Assignment

For this assignment I am to plan out, design and produce new promotional material and a campaign which entices people to come into Waterstones and read and buy books. The main thing to think about for this brief is the tone of the message behind the campaign and how I plan to advertise it. Books are a huge part of people’s lives but they are being pushed out of the world by the digital age of Kindles and e-readers. The main idea behind this exercise given is to bring people back to the books and into the book shops and to bring back that feeling that people get from going into book shops and buying a book; which is not the same feeling as reading an electronic book.

First I decided to mindmap all the different things that I associate with Waterstones:

Then I took to Google to find images of different Waterstones shops interior design.

One of the big things about Waterstones is what it looks like on the inside. Clean walls, high shelves, and most iconic of all, their fancy pants stair cases.

I took a trip to the Waterstones local to me and in Bracknell, which isn’t the biggest store they have but its big enough, so I could really experience what it’s like to be in a Waterstone’s store. I used to go into Waterstone’s all the time when I was a little younger because things like Kindles and e-readers never used to be a thing and people actually went and bought books, and when studying my GCSEs and A-Levels, I preferred to have a copy of the book myself rather than use the school textbooks because people draw in them and have no respect for their property. I used to love coming into Waterstones because there is a certain atmosphere of relaxation, and there is a calm aura to the store. I had a look around at the types of people in Waterstones reading books or having a browse and they very respectful in keeping their children in check and making sure they are on their best behaviour and having respect for other people reading in the store, and being quiet. Referring to my mind map, I wrote about the smells that this place has, and one of the very strong scents when you walk up the stairs in the Bracknell branch, is coffee. Coffee and cakes, although more coffee than anything. Waterstones having a coffee shop in their stores makes the experience all the more relaxing. Not just the customers in the shop but the staff in the shop are very aware of their surroundings, keeping quiet as they walk around and talk to other people, but the staff are very helpful even when they’re trying to be quiet.

In terms of shop layout, they have all of their popular books and genres, as well as bestsellers and popular authors, at the front of shop on shelves or stacked on separate tables in the middle of the room. They also have their stationery and gift cards and gadgets near the till points and at the front of the store. As stated earlier on, the Bracknell branch isn’t the most visually appealing Waterstones store, so I think a trip to my next local town, Reading, is in order.

Waterstones is a good way to meet and greet authors and stars and celebrities of their favourite books and autobiographies, in which they sign the book for you. On the other hand, it is clear to me why people would much prefer e-readers and Kindles to read books on because you can find any book you like by any author you like in the touch of a button, or screen. They can also be a lot cheaper to buy online because you are just paying for an application, for lack of a better word. Whereas if you bought the actual book, you would be paying a little more because of the process that the product has been through to reach the customers hands, and the designer’s hard work behind the illustrations, embossing, and designing etc. I also think that tablets and e-readers would benefit an audience who travel a bit, but also wonder why they can’t just take a book along with them either. If you were to sit on a train it wouldn’t matter if you were holding the actual book or the tablet that displays the actual book. You’d still be reading it. Although, now I think about it, the book might be a little too big to be “travel sized” in which a person who commutes to work everyday or has to travel up and down the country a lot would benefit a little more from an e-reader.

Waterstones was formerly called Waterstone’s (with an apostrophe) was founded by a man named Tim Waterstone. The first branch was opened in Old Brompton Road, London. Their logo and signage have come a long way in terms of how the company shows themselves off to the world.

Thes posters are the first batch that I made. I am not sure I like that both the logo and the word Waterstones on the poster. I did it with the invitation because it is a formal invitation and even though the logo is on it, it would give it a sense of professionalism having both the logo and the company name on it. For the posters, I think that having both on there is a little bit of overkill so I changed it to these.

I changed the word Waterstones to the logo of Waterstones because people know the logo and it is quite iconic. I played with the colours of the W and the decorative bar at the bottom of the page.

I prefer the posters with the glittery W, but I don’t like the blue bar at the bottom. So I took the bar away.

And I really prefer these posters. One thing I also did with the invitations is change the colour of the W for Waterstones from blue to glittery, and I think the glittery ones look better.

