On Display: Development After Feedback

After having time to reflect on my ‘Propsposterous’ project I felt like I needed to use my hand-lettered pieces to my full potential. I want to use the lettering in a promo video and to develop the posters; therefore I have made it into a typeface called ‘Dahlisms’. The typeface consists of capital letters, numbers, and only the necessary punctuation marks. It isn’t perfect for a reason. Some letters are slightly thicker or tilted — this is to represent the topsy turvy world of Roald Dahl’s story telling.

This is my first time making a typeface and I’m really happy with how it turned out! It’s definitely improved my posters too! Below is a before and after comparison with and without the new typeface.

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I still need to develop the layout of the posters, but they already look better with ‘Dahlisms’ being used more!

On Display: Signage

Signage was a bit difficult to come up with as Roald Dahl Plass will have metal barriers as it’s a ticketed event, but there aren’t any walls or anything that I could put a sign on. In addition to this, it doesn’t have any toilets or a reception desk as it’s all outdoors. These were the sorts of problems I had to tackle when coming up with my signage.

I then remembered my wayfinding. I realised that people would still benefit from a bit more guidance in which direction to go in order to get to the secondary site (Norwegian Church Arts Centre).

I realised that by flipping my marque, the two P shapes together emulated foot prints, and so this is the signage system I came up with for the footpath:

In addition to this, I decided to design a sign on the side of the Norwegian Church Arts Centre just to reassure people they were in the right place, but still keeping to my friendly tone in my expressive typography:

 

On Display: Moving Identity

The moving identity was a little bit difficult to complete as After Effects kept showing me a black playback screen every time I tried to watch back the animation. With this in mind, I was very limited to what I could do as I couldn’t get it to work properly no matter what I tried.

This meant I had to strip it back to the basics. I decided that I wanted my moving identity to show how the marque came to be; so showing the exclamatory and questioning tones of the whole exhibition to show how completely nonsensical the whole exhibition is.

These are the quick thumbnail sketches I did to work out how it was going to begin, the transition, and then the ending.

This is the completed moving identity:

To develop it I would probably add some sound effects to give a stronger idea of the pace and tone of the moving identity.

On Display: Website

This is the layout of the website and some of the hand-lettered pieces I made purely for the site.

I made the website in adobe XD so I could show how simple and user-friendly the site is. I wanted to make it as simple to use as possible so it was accessible to most.

This is what it looks like in the software:

This is the first time I have properly used XD and so i had to teach myself a lot of new bits and pieces, but whilst using it I discovered that the easier the interaction a person can have with the website, the more enjoyable it make it to use — especially if they aren’t caught up on all the tech.

This is a screen recording of the website, just to show how user-friendly it is:

On Display: Wayfinding Edit

When I went into the studio support session i just wanted to make sure I was going along the right lines with my wayfinding, and to get some advice for my signage. Some of the feedback I had was that my map felt too flat in comparison to the rest of the branding, and that it would look better as an illustrative map, so something along these lines:

To develop my map, I will create illustrations of landmarks in Cardiff Bay surrounding the two exhibition sites. Landmarks would work well in this case as there is only a small difference between the two different sites, meaning that people could identify their route based on their surroundings, the map just puts all of that into perspective for the viewer.

This is the quick sketch I did of the new map layout:

I needed to redraw the Pierhead because it’s such a detailed building, the sketch on the map isn’t very helpful — especially when it comes to digitising it.

I then traced over all of the buildings with a brush pen to get the same variation of brush strokes that appear across the rest of the brand.

I put them into Illustrator to digitise them and coloured them and then put them onto the map.

This is the final result:

On Display: Wayfinding – Process, Mock Up and Final

I decided that my wayfinding should be between the two sites of the exhibition — the two sites being Roald Dahl Plass and Norwegian Church Arts Centre. Its helpful for everyone as more than likely most people would go between the two spaces, whereas if I was to focus on getting from a train station to the main exhibition the map would only be useful to one group of people. With this in mind, I looked at Cardiff Bay on Google Maps, and looked at the walking route between the two sites. I create a coloured mock up with markers so I could see how the colours would turn out.

After I was happy with the mock up I created layers of the map, so the grounds itself was a layer, the path was a layer, then the location markers and then the names of certain landmarks. This made it easier to understand how it would be set out in illustrator, and also meant I could easily digitise each layer of the map without the worry of things merging together or being on the wrong layer.

This is the final outcome:

I like it, but I think it needs a bit more development. The rest of my branding uses a water colour texture, so I need to find a way to add that into the map to get the same sort of depth and tone variations. I’m really happy with how the colours look on the map, and how the hand rendered typography works to indicate the two sites and the journey between them.

