I.T.A.P week three: 12.10.2010

If pretty much everything around us is an advertisement, then surely we should be able to see and understand whatever it is that a company is trying to sell to us – it wouldn’t make much sense for a company to put a 20 foot poster at the side of the road with text so small that you would have to be 2 feet away from it to read it. Legibility is important, and it comes in a million different forms; whether it is thinking about the colour of the background compared to the colour of the text, or where the best place to put an image is. It is much easier to create an advert in the form of a flyer, or a small poster as these are handed out to the consumer, or placed in areas that are heavily populated with pedestrians so the designer doesn’t have to think about legibility too much because the viewer is much closer to the advert or is passing by at a much slower pace so the mind can process any details that, in some situations, would be completely inappropriate for their purpose.

However, when it comes to things such as road directions, maps of cities or tourist attractions or any large advertisement, notice or sign – then legibility is the first thing that the designer should be thinking about as these are important pieces of information.

The important parts of this newspaper front page have been designed in a manner that are not only legible to people walking past, but it also intrigues the reader and may persuade them to buy the paper in order to find out more about the story.

Although it might not seem like it at first, many of the images we see have been designed with their own tone of voice – one that the creator wanted to put across to us. These can cover all spans of areas; films, companies, people, brands etc. and can express any kind of emotion or feeling. This particular example is the poster from a newly released film; at first glance the viewer immediately gets the feeling that this film would be action-packed and quite serious because of the heavy use of red and black along with its bold, solid, quite graphic novel inspired layout. The use of photographs of the actors also add to the tone of voice that this poster creates as they are strongly arranged in each frame, not to mention the fact that most of the images show the actors armed with various weapons.

Although this is a very simple layout and concept, it is strong and memorable; which is exactly what you need when designing something like a film poster as this is much more likely to attract an audience than something complicated and cluttered. 

I.T.A.P week two: 5.10.2010

Illustration, to me, is all about understanding the subject before you jump into it – so the notion of using various techniques to further my understanding as part of the process of research was an aspect of this lecture that I actually appealed to; personally I am a little bit of a magpie – I collect things that I believe to be beautiful, whether it be clothing, trinkets, or merely something of a certain colour – I have to have it. And this collection often serves as a varied source of inspiration and ideas. Watching the world go by is something I also spend a lot of time doing as not only is observation something that was important in this week’s lecture, but it is important in everyday life as I think that by observing our world and what’s in it, we can learn and improve ourselves, and by doing this we improve our creative skills as well.

However, research would be nothing if all it consisted of was collecting things and observing what is around us; I feel that there is no better way to achieve a better understanding of your subject than to fully immerse yourself in it – studying the history, the practitioners, the various techniques etc. I also think that this should be done in a variety of ways; using reference books, the internet or by even going out and looking for exhibitions to explore, working practitioners to talk to.

This blends quite easily with my second chosen key principle, as the practises that are involved in research often spark inspiration; like I mentioned about my collecting habits inspiring my work. I believe that inspiration – when broken down – is strongly linked to curiosity in the way that we want to experiment with new ideas when they come to us, how we explore possibilities, previous practitioners work and simply the chain reaction one idea can cause in our minds – sparking off in numerous directions with a variety of results. I have always enjoyed the process of taking an idea and experimenting with all the different ways that idea can be used – whether it’s testing medias and materials, or techniques or styles of drawing and painting or transferring the idea from paper to computer image software.

But I also think that inspiration doesn’t just come from research, or experimenting – it can come from anywhere at anytime, which is why I often think I should always be prepared with a small sketchbook and my camera in order to document anything that happens to interest me, and it can be something incredibly small and insignificant, or it can be something that is well known and has inspired practitioners before; a number of illustrators mentioned in the lecture said that they sketch a lot and can often fill a massive number of sketchbooks, and some even use their sketchbooks as their exhibited work.