Section 5: Using a methodology

Testing the quality of design

At first, I was thinking of only designing about half of what I actually ended up doing. I really just thought about doing 3-6 campaign posters and designing the logo for a make up brand. After thinking it through, with my timescale that I had, I then realized that I thought I would have more time than originally thought, but I also wanted to push myself that little further to get that wow factor. So even by just thinking this through alone, I knew that the quality of the design and overall view of the project as a whole would look and be bigger and better than what I was going to be doing when I first wrote the proposal for my final major piece. I spent a lot of time doing illustrations for the project, as I have shown in my blog and an example here (fig. 1) Just one of many illustrations that I have done and developed for this project. I have only chosen to go ahead with a few of the illustrations because I think a brand like this needs continuity and will become recognizable with a style of illustration but also with a certain image. So for my brand, I would expect it would be the face that has appeared many times on the wall paper because to me this is a unique selling point for what the brand could be. As I have incorporated this within every piece I have done for my final major piece. 

The latest design for the elements of my final major all have the same style and therefore I think looks really good as a whole. What I have also stated in my evaluation for the final major piece is that I think if I was to see for example just one of my posters alone in a shop window, then I don’t think it would look out of place, they could all be stand alone pieces, working as an advertisement in their own right but I also think that they could all work as a collective. Putting all of my print outs together I can see how well I think that they will do in my final show, all up on my board together, I think they will be eye catching with the colour and also the individuality of illustration.

The posters that I have designed, one was advertising mascara and the other is lipstick. Showing these seperately to friends and family, I thought would give me the ideal reaction as to what I would get in the public. Along the way of developing these posters, I was documenting my progress on my blog, which friends from my course looked at and gave me snippets of advice on how I could improve sections. I took these into account did quick tests alone to see why it was they thought that.      I did a similar routine with the wallpaper, I developed this after the posters as I wanted to get a style  of the brand right first without doing a massive file for the wallpaper and then get feedback which tells me that the wallpaper isn’t working and people aren’t quite understanding it. 

Testing with the audience

Adding colour to my work this time around I think will definitely make a massive difference to what  reaction I will get from the audience. Like I have said in the previous section, I had shown classmates my work and the reaction that I got was positive with a few suggestions here and there about what they thought that I could do to improve the piece. I decided to take these into consideration and think about what the viewers had thought. I also showed a few friends (who are not involved in the project for an outside opinion and point of view) and the reaction that I got from them was good also, that they were drawn by the illustration factor of the brand and the boldness of parts of the colour also made them look at the piece. I have also shown both sets of people my wall paper and they both think that this would look really good in a make up shop environment. They think that the white space on this would make the shop feel clean and clinical like a cosmetics area should feel as the products will be coming into contact with the skin. I also think that it is important that it seems homely and the customers would feel like they could relax, thats where I think the soft and bold colours come in and work well. If I was to go further and design the whole product range and design the whole interior of the shop then I think the wallpaper would look great as a half bordered room, or even just 1 wall. I think as there is quite a lot going on, on the wallpaper and so therefore I would want the customers to really look at the one wall and concentrate on smaller aspects instead of being slightly overwhelmed with how busy the shop feels, I think that could scare people away. 

Overall I think that the testing with audience has definitely given me the confidence to carry on with my design and ideas. I believe that if I hadn’t of asked along my way, the outcome would be slightly different, maybe not as proud as I am right now either. I think that the steps of asking the audience is vital in any part of design, it gives you reason and knowledge about where you stand with your design, you get so caught up in looking at the design that it becomes normal to the creator, getting an outside view, gives the designer another chance to re-invent it, if the audience aren’t quite getting it as much as you’d wished. Also this counts for testing the quality of the design, it has the same process in developing as the audience need to understand the quality. 

Evaluation

For my final major piece the ways that I have met the needs of the brief is that I created the logo with campaign posters and also the wallpaper. The visual communication within this that I have met was I have made a make up campaign  although my project has changed quite a lot from my original idea, I feel that it has changed for the better, as for the visual side of things, it will be a lot more exciting when looked at as a whole and when all the pieces have been put together they will work visually as well as if they were all put apart - which, as a make up brand, the posters will be places in advertising boards as a stand alone piece. I can't really see or think of any ways that my project doesn't meet the visual communication needs apart from that I have used all illustration. From taking the few photos with lips with lipstick, I just didn't think it would be unique as a brand. I know that a lot of advertising wants to show the actual product, but I feel that a drawing can do the same, after all when cameras didn't exist  illustration was the main way of advertising a product!
The strengths of the visuals is that its different to any other make up brand, others occasionally use illustration, but generally not as a whole advertising campaign and I think that it works well and would catch attention. Feedback I got once was that if she saw this in the street, then she would consider buying it.