For my Waterstones campaign, I have decided to go with the Christmas theme and use the Harry Potter books as an advertising point and to give it a theme, to get people to come into Waterstones. My ideas were to create a series of posters that would go on the sides of bus stops, and bill boards to get both pedestrians and drivers to see it as they go past. I think this is a good idea because I find when I am driving I have a quick scan of the posters on the bus stops and remember a certain element about them, and when I see it again I will remember that I saw it. This is the kind of effect that I would like to have with my posters.

Another idea that I had was to go towards to stationery/gift side of Waterstones and create a candle range that smelled like things in a book shop. So for example, a new book smell, or the smell of coffee, or cake, or even coffee cake. Smells that people associate with a book shop could be made into a candle range that were only sold in Waterstones so people would have to go in there to buy them.

Another idea that I have had is making cards for all occasions to sell in the shop, for Christmas, birthdays, get well soon, and many others, by using minimalism in my designs because sometimes, less is more. The most they do for things like birthdays, is gift cards which look like the image below.

What I would like to do is go that little bit further, because if someone is buying a friend a book for their birthday then they wouldn’t want to go to a completely different shop to buy a birthday card.

I started by going straight into my Candle research for a Waterstones branded candle range. I took Yankee Candle as a good example for the way the names of candles attract the attention of customers. I chose to take Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Game of Thrones as advertising points for people who enjoy the fantasy genre of books. First I chose Lord of the Rings.

One of the most iconic things about Lord of the Rings, is a ring. It is the first thing I imagine, so I took the image of a ring and a glitter texture to give the label a bit more depth. The first label I did was for The Shire which was in Yellow because that is where the story kicks off so I chose the colour yellow for this label because the ring is yellow. (Gold)

I think that the glittery parts of the ring gives the label some more texture and it is the first thing I see on this label so customers walking by will see the ring and then read the text which will automatically make them a conversation topic.

I then chose to put the label onto a PSD mock up, and I am really pleased with the outcome. However I couldn’t make a decision on what colour the label should be – white, the colour of the glass, or a lighter shade of the text on the label.

I think that the first image is the strongest in terms of what it shows off and how much doesn’t disappear within the design. The second image makes the text and the image of the ring stand out a lot more, but the label is too white and sticks out a bit too much for my liking. The last image, I think isn’t very strong in terms of what disappears within the design. Where the blue text is on quite a dark blue background the ring loses colour and the text is quite difficult to look at because of the similarity of the colours. So I think the first image will be what my candles will definitely look like.

Here are the candles for: Waterstones Range: Lord of the Rings

Following the previous design, I did the same with Harry Potter smells including obvious ones and quoted ones. The quoted ones are spearmint toothpaste and parchment based on what Hermionie says in the 6th book (The Half-Blood Prince) when she is describing what the love potion makes her smell.

Here are the designs for: Waterstones Range: Harry Potter

Lastly I did the same for Game of Thrones except I didn’t change the colour of the icon in the middle like I did with the others. So here is the Waterstones Range: Game of Thrones

This post is to show all of the candle products in one place, organised by genre of candle, and what a possible print ad would look like showing the whole range.

I like the straight idea because it shows each candle individually and you can see the names and the designs of each label. You can tell that they are of the same range because they all have very similar labels to each other – the only thing that is different is the colour of the candle. To pick the colours, I thought about where the places are and what colour I associate with the place. For Rivendell I chose blue because it reminds me of the word river, I chose red for Mt. Doom because it is a firey mountain. I chose yellow for The Shire, because that is where the ring starts out with it’s new owner, and the ring is yellow/gold. I chose green for Fangorn because it’s a forest. It is where we meet Treebead, who is an Ent that lives within Fangorn Forest. I chose white for Gondor because of it’s iconic white tree which symbolises the city, and finally I chose black for Isengard because that is where Saruman, a dark wizard, rallies up his orc armies ready to march onto Fangorn to destroy the Ents and the forest itself.

This is a different arrangement of the candles because sometimes just laying them in a line is too boring and it doesn’t look as appealing to people. I tried a group of candles, where you can’t see all of the labels 100% because some people may look at it and wonder what the other scents are, which will then entice them to come into the shop to buy and look around at the other ranges of candles.

