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[guinartvr]

Conceptualising: The beginnings

After getting your brief, the first mockup of anything is actually pretty important to get out early and as fast as possible, so that we all know that we’re on the same page from what was discussed verbally. The mockup is a great indication of whether things have gone completely off on a different tangent, which is pretty rare unless I wasn’t listening, or didn’t ask enough questions (a skill which i think is also worth expanding upon in another post). But most of the time it will serve as a common ground from which to tweak things in the right direction, and add on more if necessary.

At this stage, there will be several rounds of mockups, as much as it is needed to reach the final design. The duration of this stage depends largely on: 

1. Guai lan level of the boss* 

2. Effectiveness of communication

3. The time I can spend working on it 

*A recent freelance boss decided to potentially completely scrap whatever work done so far (months worth of work) on a strange whim

As it is with every design-related project from archi school to personal works, I start throwing out my feelers for inspiration. While I had a tutor that refrained from being influenced from other designs in the initial design stage, citing that he didn’t want to be polluted by prevailing ideas, as a fledgling designer, I always found it useful to be open to inspiration from many different sources. We’re not here to reinvent the wheel - it’s not called stealing, but building upon the work by multitudes of others that have already solved problems that you have. Of course plagiarism is another thing altogether, but as the title of that popular book goes, you have to ‘Steal Like An Artist’. 

Also personally, I usually would already get a cloudy fog of the design/image I want to achieve from the design brief, and having references help me to refine and put down on paper what I want in my head. The end product is always pretty different from the images I found, because of the nature of how we will always process things differently from others, and the unique circumstances of each design brief. So don’t worry about ‘copying’ because it’ll definitely end up as something original if you process it thoroughly.   

Some of the places I usually get ideas from:

Tumblr: Accumulated over years of following good blogs that reblog fascinating art, design, photography and even random fan art blogs.

Instagram: I follow museums, artists and fashion designers that are a godsend on my feed. I’m personally interested in space-stuff so I follow NASA and Space X, which are also pretty inspiring. 

Google: Once again, my best friend, a good keyword search brings up great stuff to work from. 

Design books, flyers etc: Been consulting books lesser recently, due to the lack of funds to buy them, but i’ve always collected flyers and printed material that I like, especially when i’m overseas, and I find that I refer back them a lot. It’s good to get an idea what a printed design looks like in physical form.   

Behance:  A dangerous hole to go down - it’s an endless repository of great design.

On that last point, it is very easy to go crazy and find that you have a hundred tabs open and crossed-eyed by the end of a two hour session of searching. Make sure you give yourself a time-limit. Also inspiration really comes from anywhere, so even if you’re out, set your mind free. A silhouette of a tree might spark an idea of organising a system of modules etc. Go out, do other stuff, like play the piano or watch a movie or exercise (eurgh) and you never know what comes out of it. Personally I find that doing mundane tasks like eating, bathing, brushing my teeth, doing the laundry, washing the dishes, cleaning my room, really sets my brain on fire. 

Just as a last point, I’ve just completed the design for the concert poster, and I had taken inspiration for the art from the texts of the repertoire. It’ll be too lengthy if i go indepth, but here are some my scribbles, taking out lines from each piece, or in some cases, lines from the larger body of work that the text originally came from.

Hopefully this has been somewhat insightful!

[guinartvr]

We’re almost done with the poster

About 3/4 done with the poster, and i’ve hit that point again - where I step back and realise something isn’t quite right, and I feel afraid. I’ve spent a week researching and conceptualising it from the pieces in the concert programme (my favourite part tbh), then another week doing up various sketches and finding reference material, and then finally taking the plunge late last week. I think I actually generally have a problem taking concept to reality (just reflecting on my turbulent thesis journey), and tend to lurk around in the concept-stage until a deadline forces me to take the leap to the actual design.

What I’m worried about, looking at the 3/4 done poster right now, is that it will look too amateurish and like a badly-drawn kiddy fan-art, when the look I was going for was refined, ethereal landscape art. To pinpoint several key areas would be the trees (I honestly didn’t really give the trees area much effort to be honest) and the overall colouring. Hopefully, the typography and framing would be able to help it along as well. Also this style is quite a large deviation from the ‘brand’ image that I had cracked my head over. How will it all fall together??? I don’t have the answers right now.

