Start Of The Summer Work: Moroccan Pattern Work

Yesterday, I began my first day at a graphic design company as an intern (and thankfully not the making cups of tea kind!) I've actually got some work to do! The office is fairly chilled out, with 3 of us as interns and a few 15 year olds on work experience running around and so far - so good. The only thing I'm not enjoying (and won't begin to) are the long days. 9am leave the house, 8pm arrive home :(

The first project I've been given however is a patterning project for a client starting up his own mobile Moroccan food van, so the aim was to create a pattern/design we could digitally print to cover it.

What's also challenging about working here is that the boss likes to do everything using Adobe Illustrator, which to me (at times) can seem like a nightmare! Anyways...

1. Outline created using the pen tool to mimic the shape of a Moroccan lamp

2. Filigree/Natural design found to fill in gaps and create a different look

3. Flower design created using multiple shapes (very messy)

3a. Cleaned up flower design with the star of Morocco in the centre

All of these small components had to be tested out in tiles / whatever design I thought would fit the van well and colour would be a key issue. Today I think I have finished my preliminary ideas. Tomorrow the big boss will hopefully tell me where to go from there on... 

More pictures to come...

Finished Zine: View on Issuu

Finally finished my Zine and handed it in last Thursday, which was a big relief! 

I thought it'd be cool to share what I made on here!

My Zine is based on a typical lifestyle magazine, but for the dead housewife!

So a little bit of a twist on the norm.

Anyways.....

Check out AFTERLIFESTYLE ZINE here!!!

And let me know what you think! That'd be awesome! 

Finished Book Design: Loco Motion

I have finally finished my Print on Demand book and I am very happy with it! I'm hoping the quality is as good on the printed version as the preview of it that I have of it online. It's taken such a long time to do and it's caused me a LOT of problems so I'm hoping it'll be worth it. 

You can actually preview my book by following the link here!

http://www.blurb.co.uk/bookstore/invited/3406253/d9eb1a1d96caf352e768ea03561c74e3583bddeb

Here is the dust cover I have designed to wrap around my book. 

Print On Demand: Continued Development

I haven't posted anything in a while as I've taken a few days off due to it being Easter holidays and all. However in terms of work I'm just adding the finishing touches to my Print On Demand book for a bookmaking brief. I am slightly behind with this due to the time off I've taken but I'm hoping that by the end of the day it'll all be sorted and ready to be sent off to be printed! 

I think the hardest part is figuring out what kind of narrative/text I want to accompany the images.

Full spread preview

Close-up of selected pages (Unfinished)

Close-up of Line/Ribbon Detail

Animation: Background Design

I keep forgetting how long making one part of an animation takes! As part of my second scene I've started to create these layers, which will form part of a forest-type background for me to animate over the top of. To fit my running theme / style of illustration I've given them a white outline with painterly textures overlaid within the leaves. Something tells me this is going to take a lot longer than I had planned to make everything this way though. 

Bring on the sleepless nights! 

Typography: Creating Letters In Smoke

This is another example of some older work I have done last term but its something I really enjoyed making even though it took me around 4 hours! This was a part of a project where I had to create my own Zine (small magazine), which could be based on anything I liked. My topic was a kind of "Good Housekeeping" guide for the dead housewife (so a twist on your standard preconception of this sort of magazine). 

This isn't the title of my magazine but the text created for an advert type page for a new perfume called 'Mascarilla', which I believe means 'Death Mask'. I added a Day of the Dead sugar skull into the foreground and made it look like it was spraying this text out of a trigger spray at the top of its head, so it was all very stylised and awesome (I think!) Lets hope the effort is worth the long term grade!

The Impossible Repeat Pattern

Designed for a brief and based around the Penrose Triangle (aka the impossible triangle) I made this repeat pattern, which was intended for a music accessories company to base a new range of products around. The idea for using a triangle came to me when I thought of the older, more nostalgic cassette players or boom boxes and their play, pause and stop buttons.

The triangle idea was further developed by me rationalising that if this pattern was intended for a range of music accessories, a key feature of this would be movement (both the musical side of it, and for the people that would be using it: people on the go). The Penrose triangle was thought of as it symbolises something that never stops and that is continuous and related well to music as that is also something that is constantly evolving and moving and changing direction.

I have made a small Ident (logo) to accompany this pattern, but both still need a colour scheme added to them. I'm quite looking forward to experimenting with this a bit further!  

Hand Drawn Letterforms

Last year as part of my course we were given the brief of designing our own letterforms, based on anything we wanted. I designed mine around nature and trees/twigs without leaves in the Winter. 

Book Illustration: Abstract Portraits

For one piece of coursework in the first term we were given a brief to illustrate a book to help tell the story. The book was Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, which if you have read it will know is quite abstract and strange in its own right. With this in mind I wanted the images I made to reflect the story and tone of the book. These are not what I have used as my final pieces as I feel the intense colours were not a true representation of the darkness of the world in which the book is set, but are part of the process to getting there.

Valentines Day Vouchers

For Valentines day this year I wanted to do and give something a little different than your standard, shop bought Valentines card and so I decided that I'd make my own 'Valentines Vouchers'.

I decided to make them with the design in the style of an old fashioned ticket stub, with some more intricate detailing around the edges to make it more "Valentinesy". 

I made 7 vouchers in total. Each of these had a front and a back. The fronts all had the same cover design whilst the back of the vouchers all had something different to redeem on them, ranging from sweet things like 'Breakfast in Bed' to 'Wild Cards', which were redeemable for anything.

I think this is a much more personal and specialised gift and it gives you the freedom to have some fun with what the vouchers can be redeemable for! Happy Valentines ;) 

Student Elections: VOTE UNCLE SAM!

It's Students Union election time for most Universities around the country now and to help my boyfriend, Sam get the role he wants in September after he finishes his course this year, I've been making all of his election posters and promotional material to help him in his pursuit. 

This spin on the 'Uncle Sam' - I Want You poster, we decided to remove old Sam's face and replace it with MY Sam's face! So far, it's gone down a storm and everyone seems to be loving the design.

Lets hope it's memorable enough for him to win his position!

VOTE SAM! :)

Postcard Design for Magazine Promotion

This is some older work I haven't had chance to upload previously, but is all to do with a CAD project that started in September and ended in December. The brief was to design a Zine, a poster and some postcards based on anything we desired. I decided my topic would be a lifestyle magazine for the dead. 

I haven't finished all of the work on this yet, nor do I have a title... But I'm thinking something like:

Afterlife Style

Front design of Postcards

Postcard 1: 

Zombie hand reaching out of the ground with a pair of marigolds on and holding a feather duster

Postcard 2:

Someones tombstone with a bunch of feather dusters as an offering sat in front

Photoshop: Back To Basics

It's been a busy couple of weeks towards the end of term! This is a small selection of my Computer based work done in class :) 

All were made using the most basic Photoshop layering and colouring techniques in an attempt to literally ''go back to basics" with our design and to find out if we can learn anything new from it. 

Koi Carp

Squid

Jellyfish

For One Night Only

As a favour to my friend, I designed this poster for his theatre society in our University although I didn't have a lot of time to do it. It promotes a show they are putting on at the end of the month, which includes comedy sketches, songs and Shakespeare within it. 

I drew the banner/curtain by hand into Adobe Illustrator and using the brush libraries, chose one effect that I thought fitted in with the theme. The skull was a found image on google that I then edited using filters in Adobe Photoshop. I think it was a successful attempt at a poster for a nights work!

Thankfully, he really liked the poster! And so do I!