Evaluation

Evaluation

I began this project with the idea of creating a fun, contemporary book about artists from throughout history, for the ages of 9 and up. I wanted to create this product because when I was younger I had no books based on art that interested me at a young age and the only things that I learnt about art were from art lessons at school. I decided to stick with the average children’s book size of 32 pages so that it would fit in alongside other books on the market.

I decided that so this book would sell, I would have to make it appeal to the adult market as well as they would be the ones buying it for their child.  For this reason I decided to go with a contemporary style that would draw a modern parent to it as well as a younger child. The colours played a large part in making the book appeal to both audiences, I chose a colour bright enough that a child would want to pick up but muted enough that it fits in with the latest colour trends, the colour that I decided to go with in the end was a slightly pastel version of bright yellow. I feel as though this worked well as it fit in with the black line drawings used throughout the book.

I wanted to stick with slightly simplistic drawing style that would appeal to a younger audience, I didn’t want to have the drawings too simplistic though because I feel as though that would bring the target audience age down to a much younger age. For the profile drawings I decided to keep them fully coloured so the reader could get a true sense of what the artist looked like. I kept the rest of the drawings in black and white because I was inspired with the old horrible history books as they had a similar style of book to mine and they worked really well.

       

For the typography I wanted to keep it very miss matched but still stuck to a format to keep it looking professional. The reason that I wanted to keep the text styles mixed is because that seems to be a current trend within the illustration market and I feel as though this would appeal to a modern parent. I combined my own hand drawn typography with digital because I felt like too many hand drawn styles would just end up looking messy. In my learning agreement I stated that I wanted to improve my hand written typography skills and I feel like this project has really helped me with that, as I am now much more confident with drawing letters than I was before.  

Although the layouts were quite informal I kept them very similar for every page, as I wanted to keep a professional feel throughout. I also added a banner to the top of the page sticking with the muted yellow colour that I decided on with the name of the book and the page number on. I did this because I noticed that it was a common thing throughout books on the current market and I found that it really finished off the pages and brought them all together as one finished book.

For my last profile I decided that instead of choosing an artist to write about, that I would leave the profile, information and activity page for the reader to fill in so they could feel more inspired about art seeing their own pages amongst other great artists. I feel like getting them involved will make the book a lot more interesting for them.  

When I had completed all of the book I decided to add an extra bit to my book to make it feel a bit more special so I decided to add a sticker page to the back of my book. I feel like this adds a bit of extra fun for the young person reading it. For the stickers I decided to use the profile pictures of the artist as I felt it would be nice to have them all together in one place, I also thought that the shape of them was very fun and a bit quirky for a sticker and this fit right in with the overall style of the book.

Overall I am really happy with how the final product has turned out. I feel as though I have fulfilled my original intention and it looks exactly how I had planned in the beginning. I think that my ability to reach a professional looking standard has improved vastly from previous projects and this is something that I originally really struggled with. I think the strongest aspect of this project has been the strong use of hand drawn typography and the design of the front cover. If I was to re do this project I think that as well as submitting digitally I would attempt to make the final product into a proper book rather than just presenting a mock up. One last thing that I would improve if I was to re do this module is the back cover as I don’t think the design was as strong as it could have been.

Module evaluation part 2: Oranges are not the only fruit

Alongside creating the carries war book cover I began to read and develop ideas for the book Oranges are not the only fruit. When I was reading this book not one single image stood out to me that would work well on a book cover because there were so many topics and themes covered in the book. The main themes are religion and lesbian love but alongside this there are a lot of stories and bible verses. Because no images came into my mind I started to sketch lots of different thumbnails out to see what came from it. This proved very beneficial as it helped me to decide what I liked the look of most. 