I’m currently wondering if the problem lies in that the style that i decided to go for, is inherently ‘un-refined’ because it’s hand-drawn. Or because I didn’t have much practice drawing in this style anyway (once again overestimating my abilities). 

Well, thankfully I have a very good and old friend from way back who is currently a brilliant game artist, who helped me with some re-colouring advice. And our director has actually already approved it, which somehow doesn’t reassure my feeling that something ain’t quite right yet. 

Unfortunately I don’t have time to work on it tonight, so tomorrow it is. Time management is tricky. Looking forward to solving this one. It’ll have to be done by Saturday either way!

I also actually have the next post on ‘Conceptualising: The beginnings’ already done up, but i’ll probably save that for later. Till the next post!

[guinartvr]

Creating a visual identity: An amateur’s foray

Create an amazing new look for the choir! I said. Make us look more professional! I proclaimed. Then I sat down and realised the gravity of the task I had undertaken, and wonder why I make such lofty claims without considering the extent of my skills (this is a recurring theme). 

However, google has proven time and again to be my trusted companion. I found ’The Brand Questionnaire' on a local graphic designer’s website, which was a great place for me to start from. I first answered the questions myself, then asked our music and artistic director some of the questions as well, especially those that he would be able to answer better. Here are some of the more useful questions that helped me develop our new identity.

What is your brand name? What is the meaning behind its name?

An obvious question to start from, but it was important as I drew the main visual concept from the meaning behind the choir’s name. 

Why do you want a new brand? What do you want your new branding to accomplish? What problems do your brand face?

As it is in every aspect of life that we want to improve, evaluation of what was previously lacking will inform how to implement the necessary changes. Answers to this question led to knowing the image that we wanted to achieve.

What are 3-5 core values of your brand?

This helped to refine the takeaways from the previous question, and the keywords will serve as good reminders in managing the output on social media.

If you imagine your brand as a person, what personality traits would they have?

As absurd as this question sounds, and as painful as it was to ask our director (painful because I was trying very hard not to laugh while he answered it), it gave a personal dimension to the understanding of our identity, which would be great if it was able to be communicated to the general public. After all, no one wants a cold and inhuman brand. 

  So armed with a whole lot of information, the next step was to digest and translate them to actual design. I will talk about the initial design process in the next post, but for now I will outline the stages: 

  1. Receive design brief (in this case, ask questions to set parameters) 

2. Find inspiration 

3. Sketch (always pen/pencil on paper first, for me personally) 

4. Implement sketches on digital 

5. First mockup 

6. Multiple rounds of mockups

7. Final design 

8. Print/Publish/Upload/Send/Launch to Space 

For now we’ll take the website as an example of how the stages work. We had decided to start on our website as the priority output due to the large amount of work to be done. I started out by sourcing websites that I liked, and also asked friends if they had any websites to suggest (expanding the web of inspiration is always good). I roped in partner in crime for the website as I had zero knowledge of coding (only basic html that I used to faff around with on geocities), and we discussed with our director what were the features he wanted. I shared with him some of the websites I had found, pointing out the key features of each example that would be great for us.   

From that discussion, I went through a lot of sketches and sourcing for inspiration, where point 2 and 3 are interchangeable and happening together. Notably for the website, I always had the image of ‘lines’ in my head floating around, inspired by something I  remember seeing on the Berlin Phil website while watching one of their live stream from the concert hall videos, but ignored it for a few days until it pushed itself to the front again. At this point I googled to see if I could find that exact image again, but couldn’t, so I concluded that my brain had self-formulated a new image from the Berlin Phil identity, and decided to tackle the idea head-on. All the while I still have the design brief very much in mind. 

Then I made a mockup on photoshop, and also managed to throw in a very rough version of the logo, went through the rounds of mockups, and arrived at the final design. Currently it’s over to my partner in crime, who will then teach me how to operate the website. After she is done, we still need to check the website itself before making it live. 