I did the same with Harry Potter. I chose some locations and iconic things about Harry Potter that people would remember and would know that it is about Harry Potter without the logo having to be on the candle. I chose the four common rooms as scents and chose the corresponding colours to go with them. I also chose the location of the dark forest, where Harry, Ron and Hermionie venture with Hagrid and Draco to search for a dark creature in the first book, which is also mentioned in the second book when Harry and Ron go to see Aragog for help about the Chamber of Secrets. I also chose lillies because Harry’s mum’s name is Lily and people would string the two together. Another thing I chose was Butterbeer. I chose this because it is a beverage served in the wizarding world and you can also purchase it at the Harry Potter Studios in Watford, although it is movie based, so it has become quite an iconic thing from the franchise. The last two things I chose were to do with a quote that Hermionie says when talking about a really strong love potion. The love potion makes the person smelling it smell the things that attracts the person to someone, and she says she can smell parchment and spearmint toothpaste.

As well as creating a group of candles, I also made a line of candles so that there was a different composition. You cannot see all of the candle in this image but you can see the majority of it which makes it seem less mysterious.

The last group of candles I chose was the Game of Thrones series, which I have watched on the TV but not read the books. The way I went about picking the colours for each location was by googling the name of the place and picking the colour that appears the most in the area. Also having watched the TV series, I know what the places look like so can associate a colour with it. It also works because of the word iron and the colour grey. Winterfell and the colour blue. The wall and the colour pale blue, like ice and snow. Kings landing because the sigil for the Lannisters, which is where they are located is a red lion so I chose red.

Again like the others, I chose a line and a group of candles as a composition to see what they would look like. There is a different number of candles in each genre so it would look different in each composition depending on how many candles there were.

Something I chose to do and see what it would look like is find an image of each location and use it to make a print ad for the candle. The only issue with this is that the images are based on the film of Lord of the Rings, These posters could look really good if they weren’t based on the films but it’s difficult to get the feel of the location across with just the books. This is because people don’t read a lot of books anymore so the people who have read the books will understand where the place is matched with the candle without having to see the films. But someone who has seen the films, will only recognise the place because they’ve seen it in a film, unless they have watched the films religiously.

This is a print ad for the Gondor candle.

This is a print ad for The Shire candle.

Something else I chose to do was make some birthday cards that come with vouchers inside that offer free books to the receiver of the card. I thought that for certain cards you could have certain vouchers. For example, 17th birthday cards could come with a voucher for the highway code, or any books to do with driving and learning to drive etc. I made one aimed for boys and one aimed for girls so that there is a range of gender based cards.

To go with the card range that I am making I chose to make some cards based around exams. These cards could include vouchers for revision textbooks or subject textbooks for the person’s new college or university course. They could also get money off depending on how much they come in and spend. This could be a good way to get a younger audience to come in because if more younger people come in then they might be inclined to get into reading more books, or even buying revision textbooks and books about their course. They may be more likely to bring their families in to see what books they might like and use the money off vouchers to get their friends and family into reading more books and buying things like cookbooks and game guides etc. Again there is a range of cards that are aimed at both males and females so that there is a choice.

Exam results for girls

Exam results for boys

You passed / congratulations for boys

You passed / congratulations for boys

This is the last of my card collection. I chose to make some Christmas cards based around the Harry Potter Christmas Jumper style. For Christmas in the first book, Ron receives a jumper that is knitted by his mother and it has his first initial on it. So by taking a jumper texture from google and using some layer effects in Photoshop, I made a nice embossed letter with a texture overlay to make it looks knitted. I also chose to make a glittery text and write Merry Christmas using it. I think it really completes the Christmas card, rather than having just the letter and the jumper texture without the Merry Christmas or the Merry Christmas and the jumper texture. I chose the letters H for Harry, R for Ron, and W for Waterstones.

I found a mock up PSD file for cards so that I could put the cards that I have made onto it to see what it would look like as an actual card. I am really happy with the outcomes because it really shows them off in a way in which a flat image cannot. I think that I could do with having a few more cards in the range because there are more people than just 17 year olds that would like a book voucher for their birthday or for another occasion, for example children who like to read, or are in a book reading contest.

17th male

17th female

Merry Christmas H – Harry Potter

Merry Christmas K – Harry Potter

Merry Christmas R – Harry Potter

Merry Christmas W – Harry Potter

Congratulations

Congratulations female

You passed male

You passed female.