I started off by creating a silhouette style image using my own profile for the girl head. I then added the title of the book within the silhouette, I think the design was okay but nothing really special. After completing this cover I realised that this cover idea was very similar to the cover for ' The colour Purple,' another lesbian love story, I would not be able to use something so similar to something that already existed. I am glad this happened because it allowed me to think more and expend my ideas and designs.  I went back to my thumbnails and had a look through the other ideas that I had, I saw a sketch of a girl at the bottom of the page and the title above her head as if it was her thoughts. I really liked this idea but my next decision was to choose the style that I wanted to create the book cover in. At this point, I don't really know why but the Eleanor and Park book cover popped into my head and it gave me the idea to create a really modern book cover for a quite old dated story, a similar thing to what the Eleanor and Park book cover did. I thought that tis idea would attract a new more young audience to the book, a market that usually wouldn't even think to pick this book up. I thought it would be a good idea to refresh the book and bring it into this age. 

I then started on designs. As the brief specified a strong use of typography I decided to make this the focal point of the book I wanted to create a really nice quirky hand written title for the book. I’m not too great with digital fonts so I thought I would do what I know and just draw the letters. I kept it in quite a loose style so it looks as if someone could have doodled it down onto paper because there are a lot of notes that get written throughout the book and I feel as though this fits with the story. I also decided to have the books background as lined paper so it really looked like a note.  I am pleased with how the text turned out considering I don't think I'm that good at typography. I then drew the design for the girl at the bottom of the page, I wanted her to look sad because throughout the book that seems to be the feeling that she feels the most. I decided on a simple line drawing to keep the design clean, simple and modern. After scanning it in and putting it on Photoshop I decided to colour the hair and eyebrows with a light orange to reference to the title and the oranges from the story.  

I then added all of the digital text such as the author name and quote. I put the authors name in a band the same colour as the girl’s hair, I think this contained the name nicely and brought the image together and balanced it out so it was no longer bottom heavy. I continued the orange band onto the spine and the back page. I think this makes the back and front of the book work together as a cohesive piece. I decided to use my hand writing for the blurb so that again it looked like a note that someone had written. I think that it balanced out the use of digital and hand written text nicely making it look professional as opposed to a hand made DIY book cover. After adding all of the text to the back cover  I decided that it did feel a bit plain and it needed something extra. I decided to then add some doodle style motifs referencing themes in the book, I decided to keep them in the orange accent colour that I used throughout the design. 

Overall I am really pleased with how this book cover turned out because I think it looks really modern and quirky and I would probably pick it up if I saw it on a bookshelf. I also really like the illustration style, I would like to play around with this style a lot more in the future. I feel as though it is a real risk for me to enter this as a cover as it is so modern for a story set in the 60's but who knows it could really work as a re brand of the story and bring it into the modern day. I think that a cover like this would really attract a new audience to the book. If I was to re do this project I think that I would maybe spend a little bit more time making sure everything is tidied up and polished to an even higher standard But I am quite pleased with how professionally it has came out compared to previous projects. Personally I really think that I am improving with creating a more professional finish compared to last year, I think that I can keep up with this and be even more meticulous to create projects with the an even higher standard in the future.  

Module evaluation Part 1: Carrie's War

At the beginning of this module I was pretty overwhelmed with the amount of amazing briefs that we were given to choose from. It was quite a challenge for me to choose which one I wanted to do, so I thought really hard about what will benefit me most in terms of experience and opportunities that I could gain from it. I narrowed it down to the traveling man zine and the Penguin book cover competition briefs. After a lot of thought I decided that I can always work on zines and self publish them in my own time where as the penguin competition only comes around once a year, plus its only for students to enter meaning that when I leave university I cant enter it and I might as well make the most of it whilst I can. So in the end I decided to go ahead with the Penguin book cover competition. One thing that helped me to decide to do the penguin brief was the opportunities you could gain from winning the it or even getting short listed because it would definitely get you noticed within the industry.  I also thought that I would like experience in designing a book cover as I really love to read and it would be good to work alongside books in some way, in the future.

