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These are my three final posters that I made on Photoshop in my Monday lessons. The first two are my screen printed versions that I was able to make by splitting up the two layers of the original Photoshop posters. These posters all share the same design style whilst also having their own unique features. The colour scheme on the posters are relevant to the movie they represent. They were all made with either halftones, thresholds or both. These are design techniques inside of Photoshop that can look really good. They also all have a background text design that differs slightly in each poster. In conclusion, I am happy with all three of my final posters. I think they all look great with the use of halftones and thresholds. I like how I have been able to keep them all consistent whilst also giving them a bit of diversity. I like the colour schemes as it makes me instantly recognise the movie they represent. I also think the posters look great as screen prints (besides the fact that the printing failed slightly!)

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This is a PSD mockup of my full zine which includes a front cover, three full page spreads and a back cover. The reason behind using a mockup is that It can be helpful in many ways for a company or brand’s product. For example, I can get a clear idea of how my zine will look as a physical product. This is a great way of finding out how your product will function in real life. For magazines, I can get a clear look at the positioning and layout of text and other small details. Because of this, I was able to alter the positions of my text boxes to avoid trimmings and cut-offs. Its also a great way to showcase your work in a realistic fashion. As a final product, I have to say I am very happy with my zine. All of the pages that I’ve created look unique and different from one another yet they all share consistent designs. It's great to see all of the individual pages that I made come together to form an actual magazine.

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This is my final title sequence for the movie “Ready Player One”. There are a few changes in here that I have made since posting my title sequence process and review. This includes the use of cinematic black bars, changes to some of the glitch animations to make them appear smoother and the inclusion of audio. For the audio, I have added glitch sound effects which I muffled to make them less over-the-top and the song “Faith” by George Michael which slowly transitions in. In conclusion, I am happy with the outcome of my title sequence. I like the approach that I went with and I believe that this could be the actual opening sequence for the movie.

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These are my page designs for my InDesign zine that I made during Tuesday lessons. I have created five total pages which consist of a front cover, three full page spreads and a back cover. These were all created in Photoshop and then transported into InDesign. I took inspiration from popular magazine companies such as Empire and Total Film along with some zines from skilled designers on Behance when designing all of the pages. 

The front and back cover have a consistent design that looks simple yet professional. I left quite a bit of open space and spaced out the information across the entire page. Theres not too much nor too little to look at. To improve the design of the cover, I used techniques such as making text appear as its behind an image which seems to work very well. I chose a unique colour scheme of white, orange and blue which contrast off of each other very well. The blue of the background links to the film that is being presented and was specifically made a darker shade so that the white and orange combo can pop more.

The design is consistent throughout the three inside pages with the only differences being in the layout and imagery. This design choice helps me make the pages feel connected yet appear to look different at the same time. I used my artwork that I created a few weeks ago for the main source of imagery. These are made up of many different colours which help the pages to be more unique to one another. I took a different approach for the third page. As I was covering a movie from back in the 90s, I decided to go for a slightly olden design and layout which contrasts well to the two modern ones. The main colour scheme for these pages are simply a light colour on a dark colour and vice versa. This allows for easy reading whilst also keeping an eye catching design style. 

In conclusion, I am happy with the outcome of all the pages. If I had to say which one I am least happy with, I would go with the Saw page. It feels too similar to the Ready Player One page. There should be three main designs for the three inside pages but I couldn't pull a third one off. However, I still like the layout and design of the page. The other four pages look very good in my opinion and I can't wait to see what they look like when I put them on a magazine mockup.

