my learning journal

For this, we were put into groups and given a theme in which we had to do research into, we received the theme ‘Participation’ from this, we had to look into this and find examples of persuasive media, who the client is, who is it aiming to persuade, what is the key message, how successful is the campaign and what has changed as a result.

From this we discussed about different example of persuasive media, myself and Georgia decided to look into different examples of this, She researched into Starbucks – #whitecupcontest and I looked into ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, and answered the questioned asked.

Participation group

Doing this kind of research, I can see is quite useful as it has helped me get a better sense of understanding of how persuasive language is used to persuade people to either buying something, donating, entering competition etc, and looking into and seeing how this is done is done on a well known brand/charity basis. So as a Graphic Designer, I can see what works and what doesn’t in aspects of typography, visual language, persuasive language etc, so this will be very useful for this project and in the near future.

After having a tutorial with Ian about what my current book cover design, I received some feedback on how I could improve it. There was only slight changes I had to make to the book cover like having a line break, moving the title down slightly, remove a few things etc. This is the final outcome, I wanted to show the light and darkness of Williams life, and how he is walking away from the War, chaos and his abusive mother into Mr Toms life where this side is a lot lighter and inviting showing the contrast of both sides bu using similar colour tones to show this. Having these tutorials I find are very helpful to my working practice as it enables me to see what my lecturer is talking about and how I can improve upon this.

 

From the developed hand drawn ideas, this is the final outcome I have created, using specific aspects from the book that will identify with the characters from the book.

This was a good way to get a better sense of what this will be like in the real world such as working for clients, this has given me an insight of what it is needed for this. It is also good practice to get into for the future as I will know what to expect from clients and future projects. I did enjoy this project as I was given the creative freedom to create something based on the book title. I was able to experiment with different artistic techniques from using procreate on my Ipad, I was able to create something with a seamless finish and clean lines that I wouldn’t have been able to do on Illustrator.

final book cover design

I have drawn up more developed ideas for the book cover, and I decided to experiment with the concept of train tracks and how William is walking away from London leaving the war, his mother and the abuse and walking into his new life with Mr Tom, showcasing the light and darkness and the emotion of it.

Doing further development helps me with my practice as I saw the issues I was dealing with and sat back and generated more ideas to create a stronger piece of work, some ideas you think of, don’t always work out so I am glad I rectified this problem and developed an initial idea I had and created variations until I found the strongest one to carry on digitally.

Today, we had a tutorial with Jay to discuss our book cover seeing if our designs work as a book cover. Going into this I wasn’t really happy with the book cover I produced as I found it to be quite flat, and the typeface for some reason changed when I exported it. Jay seemed to like the illustrative style I had with the background, the typeface needed to be consistent through out but personally I didn’t like how this book cover had turned out so from this tutorial, I am going to do further development.

book cover 3 1

From the tutorial I had with Ian I started to develop the particular idea further to explore different outcomes and placements of particular aspects within the drawing to show variation of them. This will help me see what will work and what wont as a whole, and to see then transfer these hand rendered ideas digitally to see the full picture of what it will look like.

I have created digitally rendered illustration type background using the app sketchpad on my Ipad, I wanted to create a light and dark atmosphere between Williams mother and Mr tom showcasing a story and depth. From doing this I can see what aspects of the designs work and from this I can see the first idea doesn’t work as well as the second idea, the second idea I would find hard to place the required texts from Penguin as the background are too busy and quite clustered, and the second one is a lot more spacious with where I am able to place the required texts. I have placed a link below of this in the book cover template, the typeface changed for some reason.

book cover 1

I create another quick sketch and developed it digitally Illustrator to explore the different design aesthetics I could experiment with.

book cover 3 1

Link is above.

I had a tutorial today with Ian about my current ideas I have come up with for the ‘Goodnight Mister Tom’ book cover, explaining my concepts and the reasoning to why I am designing it the way I am. I discussed how I wanted to create it with an illustrative technique to engage younger ages to pick up the book and read it by using bright colours and using imagery that is relateable to the story and gives almost a small snippet of the entire story. I had only by this time had hand drawn ideas at this stage but the feedback I received from Ian was all positive in relation to the ideas I generated, and from this I will explore the strongest idea further and take it further to digitally rendered to show printed version by the next tutorial.

 

From the research I did, I decided to go with ‘Goodnight Mister Tom’, I found that I could identify and generate ideas more quickly and easier than the other two books as I found them to be quite boring and couldn’t fully engage with these 2 books as much as I could with ‘Goodnight Mister Tom’. As I found this book a lot more engaging, I was bale to generate a few initial ideas of a new book cover varying design aesthetics ranging from simplistic vector designs to illustrative drawings etc. I wanted to play around with the main themes I picked up from the book such as the war theme, William and Tom, Art etc and experiment with different themes to see what I could create for a book cover.

These idea generation process is to help myself as a Graphic Designer to generate ideas varying in design aesthetics to see what kind of aesthetic works well and what doesn’t, this will also help me see potential aspects I could change and develop into a new and stronger design for when I transfer hand rendered designs into digitally rendered pieces of work.

Firstly, I researched into the three books and read them to get a stronger sense of what the books are about and the atmosphere of the titles, and from this created mind maps to put down what the books are about, potential ideas, themes of the books, visual languages etc.

I also created some mood boards to help myself generate some visual language that I could possibly use in my possible book cover. This is was very useful to have as it helped me put this into the mind map which then racked up.

Doing all this research is an important part of my practice as doing research helps me get a better and deeper understanding of particular project we get given, in this case The Penguin Competition, reading the books has given me a understanding of each book and has enabled me to come up with vital information to help me with the idea generation process and I can always go back to this if I struggle or need some inspiration.

For this new project, we were given the brief to create a new book cover for one of the three book titles we were given ‘Goodnight Mister Tom’, ‘The Night Manager’ and ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’ and then these will be entered into a competition for Penguin competition.

I am leaning more towards ‘Goodnight Mister Tom’ as I have read the book and watched the film previously but I will be doing research into each book title and read the books to get a better understanding of the books. This is a vital role in my practice as it enables me to get a stronger sense of what the books are about and will help my generate ideas quickly and easily.