Unit 50: Information Graphics 'Creating Brand ID'

Important stuff to be reminder:

• Create a quirky new product
• Encouraged to make changes to existing by exploiting your own ideas and imaginative ideas

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1. Company name: Corporate brand ID (Umbrella company) [Umbrella Company: is a base / main company that creates more than one product in the franchise. For example, Kellogg’s made Cornflakes, Frosties, Rice Krispies, etc…]                           --- & ---
2. Product name: Logo and brand idea for a range of no less than 3 different products (produced by the umbrella company) [Logo: is a icon or sign that symbolises or represent the certain company.]

• Blank-Light Enhancement
• God-Mother Jeanette's Cauldron
• Call Of The Wild
• Mother Nature's Remedies
• Dr Default's Cavern
• Dragon's Cove
• Autumn Harvest
• Spring Cleansing Gardens
• Summer Falls

The meaning of the Company's name, 'Autumn Harvest' is that the ingredients of the products which including the traditional and natural techniques of the creation of the products, the name also represents the company's main time of the year to harvest different scents and medicinal fluids or leaves from the different species of plant-life in the season of Autumn, hence the titles of the products is always the main scent, herb or fluid from the plant

The type of Typography I am looking for is a woodland type of font from grass to plant like font, I can also experiment with other fonts to make readable and but not too complicated. I've looked into a Bonsai Tree in an Autumn Season phase, along with the font's leaves falling off from the font's text surface. This can be appealing to my target audience, but I have applied one too many leaves on the font, which may cause the font some difficulty of reading the font.

I’ve also looked for ground / earth style of Typography, so I’ve looked into shaped or marked soil fonts with pieces of soil scattered and gathered together to make letters.

I've found out that making the soil typography was very difficult for me to create, because it mostly spreads if the soil is too close up together, so I tried to go basic, but still appealing for the target audience, so I've started to look into different type of plant-like font styles to try out, and I've found a few, but most of them were too hard to read from and some too plain to use, but I've used one font and work around it, producing this:

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I'm looking for a natural-looking form or appearance, so I've looking into different things associated with the season of Autumn, such as plant life, leaves and wildlife that appear or are highly seen by that time of the year, but I've mostly looked into Autumn wildlife, like foxes, squirrels, birds, and hedgehogs, but I've decided that the logo shall be a hedgehog, since the head of a hedgehog reminds my of a Autumn Maple leaf's shape & form.

I've also experimented with the logo's colour palette by changing the colours of the outline on the logo, using colours that are inspired by the season of Autumn like golds, browns, yellows, lime greens, oranges, etc. I've tried to use two colours on the logo's outline and one colour for the hedgehog's eye, but I found out that the logo looked too overwhelming for the eyes, so I've tried to apply only one colour to the logo, but keep the hedgehog's eye at the same colour, so all of the outline is the same base colour except the eye.

  

I am working on a series of lotions along with natural references of common autumn plant-life and scents and their effects on the user of the lotions, I looked into different types of scents found in the autumn season and found these scents:

·      Sunflower Incense

·      Maple Leaf Incense

·      Daisy Incense

·      Rosemary Incense

·      Mojito Incense

·      Moist Grass Incense

·      Rain Mist Incense

Sunflower Incense Lotion (packaged in Vials & Spray Bottles) - Eye Strain Relief & Sight Enhancement: The sunflower smelling, eye relief lotion is to be applied around closed eyelids to helps the user to keep awake and decrease blurred vision from rough sleep or overworking on bright software or close-up lighting and is also to enhance eye sight from far distance if used around the eye area (with closed eyes to avoid eye irritation, it can also come in spray bottles.

Maple Leaf Incense Oil (packaged in Vials only) - Hand lotion for dried up or ripped skin: The Maple Leaf smelling, hand lotion is to be placed on both hands and rubbed in across the surface of the user’s skin, to relief skin irritation, protests any open rips on the skin surface, and prevents any future incidents of rips of the skin from dried-up skin being pulled.

Daisy Incense (packaged in Vials & Spray Bottles) - Nasal lotion for blocked up airways and internal throat irritation relief: The Daisy smelling, nasal lotion is a medicinal lotion, which can applied either around the user’s nose or around the user’s neck to help relief blocked noses, sore throats and painful coughing (ask a doctor if safe to apply), the Daisy Incense can come in spray bottles.