Also I should mention this, though it’s a rather boring part of the website process: gathering the necessary photos and text needed. It took pretty long, longer than I expected, and tbh the text is still incomplete at parts. But I will think of that when the time comes (probably a dangerous way of thinking).   

Interesting takeaway point from designing the website so far is the process of tailoring the website to suit our needs. While the examples we found are all pretty snazzy, we couldn’t wholesale copy a particular website, because they had different priorities and identities. 

Also since a website is live, we also had to think about how can it be updatable in the future, and how can it accommodate more information about us as we go along. Design-wise, I really had to think hard about ensuring the design remains relevant in the future, and also communicating the identity we want it to be.   

I’m not sure whether it will be successful at achieving that, but there was something comforting that I read earlier today while doing more research on branding. It said that even after the design has gone out into the world, it’s worth observing if it’s effective in meeting the goals that were set out for it, and if it isn’t, there is room to make changes where necessary. It was comforting because at least I know that even professional companies out there admit to not hitting the target on the first go.   

The next post will be about 'Conceptualising: The beginnings’, and I will be using the example of designing the logo. Actually come to think of it, this post’s topic of creating a new identity (the noob way) will probably be a prevailing topic over the next few posts. Hope this has been somewhat informative!

[guinartvr]

Introduction

Hi there!

I’ve decided to set this up (in my old, rarely updated art blog) as a means of sharing my design processes. Since this is a public blog, I’ll refrain from mentioning any names and specifics, and content will be focused on the design aspects. 

While this blog may include other design projects in the future, currently most of the posts will be about my duties as publicity officer for a choir. 

Over the next week I’ll be covering these few topics in separate blog posts:

- Creating a visual identity: An amateur’s foray

- Conceptualising: The beginings

- Time management the creative way

And as we go along, I’ll be updating as I encounter hiccups or breakthroughs, which would hopefully serve as an entertaining but somewhat educational read. 

While currently this project is rooted in the graphic design realm, I come from an architecture design background (you can peruse my archistudent blog right here) and my process is largely influenced by my experience in archi school. While I might make some unconventional turns and decisions different from how a graphic designer would work, I believe the creative process isn’t that different after all. 

So hopefully I stay true to updating this bog regularly, and I hope you’ll join me for the ride. ;)

[guinartvr]

Birch wall with a singular bluejay  - 2x3m mural, 2013.

making-of.

[guinartvr]

'Always believe in yourself. Do this and no matter where you are, you will have nothing to fear.' 

Watercolour portrait of Baron Humbert Von Gikkingen from Whisper of the Heart (耳をすませば) and The Cat Returns (猫の恩返し). More photos and description of process [here].

[guinartvr]

Logo for pandarocketship.com - paper cut post-processed in photoshop. 

[guinartvr]

[guinartvr]

‘Entropy’ - acrylic and nail varnish on paper. Inspired by The 2nd Law: Unsustainable and Isolated System by Muse.

[guinartvr]

‘Tread Softly’ - acrylic on paper, inspired by Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, By Yeats.

[guinartvr]

‘Airy Bathroom’

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‘Ah Tutti Contenti’ - inspired by a dream.

[guinartvr]

Sonobe

I designed this as a header for a student-initiated tumblr blog that documents the life of an architecture student. I made and photographed sonobe units and random geometric shapes folded from origami paper. I then exported each image into photoshop and arranged them in a stream-like manner, parting in the middle to reveal the blog title, photoshopped to look like words cut out from a piece of white paper. Underneath it is a cutting mat - an architecture student's essential in model-making. (Archistudent.tumblr.com)

[guinartvr]

'Sorrow' - inspired by Mika's Songs For Sorrow EP. 

[guinartvr]

Hand-Made Christmas cards 

1. 'Forest with Scary Branches'

2.  'Not Your Typical Forest'

3. 'Christmas at Home with Gaudy Decorations'

[guinartvr]

Pages from my scrapbook. More here.

[guinartvr]

"It seems to me there's so much more to the world then the average eye is allowed to see. I believe, if you look hard, there are more wonders in this universe then you could ever have dreamt of." - Vincent & the Doctor

Vincent - Book kingdom inspired by Doctor Who.

See the making-of here.