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Alan Kitching

Alan Kitching is one of the world’s foremost practitioners of letterpress typographic design and printmaking. Alan Kitching is renowned for his expressive use of wood and metal letterforms in creating visuals for commissions and his own limited edition prints. He has had solo shows in London and Barcelona, and contributed to various group exhibitions including the Pompidou Centre Paris, the British Library and the Barbican Art Gallery London. Previous residencies and exhibitions also include his time at the HMCT in Pasadena, California, and an exhibition  at the opening of the Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft. In 1994 Alan Kitching was appointed Royal Designer for Industry (RDI) and elected member of Alliance Graphique International (AGI). Alan is Honorary Fellow of The Royal College of Art and Visiting Professor, University of the Arts London. Alan has conducted his workshops and given talks to industry, art schools and design conventions in UK, Europe, Australia and South Africa. Previous clients include: English Heritage, Borough Market, The British Library, Creative Review, D&AD, Dazed & Confused, The Guardian, The National Theatre, Penguin Books, The Times, Royal Mail, Saatchi & Saatchi, Scheufelen Paper, Clark's Shoes, Random House, AOL and the Tate Modern.

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These are some hand-made posters for the movie “Saw” that I made on Tuesday morning. I experimented with multiple designs over the course of the lesson and these are my favourite three. I went for a bloody / unusual theme for these posters as that matches the theme and genre of the movie. My favourite is the second one as it looks like the text is blood on a wall or whatever the background is. It is very relevant to the movie and has a unique style to it. These turned out looking pretty cool and I could definitely use them in another part of the project.

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Evaluation

During this project, I have learnt many new skills that have helped me create some of my artwork. For example, I learnt how to make halftimes and thresholds of images in Photoshop to create some cool artwork. I also learnt a lot of techniques for After Effects that helped me in making my title sequence. One of these is using the Effects & Presets tab on text or layers to create interesting animations. We have been expanding our knowledge of things from the previous year such as screen-printing and using Adobe InDesign. We learnt some extra skills for these that we didn’t know last year. These skills helped me produce some better screen prints and a better looking zine than last year.

I researched many artists during this project for inspiration. My two favourite ones that influenced me in a big way are Andreea Robescu and Alan Kitching. Robescu is very talented at creating collages combining photography and illustration. I took a lot of inspiration from her work when creating my own collage and I’m glad that I did. I think it turned out looking very good! The collage was one of my favourite tasks in the project and I don't think it would be as fun if I didn't have her amazing work to take inspiration from and motivate me. Kitching is very talented with his use of text in his artwork. He uses text in great ways to help improve his artwork. I love some of his designs and took inspiration from them. He influenced my use of text in my movie posters and helped me make improvements to my typographic posters. Even in future projects, if text is involved, I will refer back to him for inspiration and influence. 

Due to the couverage of three pretty different movies, I decided to have one main target audience of young adults specifically 18+. By using this target group, I’ve made sure that all three films will be appealing and I will be able to make my work consistent and share the same styles of design. For example, you can see that my three posters share very similar designs yet have noticeable features that separates them from one another. For example, the “Saw” poster has some unnerving imagery and randomly placed background text which links to the horror genre / film of the movie. The “Ready Player One” poster has fitting imagery and glitchy code-like text which links to the movie as a whole and the themes in it.

The main thing I would do, if given more time, is create multiple page and cover designs for my magazine. I am definitely happy with what I went with but it wouldn’t hurt to experiment with different designs. By doing something like this, I might have found a design that I like more than my final one. I also could have made a much better title sequence if I had more time to plan and construct. However, I think a limitation to how good the outcome will be is the 20 second time frame. For the movie posters, I feel like I wouldn’t have been able to make them any better if I had more time. I like the processes that I used and I like the way they all turned out.

Overall, I am very happy with how this project turned out. I enjoyed the stages we had to go through to get to our final goal and I liked the work I produced during this time. I enjoyed the use of blogs and the amount of digital design work we had to do. Some of my favourite pieces of work are definitely the InDesign zine covers & pages, the movie poster designs and the After Effects title sequence. These were all fun and interesting projects to create and present. My favourite part of the entire product was creating the magazine branding and designing the front cover. I also really enjoyed the large aspects of After Effects in this project as I use the software a lot at home. Something that I would really like to see us do in the future is some sort of motion design in AE. Graphic Design and Animation is a good combo which can lead to some great outcomes. These were my favourite aspects of the course.

