Sunday, 9 December 2012
Friday, 7 December 2012
Brief 3 / Colour Choices
I was feeling a bit stuck with what colour my graphic design guide book, as I'd originally chosen to do it CMYK to appeal to designers, but as I did this I realised it looked awful, and was too cliche anyway. So it was suggested to me to look on the Pantone website for some inspiration.
This is the colour of the year for next year, and I think it would be really appropriate to use this colour as it has an interesting reason for use behind it, and also because luckily this colour would be appealing to both a male and female audience.
The current colour, but I don't think this would really appeal to the male audience.
Lots of different colour combinations, any of which could potentially work.
Here are the previous years colours of the year. I didn't know about this until recently, but the chosen colour can really effect trends for the year, so I think it would be really relevant to use the upcoming years colour.
Here are some colours which would work well with the emerald colour, if I decided to include a few different colours. I might decided to keep it simple 2 colours or could add these other shades.
Thursday, 6 December 2012
Brief 3 / International Typographic Style
I was looking for a style of design that would appeal to the target audience, and decided to look at the International Typographic Style and Swiss Graphic design inspired work. This is to help me lay out the pages in my book as I just had no idea where to start with them. I am looking at the layout and grid and arrangement of type to inspire some design decisions of my own. Some of the designs reminded me a bit of David Carson's work that I have looked at previously.
international typographic style / swiss design google search
http://www.aisleone.net/categories/international-typographic-style/
I'm going to have a play around with my layouts using these designs as an example of where to start. I need to be careful that I'm not going off topic with this style of design, and that the layout will still work with the quotes without looking too much.
Sunday, 2 December 2012
Brief 4 / Website Design
A lot of the websites I've looked at for craft websites have been really badly done, so, as I haven't found any craft websites I really like, I've focused on fashion websites, whose style could be adapted to fit in with my theme.
I want to make a website that looks fashionable, stylish, professional, and more like high end luxury crafts, rather than looking like it is for kids. Because this is the style I've seen when I was looking at the websites of competitors. I still want the craft theme that has been used throughout my products to make everything work together as a set.
Frankie is a fashion magazine website. The actual website design isn't that special but I like the use of pattern behind the buttons, this is quite unusual to see. This could work really well with the craft theme doing something like this as it would give me an opportunity to show off the textures on the website, making everything match in.
The anthropologie website looks quite crafty at the top, with the slightly mismatched way everything is aligned, and the chosen font and use of shadows. But this is mixed with a neat rectangular image box at the bottom, which changes after a few seconds. I could create a website with an image box like this, and then every few seconds a different craft could be shown.
Another fashion website, this time, Urban Outfitters actual design is quite simple, but with an image box, that changes to allow different promotions to be featured. This would be useful to do something like this as it means the website could be updated regularly to keep looking new without actually having to re-design the layout.
I really like the Liberty London website and think the mix of craft and design with professionalism is just perfect, something I am trying to achieve with my website design. A textured patterned background would be a simple way to do this, to mix the modern and sophisticated with the crafty feel. I could keep the rest of the layout and simple, so the focus would be on the image box, containing more information about the crafts available.
Theres quite a lot going on on this page of the missguided website, but I like their busy approach and it looks like theres a lot of content to read. With the existing craft and design website, theres a lot of content which would need sorting out, so if I decide to keep this content I need to think of an interesting way to do this. So I could organise the different crafts in to different sections, but keep all the important information at the top easy to access.
The top of this website is really simple again, so allows for typographic imagery or details of the clothes in the image box.
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Now, after looking at fashion websites, I've gone back to the websites of the museums whose branding I particularly liked, to consider the design of these.
This is a good example as it is simplistic and tidy, so it is easy to find what you need to, which is important, especially with the website for a museum as people will need to find out important details such as the address. Again, the use of a changing image box is used to show the different exhibitions on offer, so another idea for me using one of these could be to feature different studios work.
Saturday, 1 December 2012
Brief 4 / Competitors
One of the things that was suggested to me in my progress tutorial and the mini crit was to check out what the competitors were offering in terms of their design centres, as well as comparing the actual design of the branding and website, as a starting point for how mine could look.
selvedge
selvedge
Selvedge is a high quality craft magazine, featuring work from talented designers. The readers of this would be the target audience for visiting the MCD centre, as they would be expecting well made pieces. The crafting feel still comes across in the use of textures used in the background of the website, as well as the texture of the paper the magazine is printed on, but the sophisticated branding style sets this company out from the ammeter craft making magazines and websites available. The colour scheme of the branding fits in well with what the magazine is trying to represent about itself.
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Here are some websites of some craft workshops and design centres. Most are quite different from the MCD centre, as they are more like places you go to try out crafts, maybe with a focus on children, but as the overall theme is the same, it is important to look at trends in design.
http://www.themakeryonline.co.uk/workshops/
http://www.busybeestudio.co.uk/workshops.asp
http://www.edinburghcontemporarycraftworkshops.co.uk
http://www.thecraftcreative.co.uk
http://rowantreestudio.co.uk
I don't really like any of the styles of these logos and website designs but just looking through I have been noticing prominent themes like the kraft paper or textured background. This is something I could try through my designs, but I want them to be much more sophisticated and professional looking than any of these examples.
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I visited the Paper cut exhibition recently and found it useful to look at the postcard and leaflet I picked up when thinking about what should be included on my designs. They are printed on to GH Smith card, as the exhibition was sponsored by them, and so they look really good quality and are more likely to draw the attention of someone walking past. The postcard even finishes a spot varnish over the image on the front. This level of quality is not something you would expect for an exhibition postcard, but the fact that it is high quality gives you an indication that the exhibition will be good and is worth attending.
Postcard
Leaflet
It was looking at these products that made me think of things such as including the opening times on my posters, and including the logos of sponsors.
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