When I started to look more into the brief, the next thing to do was choose two from the three books to design a cover for. The three choices were: Oranges are not the only fruit, Freakanomics and Carrie's War. I decided quite quickly to do Carries War (the children's book) and Oranges are not the only fruit (the adult non-fiction book) because these were the two novel style books and I thought that I might enjoy reading the books anyway. Ill start with evaluating my Carries War book cover because that’s where I began. I started off reading the book pretty quickly, I soon discovered that the book was about evacuated children in World War 2. Although I enjoyed the book and it brought me back in time feel as though the story definitely lacked a gripping storyline especially for a children's book. All of the previous covers that I looked at didn't really represent the story at all because they showed scenes of war and destruction in London where none of that happened within the book. After reading the story it struck me that it was going to be hard to make such an empty story look exiting for children and make them want to pick it up off the shelves. Then it hit me, I thought why not just create the creepy woods that the children walk through throughout the story because that was the main part of the story that had a lot of description.

I started out with a few sketches of how I imagined the cover in my head and thought it would be appropriate to include the two main characters and the house that the children are going to (Hepsibah's House.) I wanted to create a woodland scene with lots of depth, my idea was that this would draw children looking in the bookshop into the scene and make them want to read the book. To make the image look really interesting and unique I decided to take my illustrations to a 3D medium. I have done this before and I really liked the look that it gave but it wasn't finished to that high of a standard so I thought that I could really push this technique and really improve it I looked at a few different artists for inspiration such as Hari and Deeppiti, they were a big influence. I then created illustrations of the trees and people that I wanted to make the scene from and I cut out a tester using cartridge paper and it took me a pretty long time to get all of the intricate detail that I wanted in the trees, after realising how long this was going to take I thought about my options. I was then given the idea to try out using the laser cutter. I really liked the idea of using it and was really exited to learn a new tool that I could use to create 3D illustrations. I then created my illustration outlines digitally using Adobe Illustrator. I then booked a session to use the laser cutter and the technician helped me to achieve what I wanted. I really, really love the finish that the laser cutter gives and it helped push my design to another level I was very pleased with my outcome. I wasn't planning for it but the laser cutter left slight scorch marks around the edge of the cuts and I really liked the colouring that it made on the white mount board it added real character. The look of the scorch marks also referenced war time really well because there will have been a lot of destruction and devastation from bombs and of course fire so there would have been a lot of scorched debris around at this time in history.

After using the laser cutter the next challenge for me to conquer was for me to photograph the scenes to create the final images. This was by far one of the hardest points of creating this book cover. As I don't have that much experience with photography or lighting it was very hard to work out the best way to light the scene. After a lot of trial and error and some help from the photography tutors we finally figured out the best lighting angles, and it took a while but in the end we got the perfect shots. I think when we got the lighting right it really transformed it to a magical scene and drew you in. This is exactly what I wanted. If I was to have any criticisms it would be that the photograph on the front cover was lit slightly differently than the front because it was harder to lighting right as a lot of shadows were being cast onto the house. I am still really pleased with the result though. After deciding on the two final images I then took them to Photoshop to edit the levels and the hue/saturation. I wanted to make the dark bits slightly darker and the light parts lighter, I did this by editing the levels. I then added a warm orangey/yellow hue to the whole image to make it look more inviting and warm. I think this really helped the image to look more like a children's book because it had a nice nostalgic look to it, It reminded me a bit of when you think of a happy memory and in your head the image has a whole warm glow to it.

Finally I added the Title, author name, Blurb and spine to the book design in Photoshop. I feel as though the front cover looked really nice and the title and author really completed the look of the front cover. I then added the blurb, this was also laser cut but it was engraved into a square piece of mount board rather than fully cut out of it. I really liked the look of the laser cut blurb but i'm not too sure how well it worked on the back of the book because it was very square and it was covering up a lot of detail of the trees. I tried other ways of placing the blurb and I tried a few ways of improving the look of it like changing the transparency and size of it, I even tried making it look like it was amongst the trees but a lot of the text was not readable. I think I will just have to deal with the way that it looks because a blurb is a very necessary part of a book back, even of its not the best designed part its one of the most important elements so I feel that its not that big of a deal that it stands out quite a bit because it does its job. 

