Design to sell

My final piece of text for Design to sell, this will also be a notebook design. Song by Roger Miller.
I liked the prune text and the vines so much that I thought I'd combine all my favourites into one! even the clouds! oh beautiful.

Poster development

Here's my hand drawn typography to coincide with the tiger image. Due to the quote also being about cars I felt the need to draw some pipes, just so the text wasn't on its own either... I think some readjustment of the layout is in order because when the images are side-by-side, as they will be in my exhibition, the pipes look odd and the negative space seems to stand out quite a lot!

Digital plastic surgery

As you can see in the previous post, the jaw lines are all different. I wasn't too keen because the line work was slightly different to the rest of the image so I produced two more separate chins by tracing over the outline of the tigers jaw. I feel the top one here is now too smooth but I am very fond of the second one.
New skill learnt right here! I like to call it; 'Digital plastic surgery'... ace.

Poster

Just some images to go with my currently-being-rendered next piece of text; 'You can't drive around with a tiger in your car'- Roger Miller.

The tiger is hand drawn with a 0.1 width fine line pen and given its skin in photoshop with a scanned tea stain experiment having had the saturation changed in photoshop, to a more orange tone.

Design to Sell development

After redrawing the text for this project several times, I finally got some good results. In previous projects I have been downgraded for using various pen sizes throughout the production of my text... not this time! Strictly size 0.1! I edited very little on both of these pieces. I removed the tacky backgrounds in photoshop and added the white and cream ones digitally, changed the contrast slightly so they were bolder but not so that I took any of the hand drawn feel away. I also cropped cloud shapes out of a pair of jeans I scanned in. fabulous.
I'm pretty impressed with the outcomes, although I have used clouds and rain, I tried to avoid using it so much. I often use them in  my work and I was worried it was becoming a bit 'samey' so I invented and incorporated a crazy wrinkle bush in with the prune text!
Ideally I want the prune text to be a humorous greetings card design and the foghorn text, along with another one yet to be completed, to be notebook designs.
As for the song writer information, I'm going to have it printed onto the back of the cards and notebooks so I don't get done for copywrite!
P.S. These songs lyrics are written by Lonnie Donegan and Frank Crumit.

Back

The back of the zine had the requirement of having the Pylon Press logo and a few bits of information; my logo for this project, some web addresses, my name and a copy write symbol. done.

Page 16

The leaf at the bottom of this picture was suppose to represent 'Cinderella's glass slipper' in a natural way. It tells readers, along with the text, that the Robin has now gone, it brings an end to the story... until she returns again next winter.

Page 15

keeping with the layout and the graphic devices, this page is very fun!

Page 13&14

These pages work as a double page spread, they're possibly a couple of my favourite pages too. There's a lot of humour in them and the use of texture and typography is a nice balance. I'm very fond of the large line drawn daffodil without any filling, it becomes a point of focus which is a positive!

Page 12

12 is a simple page but alongside 11 is works well and I think the repetitive layout keeps it in tune with the other pages.

Page 11

Page 11, like a few other pages, gave me great difficulty when it came to decision making. I was unsure weather to allow the texture of the clouds to be seen through the branch and plant pot. after changing it several times I decided that this was the best and most effective outcome; it has more style than some previous designs.

Page 9 & 10

Page 9&10 are the centre fold of the zine, so I  put them together in order to see how they looked properly. The first page seems pretty plain and remote but when put next to page 10, it does work as it is. This is one thing to think about throughout the zine; certain imagery could easily be cancelled out by the detail on the opposing page or visa versa.
I've encorporated the tea stain effect yet again, using different shapes to keep it looking effective. I put the effect inside the watering can (robins home) and I'm pretty pleased with the outcome. The section that would become the actual fold seemed pretty bare when I did put the images together in photoshop, to avoid this double page spread being ruined I added the reoccurring leaves just to hide some negative space. 

Page 8

This I my favourite page in my zine so far; it has so much character, a good amount if typography an imagery to fill the space effectively and the tea stained circles work well. The circles have become a reoccurring thing throughout the zine too which again; works splendidly! 