Rosemary Incense (packaged in Tubs only) - Face & Body cream: The Rosemary smelling, spot eliminating and facial care cream, which is applied along with water and must be applied on moist skin for best results, this eliminates any traces of spots and blackheads from the surface of the user’s  face and skin, it also lifts the natural colour of user’s facial area, this product comes with a finishing moisturiser that gives the user's skin a extra fresh looking glow the user's skin.

Mojito Incense (packaged in Tubs only) - After-Bathe Body Butter: The Mojito smelling, body butter, can be either applied on dry skin on the go, or on moist skin, freshly rinsed from a bath or a shower, this keeps the body moisturised.

Moist Grass Incense (packaged in Gel Bottles only) - Ear Irritation or Ear Infection relief : The Moist Grass smelling, ear-ache relief gel, can be applied either by rubbing around the shell of the ear or just outside the opening of the ear for better results, this gives the gel applied ear a loosening effect inside the passages of the ear or ears and dismisses any trace of irritation or tension on the surface of the skin or the inside the passage of the user’s ear or ears, (same as the Daisy Incense, ask a doctor if safe to apply).

Rain Mist Spray (packaged in Vials & Spray Bottles) - Stress relief & Calm collector: The Rain Mist smelling AND feeling, mood-reviving spray, can be used at anytime or anywhere, this vial sized bottle is great for carrying around and last for a long time in use wise. The effect of this product is very special; the particles in the spray loosen the tensed muscle inside the user’s face or on the user’s forehead, causing the levels of stress to drop and leads the user to a peace sensation, along with the moist scent of fresh rain.

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3. Packaging: This is including a mock-up of the product
&
4. Surface Graphics: Box, labels, surface graphics

The product size are going to be either the minimum size of a tub to the maximum height of a spray bottle, but the packaging was going to be a, since I had a lot of ideas of the boxes and packaging to be.
Tub:I've looked into shapes and forms for the body butter tub design, I had a few ideas like a plant pot, with the scent dropper as a sapling / sprout, a plant box, same as the plant pot design, the tub will have a sapling / sprout , even a bulb, but I chose the plant pot design, the tub had to keep a lot of body butter and the quantity of the contents.
Vial:I've also looked into vial packaging, so I've looked more around objects that are usually use outside or seen outside that is naturally form or custom by natural resources, then I found either the form of a bird house, the form of a lantern and a string handle to carrying with,(same way as the customer would carry the bird house) or the form of a traditional paper lantern, I've gone with the lantern as the shape is basic and is easy to carry with the string being the handle of the packaging. The vial itself will be around the form of a bug catcher (a jar which young children used to use to keep bugs in), it will have a tiny handle with a cork, but when the cork is pulled out, on the bottom of the cork is a dropper, which you can use for apply the contents without using any other object to place it on.
Gel Bottle:The Gel design along with the box packaging, was very difficult to find some forms for a gel bottle, so I've looked into gel bottle natural skin design, which contained some very useful designs like a plant root, growing around the product's container, or a pile of leaves in different colours, stacked on top of each other, or even leaf veins surrounding the product's surface.
Selection box: I'm also throwing in a selection box or boxes which will either a crate looking box package, a greenhouse-looking box, along with green plastic windows, or a cross-hatching basket, which will include the handle, but I'm having second thoughts about the greenhouse box packaging, since the packaging will be covered by plastic windows or the contents the packaging could either melt if it's left in a hot area or left in the sun for too long, but the cross-hatching basket design could be better, but I should be careful for what I could use on the selection box, to avoid any internal damage to any of the products inside the selection, and all of the products of Autumn Harvest are against animal testing, works along side with fair-trade, it's eco friendly, and most of the products are recyclable.

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5. Information graphics: Instructions that provides the consumer with guidance for product usage and inform about the benefits, (this is the integral part of the packaging)

Sunflower Incense:

For Lotion use: The lotion can be used on dry or moist skin (moist skin is recommended in use of this product), the user also must cleanse their hands before and after use of the lotion, after the user cleanses their hands, squeeze the bottle to collect the cream for the lotion bottle, place cream on the tips of one or two fingers, *close one eye and gently apply the cream on the closed eyelid and leave the eyelid for 30 seconds, then closed the second eye and slowly open the other and copy the same procedure* (but if the eye or eyes starts to be irritated or starts to get a burning sensation around the eyelid or the eye in general, immediately wash out the cream off the infected eyelid, if further pain occurs, please contact your local GP as soon as possible).
For Spray use: The spray can be used on either dry or moist skin (same with the lotion, it is recommended to use this product on moist skin), *gently dab the eyelid with a clean towel or cloth, then close the eyelid and spray the eyelid with the product (make sure the other eye is protected from the spray particles). After spraying the eyelid, leave the eyelid for 30 seconds, after that, copy the procedure for the other eyelid.*

Maple Leaf Incense:
For Oil use only: The oil is used only on dry skin (please do not dampen the chosen surface that you wish to apply the oil on, as the effect will not work properly within the repairing or protection process), apply a spot of the oil from the vial on a cotton bud or pad and gently dab around the damaged area of the skin or desired area of the skin. After applying the oil, throw away the cotton bud or pad and cleanse hands after use of the oil.

