It was only a matter of time...

Till I started on the digital trainer illustrations... really overdone, but still I have plans for this one... 

Hexacally

From my research I know that the Trinomic sole was developed using a series of microsized hexagonal shaped cells in order to maximise not only effiency, but cushion the wearers feet and thus enhance performance. 

So my starting point was to use hexagons as some sort of starting point for possible design influences. I mocked up a hexagonal prism to see if there would be a potential problem concerning a packaging solution similar to it in the way it had to be assembled, and if it would ruin the overall finished product.

Here is a sample of the pattern I developed, but shortly scrapped, after trying to juggle around with some hex based typeface I created, it became clear that this was far too dull and unoriginal idea for a company renowned for their slick, clean and in an abstract way expressive design work. An excercise tried, tested, but has ended with a slight sick feeling in my stomach.

On the plus side, I did mock another one of my initial sketchbook ideas up, an improvement on the hexagonal prism idea, but with more space to utilise, and an improved structure. Now by using this as a very basic outline for the full idea, I would have a timeline of events that not only interests the potential consumer, but promotes and informs the viewer to the outstanding achievements of Puma. Inside there would be an original pair of Atoms that are a collectors item, which gives the company at hand a small taste of what the company has to offer.

Polystyrene Dreams and Net-based Nightmares

This is the result of limited visuals and a rebranding of the current logo design in set for mongolian shoe bbq. Feel like I have skitted dangerously close to plagiarism here, especially with the logo. However before I go any further let me clairify my intent, delivery and distribution methods.

The packaging itself is a result of a purchase, as is with any shoebox, but the concept being that it being obviously related to the loosely based theme of food concerning the promotion. 

This is to give the chosen audience of the 18-30 age bracket a novelty in recieving their shoes in a way that is distinct, individual and makes them proud to have bought a pair of shoes from the website. Generally got good feedback from the initial designs, just that my problem analysis was a bit all over and not well thought through, but at this early on I would agree with this comment.

Mike in Photoshop

Just a little note on what we were doing with Mike in our photoshop tutorial, finally learnt how to do a Duotone correctly and not make it look like a snails lunch.
First we needed a full colour image, I just grabbed a photo of when I went to egypt.
Converted to grayscale, adjusted the contrast, etc, the went to mode and selected Duotone. 

After that I toyed around with the various levels presented to me, just to essentuate the various tones present in the image, and to get to grips with what a combination of colours can do for an image, not just purely on an aesthetic basis, but a practical one.

With the option to do more than just duotone, there is also tritone, and quadtone. So I though I'd pop a cheeky tritone up just so you can see how lovely they can be.

Illustrator part 1

Suffice to say I learnt a fair bit in the session, mainly about colour selections, how to create our own swatches and load swatches. The swatch bit was handy, as we were shown that there is actually a number of swatch books that - depending on the print you want (gloss/matte/solid matte) - would give you every pantone reference, which is particularly handy, especially when you need an exact colour match and you have to send it off to the printers. There is also a large selection of spot colours available to choose from.


The handiest part for me was the edit colours  which basically enables you to spin a wheel on the colour spectrum and it pins down relative complimentaries to use. This is handy especially if like me you spend many an hour traipsing through swatches like a doped up mac monkey.


On a more serious note, when creating colour libraries/books, its very important to save the file as an ASE file, otherwise it may hinder the use of that book/library in other Adobe programs. For example, if using tints then it wont register with the other creative suite members.

Type Workshop

Last week on this day, we had our first type workshop with Graham, where we were doing some exercises to exploit the personality/mood that can be attained by manipulation of type by some basic tampering with it.

Using the word dog as a model for moulding into the various attributes given to us: angry dog, sad dog, scary dog, scared dog, etc. We were also told at the start of the workshops that we were only limited to using serif and sans serif fonts, rather than use something decorative, which can be misleading most of the time if not used in the right context. I didn't save what I did as I thought that I had learnt enough, as well as knowledge prior to the session.


4 main factors to consider when approaching any typographical matter:

1. Size - Determines the impact/effect of the type on substrate
2. Sans serif/serif - This effects the tone/manner of the type
3. Weight - This also is an aide for the effect on the page and personality of the type
4. Case - IT DEPENDS ON what you are trying to say.

This week's exercise was focusing on the space between the letters, and how the space can be manipulated to attune to a certain piece of type's function. 

Kerning was the technique applied, by identifying the largest space in between the letters and effectively kerning the letters/words, and not over-kerning which can effect legibility.

We then upped the ante by having to kern a proverb, using limited techniques to make the proverb appear as if it was spoken rather than just manipulated by the computer. The following are examples of what I did in the session. The proverb is one of Thai origin "Grabbing excrement is better than grabbing flatulence" - this basically means be happy for what you have.

The next 2 are outcomes/development from fourthreetwoone into reading onetwothreefour. This task was set to see if we could manage the task of changing readability so the class as a whole could identify with the type.

Summer Postcards 2

These are the finals I used for the brief, I used the till monkey as a self explanatory way to sum up the main activity of my holiday despite the mundanity of the actual activity, I think I did a rather good job. We could put this up in shops to warn customers of our presence.

The Logo was adapted from the Wychwood brewerys finest Hobgoblin beer, since it was a ruby beer, I ran with that despite positive responses to my visuals for the Hobgoblin itself. I also think there is more versatility in this design.

The word was from the most common phrase that comes forth from my mate from home and work, which is used as a greeting, verb, noun, adjective, in fact you name it and I guarantee that 'Werd' has been used for any purpose. Initially from the research 'werds in a day' The geometrical shapes to form letters came to me as soon as the word overprint was mentioned.

The final colour image I used is in fact a mannequin I found many years ago and adpoted into my household, and now resides in my bedroom. Her name is Candy and I thought that since i took a picture of her on a disposable camera, I would blast some heavy halftones on her, just to see what would happen. Try her from a distance otherwise shes just a girl viewed from beer goggles.