Page 7

This page seems to be lacking texture, in comparison the all the other pages which now have effects included, this one is very plain. It's still the same scene as page 5&6 so maybe just a sunrise would assist in giving it a bit more detail. Apart from what was just mentioned; This scene has a good balance of image to text, it shows clearly the humour which I intended to portray throughout and gives a good indication to the story line.

Page 6

Page 6 was a bit more successful than 5, the only thing I intend on going back and editing is the negative space at the top of the page. Perhaps just some I the leaves which keep cropping up would work. I particularly like how the sun fades out though, it gives it a better sunrise effect, though i do worry that i looks more like a moon due to the textures on the watercolour surface.

Page 5

This page really bothered me thought the production. Because I've allowed the textures to show through the characters in previous scenes, I have to keep it continuous but on this page it just doesn't seem to work!

Page 4

Like on page three, I struggled to keep the brightness and contrast the same when I applied it to the clouds. But eventually I got something I wa happy with. The next obstacle in this scene was weather to have the characters filled or allow the texture to show through the outline. After a few adjustments I think by allowing the texture to be seen it made this image look more surreal and dreamlike, as its suppose to.

Page 3

Page three slotted together quite well once I had the style worked out. I used the tea stained effect again to produce the clouds, it was a struggle to get the brightness similar to the circle shape on the front cover and the pages previous. I gradually added different pieces of imagery to help set a scene, I think the image with the stars has a bit too much going on and distracts viewers from the story itself.

Boarder

This is page 2 in my zine, it was unsuccessful at first and after a few attempts, I seemed to be getting nowhere. I took a look back at the pylon press zines from last year and got influence from them. I was encouraged to produce this frame and apply to to a few of the scenes which had too much negative space. I also used a few different medias such as ink, pastel, watercolour paint ect to produce a better shadow effect to what I initially had. Watercolour was most effective and as can be seen, I cut a shadow from it in photoshop and applied that to my work as well.

Developments so far

My first three pages so far. The front cover, insert page and page 1. As you can see, I'm trying to keep a constant flow so that the work looks like it is from the same zine. It's easy to lose track and produce several different artworks which don't relate. I've tried to keep the tea stained effect as a continuous graphic device and my hand rendered text.

Page ideas

Here are a few page idea which I consider to be least successful. The brightness and contrast on each design are all different and none of them appear to come from the same zine. All of this has prove to be a learning curve though, particularly the scene with tea stained circles. I learnt a few new skills when doing this scene which will most definitely help with development.

Zine- cover development

Development after words with a lecturer proves successful! I'm much happier with the hand rendered look. The circular shape was literally scanned tea stains, turned into greyscale via photoshop. I also resized the little bird because it was said to look like another letter amongst the text.

Zine- cover ideas

After illustrating several texts and piecing together several ideas in photoshop; here are my designs in favour of being the zines official cover. Feedback from a lecturer included the idea of maybe using a more hand rendered circle shape as a background, rather than the digitally painted shape. All is well but it takes the hand rendered feel away from the texts.

Zine- insert ideas

Made originally from potato stamps, these were used because of their effectiveness and in order to show the variation of media available in my work. I scanned them in and took them into photoshop, which enabled me to change the brightness and contrast as well as adding some digital graphic devices. The zine is purely black and white so my palette was minimal, the stamps are black and I quite like them that shade too so a contrasting white background really helped the stamps to stand out. As can be seen, I tried to add some grey colours to the mix, but I'm unsure how I feel about them so these probably wont get used in my final outcome.

Design to Sell

 Here are some of the texts for my design to sell project, for copyright reasons I have added the publishing company and song writer of each lyric. Not all of them will be put to use but these are my favourite so they all stand a chance!
The idea is 1940-50 songs which are uplifting and for me these are exactly that! They are songs I would listen to as a child with my dear granddad. My intentions are to print them onto notebooks and postcards as part of a design to sell project. The next step is to find a continuous style of arrangement and apply it to the cards and notebooks.