed to be a yellow tinge from the woof it was put onto. This also i gave a blu e filter on. I cut out the cloud filter more precisely and lowered the opacity.  

 This experiment did't really work, I was unable to cut the cube out smoothly; with a smooth edge this probably would have been a good final piece to work with all my image. 

Final Photographs to print

Freezing seshh

Step 1 - Freezing my printed 3 x 3 cm designed sequence

Final typography sequence - Watercolour and pen images

Final images to freeze! Although, not in order im afraid. Basically from start to finish, the letter uncurls, and looses saturation throughout. The colour is water/frozen like, my letters are meant to signify the freezing process, hence the stuffening and uncurling of the letters, and the saturation loss of colour.

Experimenting with ice!

After gaining inspiration, i decided to experiment with the material ice, I felt this would look great as a final outcome.

Firstly i tried to carve out the letter 'A' out of polystyrene, to intend to fill with water, freeze, and remove. This technique, unfortunately. wasn't successful. I was unable to remove the ice without force, which caused it to break. I tried again using vaseline and cling film, this again didn't work.

This was my favourite and most successful experiment. Ad i found the first experiment difficult and time consuming I decided to freeze, a previously collected example of the letter 'a' which was printed onto glossy paper - therefore able to freeze without ink leakage. I really liked the outcome and intend to use it within my final piece.

Another idea was to freeze, in a baking tray, a thin sheet of ice and layer it on top of work, as seen by another artist. This was unsuccessful as the ice tended to break whilst being frozen, or be too thick to see through. I attempted to make it thiner, but found it too delicate to remove from the tray without snapping it.

Experimenting yet again!

This experiment had been produced last, After i had produced my own typography design and sequence. It was a 'draft' of my final pieces.

Experimenting with sequence - regarding colour and shape. Producing sequences for several idea's:

• Colour: Fades as being frozen
• Shape: Unfolding
• Shape: Stiffening

Further down are final outcome idea's

Here i began experimenting with materials, i have a deep love for watercolour and ink, so attempted to use these. I don't feel this experiment benefitted the brief at hand, especially as, i intended to use colour within my final piece. I did gain inspiration from this, and further down you shall see i use watercolour and pen instead of.

Here i began experimenting with colour, relating to the word 'freeze', typically, the connotation of cold is blue and white. Taking this into account i explored the use of watercolour, pen and ink, producing a series of experiments as a possible final outcome.

An initial mind map outlining several idea's, definitions of my chosen words, basically this helped me gain a better understanding of the meaning of the word, meaning i could broaden idea's. 

We were told to use existing fonts to create our own new one. So, numbering the letters, I combined a few and found a particular combination i liked the most and felt would work best, this i then took deeper into development...

Freeze, starting points.

I thought i'd start off with finding the definition of my chosen word 'Freeze', as it was hard not to think of the obvious, that being items like 'ice lollies', 'Ice' and being 'cold. So here's a series of online definitions:

• Stop moving - become immobilized
• Change to ice
• Be cold
• Cause to freeze
• Stop a process or a habit by imposing a freeze on it; 'suspend the aid to the war-torn country.'
• Suddenly behave coldly and formally.
• 'The freeze' a hardcore punk rock band from 1978

I then began to think outside the box by adding other words to my chosen word 'freeze'.

Freeze frame:

• An optical printing effect in which a single frame image is repeated so as to appear stationary when it is projected.
• A convention in which members of a group use their bodies to make an image or tableau capturing an idea, theme or moment in time, also called a group, tableau or still image.

\Freeze dried:

• A method used to dry substances, such as food,, to make them last longer. The substance is frozen then dried into a vacuum.

Typography in all its glory

We had short task to get us into 'the swing of things' this morning.

We had to get into our blog groups and together, from the summer brief, have at hand all our exmaples we had collected of letterforms. We were at first asked to categorize them into 10 areas. As a group we came up with:

• Photograoh related
• Serif
• Sans serif
• Illustrated
• Uppercase
• Lowercase
• Pattern
• Colour
• Digital
• 3D

We came up with these categories after arranging all our letters together and finding the prodoninant areas. As we had our own choice considering catergories, this was quite easy, but then we began to realise alot of our collected examples fitted into many categories making it impossible to give just one to each letter.

