Graphics Design

The outcomes of the graphic design week.

And during the graphics week I found I have an interest in typography - yay, personal discovery.

I made  few designs for the words:

DETACHED

RAPID

CONSUME

and I should have done flowing too but I'm slow

We were told to be very abstract with our designs, so as to make the viewer do some work when looking at it - people get bored looking at things that are easy to look at. Above if my interpretation of 'consume'. I was going for a black hole effect of things being sucked in. Other people interpreted 'consume' as eating and shopping.

I scanned the image into Photoshop and created this:

I duplicated the image, flipped it and used the 'subtraction' setting on the upper layer (I think)

The whole thing has a lot of movement, even the letters are being sucked in which I quite like. I think the overriding black is very important in the idea of consuming.

This is my design for rapid. I chose metallic colours as a reflection on how technology is developing so quickly. Everything has a direction, left to right, to indicate speed, and the chequered patches are like racing flags.

I photocopied the image in red and added the black stripes which I decided were a strong colour combination to represent this word.

In Photoshop, I added the filter 'posterize' to simplify it and made the overall colour scheme red - as it's an aggressive colour. I applied a motion blur to cash in on the expected cliche of something moving across the page. I think the blur works well because it sets these striking shapes into motion.

These are all hand made designs for 'detached'.

I began with the idea of the letters having to work around the jagged shapes.

Then I moved on to putting the words behind the shapes, so as to  break them up.

This one is my favourite because it is much simpler, the word is striking and central and the background, as opposed to playing a key part in the image, supports the idea the word portrays.

I enjoyed graphics design a lot more than I though I would. 
The processes of developing ideas are much more methodical than the creative insanity that I usually function with, so it was refreshing to be challenged into injecting creativity into quite a restricted way of working.

I also like typography and discovered an interest in 'kinetic typography', (basically animated words). An example of this is this video by Ronnie Bruce, of a slam poem by Taylor Mali, an American poet/writer. (As an English literature geek, I also enjoy the poem):

OVER AND OUT