This is another style of card I would like to add to the card range because of the different ages included. There are more people than just 17 year olds who have just got their provisional license, and people who have just passed their exams. There are other people of other ages that enjoy reading, and that should be being encouraged to read at a younger age so that when they are older they have the ability to read at a more advanced level and do not struggle when they want to get into a career without any disorders that affect their reading.

10th

14th

15th

17th

18th

Again, I chose to use the same mock up for these cards because they show off what the cards would actually look like as a product.

10th

14th

15th

17th

18th

These are the styles of the vouchers that would appear in the cards. I think that these have a good affect on the viewer because they emphasise the most important parts of the deal and the information given. In yellow we have the deal in a nutshell, so 2 for 1, 10% off 20% off 50% off etc. I think that this is good because it draws attention straight away with the big shapes and bright colours. The red circles around selected text adds to the image a little bit because if it were just yellow and black it would look too dull, but with the added red it makes it looks bolder and it points out the main parts of the deal without the yellow star.

2 for 1 on revision guides

10% off

20% off

10th off students

50% off

Free highway code

Buy 2 get 3rd free

I chose three different sentences to put on these posters. I took a picture of a fireplace where I work because it looks really cosy and Waterstones overall is a cosy shop. What I did was put the W in the bottom corner, and pick a nice script font to write over the top of the image. The text is centered because of the composition of the photograph. I chose to put the fireplace in the bottom right corner because it would give me room to work with the rest of the poster. If I made the fire in the center of the image it would draw attention, but it being in the bottom of the page people will look at it then they will look up at the rest of the page.

Minimalism

In this lesson we looked at minimalist movie posters! (and minimalism) Minimalism is basically designing with the smallest amount of information and still being able to get the message across, which is probably why we looked at movie posters because they should also still be recognisable. There are different ways a poster can be made into a minimalist design piece because of the context of the film. For example, Harry Potter would be recognisable to an extent because of the recognisable imagery from the films, like his scar and glasses. However the wands, and owls, and smaller things like books and even the philosopher’s stone from the first film, would most likely be recognisable by people who have watched the films.

We were given the task of creating some minimalist movie posters of our own, and I chose the Harry Potter book series to do. I will do them with and without the book title to see if they have the same effect without the titles. Here are both.

I really liked doing the minimalism posters for the Harry Potter books, so I chose to do some other films rather than books to get some inspiration for some other ideas for my brief. I chose Django Unchained for my first one.

This is probably only clear to people who have watched Django Unchained because this is the suit that Jamie Foxx wears when the character of Dr King Schultz says that Django is a free man and gets to choose what he wants to wear. So he chooses a blue velvet suit with a white and frilly collar. Here is a screenshot from the film.

Other one that I chose was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. I chose to create a silhouette in the famous mirror that the queen looks into, and the reflection in the mirror is a silhouette of the witch that she turns herself into to give Snow White the poisonous apple.

I also chose to make the letter O in the word snow an apple with a bite out of it, to give some concept to the poster.

Typography in the Environment

Using typography in an environment gives the image a lot more depth and gives it a narrative. By using objects for type and making type to put in an image, we give the image a story. Here are some examples.

One designer called Jung Lee, uses typography in the environment using small sentences and placing them in quite dark places where people wouldn’t be likely to come across them. Here are some examples of her work.

We were to come up with a quote from a book, or from a film that is based on a book and create an image using typography to give that quote a story. I chose 5 Lord of the Rings quotes and imagery associated with them, which were:

There is only one Lord of the Ring.

Shadows, rings

What about second breakfast?

Bowls, spoons, egg shells

Death is just another, path one that we all must take.

Skulls, graveyard, long road/path, ambulance

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

Clocks, sundail

Fly, you fools!

Insects, bugs, bees, flowers

Here is my design for one of the quotes, I took an approach to it which isn’t contextual to the quote but I think it would make sense to people familiar with Lord of the Rings.

Change for Life

I retried my Change 4 Life advert and I prefer it a lot more than my other one.

Print Process

When it comes to your printing process in Graphic Design, always make sure it is exactly what you want, or what the client wants. There are five steps in a printing process and these are:

Proof Reading

A proof reader is paid to proof read documents and find mistakes within design, journalism, etc. Always make sure you get someone else to proof read your work for either yourself or your client otherwise it will just come back to you, creating more work for you.

