Graphic design student of Coventry University
In the essay I wrote about how I agree with Beatrice Warde, the fact that its written about Wine tasting doesn’t matter, it can still be related to graphic design.
The essay itself didn’t take me long to do, I still haven’t received feedback however.
This is the idea that I have come up, It is a way of showing the chiefs journey from his homeland with the buffalo, salmon and forests to a mental hospital.
I spent roughly two hours to make the blueprint itself, everything was made to follow the grid, The reason everything is so precise because I want it to be a visual reflection of how strict the hospital are.
This is a printscreen of how many layers I used to make just the art work
this is the finished art work, all I have to do now is add the writing to it.
The book cover itself for me has had many different initial ideas, i showed these in my sketchbook, however for personal development I want to show the ways in which i have become indecisive on a certain cover.
This was the initial idea:
When I finished it I decided to self analyse it, I noticed that it was very awkward in that there seemed to be no actual alignment or use of grids. So i used the photoshop grid lines to set some for a new composition.
Now with the use of grids I have come to a better composition, the changes made were;
The location of the background image, before when the book cover would of been printed and trimmed to size some of the image would have been lost, I have now moved it so that there wont be any unwanted cutting.
The size and positioning of the title, however i feel that this could still use some work in that it seems to be awkwardly spaced
The blurb on the back now follows the grid made by the penguin “footer” this makes it easier on the eyes.
The small quote on the front of the book cover is now also aligned with the height of the penguin “footer” and composed to the spine equally to that of the penguin “footer”
This was the next stage of development, the only change here from that of the previous is the size and composition of the title. I have now aligned the title in a grid that has mirrored from the back cover, meaning that the width of the text box is equal to the width of the footer.
This was an experiment to see how the blurb would look when placed in a box, when asked for feed back I was told by some that it looked good and that they liked it, however many disagreed and said it was better before, I too believe that it looked better before when it followed the grid lines.
This was the next experiment, I added an orange tint, the exact same orange used in the penguin logo, I did this on photoshop to add a bit of life to the image, however I expanded on this idea by making another version, one in which everything was using the orange, as seen below.
However, when this had been finished the feedback i got wasn’t positive which is what i was hoping for as i did agree with feedback I was given, The use of oranges and blacks made it a very simple 2 colour scheme, this however was stopped by the penguin footer which has to stay white. I preferred this idea when only the hand had an orange colour to it.
Other Notes.
I used my knowledge of tracking and kerning to change the title from have such awkward spacing between letters and words.
This was the first time I had tried it, the large spaces between the words made it a sentence that when seen was read as “one. flew. over. the. cuckoo’s. nest.” rather that a free flowing sentence.
Thats when I had decided to make the title smaller and try it out like shown above.
The photo used was taken by myself using my grandfathers hand(s) as the subject, out of 30 photographs only 3 were useful and only 2 were used in the development of this idea. the other hand used is shown below
When this hand was used I came across a familiar situation, the cropping and composition of the image itself would be cut shorter that what I want, this caused me to change the positioning and rotation.
This though caused a new problem. Due to the hands having such strong lines because of the dramatic lighting and contrast it made these lines which go of at an angle which makes the cover less efective, with the previous design the lines were at roughly 45 degrees which was nice as it broke up and eased the strong guild lines that I had made.
This lecture we watched a DVD called “No Logo”, It was about how branding is taking over the world and if its a good thing.
No Space
Branding consists of constantly bombarding the public with logos, names and the brand. It started many years ago when small local farmers, bakers and other provided started transporting their goods to the wider nation, instead of having a personal relation with an actual person the advertisement was now the new relation but with a face printed on a poster, billboard or flyer.
Big brands like starbucks, mcdonalds, Mac and disney started advertising an idea, whether it being happiness, socialising or “being in”, it wasn’t about the actual product but more to do with the idea.
Mega Brands such as Virgin were about being a “virgin person”, an individual which is unique to any other, but now virgin has changed from being a mainly music brand to a “this is what you can be” brand, showing that you could be similar to the likes of Richard Brandson and how he is, you could travel Virgin airlines etc and do all these things that he does if you were a “virgin person”
No Jobs
When you purchase a pair of Nike pair of shoes, you’re not buying a pair of shoes made by nike, you’re actually buying a pair of shoes made in china, japan, hong kong or any other country with people who will ask for high wages. These workers who get paid less than a doller a day are mainly women who come from provinces which are 6 or 7 hours a day. This is because they were trying to make a work force which are easy to control
In todays technical demonstration we were shown how to make an image from scratch. we made the image shown below. 
we were shown how to use many different tools, filters and other things to help. To make the table fabric it was a basic green layer with an added noise filter, then a darkened section at the bak as an edge. To make the balls it was a standard elliptic marquee tool which had a block colour filling with a darkened edge and a spot light. The cue was made of three pieces. The shaft, the ring and the tip. were all made using the rectangular marquee tool, the shaft used a brown fill with noise and then motion blur to make the wood grain. the ring is made using gradient tools. and the tip was made with the elliptic marquee tool into a oval shape, it has a blue fill with a noise filter added to it.. its then resized and placed behind the shaft and ring layers.