Daisy Incense:
For Vial use: The lotion can be applied either on dry or moist (either is optional), apply the lotion either on the user's nose (across the bridge of the nose for best results), or around the user's neck, after the use of the product, cleanse the hands after use. The contents can be used by pouring a vial cap full in a bowl of hot water, so the user can use the steam and scent to unblock the airways.
For Spray use: The spray is a nasal spray that is used inside the nose's airways to relieve pressure in the airways.

Rosemary Incense:
For cream use only: The cream must be applied on moist skin (if the cream is applied on dry skin, the effect of the cream will be either slowed down the process of the cream or lessen the effect on the cream!) After the user has applied water on the face or the desired area of the skin on the body, rub two fingers through the cream and slowly rub the cream till it begins to turn warm, then gently apply the cream of the face or the desired area of skin by smoothly rubbing the cream on, and then wash the cream off by using either a cotton pad / bud or a clean towel.

Mojito Incense:
For cream (Home use): The cream can be applied on both moist and dry skin (however, moist skin is mostly recommended)

Unit 50: Comparing Main designed Logo to other Logos

I been looking at different logos across the internet to see if I there is any  compare different logos to my own, so that I can see if I can make any improvements on my logo and making notes on any similarity and difference between my logo and the ones i've found.

These are the logos i've created in the preparations of my products at the moment:

COMIC STRIP UNIT

For this unit we had to complete a comic strip style piece of work, but the characters had to be inanimate objects.

Firstly, I had to decide what I was going to do the story about, and thought about possible storyline ideas.  I have some Manga books at home that I referred to (they are by Mark Crilley) and we had some old Beano annuals at home too. These gave me ideas on storylines, how to lay out the pages and how to images should relate to the dialogue bubbles to tell the story both in writing and through effective images.

I decided to focus my storyline on alienation, and used a mug to illustrate this.  I decided to use a mug, a rubber and pencil.  The rubber and pencil are the 2 most used pieces of equipment in the office, whereas the mug is only used occassionally, and as such feels left out of things. The moral of this story is that even if you feel alienated by working with others in a team you can achieve much more.

Initially, I did have 5 characters, but as the story developed only three featured, so I scrapped the other two t keep the storyline simple.

Now I had decided what the story would be about, I needed to thing about the style of illustration I would use and materials.

For this, I looked at the work of 5 different illustrators for inspiration. Some of these are people I remember from my childhood.

Mark Crilley


I do like Mark Crilley's style (which follows Japanese Manga illustration style) and have several of his books, including Brody's Ghost and Miki Falls.  His images really conjure up the mood of the storyline and make the dialogue come to life on the page.  His style is cartoon like, and in that respect he is quite similar to another illustrator I focussed on when looking for some inspiration.

Axel Scheffler

This artist created one of the best known children's characters in recent years, The Gruffalo.  Having two small nephews and a little niece who are all fans of his work, I am very used to seeing his work in the Julia Donaldson books that they love so much.  I really like the way his picture fill a page with bright colours and simple images, which completely suit the books' audience (young children). His images are pretty two dimensional with a cartoon like style drawings with ink outlines.  They are not over complicated pictures which means they tell the story clearly for young children to understand.His work with Julia Donaldson shows just how much his images help to tell the story - his characterisation of the Gruffalo for example, is drawn from the description in the book, but he could have created a scary monster, instead he gives up a quite likeable character that kids love/

E H Shepard

I really like the original illustrations in A A Milne's Winnie the Pooh books.  They have a quite spidery, uneven ,thick ink outline.  The colours used are quite subtle, as he uses watercolours.  This gives the illustrations a qaint, old-fasioned feel to them, which I like a lot.

They are much different to the work of Axel Scheffler and Mark Crilley, as they show more texture and shading.

Even after the Disney films of Winnie the Pooh, I still prefer these drawings of the characters as I feel they show them as they are written in the book by A A Milne.  In the Disney version, Winnie the Pooh looks too 'tidy' but in real life, a teddy bear is probably a but untidy.


