Editorial Concept #6, (Final Design)

In my last editorial development blog, I finally decided which concepts I was going to base the final design on.

My editorial illustration needed to work with a hypothetical interview with Kate Bush, discussing the album, 'Hounds Of Love'.

I tried working away from using a portrait style the for the editorial, since I wanted to explore with using an illustration that complimented the album, since Kate Bush was already established, and well known enough, to not have the article illustration focused on her.

You find the use of artist portraits a lot in editorial illustration, and I feel like this is uncessarrily overused for established artists.

I decided to go with concept #2, which was originally sketched as part of the album cover development.

Concept #2

The illustration that went on to become concept #2, was actually used in the final album design, but only as a very small part of the design, being featured on the back cover.

As you can see, the illustration wasn't a very prominent part of the design.

I felt from the start of the editorial development, that this illustration had a good chance of working on its own, due to its bold, and intricate level of detail. It also could have easily have been re-sized, in order to fit the required 15cm x 15cm size, as stated by the brief.

I used photoshop to re-size the image, and matching it to the require DPI, as stated by the brief.

Photoshop is a great tool for re-sizing images.

I knew the importance of adding a bleed to my design, and decided to opt for an industry standard size of 5mm. I also used photoshop to adjust the level of black in the image, after deciding to use a simple black and white style, resembling my album cover design.

My final editorial with a 5mm bleed.

Thomas.

Editorial Development #4 (Digital Manipulation)

The next stage to help me come up with a final editorial illustration, is the experimentation with digital manipulation.

I have used Photoshop a lot in this module.
It is software that is industry standard, so I feel I should get more familiar with the software because it is a staple in industry.

Photoshop allows the user to do almost anything to an image, and with a wide range of features and ways to edit visuals, It makes sense to use Photoshop as part of my development.

For this section, I have scanned all of my chosen concepts into individual Photoshop files, where I have then gone onto tweak such aspects as depth, contrast, and colour.

I will now highlight my first chosen concept, followed by the other concepts chosen in editorial development #3, (refining concepts).


Concept #2:

Before

After

This manipulation trial has allowed me to come up an incredibly striking illustration.
By again manipulating the colour settings of the image, I was able to reduce the amount of cyan, yellow, and black, which allowed the magenta hues to stand out, and become more prominent.

This manipulation in my opinion make the illustration quite, 'crazy'. The pink I felt could reflect her femininity, and also the two tone grey and pink tone seems to work incredibly well together.


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Concept: #3:

Before

After

For this digital manipulation, I used the solarise filter found in the settings of photoshop. I knew that by applying this transformation, it would cause the colour tones to invert.

This in my opinion, allows for a much more bolder image, and has an element of fear in it, as the negative version seems much more 'darker', than the original. This matches the album, as there is a lot of 'dark' songs on it.


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Concept #6:

Before

After

Using the photoshop filter called, wind, I was able to create the illusion of wind distorting the image, from right to left. I really like this manipulation, as it creates the illusion of motion. This motion theme could refer to her movements in dance, as I have observed her through her numerous music videos, and I am very surprised by the fact that she can do all sorts of exquisite movements, and poses, incredibly quickly. I love her dancing, I think Kate Bush is great at this, and I feel that through certain styles of dancing, it helps to set the tone more for the music.



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This blog was meant to see what photoshop could allow me to achieve, through digital manipulation.
I will now be moving onto choosing my editorial concept, to progress with toward my final illustration design.







Thomas.

Final Ticket Design

After creating a lot of necessary product development, I have finally completed my product design, in the form of a limited edition ticket, promoting a hypothetical Kate Bush concert.

The ticket was developed in two separate parts, a front and back design that have since been pieced together to form a double sided product.

Below are the designs for each side of the ticket, starting with the front.


Front:

The front design of my ticket product.

Back:

The rear design of my ticket product.

I have placed them onto a single 'sheet' in photoshop, with the 5mm bleeds, for comparison

Both of my designs on a single page.

My ticket design incorporates the use of the eventim logo, this would be classed as copyright if I used it outside of an academic environment, the log can be referenced at the following link.

http://ticketnews.eventim.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/eventim-apollo-logo.jpg < logo referenced at this link.

I have been trailing with the printing of my ticket, by using photoshop, as well as some cartridge paper just to test with.

Front of my ticket.

Rear of my ticket.

This was just a rough print, just to make sure my ticket is 18.6cm x 8.2cm.
As you can see I haven't cut very precisely in the tester, something I will need to line up better for next time.

For the final ticket, I used a type of card that had a higher level of GSM.
There are no professional tickets out there in the market, that contain poor and flimsy paper, so this is reflecting what I have taken from my ticket research.

Overall I am very pleased with my ticket product, I think it ties in well with my other products, and also matches my intended audience perfectly.

My ticket is at the dimensions that I planned on working with, those being 18.6 x 8.2cm, minus the 5mm bleed.





Thomas.

Screenprinting Issues

Today I went into the print room to discuss the process of getting my product, and album cover screen printed, in order for both items to be as professional looking as possible.

http://www.thisisprintshop.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/home1.jpg < image reference at this link.

However, after myself and Jade examined my photoshop file, Jade pointed out that the very fine detail, particularly the detail in the eyes of the design, would be almost impossible to screen print, due to the size, and complexity.
She said that the mesh would have issues with the inking process, and that most likely, very little ink would work its way to fill the detail of the iris.

An example of the level of detail in my final illustrations.

Because of this unexpected issue, (which for the record I will learn from in the future, when planning to screen print a design), I have opted to not go ahead with screen printing any of my items for the brief, as they all contain intricate levels of detail.
I am saddened by this, I will however screenprint an image within the module, so I can say that I have tried, and successfully experimented with the screenprinting process, one that I am eager to learn more about.

