Presenting Initial Printed Layouts

I decided to present these three double page spreads as one single article to a tutor for critique. Some things that I noticed even before my critique was the fact that there a very strong sense of consistency and pace between spreads two and three, however almost no consistency between those two and spread one, my initial plans to have a manipulated shadow image be the background for the first spread have not been completed yet, this is due to the unforeseen difficulty in this task, I feel I may be unable to perform this in a high enough quality before the deadline and so will have to look at either alternative methods to creating this type of finish, or making a different design entirely. An advantage to doing this would be that I would be able to make something that held much more consistent aesthetic and pace to the other two spreads. For now, as a way to visualise the concept I have simply roughly replicated the effect using photography and Photoshop in order to attempt to show what I want the end effect to look like, however this does not look as good as I want it too.

Many things were offered for improvement within the critique, alternative research methods as well as opinions on my designs themselves. Something that I noticed was a common theme throughout all of my critiques was the dislike of the brick background that I have used within some of my designs, although I personally do like the effect that it offers, I am willingly to try alternatives. Perhaps the inky darkness of a plain black background will assist to give my work a greater sense of mystery, a finish I feel would work very effectively given my chosen article.

An idea that was brought up that I would like to explore further into was the concept of windows as a visual metaphor for my article, I like this concept because not only do I agree with the idea but I also feel that I would be able to easily acquire a large amount of work that could be used as potential final outcome imagery. It would also give me an opportunity to step away from type-as-image for a while and explore alternative design ideas. Windows could act as a barrier, however one that could be seen through but not moved through, this combined with the use of curtains/blinds to obscure the imagery and typography placed within the page would not only give my work a more three dimensional aspect to it, but would also give me more potential avenues to explore in terms of visual metaphors for my article.

After bringing up that use of lights to reveal identifiable, but obscured at first shapes within the shadows that are produced some extra research points include, reverse graphics, where stained surfaces are cleaned in such a way that they reveal or create artworks within them. While this would be a very aesthetically pleasing concept to create, I feel it would be very difficult to practice, this as well as the fact that Illustrating is not my strongest way of creating work. However it would be interesting to try.

The use of neon signs was looked at, and although the overall look of the typeface was positive, the connotations that are linked in with the locations that neon signs are normally located were pointed out, however I feel this is only true when the neon type is paired with the brick wall background, so this only gives me further reason and motivation to try out different alternatives for background textures, although I would very much like to have a plain black background, the neon glows work very effectively when they have something to blend into, it gives the light a much more realistic look, making it look more consistent alongside photography while still being able to be used alongside illustration and typography.

Overall I found this feedback somewhat conflicting with previous feedback, however it was still useful in bringing up new concepts to explore as well as confirming certain thoughts about my designs that I had been pondering for a number of days, moving on from this feedback I will redesign the backgrounds for all the of spreads and see what effective outcomes I can come up with, I will most likely stick with the neon type however I plan to change the scenery surrounding the type in order to make it more effective, due to the large amount of time that I have put into creating my own inspired typeface I feel it would be a massive waste to not use it within my initial final outcomes.

I will begin sketching and photographing potential new backgrounds in the form of windows acting as barriers, thinking up new ways to obscure text to convey visual metaphors using this method. As well as looking into more easily achieved methods of capturing my initial spread photograph, this will most likely be by simply taking a photograph without a shadow and manipulating it to a very convincing finish within Photoshop, this also allows me to edit other parts of the photograph in order to make it more aesthetically pleasing.

Finally I plan to explore much further with the ripped paper effect, due to the positive feedback on the page that featured this concept I will create some initial designs that show the ripped fragments of paper possibly obscuring text similarly to the way I want the blinds of windows too, making it more obvious that the text is trying to hide from view and requires something or someone to rip off the covers to reveal this hidden truth that so many are unaware of.

I am very glad for this feedback, it has offered me alternate views on my designs and will help me to explore further ideas in the coming weeks, I plan to now return to my sketchbook to brainstorm some more ideas that can be illustrated and photographed further to be used in my final outcomes.