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Karan Singh

Amsterdam-based Karan Singh creates illustrations, GIFs, animations, 3D motion graphics and more for myriad applications, from print to social media and TV, through to set designs for photo shoots, projections for art shows and musical performances.

While he studied interaction design, Karan has focused on visual arts and illustration for the past nine years, drawing inspiration from graphic design sensibilities and op-art minimalism. His particular skill lies in his ability to harness and manipulate the eye-popping powers of pattern and contrasting colours to create bold and playful imagery that, despite favouring flat colours, display a beguiling sense of depth and dimensionality.

Karan's clients include Instagram, Converse, Louis Vuitton, IBM, Nike, Apple, SK II, Porsche, Anya Hindmarch, IMAX, Southeast Asian Games 2019, Royal Exchange London, American Express, AirBnb, Intel, Samsung, Topshop, ASICS and the band OK Go.

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This is a collage of Photography and Illustration that I created on Friday. This was inspired by Andreea Robescu who does really great collages. I chose the movie “Ready Player One” and went for a popular / symbolic image from the movie. I went with a blue, black and white colour scheme as blue links to the movie very well. Having black and white colours allow the blue to stand out more and grab the viewer’s attention. 

To create this collage, I started by turning the main image black and white so the blue is able to stand out. After this, I drew some custom shapes and lines with a graphics tablet. I added paint drips to make the shapes feel realistic and hand-painted. Then, I made some black abstract shapes to stop the background from feeling too empty. From here, I added some paint splatters from a Photoshop brush pack in a blue colour to bring the whole artwork together. To finish it off, I used a brush preset of torn paper and made a large area across the artwork. I added text inside of it by setting a clipping mask. I created the text by using the same technique I used in my movie posters. I added one final piece of text at the bottom and it’s finished.

I am very happy with how this tuned out. I love the colour scheme I went for as it really brings the piece together. I like the paint drips and the paint sprays as it gives the artwork a physical feel. My favourite part is the main text in the middle. The technique I used looks really professional and simple. The whole collage looks very creative and abstract which is a style I don't usually go near. However, I think this artwork does look very unique and interesting to look at. 

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This is the front cover for my magazine “Cinezine” which was made entirely on Photoshop. Before I even started, I created a colour scheme of three colours on the website coolors. I went with a blue (which links to the movie very well) for a background and then a white / orange for foreground assets. I used one of the official movie poster backgrounds for the background of this cover. I turned the entire image into a threshold and made the colour scheme around the blue from my chosen colours. I created all of the text and imported assets like the logo and the barcode. I created a layout and added some depth by putting some text behind the main imagery. I applied the white and orange colour scheme to the text and logo in a simple yet good looking way. 

In my opinion, I am really happy with how this front cover turned out. The techniques I used in this poster really help it look professional, like an actual movie magazine. The colour scheme is very simple yet effective. It’s easy to read and navigate through due to the way I laid it out. There are definitely other designs I could have went with and I could have experimented with different styles but I am very happy with the one I went for. I started off going for a different design which shows all three movies on the very first cover. This can be seen above. However, I am glad that I left this idea and went with a much simpler and easier design and layout. 

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Andreea Robescu

Robescu is a multidisciplinary artist based in Barcelona. She grew up in a family of artists and her art experiments started during childhood and at age 12 she had her first group exhibition shocking the audiences with huge canvases of nudes drawn in charcoal. She continued her artistic journey but decided to follow a different path and pursue a career in Interior Design. After earning her Bachelor Degree she specialised in retail design, mainly window display visuals.Meanwhile she started working as a creative alongside her partner Andrei Robu at his branding studio where she focused on art direction for various projects. During this time she learned more about graphic design and gained valuable experience in working with corporate clients. This intricate but very creative road helped her rediscover the passion for illustration and art.

