Creative Partners: Considering Typography

From the research that I had conducted as well as what the brief required me and greta decided that we wanted to take a fairly modernist and simplistic approach to the aesthetic of the packaging and let the concept speak for itself, we felt this was best done through the use of black and white as well as a sans serif typeface. Initially I started working a light weight sans serif type face and experimenting with some basic layouts however I felt too far away from the existing brand, it didn't look like a L'Artisan product. I also experimented with the name of 'L'Art De Contradiction' and creating this concept through the distortion of the type. It looked cool, but ultimately it was illegible and unreadable and that our whole concept to it needs to clear what exactly we are communicating. 

After looking through many a font websites I found this typeface Giorgio Sans, as soon as I saw it I knew it was perfect for the brand and perfect for concept - it worked on so many left. Firstly the typefaces itself is inherently modern, it's clean and simple and sans-serif but the typeface came with titling alternatives and this gave the font a whole new feel, it still felt modern but it had a subtle hint of heritage about it and it is something me and greta wanted to achieve through the design. We want to modernise the brand and bring it into the 21st century but not forget it's traditional french heritage. Furthermore is is something french art deco about the typeface again reflecting the french heritage of the brand. Additionally the titling alternatives also offered contrast in letter form construction and this perfectly conveyed the contradiction concept, subtle but works extremely well - the letterform contradict each other! 

I met up with Greta to show her the progress I had made with the packaging, she liked what I had done and felt the concept came across well with the typeface and design I had began to put together. So I continued to work on these designs. 

Good is New York City: Research Booklet Crit Feedback

The crit for the research booklet was primarily a presentation of the booklet formally to rest of the group as well as Amber and Simon, this was more of a presentation than a chance to receive feedback although some comments where made. Simon and Amber did say they liked the format I had chosen for the booklet and that it was relevant to the content of the booklet. 

The next day the crit was continued and this offered a chance for more formal feedback to be given. This crit was ran as a class and we walked around and saw everybody's work leaving feedback on people's work where relevant.

Feedback Received:

• I'm a huge fan of the word play, personal response to the research evidenced nicely 
• Interactive format  is very successful and how you have approached your research
• Proof read your work -Vactioner?
• Really good foldable layout design
• Interesting attention drawing headings
• Humans of new york cool layout and use of photos
• Well thought out good breadth of research
• Cool format bro
• Very conceptual format
• Make research more personal it will then be cut down dramatically 

Moving Forward

• A major problem with the research booklet at the moment is that it is extremely text heavy and that a lot of text needs to cut out and it was suggested that I can do this by making the content more personal, moving forward I will need to consider making the booklet a lot less text heavy
• I'm glad the format of the publication was so well received and everyone was in agreement that the format worked well 
• Proof read my work before I print the final version!
• The humans of new york layout was well received for being good and interesting layout of information but this is not reflected in the rest of the booklet I will consider bringing more of this design to the rest of the booklet to main continuity but also to cut down the content and make the layout more interesting

Good is New York City: Initial Research Booklet & Mockup

I have started to compile my research into the 16 page booklet, I wanted to come up with a concept for booklet rather than just a 16 page A format printed booklet. Most of the content I have been researching  into is the information that tourists look about cities however i have focused on looking at information like this but that tourist would less traditionally find. I came up with the idea to make the research booklet in the format of a map, every tourist has or uses a map and the format fits and aligns perfectly with the content I have been researching. I have produced an initial mock up to take to crit and printed it on the laser printer. I booklet is still in it's very early stages and have printed in it this way in the hope that I can move forward with the design of booklet in reflection of the feedback that I will receive in the crit. Both the concept and type of content lead me to name the booklet 'I'm not a your average vacationer, i'm a new yorker' which sums up the concept and the type of content inside. Within the design I have tired to create a contrast between text and image so that is doesn't appear to text heavy or too image heavy either. 

Working with the printed mock up also help me better understand how I can work with format as up until this point it has been digitally designed now that I have printed it I can already see adjustments that I can make to the design. 

Good Is New York City: Developed & Final Research Boards

In response to the feedback I received in the crit I have some changes to my research boards. I have checked the spelling throughout, this is still something I'm not doing on a regular basis but I need to be doing it! I've also slightly adjusted the layout in certain areas to keep continuity throughout the boards, I completed the final page of research boards which contains a detailed explanation of my chosen target audience. 

