Saturday was a scorcher in Peterborough! Whilst sunning myself with a pint in the beer garden, my sister, (who was driving so had a half pint non alcoholic beer..) had a rather funky glass which gave me a bit of inspo! I wanted to “accidentally” drop the glass in my bag but figured it was way too hot to be bailed out of a cell for theft and I had a torturous shift at work ahead of me!… 😀
I knew I had to photograph it though and blog about it as part of my research!
The glass as you can see for yourself uses a very nice, fancy style of type and uses a tattooed, illustrated man!
It is very similar to the style of illustration I have done for my postcards and the tattoo illustrations I have drawn. On this glass all the tattoos on the man relate to the make of beer and how and where it was made etc. It is an unusual design for a glass and an unusual choice of typography.
The whole feel of it is quite laid back and fun. The slogan is “The soul of beer” and I think they have used the choice of a tattooed man to literally illustrate this because tattoos are very personal, they mean something to the person who has them tattooed and they very much become an “identity” “Soul” is you, what you are made of; beliefs, feelings, emotions, places you’ve been, people you know, the impact you leave on people… I feel this very much relates to what I am trying to communicate in my postcards.
The overall message on this beer glass is that the beer encompasses “soul” the tattooed man shows pride in his soul and Bedford where it is obviously made. It also possibly shows that it is very much a “mans drink”.
So today on my lunch break I sat with more print outs of my current postcards. Like last time I put them together to see if they work and wrote on post it notes changes I want to make to adjust this weekend… I sat with my work colleague and surprised myself for the first time ever that I was actually quite open in talking about my ideas, thoughts and feelings about my work so far. Usually I am shut off and keep everything close to my chest – the fear of rejection or not pleasing!
I was telling her that I need to make changes to my postcards in that I need to add more “Graphic Design” into them. Curently I feel that my work has my own style attached to it but I am worried that at the moment it looks too illustrated rather than Graphic Design.
By the end of my lunch break I decided that ideally I need 4 postcards instead of 3. My original idea was that the 3rd and final postcard would be LA themed, I have now decided to add an extra postcard and split the wing image across both. One will represent my design influence and the other will still be LA themed.
This is what I mocked up…
I started to look on pinterest for inspiration. I decided I need something pink that will fit in with the current theme of the first 2 postcards but I need something that looks more design and represents Graphic Design or influential designers.
My “Pink Branding” board on Pinterest
I really liked these images:
I like the way Chanel is written. I like the colours and the style of type. It looks to me like brush strokes. This is different… using marker or highlighter pens to make an impactAnother example of the Chanel and the brush stroke appearance The top image although I think is marker pen reminded me of post it notes… I had the idea then of using bright pink post it notes and importing this image through into PhotoshopI like this. This reminded me of David Carsons work with the ripped paper and the collage style. I like the simplistic type at the top and the colour that is used. This uses a map design; similar to what I want to achieve with my LA design postcard. I like the colour used and the bright, modern look of it. The type and colour makes an impact.
My designs and style of work are quite modern in appearance, I want to one of the designs back to the origins of Graphic Design/ what area of design I am interested in but I still need to keep the same modern, bright appearance that it has currently. To reflect a style such as Bauhaus for example just wouldn’t work. I then started to think about what I am interested in…
I love magazines…
Now I don’t just mean the naff celebrity gossip ones that come out every Tuesday (even though I am a little addicted to these also :s) I really like a good quality, well designed, quirky, attractive looking magazine. One of my all time favourites has always been Nylon. Nylon is alternative, its arty, quirky and the way it is designed and laid out is always very different. I later learned that Nylon took some of influence from David Carson and Raygun. I then thought what about doing something similar in my design. To have influences from magazines with the type and layouts but have the quirky, collage influence from Carson.
David Carsons new book. You can see the style of collage and type.
I really like the highlighter/marker pen idea and I have messed around with that approach in some thumbnail sketches. It then got me into thinking how I would incorporate magazines into my design… like Carsons work where he rips up pages and uses them in his work, how could I use this influence in my work? I then thought I have the LMU magazine that got sent me (I wrote about this in my research section on my blog) the magazine was designed by Pentagram so it would also have that designer influence. If I could take pages out of this magazine and incorporate them into my design. The articles from the magazine all also relate to Los Angeles and around “what is an Angeleno” which ties in with my design.
Make a collage from pages of this magazine and then add the marker pen idea and maybe some other mixed media.
The LMU “Los Angeles edition” designed by Pentagram.
