ALEC - hallway tiles

A challenging project to say the least!

I chose to explore the relationship between big corporate style design studios VS the smaller grass roots style studio and their relationship to money making and success. While idea generating I ran into many design cul-de-sacs, forcing me to re-evaluate my direction and what I wanted to say. In the end I chose to take the simpler approach by letting the typography do most of the talking. My intention was to create designs which were really clean and fresh and I used this project as an excersise to explore the ideas of creative typography. 

By using Jamie as my star I was trying to give of the 'grass roots designer' vibe because my tiles tried to illustrate how money/success can influence which direction you take in the design world. 

At the printers I gave them an 8 page pdf to print but one of the tiles was not showing up fully but luckily I had the single tiles on my usb as well so they were able to print the troublesome tile from that!

All in all fun project, my only setback was not being able to fully explore the text tweaking capabilities in illustrator.

PAOLO - VISUAL METAPHORS finish

This was a nice challenge, even if I have chosen a theme already used in the past

it was very difficult to come out with fresh, different ideas and concepts and trying not to be repetitive. It took me about 3 weeks to get the 8 metaphors, than because last year illustrations have been used , I have decided not to make it totally illustrative, just to be different, so I  started playing around with photoshop and doing a sort of  blended collage. I wanted to give it a sort of mysterious and confused apparence but also

having the viewer reflecting on the metaphors and drawing  personal conclusions. Then I thought that I was not gonna have all the time necessary to make it looking like I really wanted to,  time was really running out so I decided to keep the darkness , not to much, but also give it a funny look and putting my face on alice`s body. I must be honest, I am not completely satisfied  at the end but it`s been a good experience and I have learned a lot and I` ve also been struggling a lot to get the job done............ adding bloody bleeds was a problem too.

JOShH - tiles prodject

picking a topic was rather easy. i chose to do "staying abreast of trends"
because i thought that made the most sense to me.
i wanted to reflect the trends of each era from 50-to now (08) then in on tile i would do a question mark page
to create the question. what trend is next?

im still yet to decide on a particular design for each tile.
so i have just been researching every era intensively
and starting to get ideas for graphics

JOSH -8 panels

This was actually one of the most challenging projects for me.
I found it easy to choose my subject, (staying abreast of trends),
but after that i had real trouble in deciding what i wanted to do and even how to do what i had in my mind.
I found for me research was the key.
I spent hours on hours researching different eras.
finding out colours and fonts, icons and graphic elements that represented the era.

Because of my intensive research i was able to come up with my end creations in quite a short amount of time.
Which i am really happy with.
In all this prodject was fun and forced me to really research before i created.
I learnt alot about different eras and the best ways in which to research.
As far as the set out of the project over the series of weeks, i thought worked perfectly

:)

Visual METAPHORS PROJECT Finish Kurt

So after all the work is done, i,m really happy with the outcome of this project, I think for me the most difficult part of the whole thing was to come up with metaphors that really connected to the images i had planned.
The process went relatively smooth and easy, I made sure that my plan was good from the start and that i stuck to my guns and didn't change my mind mid way through. I did 2 photo shoots thanks to my mate Mat a photographer from the Bulletin Newspaper and my girl Melissa, I was in the gorilla suit, and the rest i illustrated or used Typography.
I did how ever learn a lot about the different techniques to deep etch hair and fur,
and thanks to Rosalind i found that the photoshop plug-in Fluid mask is a very powerful and useful tool for this.
I was happy with the final prints thanks to another good friend Paul at Sign Makers he did a great job for me and printed to a contact type plastic and it was then laminated and stuck to the foam core board (which was a bit thick to cut out) but was no problem in the end, i would have maybe gone back and done a little image correction as i feel the photography has come out a little dark but it,s really a minor thing. The main thing for me with this project was that i had fun!! and i can only hope that in the future i will get the opportunity to do similar things. ((>8)

Gemma: Tiles Project Evaluation

For some time at the beginning of this project I found it hard to come up with an idea that would not only pay attention to the brief but an idea that would also be able to be reflected over all eight tiles.

Because I felt as though I was wasting so much of my time trying to think of an idea, I decided to just pick one of the topics from the brief; this was ‘how to stay abreast of design trends.’

From here most of my inspiration came from research. I looked into books, magazines and Internet sites and then had the idea to represent each 10-year period in graphic design onto each tile.

I completed all tiles in Photoshop as I was using mainly images and shapes in my layers and I found this was the best way to do it. I didn’t come across any major issues through the designs, although one aspect I needed to get my head around was the bleed and crop marks that needed to be set for printing. I found it very useful go and talk to the printers that were going to print the project about what they prefer you to do and set up for them on the document.

I was happy with my end result and the prints that I got from them. If I were to get a similar project printed like this one I think I would have gone for a thicker paper, just to make it stronger and more durable which therefore would probably allow them to withstand more contact and make them last that bit longer. Other than that, I thought they all fit fairly well together as a design composition and do the job in representing each time period in design which is what I intended to do.

LEE: HALLWAY IJ THE FFHALL

So basically, my hallway project was going to be based on the G-team, which was a mild rip-off of the A-team, with the G standing for graphics, and several visual puns based on the different jobs in the graphic design industry.

That was about as far as i got with that idea so i decided to just do whatever came to me without thinking about it much. and ended up with a fairly decent outcome. My final 8 panels are basically a "how to guide" to enjoying a productive relationship with graphic design.

All of my designs are drawn on paper first, scanned in to the computer, live traced and colored in, in illustrator.

the 8 panels are thus:

-Title: Introduces the collection

-Stay positive: stay positive in the industry or it will devour your soul.

-aim high: Basically saying that you should try to be your best.

-Think outside the box: be creative and dot adhere to social norms.

-Use your imagination: don't be afraid to do something really stupid. Accompanied by a picture that i made by just drawing whatever came into my head without thinking about it, and ran with it.

-Be nice to others: If you are not nice to people, you are a douche. and no-one likes a douche now do they?

-try new things: a picture that is completely different in style from the other 7. don't be afraid to branch out.

-Never give up: if you are having difficulty completing a task, try your best to see it through to the end. the picture is supposed to be of a half finished drawing but no-one is yet to understand it without me explaining it to them first).

And that's the gist of my project. If you have any questions please forward them to my secretary.