my learning journal

To help with doing some ideation, I have researched into different layouts and designs of billboards and banners to me get a better sense of what to put on a billboard and banner but also mainly to get inspiration.

Billboard

After doing some research, I started to do my own ideation, coming up with a variety of ideas, some being quite simplistic, others being quite geometric and some combining both with colour.

I drew up some initial ideas and developed these even further to create more contemporary designs, still using different aspects from different things. I took some inspiration from my poster designs for the billboard. I transferred these initial ideas digitally using a variety of Illustrator and InDesign.

I decided to take the 2nd and 3rd billboard designs and use these for the final outcomes for this.

Banner

To help me through the ideation process, I decided to do some research into various exhibition banners to help me get a sense of the layout and what actually is needed to go into the banners.

 

From this research, I started off to create some ideas off these banners to see how I could layout the banners and to know what information is needed to go onto them.

After doing some initial ideas I did some more development ideas to show that I can improve current ideas into some more modern and contemporary, I took some inspiration from my poster designs. From this I transferred my hand drawn ideas digitally using InDesign.

I researched into different brochure layouts to get some inspiration for the layout and creating a brochure that’s modern and contemporary. After doing some further research and development on my brochure ideas. I decided to experiment more with layout and typographic placing and experiment more with negative space, showing a sense of hierarchy. I have done various brochure ideas to show variety in ideas, some ideas are more typographically based, some are type and negative space and others type and imagery based which is a good contrast to have and a good variety of hierarchy. I experimented with different styles of brochures such as a booklet, fan fold and an accordion fold.

I then transferred one of the original ideas through to InDesign to start digitally rendering it.

When looking at this as a whole, I found it quite generic and quite repetitive, there needs to be a more of a contemporary approach to it so I did more development as shown above.

This is my developed and final brochure design, I find this is more successful than the previous one as it is more contemporary and playful with the layout and hierarchy and isn’t repetitive.

Development and research is vital part of a graphic designers practice as it enables the graphic designer have further in depth knowledge of what they are designing for, able to get more specific information that is needed for project specific ideas and also researching into different brochures etc to see what inspiration we can get from them and from this create our own ideas and from this then further develop current ideas and make them even more stronger which will then lead to a more developed and finished piece.

So after doing some further research into current poster designs, I took some inspiration from them and came up with a few different ideas plus development. Using different layouts, different placements of typography, imagery etc.

Doing this shows as a Graphic Designer, I can take critique and develop and come up with a variety of ideas. It also shows as a graphic designer I can come up with a variety of different ideas which take different aspects from one another to create a new design, shows imagination which is vital in the industry.

I have transferred some of these designs digitally into InDesign to create digitally rendered posters. I will be experimenting with hierarchy, typography. but I will most likely end up using the development ideas as they are more contemporary and playful with layouts and hierarchy and just more modern.

I further developed these posters as they are quite simple and not modern enough. So I decided to add imagery related to the knife and vehicle crime.

These are my final poster designs for this exhibition, I took the advice from all my lecturers and carried this through to make my work more contemporary and more professional looking. Having feedback has helped me considerably to improve my work and having this as practice has and will help me even further for future projects as I will not take this feedback as criticism but as a way to improve my work even further to further improve my work which will enable people to get the best out of my creative practice

After presenting what I have currently done to David, it was found that I was sticking to coding more than to what I was researching into which is police mental health as this topic is quite hard to look into as its quite difficult to get first hand imagery, so taking on this advice, I decided to look more more into crimes happening in the UK and go from there.

hidden reality rs

I did some further research into the most popular crimes within different part of the UK.

Taking the advice that Ian gave me, I decided to pump out some new designs and make them more simplistic so when the logo is on a smaller or larger scale it will be easily recognizable.

So I decided to stick with monotones and experiments with different shaping, placements of the heading, different fill colour, using a linear approach or just a solid colour approach. I then transferred these digitally onto Illustrator, and created vectors using the font I made to create the logo.

I also experimented with mental health colours to see what it would look like if there was colour introduced. As a graphic designer, I took the initiative to stay away from using colour because I didn’t want to single out any specific mental illness when there are many mental health illnesses the police force suffer with. As a graphic designer you need to think and do what is best and that you don’t single out any specific aspect by using colour related to it, as the public may think its for that specific aspect.

 

Before coming up and creating some exhibition posters, I decided to do some research into different posters, looking at layouts, hierarchy, placements etc and take some inspiration from there into my design process.

Doing research plays an important part in a designers practice as you are able to get ideas from work that is currently out there, and take a few aspects such as layouts, hierarchy etc from each design to create something new and contemporary.

Before I started designing my posters I did some research as shown above, as this is a vital part of a graphic designers practice, as it helps the designer get inspiration to create new and exciting ideas. I have come up with a variation of ideas and development, the reason I have done this is to show development within my ideation process.

I have used a combination of Adobe Illustrator and InDesign to create my posters, but thinking about it I may take some of these ideas through to a billboard, bus stop poster etc, I think this will help me with the time frame I have within in this project.

I had to create a quick presentation to show Ian what my brand is about and what I have done so far.

The feedback was all very helpful in improving my current work and designer practice as this will give myself practice when when presenting my ideas to a company boss and clients, so it is good practice for future jobs etc.

The feedback was very useful in going forward with my work. Ian mentioned to develop and do more variations of the logo and also liked the typeface I made and the poster also received positive feedback, this I will take on to further develop my current work.

CODIFICATION – HIDDEN REALITY

Using the typeface I created, I have drawn up some quick sketches using a variety of elements such as Morse code to spell out the different mental health illnesses that the police officers suffer with. Using the typeface has worked better and links to the brand identity even more. I also experimented with with a variety of layout formats, and adding circuit like textures and how the logo is placed. As a graphic designer it is out job to create a logo that shows the brands identity and that it is recognizable.

I took these hand drawn designs and transferred them to illustrator and crested vectors using this software, again created variations of the Hidden Reality logo. I also tried out using a variation of colours relating to mental illnesses to see what they would look like in colour.

I decided to keep with the logo black and white as I found it related more to the brand identity a lot more than the colour will be used through out the posters, leaflet etc which will relate to the mental health illnesses. Also with the colours I found that having too many colours will make the logo too busy and the colours will then clash with each other.

I knew that right from the start I wanted to create my own typeface, so I researched into various typefaces to see what is out there currently and to get some inspiration.

1st typeface design:

So I firstly created this quick sketch of this typeface. I created it to be quite futuristic and also quite contemporary in the way it has been shaped and using various cut away geometric shapes and a heavier weight. But looking at this I feel like this typeface isn’t suitable as I find the weight of the typeface is too heavy and doesn’t relate to computer coding in particular.

2nd typeface design:

The next typeface I created is completely different to the previous typeface, still quite futuristic and contemporary but the typeface is a lot lighter in weight and the design is more simplistic which will make the type a lot more legible. The typeface has the curvature but also the linear structure that I would like.

But looking at both typefaces side by side, the 2nd typeface is a lot stronger and more legible. As a graphic designer, you need to make the best decision yourself and for your clients in order for it to be successful and to also show variation so clients can see a variation and have a choice of designs so the clients can also see creative range.

I transferred the 2nd typeface design onto Adobe Illustrator, and created a typeface from vectors, considering I have never created a typeface from scratch and transferring it digitally, it turned out very well and this has expanded my knowledge and design practice even further and it also shows I can create my own typeface.