I am going to sketch out some more thumbnails and experiment with some mixed media;
Letterpress/screen printing
ink splatter
marker pen/highlighter
brush strokes / brushed type
post it notes
lipstick
collage
using the highlighter approach mixed in with the Angeleno and having the idea to make the type run down it similar to the drips on the previous postcards.
As I wrote in one of my previous posts; I wanted to work on the leg tattoo illustrations and make them more relevant to me. I decided to add my actual tattoo design onto it. I had the tattoo done for my 30th birthday and the design represented a lot to me in regards to new starts, rising out of adversity, entering my 30s single, stronger and independent. It also partly relates to my star sign and the moon. I designed the tattoo myself so I figured it is an important thing to show on this postcard as that does truly represent me. I will now work the other tattoos around it instead of having them as random images dotted about on the leg.
My wrist tattoo I designed and drew myself.A close up of part of it. I quite like how the pink filled in lotus is not in line with the rest of it. I like the bright bold colour and the way they stand out
So on Sunday I was at a loose end by myself and decided to go for a ride out in my car to Peterborough town to have a “window” shop. It NEVER turns out to be a window shop and much to my banks dismay I ended up spending.. AGAIN!
I think since starting this course it has made me more aware of what is around me.. I find myself looking at things for sale in the shop not for the item but because I like the packaging or the type or lettering used! I find myself keeping labels or picking up random hand outs and booklets just for the inspiration itself.
I have mentioned before that I have a love for Paperchase… again, I never really noticed the shop much before I enrolled onto the course! Now however I have to go in whenever I go to Peterborough. This weekend they had the £3 sale on and I could have spent a fortune! Instead I picked up some more postcards for inspiration! (I have pinned them to my wall at home as like a visual moodboard!) and picked up some female empowered pin badges! I liked the designs and the lettering they used was very similar to what I am trying to achieve in my own designs!
The packaging is also very similar it that its using a drip effect, this one is more like a watercolour effect though! It has a rebel feel to it. Like modern punk, graffiti style. It is meant to come across as strong and empowering.
The girl power pin badges
The wall above my laptop covered in Paperchase postcard inspo!
I then find myself wandering from shop to shop looking everywhere for inspiration and cool finds! On my venture to find Neon Pink acrylic paint (I never found any FYI) John Lewis do a range of high end quality cards which have a similar illustration theme to mine. Some were based around girl power and some were based around astrology, crystals, dream catchers and mindfulness etc. The cards were priced at a steep £4 each so I opted to take a sneaky pic of 2 instead! :p
The lettering used is similar to my style of work which is why they stood out to me. I feel the illustrations are very simply designed though, although they are modern. They use foiling and glitter also – This is possibly why the price of them is more than a standard card as the printing processes used for these would be much more expensive.
Having watched a few documentaries and films featuring Graphic Designer David Carson I decided to have a read of one of his books. This one is a 2nd edition and is filled with photographs, interviews and features work from the magazines where he made his mark such as Raygun.
The book starts off with an email from a student who wants questions relating to Carsons work to help with his uni course. The questions answered by Lewis Blackwell (Co author on this book) looks into the origins of his work and discusses the reactions to his work.
Carsons work is well known to not follow any rule book. He completely bypasses grids, the use of only one type size and the use of different typefaces, his work has even featured typos and errors that has not been recognised before going to print but then somehow he plays this off and continues to use these errors to make his work great. I like how he basically does whatever he wants! He goes more by what feels right than sticking by the rule book.
So I took the Lost Angeleno illustration away for the time being (for further improvements from my last post!) and decided to replace it with this one…
I had already designed the heart illustration for my Graphically Pink page but the idea sprung from a daft drawing a work colleague sharpie penned on my arm at work the other night, a heart tattoo with “Mom” drawn inside.
Thanks Matt! 😛
It made me jokingly think to myself if I had a tattoo for every guy I invested feelings in who had wasted my time and broken my heart I would have them halfway down my arm! I liked this idea for my design to show the vulnerability again; to show how I wear my heart on my sleeve and to show the strength in the weakness that regardless of the hurt… you carry on. I started messing around with the idea and drew out some random scribbles next to the heart with crosses through them to represent mens names… obviously I want the names to be faded and unrecognisable. I then decided to carry on the theme from postcard 1 with the drips of lipstick and include this bleeding from the heart. One of my earliest doodles which I still have is from when I was 14/15 years old and it was a broken heart with the words “Stupid cupid who needs love?” written around it. I have included part of this on my design also. I felt I needed to add this to show the “unlucky in love” factor rather than the fact it might just look like I just get through a list of men!