Soft Proof

A soft proof of a document is classed as a digital PDF file or on screen in whichever format you can provide it in. This way it saves trees and doesn’t waste paper.

Hard Proof

When you are sure that everything is perfect with your soft proof, and it’s been proof read with any adjustments, you are ready to print a hard proof. This is one single printed copy of the design or article to check the colours, the DPI, the type and it’s legibility and that the layout is right.

Separations

Separations are printed pages with the default print colours (CMYK) of the image printed onto each page. One page for Cyan, one for Magenta, one for Yellow, one for Black. By printing these pages it shows us how much of each colour is used in a single article or design. However, it doesn’t show us any colours that we use that aren’t CMYK. The person printing will have to buy that particular coloured ink to print in that specific colour, otherwise it will come out a completely different colour using a mixture of CMYK and will not be the exact colour you wanted.

Client signs off the proof

As soon as the client signs off the proof, any problems that they find within the design is now down to them to fix. They signed to say that everything is perfect with the design you have provided to them so if they then find a mistake, it is their own fault for not checking anything before they signed to say it was all okay.

Common Mistakes

There are many mistakes that a designer can make when it comes to designing something to print. The easiest mistake to make is the difference between RGB and CMYK colour modes. RGB is a colour system in which the light is used to mix the colours, so the more light you add, the brighter and more vibrant the colour is. This mode is used for designs that are to be on screen and stay on screen because that’s how most devices work, whether it be PC, Mac, Android, iPad, etc.

CMYK is a colour system where inks are mixed to create lots of different hues, which is like mixing paint – the more ink you mix the darker the colour will be. The spectrum of colours that can be created by light is a lot bigger than the range you can create with ink, so the design software has to be set to CMYK. If you don’t set it to CMYK then your design will come out in completely different colours to the ones that you think you are using on the screen.

Set the correct resolution when setting up your document. On the computer the resolution alters how large your image physically looks on screen, but in the print resolution it determines how sharp and crisp the designs will come out. 72ppi is the resolution used for most images used on the web but for print designs, 300ppi is the standard resolution. You can’t scale a design up in resolution so if you don’t set it right the first time, you have to start all over again.

Kerning, proof reading and spell. Typos do suck, and fixing mistakes is easy on the web. But if you just received over 1000 prints that you designed to find a spelling mistake staring you in the face every time you looked at it, you would be really annoyed at yourself. Mistakes in print can’t be changed when you send it off to print, so take time checking for mistakes, grammar, and spell check mistakes that spell check hasn’t picked up and for ugly kerning.

Blurb Book Creator

Blurb book creator is a plug in you can download for InDesign to create your own layout and design you own book for a company named Blurb, who professional print your designs into book form. This is what the tool looks like:

It gives you the options to choose how many pages you want and you can even choose which size you want the book to be, which matches all the sizes on the website. It even tell you how much your book will cost. This will prove to be handy because if you find that you want to add pages to your production at any time, then you can and you can see how much the price will go up by depending on how many pages you add.

This is what loads up when you choose all your settings. It gives you two layers to start with – one is for you to place your design onto, and the other is for the instructions on how to get the best of your design using this tool. It shows you which lines mean what and where you should put body copy and any images if you don’t want them to get trimmed when the publication gets printed.

Calligrams & Pictograms

In this session I looked at pictograms and calligrams. A pictogram is a pictoral symbol for a word or phrase. A calligram is a word or piece of text in which the design and layout of the letters creates a visual image related to the meaning of the words themselves.

This is my version of a calligram, which has it’s good sides and it’s bad sides. I think it’s good because it actually looks like the shape of a banana, but I don’t like it because of the shape of the B. I think that it’s something that can be changed, but I don’t like the letters when using the text wrap tool in Adobe Illustrator. I did a calligram last year which had a 3-Dimensional element to it because of the Pucker & Bloat effect in Illustrator.

These are my examples of pictograms; They represent the sport curling and I was given this topic as a challenge. I was not allowed to look at pictograms before creating them to see if I could come up with something all by myself. These are the results.

When you google curling pictograms, you get this as the image search.

So I was fairly close, except I didn’t use a person or stick figure in my pictograms. You don’t have to have a person in your pictograms all the time. Just look at airline pictograms.

Not all of them involve people.