The only way that I can think that the pieces might be mis-understood is that I have only created a few products within the drawings, but if I was to actually make the brand and take it further then I would make more products with a wider range. I could improve or develop my idea if there was more time involved bu creating more variety of products, so that there is more of a varied pattern on the wallpaper. I will wait to see what the wallpaper looks like up, when it arrives from the printers in the next 2 days. Another way that I think that the project could be more improved would  be that if I had access to professional photographers and their equipment then I would probably experiment more with joining illustration and photography together.

My time keeping within this project has been difficult. Working full time in the day and coming back to do work has been very hard work but I feel that I have managed it well. I set myself the right amount of work for my time frame that I had and I think that I used my evening well with the few hours I had every night.
My research for this project went ok. I found it hard to look at book information that I wanted to look at. I don't have good access to a library at the moment and when I tried to buy the book that I wanted, it was over £20 everywhere I looked, so I had to weigh up if I thought I could get enough information from online and also design information from adverts in magazines and from make up leaflets - which I feel I got a really good amount from. Looking in the magazines is where I feel I got my ideas and inspiration from, it showed me how and where things are usually laid out on a page and what products are highly advertised.
I used experimentation well in this project, I did a lot of drawing and that is where I got most of my experimentation. I photographed lips to see if I thought I could combine the two, but I just feel that I wanted to keep it in style with myself and i think that I did this well by carrying on with illustration.
I loved the drawing aspect of this project. I think that I helped myself a lot - rediscovering how much I like to do it and how long I can sit and draw without realising the time and I think that is definitely one thing I will be carrying on with when I complete the project and course. I also enjoyed making the wallpaper, although it was quite fiddly, it was challenging.

If I was to do this project again, I would experiment more with the poster designs. When doing this part I felt like I rushed it just slightly as I knew that the wallpaper would be a tricky thing to make and make look  really good as its going my be a main attraction of my show. 

Finals

These are my final posters:

What I have achieved here with these I am very happy and proud with. I think the mixture of illustration and digital works well together and I have been a little more experimental with colour which I don't usually do as often but I am happy with how the experiment has turned out for me. 

This is my wallpaper:

Again, the same as the posters, I am really happy with the outcome of this. I am proud to of been able to sit for hours and hours tweaking parts of the piece which may not of been HAD to do but I feel that I want every little part of the wallpaper to be perfect here. 

Wallpaper development

Here I am going to just write about my development for my wall paper design.

I have created this in a similar way to the posters part from this is a little more complex with placement and repeat patterns. 

When I have printed this off I want it to be a life like size and so the document that I have created is 250cm (height) and 60cm (width). After having contact with a printing shop I was told these dimensions would be okay to print with. 

I developed the drawings from before in photoshop - using the mascara and the lipstick from my poster (this I feel will link the wallpaper in) with developing these I changed the colours so that when put on to the page.. There is a good variety of colour and brightness to the wallpaper. 

What I did first was place a few drawings on to the top of the first wallpaper roll. I moved them about til I felt there was enough white space between them all and space for the quotes that I have collected from friends and family. I then added the quotes where needed and felt where they fitted in well. 

After I thought this section was right I then copied and pasted it 3 times down the page.. Creating the repeated pattern. 

Not wanting all the colours to be the same, I RELINKED the images with new ones that I had made. This is something I found really useful when doing a piece like this. It means that the image I am dealing with will stay the same size and also in the same place, the colour will just change. On some I have had to move around slightly - so I am able to get the pattern correct. 

For the next sheet I copied and pasted again but instead of just putting the colours in the same order, I moved it down so the colours next to each other on the wall paper when put up for the show will not be next to each other.

The fonts that I downloaded from dafont.com  for this wallpaper are:

Ammy's Handwriting
Enchanted Castle
Honey I stole your jumper
I still believe.

These were used for the quotes. They were free downloads. 

I am so pleased with this outcome of the wallpaper. The only thing I have to worry about is my printing costs. I have a quote for £85 for the two sheets. Worryingly. But I am going to shop around a little. But I also don't want it to be a bad quality paper so I need to think about whether it is best to go for the quality for this kind of project. 

This last picture is half of my wallpaper design that is going up for the show. 