Beatrix Potter

I have been a fan of Beatrix Potter's illustrations since listening to the stories as a small child, and loved the story of Benjamin Bunny and Peter Rabbit so much, I asked for it almost every night!

These pictures are much more 3 dimensional that the work by the previous illustrators, and shows much more attention to detail.  This much be due to Beatrix Potter's study of animal anatomy.  She uses a soft pallette of watercolours and delicate ink outlining in her pictures, which show small aminals dressed in clothes of the period (Victorian/Edwardian).

Her work is much more detailed and precise than the previous artists, and these illustrations look like watercolour studies rather than storybook pictures.  in this respect, her work ins unlike the other artists I looked to for ideas.

Quentin Blake

One of my favourite artists.  Quentin Blake did the illustrations for Roald Dahl's brilliant children's books, and they go so well with the rather dark and weird side of Roals dahl's books perfectly.  The quirky ink and watercolour illustrations and very spidery outlines and a very distinctive style.  His images of Roald Dahl's characters help you to see the quite alternative side of children's books - they are not cute and cuddly, but a bit odd.  No one else could have illustrated roald Dahl's books as well as Quentin Blake.  They are brilliant!!!

Taking all of these artists' work into consideration, I decided to

Commedia dell'arte

http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/backstage/commedia-dellarte

Comic Strip Evaluation

The first thing I had to think about for this task was my character design and I initially had the idea of creating frankenstein like animal characters, however, upon checking the brief again, I realised that I had to use inanimate objects and so had to re-think my original idea.

I decided to use a particular type of room for this story, which affected the type of characters I would have in it.  As I decided to have this story based in a meeting room, it seemed appropriate that the characters would be items of stationery, and a coffee cup was also included symbolized alienation as it was quite different to the rest of the items portrayed in the story.

Once I decided what my characters were going to be, I looked at different styles of story telling through pictures and had a look at Axel Scheffler the illustrator for the Gruffalo books> I also am a big fan of Quentin Blake who did all of the illustrations for the Roald Dahl books.  Another source of inspiration I referred to was Mark Crilley as I am a fan of his manga story books with thte facial expressions and comic layouts.  I also liked the colour palette, which was used in the original illustration of the Winnie the Pooh books.

LSG Research

P1 - Learner Survival Guide

Below are some things I looked at when planning my design for the Learner Survival Guide.  I looked at 60's Flower Power Art, Surrealism in Advertising and Magazine front Covers for inspiration.


60's Flower Power-

In 60's Flower Power art there is a use of very bold colours with a wide spectrum and the designs are very 'busy' and have a contrasting palette.  The shapes are quite simplistic with curved edges being predominant and they are two dimensional with very little or no shading and texture.  Sometimes the use of colours almost clashes to make them eye-catching, so that the image and design stand out and are noticed. In most 60's Flower Power art the colours used are not normally those aligned with their counterparts on the colour wheel.

Below are some good examples of 60's Flower Power art, which demonstrate the above points.

Some of these (such as the second and third designs below) are slightly more complex, with a design running through the background also, and then colours are more pastel in shade.  However, throughout, all four designs the use of curved lines, simple detailing using circles and dots and a line border around each flower or design shape (for example the fan shaped leaves/petals in design two) help to give structure to each part of the picture.

All together, these make all four pictures very attractive, bright and interesting - things I want my cover for the Learner Survival Guide to be.














Surrealism in Advertisement:

Surrealism in advertising helps promote a brand  by using unusual images of their product to capture people's attention and imagination through the use of photographic manipulation using Photoshop, CGI and use of props and costume.  Through the clever use of images you can instantly tell people what your product does and what it can do for them in interesting way.

The colours used then to be natural so as to make them seem almost a possible real situation and can change depending on the product being advertised.  For example, the first picture shown below is from an advertisement for Harvey Nichols, and is of two men depicted as having fly heads and a girl putting make-up on with a lit up light bulb for hers.  This would suggest that men will be attracted to her because she wears make-up from Harvey Nicholls, but for the advertisement to be effective the background needs to be quite dark so that her 'head' shines brightly to highlight the main point of the advert.

In all of these advertisements, you will notice that there is a contrast of colours to show what the main feature being promoted is (in the Wella Koleston advertisement, the hair colour is dark, but the background is a pinky peach colour which enhances and shows off to high impact the hair colour and brush), whereas, the Absolut Vodka picture again has a dark background to accentuate the 'smoke' bottle.  The colour palette used in the water advertisement promotes this product as being natural - the colours used are earth and sky and the image tells you that this water has burst up from the rocks below and is pure and although the contrast is softer in this advertisement it still contains warm colours for the earth and cold for they sky and water.











