Day 5: Film Poster

The brief was to make a promotional poster for the unmade film The 33, which is about the miners that were trapped underground in Chile, 2010. I started this project off by researching the accident and finding photos and videos associated with it. I then looked at existing film posters to do with being trapped and also for films in the cinema today. I started generating some ideas for my poster in my sketch book, picking my favourites and producing them on InDesign. I decided to go with the design you see below.

Authors own 

I produced this image on Photoshop. It was originally a screen shot of two miners hugging from a video I found. I cut out a black silhouette of the two man to represent the darkness of their environment underground and added some thin lines to show important details e.g. the helmets, the squeezed close eye, the arms. I am pleased with this design decision because it says a lot about the struggle the 33 miners endured, the desperation. However, the background loses its meaning a because you can clearly make out what it is. There are actually rocks in the back ground. I enjoyed the research and idea generation part of this task because I was able to learn and also be created with the new information. Although, I found the final process of making quite stressful as I was not too familiar with Photoshop. Having said that, I am please with the outcome, considering.

Two other designs I made using Photoshop and InDesign

Day 4: Type Play

All authors own

Experimenting with fonts and layouts was an interesting process. I was able to be playful with words and strengthen the mean of each word by portraying it in a communicative way. "Busy" is situated amongst repetitions of itself, "thin" uses thin lines and narrow spacing between each letter and "pinched" is situated between two fingers that are pressing together against the P. I would have liked to have used more colour, but I feel it would be most appropriate when using adjectives that are emotions or temperatures. I was surprised to find that so much planning was put into the presentation of words e.g. colour, type face, size, layout and context. I have a new found respect for typography as it's own art form. 

Day 1: Illustration Book Cover

Mindmap of things associated with illustration

 Research into the context/range of illustration

Illustration with text/existing book cover designs

Experimenting with cover layouts

Experimenting with cover designs/titles

Using Illustrator to digitally draw the text

Font experimentation

Using indesign to create the final book cover

Final book cover design

All photos are authors own

This was the first in 6 one day projects that I completed over 2 weeks. Starting with the my chosen topic of illustration I proceeded to do research in an effort to produce a book cover design. I really enjoyed this project because it gave me an opportunity to learn more about illustration and it's diversity. It was also a chance to create a more illustrative graphic's piece, as it fitted well with the concept I was working with. It was challenging to come up with a concept, research, ideas and final piece all in one day, but it encourage a more efficient work approach.

I am pleased with my final book cover design. I think the pencil mark background I created by dragging a graphite stick across the page is in keeping with the typical associations with illustration e.g. personal, hand drawn marks. Also, small design choices such as, the handwriting type face in the corner of the front page to represent an artists signature, help the appearance of the piece. However, I'm not sure whether the image on the front cover is clear. My idea was that it would relate back to an earlier illustration I did, but was shaped to look like a question mark and the teeth spell out "Illustration". The title of the book being Illustration?