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Me Designer Poster: Assembly

The main idea for the design of this poster came from the time I have spent studying 3D design and animation. I thought of working on a design that showed 3D elements in a 3D world but also allowing room for 2-dimensional objects in order to create a contrast between dimensions.

Since the phrase “Me Designer” was the general theme of this poster, I decided to make it the central piece of my design. Therefore, the arrangement of the elements allows for the “Me Designer” letters to stand out from the rest of the composition. Although the colours used in the letters are the same as the in rest of  the poster, the letters are still visible. I wanted the typeface to be in 3D, so I added details to the letters to create a 3D effect. I also placed them vertically so they looked like vintage neon letters or LED letters that are normally seen in store signs.

For the composition I drew inspiration from Escher and Victor Vasarely’s artwork. These two artists worked with perspective, repetition and patterns, which are some of the design principles commonly used. That is why I initially placed squares evenly distributed on the poster, vertically and horizontally, following a grid system, and then I changed the size and position of the squares to add dynamism to the design. By doing so I also applied some of the Gestalt principles: Similarity and proximity, this is because the squares are elements that look similar to one another, and since they are close to each other they are also seen as one group despite their relative size or position.

To create the 3D world that I previously mentioned, I transformed the squares into cubes, although not all them, so that the contrast between 2D and 3D could be observed. By creating these cubes the design obtained a depth effect. To complement that effect, I created a background that contained the world. This background resembles a sort of portal where the rest of the elements appear to be coming from. I added a grid that covered all of that background element. I did that in order to create a wireframe effect; this is because wireframes are normally used in 3D design programs and are very important to see the polygons that make up a 3D model.

Finally, for the colour palette, I decided to use a combination of analogous colours and complementary colours in order to create a more balanced look for the design. I chose a combination of blue, purple and green tints and tones, but I also used a yellow-orange tone to create a contrast and highlight certain areas of the design.

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Me Designer Poster: Idea Development

The main idea that I worked with was designing a poster with 3D elements in a 3D world but also allowing room for 2-dimensional objects in order to create a contrast between dimensions.

This concept refers to the abilities and knowledge the 3D designer needs to have in order to work with basic concepts and ideas that need to be transformed into 3D designs.

Mind Map

For the composition I drew inspiration from Escher and Victor Vasarely’s artwork. These two artists worked with perspective, repetition and patterns.

I wanted to add details to the letters so that this created a 3D effect. I also thought of placing them vertically so they resembled vintage neon sign letters.

The objects that I used were cubes as these are probably the first basic form to start modelling in 3D, however, to be able to observe the 2D to 3D transformation I added squares and frames which are the simplified 2D versions of a cube.

I also wanted to include wireframe textures as wireframes are normally used in 3D design programs and are very important to see the polygons that make up a 3D model.

MoodBoard

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Colour Theory

In this exercise I used one picture of city buildings, to outline the basic shapes and then painted them using different colour combinations based on the Colour Theory, that explains what colours can be used or combined with other colours when creating a visually appealing design or composition.

The colour groups applied in the following compositions are as follows:

Primary colours

Secondary colours

Tertiary colours

Analogous colours

Complementary colours

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Gestalt Principles

In this exercise I used simple shapes to illustrate the Gestalt principles used in design:

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M.C. Escher and Gestalt Principles

In this exercise I’ll be explaining how the Gestalt principles are applied in Escher’s work, by analysing 2 of his artworks.

In this first work we can see immediately that the first principle that stands out is Similarity. This one is very common principle in Escher’s work, as he used to use a lot of repetition in his artworks, such as in his tessellations. Similarity in a design means that objects that are similar tend to be perceived as part of a group. In this case, the leaves on the pond share common features, some of them in terms of size and colour, some of them are also similar in terms of shape. The reflected branches at the background are following similarity. Proximity is seen in the branches too, as they are close to each other and can be perceived as part of a unity. Proximity is also seen in the leaves, despite the changes in size and shape, as they are placed very close to one another which gives us the impression that they are all part of the same group. Finally, Continuation is seen in the branches too. Our view of them is obstructed by the leaves, however the lines that form the branches lead us to below the surface of the pond where we can see the fish which stands out by itself from the rest of the composition.

In this artwork, the Gestalt principles can be clearly seen as well. We start with Similarity, as all the fish are similar in terms of shape. However, within the major group, there are secondary groups of fish, half of them white, and half of them black. We can also find similarity in the size of the fish. The smaller fish are all alike despite the difference in colour, the same thing occurs for the bigger fish. Proximity is clear as well, we can see the that whole composition is part of the same unity, despite the how the characteristics of the objects vary within the artwork and this is because all of the elements are placed neatly together in a tessellation. Continuation is created by rows of fish the move from side to side, leading the faces of the bigger fish, as well as rows of fish the move towards the tail. But the most amazing use of the Gestalt principles here is Figure and Ground. He used fish to create a tessellation where the fish figures separate from the background while other fish are formed in the background a different colour. At the same time these rows of fish act as scales of the bigger fish.

