OUGD406 Studio Brief 2 - Development

OUGD406 Studio Brief 2 - Development

While creating different thumbnails and sketches for my cover design, I really struggled to come up with ideas as when I did think of different designs, I completely forgot that it had to be a screen print and we're limited to only 3 colours. Therefore I created more thumbnails for what I could do but I struggled to find any concepts or ideas for this brief as the main focus for me, was to link the cover with context of the book however this proved very difficult for me to do as I find type a hard thing to visualise without doing the obvious of playing around with text. My first idea was to feature 6 circles so it would convey a colour palette, so it would relate to how artists use a colour palette for their design choices, much like graphic designers use typography as a palette for their design choices. This is something I played around with as I quite liked this concept, although when designing I still struggled experimenting with this design as I didn't think it looked aesthetically pleasing.

Another concept was as Ellen Lupton follows Bauhaus design, was to incorporate this into the design somehow. So I thought about adding triangles, circles and squares and using the colour scheme blue, yellow and red which are strongly seen in Bauhaus design. I thought also about keeping the newspaper print and placing the shapes within these while using primary colours. 

Thirdly, as I was really struggling overall for ideas so I just thought about not making the cover directly link with the context, and instead just choosing to make the cover a lot more appealing and creating something that would like nice as a screen print and book cover, rather than linking it directly, and making  typography seem like a more interesting subject. I then thought about looked into the concept of creating a book cover that follows post modernist designs as well as Lupton in her other books looks a lot at contemporary design.
I then created this, which was based around the idea of the word 'thinking' within the title, which I therefore made it look like a mind map to interpret it as thinking. I also decided to stick with simple circle shapes and lines to keep a modern approach to it but mainly as Lupton follows Bauhaus, to stick with simple shapes for form follows function. I also kept it a black and white theme as I thought it also could be interpreted as constellations as well, while the aqua green for the title 'type' draws the attention to it. 

Lastly, when I looked inside the book, this is actually where I found the most inspiration and I'm not sure why I didn't do this sooner. The book featured a variety of different designers but certain pages caught my attention (below) I then thought about using these styles that have been demonstrating but using my concepts to create a design. In my interim critique I said that I was struggling with ideas but showed the psychedelic posters in the book, and I got good feedback saying that if that is what interests me then I should go with this style and go with what inspires me. In addition they said I can just break the rules, which I'm glad as I just don't feel inspired to ultimately create a cover that may look nice but won't really be that appealing. Most posters anyway have only 2-3 bold colours which would make it really good for a screen print. I was advised as well in my interim critique to hand render this then scan it in, which thinking about it would be best as I don't have very strong skills on Photoshop etc. Therefore I am going to follow what my peers said and break the rules, as I think even though this doesn't particularly relate to type, it definitely makes it so much more appealing to audiences, and I think anyone would definitely pick this book up if it had a psychedelic, 60s, 70s vibe on the cover.

So I then looked into different 60s and 70s posters as I felt I needed to do more research before I could start designing. I started looking into the counterculture of the 1960's and really think my biggest interests within art and design is psychedelic art, I think the features of this such as bright colours, kaleidoscopic patterns etc really inspire me, and I have noticed in my work that it does feature a lot of bright colours. I think this has been a revelation for me as although I knew about psychedelic art, I've never properly looked into it before and found that all the features and styles are ones I really love, I just never really knew that such features such as spirals and concentric circles all feature under psychedelic art. I think for future briefs to come and in my own time I'm going to work and play around with this style and these features.


Features
Fantastic, metaphysical and surrealistic subject matter
Kaleidoscopic, fractal or paisley patterns
Bright and/or highly contrasting colors
Extreme depth of detail or stylization of detail. Also so called Horror vacui style.
Morphing of objects and/or themes and sometimes collage
Phosphenes, spirals, concentric circles, diffraction patterns, and other entoptic motifs
Repetition of motifs
Innovative typography and hand-lettering, including warping and transposition of positive and negative spaces

Therefore, I looked up how to do these style posters and I learnt about the warping tool on photoshop. For this I played around with it and used it to create this effect and this is what I ended up with. I'm happy overall with how it turned out and then decided to add the outlines of a human head and brain to get more psychedelic vibes within the piece, in addition it relates well to 'thinking with' in the title. I chose yellow and purple for the colours as I felt these were both strong, clashing colours which worked with the style of the letters overall. I had trouble with placing the outline onto this image as it hasn't turned out as sharp, but this is something I wish to improve depending on feedback as to whether I should take this design forward. As this my first attempt at this style poster I am happy with how it turned out, I think it can be interpreted as an interesting book about type with a lively colour, however I only worry that it could be interpreted as a book just about 60s psychedelic style posters as that's what the cover suggests. 

Therefore, I tried out making a design that had more connotations of a regular book, with a simplistic, minimal style surrounding the title. I think although it does look like a book cover, the simplicity for me doesn't make the book look as lively as I would like and this style is traditionally used for penguin classics or textbooks, therefore this style with the lively type don't work together as it connotes two different style books. I think I can work further to  achieve the correct effect that I want people to feel when they pick this book up from the shelf. 

These were my final designs that I did and the ones I am most happy with. I think these work better as the style of the letters does have this element of 60, 70s style posters that I wanted but also I think it works as a book cover due to the bold colours and strong shapes. It has a simplistic element to it but works together with type rather than against it like my previous design. I think the overall effect is a fun, lively feeling which I wanted the book to be, I wanted a lively book cover which would encourage you to pick it off, off the shelf. The colours I chose I think work well together, which I'm glad as I wanted to stick to yellow as it was the the first colour of the original design and conveys enthusiasm and creativity according to colour theory. The pink I chose as the colours complement each other and gives off a child like style which works in creating the book cover fun. I did do two variations of this design as I wasn't sure where to put 'Ellen Lupton' on the page, which I will use other peoples feedback to help me decide. 

Over the Graphic Design Facebook page we have I posted my designs to get feedback. These were the two that the most people liked. My feedback was useful and I was quite surprised that people appeared to like this first one as it was one of my initial ideas. For the second, everyone preferred this variation and my feedback for both was really useful. I agree that this second one would work well as a screen print and also is keeping in my idea for a fun and lively book cover with a psychedelic 60s posters influence. Therefore I decided to this design forward.