Her art breaks the boundaries of how the body and facial features are illustrated through photography in the fashion industry and by using a more relaxed and fun way of looking at things she expressed and embraced the human sexuality in a playful and empowering way. 

Bold colours and abstract shapes play a big part of Andreea’s work. She’s creating powerful visuals using everything from markers to acrylics, pencils and ink, sometimes even her bare hands making the whole process a very personal one. Her energetic illustrations attracted the eye of various global brands and publications.On a personal artistic level she is working to evolve towards different mediums like working at a larger scale, translating her artwork to moving images and creating art installations.

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This is my poster for “Trainspotting”  that I made in Photoshop during my Monday lessons. This poster has been made with two techniques using features inside of Photoshop. It consists of only two colours so it matches well with my previous two movie posters.

The first technique is creating a “threshold” image. To do this, I took the image that I cut out from the previous technique and duplicated it two times. I selected the top layer and went to Image>Adjustments>Threshold and set the level to “30.” Then, I selected the bottom layer and set the level to “60.” After this, I selected the top layer, took the magic wand tool (W) and set the tolerance to 0 with “Contiguous” set to off. I selected the white and deleted it. Finally, I selected the bottom layer and selected the black and changed the colour to a red. When I put these layers together (with the black layer on top of the red) it creates the effect that you see in the poster.

The second technique is creating background text. To do this, I created a new document and typed out the text. I duplicated the text in a line. I can customise this as much as I want to. For the “Saw” poster, I went with text, a big gap, more text and then a small gap. This creates an uneven design that links to the horror theme of the movie. After I had my text positioned correctly, I took the rectangular marquee tool (M) and created an area around the text. Then, I went to Edit>Define Pattern. I gave it a name and then clicked “Ok.” After this, I went back into my poster document and created a new layer. I selected the whole layer by pressing CMD + A and went to Edit>Fill. I selected “Pattern” in the “Contents” drop down box and selected my text pattern. To edit the pattern, all I had to do is select the parts I wanted deleted or changed with the magic wand tool. This creates the background text effect that you see in the posters.

In conclusion, I am pretty happy with this design. I am happy that I used multiple techniques in the design as that gives the design some variety and diversity. I am also happy that I got the poster to look very different to my other two and have its own unique style.

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On Monday, I did my second screen print which was the black layer of my “Saw” movie poster which was created in Photoshop. I had to screen print these black layers directly onto the red layers that I made during the last Monday lesson. To do this, I had to use acetate (taped down on the table) to help align the two layers up when screen printing. Once I had it taped down on the table, I had to screen print one black layer outcome onto the acetate. Because I did this, I was able to take one of my red layer outcomes and align it on the table with the black layer screen print on the acetate. From here I just kept screen printing my black layers onto my red layers until I had none left. These prints came out very good compared to my first red layer prints (which got messed up quite a bit as you can see in the final outcomes). There were no printing errors in any of the black layer outcomes which was really good to see.

These are the final outcomes of my first full screen print. This is the combination of screen printing both the red layer and the black layer . These outcomes have turned out looking not as good as I had hoped but I think they still look pretty good. I can definitely see some printing errors within the red parts of the outcome which take away from the overall artwork. I prefer the top outcome over the bottom one due to the overall effectiveness of the printing. For example, the one on the bottom has some very noticable printing errors (mainly in the body of the bottom character and on all of the text) and the two colour layers are not perfectly aligned, as you can see in the bottom right. The one on the top only has a few printing errors with the text on the top of the outcome. However, this outcome does seem to be aligned much better than the other outcome. This makes the whole artwork look better overall. 

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These are the first screen prints for my movie posters. I decided to start with the “SAW” poster over the “Ready Player One” poster and we were tasked with doing the colour version first. I did about eight outcomes in class during my Monday lesson. A few of them came out very bad and I decided they were not worth keeping. I had about five good outcomes and I've posted the worst and best of those five outcomes here. The outcome at the top is the best one I did on that day, whilst the bottom outcome is probably the worst one. The outcome of the printing varied due to either how hard I pressed down or how much paint I used. Aside from that, I think these outcomes look just as good as I hoped and I cannot wait to screen print the black and white versions to bring the whole thing together.