I will update in a future blog.







Thomas.

Product Development #6 (Final Product)

All of my product development has led up to this conclusive blog, which features my final product design.

My product of choice to develop upon for the brief, was that of a limited edition ticket, for a hypothetical Kate Bush concert.

I researched everything that I felt I needed to, from screen printing, to ticket size, and contents.

Studying ticket dimensions for research.

I feel that my product development has really aided me in coming up with a contemporary design that both compliments the product, whilst also complementing, and suiting the artist.

From the very start of the product development, I knew that the design needed to be very important, as it has to be able to entice customers.

The final design combines typography, with a two tone colour scheme, and themes that refer to a number of songs found on the album that it was based on.
The rear design resembled the front, and I left some space available in order to incorporate ticket information, such as the venue, seat number, and date.

I believe that my final design has a contemporary appearance, and this is mandatory to match both my audience, as well as fit the criteria of the non-narrative brief.

The front of the ticket, like the back, has a split two tone black and white appearance, with one half in white, and the other in black.
I used a leaf brush tool to provide some visual appeal to the black side of the ticket, and leaves incorporate the album's theme, as you can see this across all of my existing concepts and developments, not just in the product blogs.

Front of my illustrative based ticket.

The illustration on the right side is directly influenced by my developmental concepts, and incorporates typography into the illustration.

The rear of the ticket is very important to the design, as it is the side of my ticket that will highlight all of the event information, as well as the barcode and the event company logo.

Rear of my ticket.

To help with the development of the rear of the ticket, I looked at some existing tickets by the 'Arctic Monkeys', as well as an official Kate Bush 'Before the Dawn' concert ticket I found online.

Arctic Monkeys ticket.

http://rickwakemanscape.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/katebushticket1.jpg < image reference at this link.

I noticed that certain pieces of information on the ticket stood out more than others.
For example, such important info as the date, event, seating location, as well as the artist/band name, were larger in size, and often in a bolder setting.
I incorporated this information on my ticket, using what I learnt from the example tickets, and also took into account the font.
The font I wanted to resemble that of the album, poster and editorial, however I wanted the text to be very legible and clear.
I used some of the stylised text on such information as the artist's name, however stuck to a very clear font for the other information.

The font from the original 'Hounds of Love' album is the pink text, whilst the font used on my album/poster/ticket, can be seen underneath. My font type was called 'Apple Chancery Chancery'.

There are barcodes featured on both example tickets as well, and I thought it would be professional to place one on my product as well.
I went online to a barcode generator, in order to come up with a barcode for my ticket.

http://www.barcode-generator.org < image reference at this link.

Inputing in the words Hounds Of Love, allows me to come up with a professional looking barcode, which can be seen below.

http://www.barcode-generator.org < image reference at this link.

This barcode will be placed directly on the reverse side of my ticket, near the event info.

I aim to have my final ticket screen printed.

I have already talked to Jade about how I could go about with the process, so I will create a new blog when the time comes to print the product.











Thomas.

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a software programe available on PC, and Mac formats. It is a software package sold by Adobe, and the latest version is Photoshop CC, the CC stands for creative cloud.

It is commonly widely used in industry, by many professionals ranging between artists, illustrators, and graphic designers.
As well as Photoshop, such other packages as Adobe Illustrator, Autodesk CAD, and Sketchbook Pro are used commonly, sometimes in conjunction with Photoshop, as there is no one definitive package that offers all features.

It is a very powerful piece of software that allows the user to manipulate many different aspects of images, from basic things like cropping, sketching, and layering, to more advanced things, like editing colour via CYMK/RGB settings, and creating/printing 3d content.

Editing CYMK colour in photoshop, via the Curve preferences.

I have been using Adobe Photoshop for around a year in a professional setting, and I have found my skill improving due continual use, especially over the past few modules.

I have been using photoshop a lot in this current module.
I have been using the software to do such things as edit my illustrations/designs, and add the important bleeds to my final pieces.

Bleeds are very important when it comes to submitting illustrations for print.

Thomas.

Editorial Development #5 (Choosing a Concept)

With all of the research that I have come up with in the development of my editorial illustration, I finally feel like I'm ready to move onto the final stage in my development, which is choosing a final concept to work with.

All of my concepts, really tie into the theme of the album, however some more than others.
A lot of my concepts in the editorial development are more varied compared to the concepts produced for the other criteria in the module.

I have focused a lot more on typography based designs for example, as I have realised the importance of typography greatly, especially over the last few weeks as I have been placing this into my concept practises.

An unused editorial concept, with a heavy typographic theme.

My editorial has to be digitally submitted with a bleed, in the size of 15cm x 15cm (150mm x 150mm), and at a size of 300dpi, all of my editorial concepts featured in my second development book are automatically at this size.
The final editorial illustration however, will be illustrated at a larger size, to allow for a high resolution image to be produced, once the image has been increased in size.

The concept that I have decided to choose to put forward as my final editorial illustration, is that of concept #2.
I really feel that this choice is the illustration that stands out the most in my opinion, and it works much better with the album cover, as it has a very similar theme.

I chose this concept to be put through experimentation with Adobe Photoshop in one of my earlier blogs, and this allowed for some very interesting results, one of them is featured below.



The use of using concept #2 as a standalone editorial piece, I feel would be very bold, and striking.

The image works perfectly in the dimensions stated by the brief, but in order to stick with the black and white theme (like my album), I will submit my final editorial illustration as black and white.

I feel that it reflects my album nicely, as well as my hypothetical interview which discusses the album. 












Thomas.