Evaluation of work in Text and Image

Text and Image Evaluation

Overall, I have learnt a lot from this unit and I am pleased with the work I have produced.

Editorial Illustration

I really enjoyed this unit. We went on the day trip to Poole at the beginning of the course to take photos and sketches of our initial thoughts and reactions of the town and quay itself. I tried to take photos of shop signs with interesting fonts and shapes as well as pictures of buildings, people, the quay and interesting things around. Looking back at the photos that I taken I noticed there was a lot of “sea-side” photos of iconic items around like anchors, ropes, ice creams, seagulls, chains and boats.

The research went really well, I looked at lots of different newspapers, editorial illustrators and illustrations and so on. I thought in detail about what I wanted my editorial illustration and what message I wanted to convey. I used bright colours to attract younger people to the newspaper article, and juxtaposed this idea with using old typical images like anchors, old lamp post etc. I wanted to do this because its bringing “the new back to the old”, making vintage more interesting and get more younger people visiting Poole and getting rid of the typical “old person” stigma that Poole has.

When doing our research for this project I created a small piece of work, which was drawing with paper. I created this by getting a bright pink piece of paper, which suited my idea of using bright colours, and cut out shapes of ropes, chains and lamppost from it using a scalpel so that I could create more detailed work. I then put these cut out shapes onto a black background to make it really stand out from the page. I think it looked really good but if I had more time I would have liked to make things look more detailed like the rope image.

With my editorial illustration, I think that I portrayed my message pretty well because of the colours and images. I think that the colours look brilliant and it was exactly what I wanted in my head. I think the images I created using acrylic paints, and cutting paper using a scalpel. I think these images came out really well; especially the ice cream because I think it looks realistic. The one thing that I think I could do to improve my piece would be too add more things to the page. I think if I did a picture of a seagull or ropes or chains it would get rid of some of the leftover space.

Letterpress

This unit was the first time that I ever used a letterpress machine. I enjoyed creating the words using the printing machine and thought it was a really interesting experience. I used the word Boundary from the brief and using letters in different shapes and sizes to make the words look interesting. I also used different colours.

When doing the research I saw a lot of amazing pieces of work that people in the industry had created and I really liked the way that these people used colour to make amazing images, and also the way used to create shapes using the words that relate to each other.

This gave me the idea of using the word boundaries and putting these words into a square shape, making them look like they are bounded. I wanted to use black and white because I think it stands out well on pages and makes it more “in your face”. I messed around with words in different colours and decided that black and white looked much better.

I think that it looked really well but after finishing it, I think that I could have done more detail or maybe used a little bit of colour as well as black and white. I think that by doing this, it would have made it more interesting to look at and therefore it would make it more eccentric.

Promo Print

This was my favourite section of the unit by far. I really enjoyed learning Quark and trying something completely different.

I created a booklet on myself, and the work that I have created in my time on the course so far. I really got into researching and creating initial designs and ideas to put into the booklet and I think I came up with a pretty good design. I wanted to keep the booklet sleek and chic so I found a black and white design that I really like and replicated it using some canvas fabric and black acrylic paint, then scanned it into the computer to use. I like the vertical look of the design and thought it would make a really funky background to use. I set myself lots of grids and rulers across the pages so that I could make the book look as professional as I could. I used the Bauhaus font to make my titles and changed my photos of my work to black and white in Photoshop as well as changing the resolution and converting it to CMYK.

I did a lot of research on my favourite designer called Neil Duerden who is a British designer famous for his eccentric designs and illustrations and is fairly well known in the English design industry. I showed a lot of images in my sketchbook and looked into his life in the industry.

I think that the booklet looks brilliant and I really think it came out well, however I would have liked to add more funky designs to it and maybe if given the chance make own font to use which could have been quite interesting to do.

Visual Equations

I found this unit difficult at the beginning because I found it really hard to think of a suitable idea that was good enough and still fitted the brief. Eventually I finally thought about being in the airport and seeing the HSBC adverts, which have a lot of visual equations in it. I did a lot of research of these different adverts and decided that I wanted to do the same thing yet make my adverts more controversial and about issues that are happening around the world everyday like racism, sexism, discrimination against religions, the Iraq war and so on.

I ended up making a series of 6 images using the same style, layout and font as the HSBC adverts so that they are instantly recognisable to people who see them, but I want them to be quite shocked by my adverts.

I think that the images came out really well and my idea was a good idea. I really enjoyed creating these images because it gave me a chance to speak my thoughts about some issues that are happening in the world, and I enjoyed creating something that was controversial and different.

If I were to do it again I would have liked to create more images, and maybe more controversial images often. I think I could maybe add some more to the advert and make it more obvious that it is the HSBC adverts somehow.