Each of the groups read out their list of categories to fred bates, in which he created a new list for us to categorize our letters into. The list was:

• Serif
• Sans serif
• Light
• Bold
• Regular
• Font
• Scale/point size
• Uppercase
• Lowercase
• Italic

These we found more difficult as we couldn't make sense to what is 'regular', without that we can't define what 'bold' and 'light' is, and so on. With this in mind, we were taken to have another type related presentation...

Typeface anatomy

There really was a mass of unexpected elements to typography! Elements to the actual letters had definitions, for instance, the letter 'G' consists of an 'ear', 'Loop' and 'Link'. Below are several sheets giving a glossary of different typography elelements, which I'm sure will help with the given brief.

Alphabet soup. Part one.

Yesterday we were given an introductory presentation into typography. Afterwards in which we had to them pick a word from the 'randomizer box' in which a range of words had been printed onto paper. I had picked out the word 'Freeze'. We were then told we would have to create a new typography in relation to this word.

The brief itself reads: 'Produce a set series or sequence of ten letterforms that explore and communicate your interpretation of the word that you have selected from the randomiser. Using your newfound appriciation of the anatomy of typographic forms and the wealth of research that you have already gathered, focus on the manipulation of existing letter forms in order to solve this problem.

We had to bear in mind a second brief which, in relation, is about 'visual thinking'.

The deliverables consist of 10 x A6 resolutions - 10 single letterforms relating to the word picked from the randomiser box.

Thats it...final designs

Printing our final tote bag designs

This is the final stage! Printing our finalized design solutions onto canvas tote bags. We did discuss what would be the most cost effective method, also taking into consideration our target audience of students. Tote bags were cost effective, fitting into the 'eco friendly' category many companies aims for, and useful as an item to students. One of our team members, Sophie, purchased 5 tote bags from a craft store, one for the each of us, and some transfer paper to print our designs onto. Personally I have little knowledge of the process needed for heat tranferring, but other teams members did, so combining each of our knowledge we were able to omit this process in a successful manner, creating a product with a proffesional finish.

Here are our finalised bag deisgns:

Sophie's - inspired by the home comfort of baking.

I find sophie's illsutartive skills very impressive, she's skillfully controlled when creating the definition of lining. Using thick and thin lines creates a texture like appearance, complimented by the pastel colour pallette, creates a life like, and i must admit 'mouth watering' design!

Her typography works well along side her illustrative ability too.

Cherry's - With the idea of the real home comfort a nice home brew.

I must admit, when seeing an inital sketch on paper, i didn't think much to his design. But His photoshop skills really brought his work to life. Defining lines, carefully to not be so bold in his approach. Using a harmonious approach to colour pallette, considering sophie's too, meant consistancy in each of our designs.His simplistic typeography works well with his detailed illustrations; the design doesn't look to complicated and 'busy'.

My own design - Routine and time management will benefit you in the long run, along side university studies.

I decided to approach this immediatly with a monocrome colour pallette, as I believe limited colour really suits my style of illustration and hand drawn typography. My simplistic approach

Yafat's - Trying to let new students to know to make the best of this new experiance.

Yafat worked prodominantly is type, but also using illustration to create letter forms which i feel really works well here. His hand drawn type is interesting as it doesn't follow any path nor grid, instead it's quite free and its size fluctuates throughout the design. The use of very bold text, with delicate illustration and smaller text works really well, it puts across two big messages in seperates ways highlighting them both.

Will's - His approach was different, more of a warning to 'freshers' to, as his design states to 'think outside the bottle', in hindsight bear in mind, there are consequences when drinking.

Me and Will I feel hold similarities to our style approach to design, he has a real flair for hand drawn typography, which makes up the mass of his final piece. His bold, approach, and different font styel to each work is a real treat, its original. And i feel visually appealing. Unlike my own, his type is filled rather than just an outline, which compliments his bold, block illustration of a bottle. I also like the idea of all his word being off centred and offlined; he doesn't restrict his work to a gridelike formation.

As a group, we made the design to design and create a logo to go onto each of our bags to create continuity throughout. It also gave it a proffesional approach. Will draw up a logo, stating 'in the bag', telling our audience about our product, that it does in fact have contents. Here is the logo design:

Here's a selection of our initial idea's, drawings, and plans in which we mounted up to use within our presentation we had to give to the rest of the class. We would be explaining our approach to the brief, telling of our solution and attempting to 'seel' our product. Seeing all our work together, we had a visual image of how well we all worked together, each of us had a rnage of illustrative skills which complimented eachothers work, considering we were randomly put together as a group, I feel we have been pretty lucky to have been put together.

Getting there! Yet more initial designs...