These are my final photographs for the Portraits, I took these on a cloudy day outside, tara was used as a Model because she wont be shy to model because we know each other so well.
I exposed the photographs so that there were no extreme whites, this means where the photograph is too over exposed and causes there to be an area with no information.
I rotated the photograph so that the natural horizon is aligned with the rectangular frame. It makes the photograph look more natural and easier on the eye.
I edited this one so that it was darker, it does have areas which are fully black, however it has a good style to it that I do like, but for my final photograph I would rather have a properly exposed photograph.
This is another photograph taken, similar to the one above it. Its more exposed to make it a better photograph. All the photographs have been aligned to fit on the rule of thirds.
This is my final photograph, I have composed and exposed it so that it doesn’t have any full blacks or full whites.
How to make a Non Scrolling Background
<style type=”text/css”>
Body
{
Background-image:url(“snake.jpg”); < background name
background-repeat:no-repeat; < choosing the repetition of the background
background-attachment:fixed; < the script to allow motion in the background
}
</style>
How to add links
<!—
a:link{color:blue; text-decoration:none; font-size:130pt; font-family:impact; letter-spacing:-5}
a:hover{color:yellow; text-decoration:none; font-size:160pt; font-family:garamond; letter-spacing:-1;
}
—>
</style>
How to add hotspots. (link without text or button)
The script
<img src=”lana.jpg” usemap=”#lana.jpg” border=”0”>
<map name=”lana”>
<area shape=”rect” coords=”688,429,854,498” a href=”http://www.facebook.com”>
The steps
Step 1) Open the image in photoshop
Step 2) Go to Photoshop -> Preferences -> units and rulers
Step 3) Change the units to pixels
Step 4) View the image at 100%
Step 5) Go to the top left
Step 6) Use move tool
Step 7) Window info
Step 8) Draw rectangle with marquee tool
Step 9) Get top left co-ordinates and bottom right co-ordinates.
How to have a link with roll-over effects
These photographs were all taken in Wales, I chose Wales as a location to photograph because I have been told its a very scenic place to visit, therefore I figured it would be a good place to photograph. Durring my trip I thought of experimenting with HDR and Panoramic styled photos. Here are my final landscape photographs.
we were shown how light works and how different reflectors can add temperature to a photo.
For example, with this photo of Katherine, I used two different types of reflectors, a silver one which just reflects light as it is (Below)…
and a Golden reflector which adds a warming temperature which is useful for artificial warmth (below).
as you can see there is a clear difference in the lighting, also it creates a much more evident catch light.
A catch light is a reflection in the eye of the model, it is a small feature that adds a lot to an image and can “make or break” a photograph.
This is a photo showing where the photos where taken and the setup used, just a matte black background to make sure there are no reflections in the photos, however there were a few holes which revealed small white patches and therefore cased a distraction in the photographs.
learning how to work with Style sheets and Internal sheets.
Style Sheets.
With style sheets the HTML has changed slightly, for example;
Font Face= is now Font-Family:
Font Size= is nowFont-Size:
bgcolor= is now Color:
The advantages of using Style sheets are that now we can use any font size, we can also use any colour. We are no longer restricted to the standard “red”, “blue” and other colours. Now we can use the hexodecimal colour chart to colour our text and backgrounds.
Also now with the introduction of style sheets we can include letter spacing and margins. To add letter spacing simply use this script letter-spacing:±value. To add a margin use the script margin-top/left/right/bottom:±value.
Internal Style
WIth internal style the script has to go in the <head> section, it acts as a reference to the <body> section using “p”,”h1” and so on as a reference
the way the script would be written is:
<html>
<head>
<title>css</title>
<style type=”text/css”>
body {background-color:ff7835}
p {font-family:verdana;
font-size:100;
color:FEDDCD;
</style>
</head>
<body>
<p> text goes here and will be altered according to style sheet.
</body>
</html>
The P tag is used as a reference so that the script knows what text, image or other insert has to have the applied HTML
However, with internal sheets we now use these {} to contain the script.