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This is some typographic lettering of the word “SAW” that I did on Tuesday morning. This was made physically with pens, pencils, graphite pencils, paint and stencils. This design was scanned into the Mac and put into Photoshop so that I could fix it up and edit it further. I am actually very happy with how this tuned out. I am normally not very good at any of the physical activities but I think I created some good typographic concepts. This can be used on the front cover or as artwork inside of my Indesign zine. This is just an early version with only slight adjustments in Photoshop which means I can always edit and improve it if I wish to, I can always add colour depending on what I do with it. 

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Zenzine - https://www.behance.net/gallery/54516227/Zenzine?tracking_source=search_projects_views%7CZine%20

Pixel Perfect - https://www.behance.net/gallery/18025937/Pixel-Perfect-a-screen-printed-zine?tracking_source=search_projects_views%7CZine%20

These two well-known zines that I found whilst browsing through bechance really caught my attention at first glance. They have really unique and creative designs that are like nothing I have ever seen before. There are plenty of features in these that I can take inspiration from when designing my own zine. 

Lets start with Zenzine. This zine’s front cover instantly caught my attention with its simplistic yet creative design. I knew instantly that this zine would have some great designs and layouts within it. I imagine the title of the zine was created from scratch without a baseline font which is very impressive as it looks great. The main piece of artwork is very abstract and is a great piece of artwork to present as the first thing you see. 

The very first double page spread of the zine continues this abstract design from the front cover in a very unique layout. I am a huge fan of how the designer put this page together. The stand out part of this page is definitely the illustrations that sit in front of the text and grab all of your attention. They, along with a couple small pictures, are the only source of colour on the page. The double page spread has a simple and clean black text on a white background colour scheme so having the extra wave of colour really works well. The artwork themselves are all very abstract and creative. I particularly like the black strokes around all of the colour as it contrasts well to the white background. 

I will definitely refer back to this zine when creating my own zine, specifically when I am working on the creative and design aspects. I don't think this zine will help me with my positioning / layout as the content in the magazines will be completely different, however I can still take some inspiration as the designer of this zine definitely knows how to make a well-designed zine.

Lastly, we have Pixel Perfect. This zine’s front cover caught my attention just like Zenzine did. This front cover is a lot messier than Zenzine’s simplistic one, however the design is very solid and effective in grabbing the audience. I can tell from the cover that the contents of this zine are going to be very creative and pleasing to look at. I love how the main text varies so differently and no one letter is the same. I also like how some of the words are in a blocky pixelated effect which links to the title of the zine. I am a fan of the pink graphics and black text on a solid white / light grey background colour scheme. 

One of the double page spreads of the zine continues the colour scheme from the cover, which keeps the entire zine seeming consistent. 

In conclusion, these two zines and their many different techniques and effects can really help me when designing my own zine. There is so much to take inspiration from and I don't think I will ever run out of ideas. I look forward to making my own zine in the future with inspiration from these great examples.

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I was tasked to research logos that I could use as inspiration for my own logo. I decided to research famous magazine company logos. These are examples I found that appeal to me. These logos are actually all vastly different from one another but are all designs that I think work very well and look great. My favourites are definitely TotalFilm, Empire and Film Stories as they all have the cleanest and simplistic appearence. I think the simpler the better in terms of a magazine logo. The SFX and Sight&Sound logos definitely look the weakest in my opinion, however I have seen them on their magazine covers in different designs which actually look great. My favourite out of all of them is probably the  TotalFilm logo as this one has a bit more complexity than the other whilst still looking very simplistic. I am going to take inspiration from these all of these logo examples when creating my own logo for my Indesign zine.