As a group we were given the task of choosing a Change 4 Life campaign poster and redesigning it in the form of pictograms or calligrams. I chose the couch to 5k campaign poster because you can use the words literally to speak to a younger audience by using the denotation of an object as a pictogram to speak to quite a young audience.

What I did was create an icon for a couch or sofa, wrote the number 2 and 5K and gave them all white fills and black strokes so that they looked like the sofa. This is what I came up with, after I had added the Change 4 Life logo and the appstore logo and the NHS Choices logo.

It’s not the most colourful thing in the world, but maybe that could be seen as a good thing. Sometimes when it comes to children’s posters the colours contrast so much that it makes a piece of design hard to look at. I think black and white is a good choice because it’s consistent and in print cases, cheaper to print. Change 4 Life have another colour scheme for their logo in which the background is bright yellow. So I could change the whole background to yellow, but that would make the icons difficult to focus on because of the sharp contrast between colours.

Stencils

Stencils are things that can be projected onto with a medium. They are quick and photo-realistic. Some words that come to mine then I think about stencils are:

• Positive & negative space
• Banksy
• Graffiti
• Silhouettes
• DIY, do it yourself art
• Protest
• Typography
• Simplicity
• War

Banksy is a graffiti artist located in Britain. His street art combines dark humour with graffiti by using a stenciling technique. He was influenced by another artist called Blek Le Rat who was one of the first graffiti artists in Paris and has been described as the Father of stencil graffiti.

Looking at the West Side Story posters, there is a difference in the way which they have been designed.

The one on the left has more of a musical ring to it because you can see people dancing in all of the images in the words, but it looks too musically. The one of the right is made up of stencils, and even though there are two people dancing on the stairs, it doesn’t look very musically. The poster on the right has a distorted typeface which makes it look a bit more gritty, kind of like the musical itself, because the stencil typeface changes the atmosphere of the design as a whole.

I was given an exercise to create a formal design using the medium of stencils as the design feature; like the shadow typography but with a stencil. The task was to create a fair trade tea poster for a company or brand. I chose Starbucks because the logo is quite complex and because of the squiggly lines in it, it would prove a challenge and would also look good as a stencil.

Here are the pictures that I took of the stencil using tea leaves, salt, and flour.

I took one of my pictures of the stencil and chose to make the photo a little bigger by using the clone stamp tool to merge the colour of the background onto the new artboard.

This made a little more room to add text to the picture; I think the colour of the background is a good choice because it contrasts well with the tea leaves and makes the logo more crisp. I was thinking of changing the background to a hessian texture but I wasn’t too sure on how to do it, so will seek help when I have my next workshop.

I then added text and the fair trade logo to the image. The text looks far too crisp where I have just added the layer on top so I will sort that out by using the blur tool and blurring the letters so that they sink into the background a little bit. I got the colour for the letters by using the eyedropper tool on different parts of the tea leaves to find the right shade of brown for the lettering.

This is final image, I’m really happy with it and its effectiveness as a formal piece of graphic design. I will be experimenting with the other methods of stencilling as well to see how they look as a formal piece of design.

I googled Starbucks fair trade adverts and they all look very similar in terms of colour scheme and design but this is one that I liked and was similar to the ones that I have made.

I like this because of the brown hessian bag texture for the background and its colour scheme for lettering is using natural colours like plants for the coffee beans, as the advert is talking about coffee. These are my three adverts or formal design pieces I made by using stencils and by stencilling with tea leaves, salt (as it’s a little heavier than sugar and is finer), and flour.

My favourite design is the one with the tea leaves because not only is it relevant to the design’s intentions but it looks good because there is a lot of depth in the tea leaves where they have piled up when being stencilled. The colours are good in terms of contrasting and even though the face of the logo isn’t as detailed as I would have liked it to be, it is still recognisable and I really like it.

I liked doing the Starbucks stencils so much that I decided to play around with the coffee beans from the Costa Coffee logo by using the same materials to create a stencil. These are the pictures of the Costa logo using tea leaves, salt, and a new medium of tea staining.

My favourite is the tea leaves because they add so much depth to an image. I think that the salt one is good as well but where the salt is so heavy on the paper, the paper bends when the stencil is being removed so the detail is taken away from the logo. The tea staining was very tedious because I used thin paper as the stencil for it, so the stencil tea bled a little bit but I still think it looks really good. With a little contrast tweaking I think the photograph will look really good in terms of visual aspects and colour contrast.