I also printed out rough versions of both the postcards so far and laid them out together to see if they worked and to see what would further need improving. I put post-its on the areas I wanted to add changes to and then carried out these changes on Illustrator. A few of the changes was to add a few further drips which would carry on from each other over the postcards, to improve the hand and then I drew on the heart idea illustration idea.
laying them both out and deciding what works and what changes need to be made so far This is the hand lettering I did for the Stupid Cupid, it is very similar to the original I drew years ago.
Following on from my previous post I have added some of the yellow into this postcard. I think it follows on more from the first one by adding this colour
I played around with the idea of this logo for one of the leg tattoos but decided I actually hate it!
Type whether hand lettered or typed should be legible and easy to the eye to read. It needs to flow and be comfortable to read! – I actually feel lost trying to move my eyes from letter to letter to fathom out how they work together and what they are. This idea will need completely redesigning!
As I wrote in my previous post I am not entirely happy with how the tattoo illustrations on the leg looks.. I want to more or less create one main image filled with all the different illustration icons so that the idea flows better.
I spent last night (a rare night off!) doing some more development of postcard 2!
This is the point now that I am up to… (This is a low res screenshot image so the final thing will be much more high quality!)
So far I am fairly pleased with how it is turning out; although I do prefer postcard 1 more! When I put the 2 together so far they work well together but I feel this one needs a bit more ” wow!” to it. The colours I used in postcard 1 are exactly the same as these as well as the yellow for the blonde. I might see how I can potentially add this colour to this design.
The hand still needs a lot of work! Hands have never been my forte (in my college days the joke was that I used to draw “mutant hands”! this is very much at the moment one of them!
As far as the motivational tattoos go.. this design needs to further symbolise girl power and empowerment and being strong and independent and I feel like I need more supporting (leg tattoos) illustrations for this.
More development on postcard 2… It seems to be taking ages to complete this set but I’m conscious that I want them to be exactly how I envision them and also the fact that I am learning as I am going along.
In the last month since I started designing these on Illustrator I feel like I have progressed and learned new techniques and got more confident in producing digital media once again.
Postcard 2 I want to represent girl power, girl code and generally being strong and independent. I felt like my original drawings for this postcard included too many LA inspired tattoos (which would take the attention away from postcard 3) and not enough symbols to represent the “girl empowered” theme of this one.
I decided to sketch up some ideas for the tattoos on postcard 2 that represent me more and the theme of girl power, strength and independence.
The main one that I wanted to include is “Be you.” I get told this a lot by friends, family and acquaintances. I get judged and criticised a lot for how I look and for my love of pink… “BE YOU, Be Pink Amy.”
My best friend Emma tells me that I am a “people pleaser” I tend to put others, their feelings and their needs before my own. This ultimately leaves me vulnerable, used and left feeling sad and insecure. An imbalance of emotions. Another common comment I usually always get is that I listen to other peoples negative opinions far too much. I have my own style, my own voice and my own unique quirks and I am confident with who I am so why am I sometimes too afraid to trust my own instincts and to free myself completely? This is something I work on everyday.. I grow more confident with age and experience. “Be you”. (This later ties in to another one of my tattoo designs for this postcard also.) The alien (Apart from my experience of random inappropriate men on a dating website years ago comparing me as “alien big eyes”!) is a symbol of being different; It’s OK to not “belong” to not follow trends, to not follow, chase or seek appreciation from people who are not right for us or to not stay in situations just because it feels like the right thing to do; comfort zones. There is a whole world out there to be explored! It is OK to break out of this metaphorical box that people tend to try and put us inside… Why do people think life is supposed to fit to a “plan” and to a specific time frame? It is OK to not conform or to be constricted. Think outside that damn box!!
The star sign aspect of the design (the crab) is important to me. My star sign is cancer and I feel I embody every trait of that sign. I have a sensitive inside and a hard outer shell. I struggle to trust, I “feel” with everything I have. I wanted to include this onto the design as the overall feel of postcard 2 is about femininity, the vulnerability of being a girl in a tough world and being “naked” in a sense that I expose who I am, what I like and how I feel.
Make lemonade from lemons is to overcome bitterness, bad luck and adversity to make something good out of bad experiences. Also as a reference to design advice I once received; Do not put any lemons out there!!
Adding details and adding more appropriate designed tattoos.
pinkangeleno.com 