Section 4: Proposing a Methodology

Different methodologies are useless for projects as they help the designer get a grasp as to what people who look at it from the outside, think of the design. Through out the designing of this project I have been sharing development with class mates who regularly also update their progress through a Graphic Design Facebook account we all have joined. This proves to us a really helpful and good way to get feed back from other designers who don't always know what it is you are working on, so their opinion is useful. For an example, I have put a screenshot up of the design of my logo and I got feedback from it of what everyone thought of the design. On its own, people were a little confused about what and where it would be for, but once explained the brand and the brand name, it became a lot more clearer of the purpose of the logo and there after I have used it along side my work. 

From getting feedback from my designs as I have been developing them, I feel that the quality of my work is good as people who have given me feedback like the way in which I have designed. I have kept to my style which tends to be along the lines of 'less is more' as I tend to keep quite a lot of white space, I have used illustration and so it takes a while to develop these digitally after getting them onto my computer. From feedback though, I have decided to develop and improve them slightly by using Photoshop to go around all the edges of my illustration, to get the perfect clean cut look, but with still the quality of being hand drawn.

Final digital drawings with development

I am now going to show my drawings after I have developed them in Photoshop. I am going to experiment a bit with them. After adding colour on the paper with water colour, I think that it defiently looks better when the colours have been added on screen. I also think that this will print better once ready.

The first one that I have developed is the nail varnish. I have added the logo that I have designed as well as the ritual word that I had drew. I am going to develop this one a little more so that I can get a certain look that I want for the posters and also the wallpaper.

I have decided that this one I want in red as I think its quite a statement colour and would do well to stand out on the wallpaper. I think that I will change the direction of where the nail varnish flows to add something different to each little varnish pot. I think that I am going to do about 3 versions so that I can space these around evenly on the wall paper.

For the campaign posters, I think that I am going to use the drawings of the faces that I have done. I think these will work more effectively as a piece to be drawn to and then, whatever I choose the product to be that I am going to advertise on these posters, I will then add colour to the relevant part of the face. For example, if I am advertising lipstick, I will colour in the lips in the same colour as being show on the lipstick. I think this will draw attention to the colour and then the face drawing detail.

I really want to do one of my posters as a ad for mascara so I am going to try a few different ways which I can do this.
Here I am going to show ways which I have developed the mascara poster..

As you can see here I have used a drawing but I have decided to use just half of the face here as I tihnk that it makes you look more clearly just to the eye.. where the mascara is being worn.

I am going to add some text.

I have decided that I am going to use a downloadable font for my writing now. After trying to edit and get the hand written font that I produced, it was proving too difficult to make the font look sharp and as straight as I would of liked.

I think that this will add the extra bit of 'digital' to the pieces.

The font that I have used on the product and for the heading is called 'Claire Hand and comes in Light, Regular and Bold' of which I am using mainly Light and Regular. 

After doing this I have downloaded a selection of free fonts that are all in different types of hand writing. This is what I will use for everyones 'ritual' of putting on make up. 

The font that I have used here is called Claire Hand.

I downloaded this from da font, and it was a free font to use.

I like it because it has the personal and human like feel to it like the rest of my poster design.

This is the final outcome for this poster. I have used Gill Sans in Light and Regular for the information on this page. I was thinking of using something which had more of a handwritten feel to it like I am going to use for the quotes on the wall paper, but I think because it is an informative piece of writing I wanted it to be easy to read but yet still have some hierarchy in what bit you look at first. So I have changed the sizing and boldness to parts of it. 

My next poster is going to be a lipstick advert poster.

Here is the development for this poster.

I am pleased with both of the outcomes for the campaign posters. I feel they work well - together as well as a stand alone posters.

After getting a little feedback from classmates, one said if she saw this poster in the street or shop she would consider buying the product.

These screen shots are from the development stages of the second poster. I have shown here just the stages in which each part was added. First being the lipstick though, this is places in the right hand corner, as is the mascara because when looking at the adverts in magazines, that is generally where the products are placed. There is a reason behind this - the eye will look at the page as though you are reading a book. We would read from the top left hand corner to the bottom right hand corner. So in theory, the product is the last thing that you will see, hopefully being what you remember about the poster.

Drawings for wallpaper and posters

Here I am going to document the drawings that I am going to use for my wallpaper. After uploading these I am going to be developing them in Photoshop before putting them on InDesign, which is where I am going to be making the actual final posters and wallpaper.

These drawings here are ones that I am now going to develop in Photoshop. I am going to edit and add colour to them ready to add to the campaign posters and also to the wallpaper.

I want to keep some of the drawings simple and colour less but the products that I am going to develop I think are the ones I am going to add all the colour to.

I am going to bring all the components together on Photoshop, like the logo and the branding. I have developed the brand lettering by hand and I am going to add these on to the bottles of product the same ways on Photoshop.