Overall I am really pleased with how this book design has turned out, I was not too sure initially how good I would be at creating a book cover that worked with the story but I feel that I really have. Its hard to tell if it will be what the judges are looking for but I certainly think it will be unique against other entries so it will hopefully catch a few eyes. If I was to do this project the only thing that I would change is the slight issue with the blurb on the back of the book, I think I would plan for it to fit better within the image. Other than that I feel as though I have completed this module to a pretty high standard with no real major issues. I even feel as though my time management has even improved as I have finished everything with a little bit of time left to tweak things as opposed to working right up to the deadline. I also managed to complete it whilst keeping on top of all my other written work, which I am quite proud of.   

Evaluation

Once I had chosen the album that I was going to base my project on (Aventine by Agnes Obel) it was time to think of a concept that was fit for the purpose, to help me narrow down and refine my ideas. I feel that the concept that I chose was fitting for the album choice because of the artist’s influences and heritage, it helped me a lot with thinking of an idea for the album cover.  The concept gave me a point of reference that I could always go back to if I got stuck with what image I wanted to create.

I then moved onto artist research, this helped me greatly because it helped me realise what I am capable of stylistically and helped me to understand how I work. Throughout this project I realised that I am not much of a graphical illustrator like most Scandinavian artists, because of this I looked at a broader range of artists so that my influences would work for my style and me.  

After researching a large range of subjects surrounding the album I decided to go ahead and start creating my images. This is the point where I realised that I would find the colours of Scandinavian art hard to work with, I also noticed that the art I was creating [fig.1&2] looked to innocent and happy to fit in with the themes of Agnes Obels slightly dark album. This forced me to take a few days to stop and re evaluate what I was doing and I’m so glad I did that  because I came out with much stronger art work in the end. The colours that I decided to use in the end reflect the autumnal feel of an enchanted forrest. I feel as though the deep reds and oranges [fig.3] help to darken the image a lot fitting the album a lot more, the same stands for my poster design. I used water colour and digital art to complete the piece, this is different to most scandinavian art but it is a medium that i am more confident in using so i am pleased that i stuck with my instinct because the piece came out really nice. 

For the product that I decided to screen print the material, this allowed me to learn and try out new techniques. I am really happy that I used this technique because I think the final outcome of my product works really well. I found the process of screen-printing hand and complicated because my memory was really tested with trying to get all of the correct and I made a few mistakes a long the way but overall I enjoyed the process.  

I feel as though i completed the editorial piece [fig 4] in a very fitting style and it fit in with the editorial research that i did. I was pleased with the outcome of the editorial because i had never really tried out this style before but i really enjoyed it and it came out exactly how i imagined it in my head.  

The positives of this project for me were how I presented my final body of work because I feel it is the most professionally presented project that I have ever done. The presentation is usually where I fall down and that greatly effects the overall project, this time is the first time I have been proud to present my work. I also think that I have managed to do branding well throughout this project as all of the items I have created are cohesive with each other and look like they are part of the same family.

In the future I feel as though I could be more thorough with artist research because although I feel like the research that I did helped me out a lot, if I had completed more of it, I could have refined my ideas and style a lot more. I could have also created work that was more linked to the style of artist that I was looking at. I could have also improved my analysis of the album cover in the beginning and that would have saved me having to re evaluate my ideas half way through therefore saving me time overall.

Overall I am pleased with my work but areas of my research and development could have been improved. I feel as though I have improved greatly compared to previous projects but there is still room for further improvement.

Fig 1 

fig 2 

fig 3

fig 4