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Visual Structure

Every design is based on a visual structure. Whether is intentional or not, designers place their objects or elements in a composition in particular ways to convey a message or to highlight pieces of information within a design. The following are 8 different ways to organise objects in a design, which also allows the designer to create compositions that are visually appealing due the way they are structured.

As we can see, these are all possible choices when organising the elements of our design. It also makes it easier for designers to place certain elements that might require more attention than others, or to establish connections, interactions and relationships between elements as well as the intended hierarchy. Understanding and using use these structures provides more flexibility to the designer in the design process. We can experiment with various structures until we find the one that more accurately organises the elements and the information that make up the messages we are trying to communicate through a particular piece or composition. Ultimately, these structures provide the designer with a system that they can follow so that they can convey ideas or information in a particular order to the viewer.

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Creating Typeface

I wanted to create a font that could be used in creative works such as movie posters or as a title sequence in a video or film. The concept for this design was inspired by two fonts, Anaphora, which is a font that has thin strokes for its letters and serifs at the end of each stroke, and Merienda, a dynamic sans serif font with strokes that resemble those of a brush. This last font is the one I used as a base typeface for the typography I designed.  

I started by designing the stems, ascenders and the diagonal strokes of the font. Merienda has slightly slanted strokes, like the ones used in italic types, so I decided to use a similar pattern. I also wanted to keep the brush-like strokes of the original font to give it a stylised look. I used the shapes obtained from the golden ratio exercise. First I selected 2 of the rectangles with same length and different width to create the stems. For a dynamic look I modified straight longer sides and created curvy sides instead. The flat top and bottom ends of each stem were changed to create a more elegant look. I changed the top ends into spurs. And the bottom end was made wider and a bit rounded to eliminate the flat look, this way creating the terminal for some of the letters. These  stems were used in letters with vertical and diagonal strokes such as “A”, “M” or “N”. 

Letters and numbers that had curved strokes or counters were harder to design. I used the circles obtained in the golden ratio exercise. I managed to create the curved strokes and the bowls for letters such as “o” “d” or “b”. In this font I wanted the contrast between thin and thick strokes to be medium, therefore the transition from thick to thin in the curved strokes and the bowls is not as marked as in other typefaces. Finally, the tails and descenders of letters such as “j”, capital “R” or “q” were made using the initial stem used for the ascenders. The tails required a little bit of extra work to create a nice shape that was curved and at the same time kept the original features of the initial stem, in order to maintain consistency in the design.

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Fonts

On the internet we can find many types of fonts, for different purposes and to convey different types of information or emotions in the audience. Most of these fonts can be applied in different designs according to the situation, so it is ultimately up to the designer or user to pick the one that better suits their needs or their expectations. Nevertheless, there some fonts that are just really good and well designed, while there some others that are not very good.

I looked up some fonts on the internet for this analysis, and I was able to find some that I really liked and some others that wouldn’t be my first choice when picking fonts for a design.

Fonts I really liked are:

Anaphora: https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/anaphora

Cagliostro: https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/cagliostro

Merienda: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Merienda

Fonts I did not like:

Ofissina: https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/ofissina

Kirang Haerang: https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/kirang-haerang

Righteous: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Righteous 

The first three share a common characteristic, and that is that all of them have a consistent design. They also are pleasing to eye, as they seem to have a well-thought-out design that took care of the correct proportions, the distance between letters and sizes of elements such as descenders, ascenders and x-height. On the other hand, the fonts I did not like weren’t very visually appealing to me; although they also had consistency in their designs. To better understand this, I will compare two of these of sans serif fonts: Merienda and Kirang Haerang by using the same word, “Typography”.

The first impression I get is that Merienda clearly has a lot more consistent elements than Kirang Haerang. The first one maintains the same width and height for stem of the capital “T” and the stem and ascender of the lowercase “h”, although this last stroke is in fact mirrored horizontally in the latter. The descenders of the “p”, “g” and “y” also keep the ratio from the stem of the capital T, and they are all sitting on the same descender line. This makes the typeface design look tidy and consistent. On the other hand, Kirang Haerang has different widths for the main strokes of each letter. The stem of the uppercase T is considerably thicker than the rest of the letters. Even the bowls of the “o” and “a” are very different. I suppose this is the intended design, however, I think it is not as visually appealing as Merienda’s design.  The descender line of Kirang Haerang is not quite clear either, as the descenders of the letters “p”, “g” and “y” sit on a different line.  Finally, the strokes in Merienda’s letters are very elegant, they look like brush strokes, thinner in the middle with thicker, soft terminals. Kirang Haerang’s strokes are mainly straight, but they also look wobbly. Although, it is a consistent feature in the design, it gives the font a messy, not very nice look.