Magazine Covers:

To give ma an idea of how to get an effective design for the Student survival Guide, I looked a some different types of magazine covers and how the images were created, if any effects were used, the use of text size and style and colours used.

The main purposes of a Magazine Front cover is to attract people's attention, tell them the main features in that edition of the magazine and needs to get people to buy that magazine rather than another one covering similar subjects,  by being attractive, eye catching and not boring.

In the first magazine cover (Empire Magazine), I like the way that the main design uses monochrome colours for both the text and image, which is the main character in the main story in this magazine - it is very effective.  To highlight the main feature in this copy of Empire, the title of the film they are focussing on is in a large font style (sans serif) in bright red.  By using red, this text jumps of out the page and grabs your attention right away, and tells you immediately what the main story is about.  The other text in red is the magazine title - another important piece of text.

I really like the way that the other articles in this magazine are either side of the image of Leonardo Di Caprio and they appear to taper in size from large at each side of the front cover to small in the centre (close to the image).  This gives the illusion of Leonardo Di Caprio walking down a corridor of words.

The image of Leonardo Di Caprio looks as if it has been edited using photoshop to make the image a little grainy and the lighting looks quite sharp too.

Because only a few colours have been used on this cover, it looks really eyecatching and the colour scheme works well with the subject matter (which relates mainly to science fiction and fantasy films - the only film in this issue that is not of this type is highlighted in red - that is about thrillers).




In this second magazine cover, the PlayStation magazine, the font style is exactly the same as for the popular games console of which the magazine is about.  In this edition they have used a gold coloured text which goes with the God status of the min feature about a war game.  However, I don't think this colour works very well with the white background - it doesn't stand out as much as it could, and think that another metallic looking colour, such as bronze or dark silver would have looked much better and highlighted both the title and the main features of this magazine 9as they are all in this gold colour).

The image much be CGI as it looks like a still of a character taken from the main featured game.  This image does stand out well from the white background and looks almost three dimensional, as if it is about to jump out of the page.  This would get my attention, but I think that the text looks almost all the same on this magazine - there needs to be a bit more of variety in colour and style so that features stand out.



In this third magazine cover (Entertainment Weekly), I really like the way in which the colours blend together, but the image of Jonny Depp still manages to stand out - he seems to be looking directly at you, and this grabs your attention.

Again, the main feature of the magazine is the film, Sweeney Todd, which is about a demon barber so the colour scheme used, of different blues, monochrome image with some red lettering suits the main subject of the magazine.

The image of Johnny Depp has definitely been edited using photoshop as it is mainly black and white, but the area around his eyes have been coloured a reddish pink, to make him look quite evil. I think this is very effective!!!

The size and style of the text varies for each article, and the articles are show in red italic serif font, with the other text being sans serif bold text in either the pale blue colour of white, which sticks to the limited colour scheme of this cover.

Overall, the clever use of photoshop and the striking image put together with the three colours of text work well on this cover and I particularly like it.





The final magazine front cover I have chosen, is an edition of Martial Arts Illustrated.  This is a very different cover to the previous one, as it has a wide variety of colours, and some of the text is outlined in a bright mustard yellow colour to make it stand out.

The main image on this cover is of Bruce Lee, and looks as it is a still from one of his films.  In my opinion, it has been touched up slightly using photoshop, just to edit the shading a bit, but the photo otherwise looks as if it has been unchanged.

The text is mainly in sans serif style with a just the word 'special' in a yellow italic script style to highlight that this magazine is a special edition on Bruce Lee.  The other articles are in different sizes and styles of font to easily see that they are about different subjects.  Colour also helps identify the different articles (some are in yellow text, some white and some are white in a block of red).

Overall, although there are a lot of different colours used here, it looks quite exciting and this fits with the type of magazine (martial arts) and would be attractive to people.

New Worksop Bus Station Window Design

We had a chat with Paul Horn, who has been explaining to us about what's happening with our ideas once the final designs are finished and why the designs are there for a reason. He was also there for us to ask question to him about the use of colours, the opacity of the design, what type of designs are relevant to bus station design and should the designs be related around Worksop or Bassetlaw. He is organizing to bring in the architect to see the designs for the bus station and if there is any complications with any of the designs.

Vorticism