I decided to take a typographical turn to the word tea and stencil out the letter T in different typefaces. Sans-serif, Script, Serif, and Stencil. My favourite was the Serif typeface because of the decorative ends of the letter. Here are the photographs I took.

These were using tea leaves for the stencil, like I did with the Starbucks and the Costa logos seen in previous posts on the Design for Print page.

These were the salt letters, again like I did for Starbucks and Costa in previous posts. I didn’t take pictures of the other two because they were not very good and the stencil kept messing up as the salt was so heavy.

These are the tea stained Ts. I really like the two in the top image (Stencil and Serif) because they are have more to them to just one shape. The Script typeface is very chunky so easy to create as a stencil using almost any medium. The Sans-serif typeface is very thin but also is just two lines going in different directions that have been connected. The Stencil type is almost made up of different shapes because of the parts that are disconnected, and the Serif typeface has the decorative tips that make it a challenge to make look good through stencilling.

Shadow Typography

Shadows can be associated with light, ghosts, film noir, mysteries, puppets, sunsets, darkness, and many more things. An example of meaning is light because it’s positive, meaning sanctuary and protection. By doing some research behind the word “shadow” I found that according to Jungian psychology, otherwise known as Analytical psychology (which is a school of psychology that originated from ideas of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung), a shadow or a shadow aspect could refer to either an unconscious state of personality which the conscious ego cannot identify in itself or the entirety of unconsciousness, which means everything of which a person is not fully conscious.

I looked into shadow in typography, which gives the typography a level of 3 Dimensional depth when using different lighting, i.e; different angles of light. The first exercise I was given was to use shadows as a design feature. I was asked to choose from three book titles and create a book cover design with author information on the front, where shadows are the main design feature. The book that I chose was called The Long Road. I wasn’t sure whether to use a block caps font, script font, or a normal sans-serif with caps and lower case.

I started out with a Serif typeface but it didn’t quite work because of the contrast on the bar of the T so I gave up on the idea of the serif typeface.

I then tried a normal sans-serif typeface with both upper and lower case letters. I didn’t like it because the letters weren’t very sturdy and the contrast between some of the letters fell apart.

This is the sans-serif with a shadow. I quite like it although the letters do not stay upright enough for my liking.

I then tried a block capital typeface, which I really liked. It was easy to cut because the edges are straight and they have a thick base so they stand very well on the paper. I think this will be the typeface that I use.

I cut some more and shined a light on the words to change the light’s angle and I’m really happy with the Bebas font. Its thick, bold, eye catching and sturdy. The next thing I need to decide on is the image that I want to use for the background.

I discovered that I hadn’t tried out a script typeface for the shadow typography so I chose to do this. I think it worked quite well but it doesn’t quite have the same effect as the Bebas font.

I added some colour to it to see what it would look like with a natural shadow behind it and it doesn’t look half bad. I think that adding colour makes it look more 3 dimensional because the paper that is flat is white, and the raised part is coloured.

After doing this I started cutting out my final font and took some pictures with one light source and two light sources. I think that the angled pictures give the text more of an ominous effect because they aren’t center of the page or photograph.

 

I added colour to this one as well to see what it would look like. I chose red because of the post-apocalyptic story, and red connotes blood and death and gore (it just seemed necessary). I like the red text because as I said before with the script font it looks more 3 dimensional. With the added shadows as well it just finishes off the image.

First I loaded the picture in Adobe Photoshop; this is the original photograph of the typeface.

Next I changed the levels of the photograph. This makes the darker parts of the photo darker and the lighter parts of the photo lighter. This made the paper almost the whitest it could be, and I changed the darker parts a little bit so that the shadow was more visible.

Then I changed the vibrance and saturation of the photo to make the red lettering brighter so that there was more of a contrast between the colour and the shadow.

I then searched Google for a picture of train tracks and rotated the image to match the direction of my text, and I blurred the edges of the lettering so that it became merged into the image instead of just sitting on top.

I then added the author’s name on the bottom of the artboard to finish of the piece of work. I think that the outline around the text makes it stand out just that little bit more.

This is the final image that I created. I think it looks really good because the title of the page really stands out and I like that the rails and the text are parallel to each other.