Good is New York City: Rewritten Brief 1

Good is New York City: Research Boards & Crit 1

Positives

• Interesting and thought provoking
• Imagery is eye catching
• Good use and amount of text
• Good range of image based research
• Variation and range of products researched
• 'Nice' layout, presentable and professional
• Strong use of the grid
• Good, simple, clean layout, good use of white space
• Useful that the information is broken down into separate categories

Possible areas for improvement

• Reduce the amount of body copy in areas of the boards, this will maintain balance throughout the boards
• Number the boards
• Play around with the layout, it seems a bit dull to you usually do
• Label images along side them
• Check punctuation and spelling
• Image could all line up along the bottom
• Consider legibility of type when positioning it over images
• Consider how use of bold and regular affects how the text is read by the reader

Good Is New York City: Brief Workshop

5 words that some up my good

• Cabs
• Skyscraper
• Street
• Capital
• Subway

5 Words that some up my target audience

• Middle class
• Educated
• Professional
• Middle aged
• Creative

Tone of Voice

• Adventurous
• Intellectual
• Surprising
• Colloquial
• Informative

5 Possible products

• iPad/iPhone App
• City Centre
• Book/Publication
• Website
• Newspaper
• Posters
• Way finding

Processes

• iPhone and App development
• Embossing
• Buckram
• Duplexing
• Stock exploration

My research will be focused and created through the lens of: 

An Introduction to New York City

Specialist areas of graphic design I will be focussing on

• Information & Wayfinding 
• Retail & Promotion

Moving Forward

• Write the brief for this module using headings provided
• Rework boards in accordance with Feedback

Design Practice 2: Photography Workshop

Me and Eve decided to partner up for this workshop and photograph the work we had brought, we encountered a major when trying to photography my Takeover Brand guidelines, no matter what we did we couldn't replicate the exact colour through the camera/photos. The photography tutor told us that will colours like this it's not also possible to achieve them in photographs and that its something you have to adjust post-photo shoot in Lightoom or Photoshop. 

Always in my coat. I'm so cold at university! 

Creative Partners: Bottles

When me and greta last met we did a little research and found a company that manufacturer perfume bottles and they had the shapes that we wanted. I request some samples via there website, they then emailed me back and said in order for samples to be sent out I would need to place a minimum order of 5000 units! This was obviously unrealistic for us to do. However I emailed them to explain what we were using the bottle for and that we were students. They sent us out a selection of bottle including the bottle we wanted as well as the sprayers and caps. Restoring faith in humanity that good people exist in this world and that if you don't ask you don't get. 

Creative Partners: The Concept + Action Plan 2

So me and Greta decided to meet and get cracking with discussing our ideas and moving forward with this brief. Firstly we both shared our ideas with each, each of us pitched to each other about what our thoughts were so far on the brief. We both felt like we had some good ideas and some ideas which overlapped this lead to us combining some of our ideas to move forward. Greta really like the concept that I had come up with of calling the perfume series 'L'Art De Contradiction'  so we both decided this would be our concept and used that to move forward. We both agreed that we needed to think of names for the individual perfumes before we did anything else! Greta had been thinking about natures influence in her designs and possible names we therefore decided to use nature as a lens to create our contradictory names. This ended developing into a sub concept of 'Beautiful disaster' - this was our naming strategy every name would be a beautiful disaster, a name which was a contradiction of nature and its beauty and its disaster. When we began to think about naming the scent this threw up the question how do we make them unisex? This lead to a long discussion and we decided to bend the brief a little and create two female scents and two male scents this was primarily because some of the scents didn't seem masculine such as those described as a 'sublime love' so we split the scent into two male and two female. 

...After many hours spent on the online thesaurus the final names we came up with were

Male scents: Silent Shock and Dark Flame

Female scents: Serene Flux and Gentle Storm

Now we had finally decided on the scents names we decided to look at how this concept of contradiction could be visually convey through the perfume bottle. We both had a range of bottle ideas and through combining these we decided to use two materials to construct the bottle, these being glass and wood, wood representing nature and glass representing the beauty. Further the contrast in materials can be seen as a contradiction. We looked at shape and form of the bottle and explore a variety of shapes and forms but as a result of what glass bottle we could order from the internet we ended up using a square format for the bottle. As we couldn't make the glass part ourselves this limited us to what shapes and forms we could create. We wanted each of the bottle to be split in half exactly and half to be made of wood and the other of glass to show the contradiction furthermore we also wanted a different shape/size between the male and female bottle to again show this contradiction. We wanted the contradiction concept to be shown through everything we designed. 

Finally we moved onto to discussing the packaging concept, with a strong focus on contradiction greta showed me some researched she had found on perorated surfaces and this linked to both our needs to be extremely innovative with out packaging. We came up with the idea that the packaging become a perforated surface in which the user would tear of sections to create patterns and make the packaging individual to them but also this would reveal the perfume and be how the user gets access to the perfume. We also decided at this point that to translate the concept to this the packaging would be completely white and then be patterned on the interior to show a stark contrast between bright white and vidid patterns. We then developed a shape for each of the perfume that would form the perforated shapes for each of the packages and that would also inform the style of pattern inside. This shapes and forms came as a result of the names we gave each perfume. 

Action Plan:

Greta: Develop pattern to be used inside of the packages

Tom: Begin to work with type and layout to create the packaging design as well as apply this to perfume bottle. 

Type Workshop 2: Type & Grid

Is it just aesthetics or is there reasons why we should do certain things?

Finish spread and show grids

Type Workshop 1: Fibonacci Sequence

The Numbering sequence

Using the Fibonacci sequence to construct typographical proportions