On Display: Booklet Layout Edit

I looked at the feedback I had in my one to one and played with the scale of some of the images and worked on a new layout.

On Display: My Marque in the Alphabet

In my one to one critique, it was mentioned that I could incorporate my marque into my hand-lettering more — which meant playing around with the formation of certain letters.

I really like the idea of altering the appearance of some of the letters to try and make a stronger visual language across the entire brand.

I tried to using this in the hand-lettered work in the booklet:

I really like how it emphasises the marque and how it adds something a bit more special and unique to the hand-lettering.

On Display: Hand-Rendered Typography Inspiration

Going forward, I want to celebrate my hand-rendered typography more, so I looked into three people who are especially big for their own hand-rendered works. These are:

• Oliver Jeffers
• Mr Bingo
• Emily Coxhead

Oliver Jeffers

I really liked the sense of ‘higgledy-piggledy’ in Oliver Jeffers’ work. The way he plays with the scale of the letterforms set alarm bells ringing with the word ‘gobblefunking’; his work feels very playful. In addition to this, I like how he mixes lowercase and uppercase, cursive and block letters to create his work — this adds to that feeling of ‘higgledy-piggledy’ I was talking about earlier.

Mr. Bingo

I was really interested by the ways in which Mr. Bingo emphasises key words and phrases within his work. I like how circling and underlining gives it a sense of urgency, or importance, but also adds a fun and expressive tone to the piece.

Emily Coxhead/The Happy News

I think ‘lovely’ is the perfect word to some up the work in The Happy News. Emily Coxhead has this beautifully bright colour palette and it emphasises the happy nature of her work. I think this works in my case too as I have a bright colour palette and everything I’m hand-lettering is of a positive nature too. In addition to this, I really like the little beams that come off of certain words as they give a chirpy, happy tone to the piece. These elements altogether just make the work really enjoyable to look at.

On Display: One to One Critique and Developments

When I went to my one-to-one critique, it appeared my logo still needed some developments and that I need to use my marque more within my logotype. 

When I went away from the session I sketched out six new logotypes, all in a similar style but with minor tweaks. I used these six sketches, and went over elements of them with a brush pen to come up with more logotype designs.

After doing this, I picked my four favourites and re-did them in yellow. I did this so I could see them in the logotype colour so I could have a better idea of what they would look like.

I ended up mixing the third and fourth yellow logotypes together to come up with my final logotype

I really like this logotype and I think it sits quite nicely between my first and second logotype ideas.

In addition to developing my logotype even further, it was also suggested that I try using the exact marque to create my illustrations.

I wasn’t convinced with this idea, it just didn’t feel right to have everything looking the same shape. I went and tried it to see if there was anyway I could get the idea to work

So the idea was to have the marque really strong and then have the details drawn on in a different colour. This still didn’t have me convinced, so I tried to see if I could manipulate the shapes slightly to see if that would work.

I tried some quick outcomes but however I tried to manipulate the shape it just didn’t feel like it was working for me.

I tried it with some of the other illustrations, thinking that a fresh angle on it would change my mind, but they didn’t feel as playful. I think it takes the life out of them, especially the tortoise. It looks like I’ve forced it into this shape and loses its expressive nature.

I tried again using markers, thinking that possibly the block shape but coloured in to look like the illustrations would work.

I think I’m going to stick with my original illustrations because the developments don’t feel as playful and expressive.

Going back to my last LJ entry, it was agreed that my layouts felt flat and lifeless, so I need something to give the page more dimensions and to make it feel more dynamic; in addition to this, a textured background would again emulate the style of Quentin Blake.

This is what I came up with:

I love how this looks. I’m still developing the layout and playing with scale, so I don’t have anything to really show on that yet, but I’ve put the new logotype in to show how it works in context.

I tried for so long to get the texture right. Initially, I painted sheets with a full watercolour texture with the plan to just edit it in Photoshop and then copy it into Indesign.

I thought by using a cool tone and warm tone I could also get different effects and layers in the texture, but these didn’t work due to the paper buckling. The buckled paper caused the light to show up in some areas more than others, which stripped away some of the texture when I put it into Photoshop.

I decided to try again but make a smaller texture in black and white. I realised that by doing it in black and white I would see more of the watermarks and veining in the texture; in addition to this, I realised I could just used the same texture but layer it and alter it in Illustrator to create different watercolour textures each time.

I colourised the texture in Photoshop, with the red from my colour palette, after playing with the levels and the curves. This created the texture on the right.

This is it layered in illustrator. I also played with the opacity of some to get a variety of tones and layering textures.

Resources:

• Watercolour texture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRw3QDdO0C8