All done

Well that was fun now wasn't it? I was at first very wary of what I was going to do with this blog and about how my grades were going to look, but I seem to have worried about nothing. Thank-you to my classmates for you're many comments, I enjoyed reading everyone of them! I am not sure what I am going to do with this blog now that the school semester is over. We'll see If I keep this blog going. For now I am just going to leave it as is, so tah tah for now.

Cheers,
Melanie

More Tea?

    I really like this can which is for Earl Grey Tea from the Empress hotel. The gold accents on the black with the grey swirls make for an interesting design. The designers chose to use a serif text to compliment the idea of tea being for posh people. The logo sticks out from the rest of the can because of the surrounding black and bordered by the "F' swirl design. the same is true for a little blurb that is on the right picture which is also bordered. Some how they were able to fit information from where the tea came to the the companies name and logo to the website all in a neat little package. The grey upraised part of the can looks like an intricate Celtic art but on closer inspection is actually the Fairmonts "F" layered on top of itself.

That's all for today,

Cheers,
Melanie

Bright colours and multitudes of dots

    Whoops, I forgot it was Tuesday today. So as promised last week I have some cool Graphic Design that I picked up in the Vancouver Art Gallery.
    Today I bring you Ken Lum's a Users guide. The coolest fold out I've seen:

 

 

This is how it looks when one picks it up. The colours burn.

Underneath the pink.

A break from the colours.

This is the inside when opened.

This is the outside when completely opened.

   This one is actually really hard to critique, because of it's uniqueness. But I can definitely say that it attracted my eyes right away with the bright colours. It also makes the person want to keep opening just because the the way it opens and the bold colours it carries though out the brochure. The way they used the gray triangles worked very well as you can see with the back view, it really gives a nice break for your eyes as you look through it. The layout for the body copy is nice and neat and placed where it is able to be read easily and the paragraphs are uniform. I don't know what they were trying to accomplish with the dots but it is interesting although it could be called clutter as well. Over all a very cool piece of graphic design and something I haven't seen before.

Cheers,
Melanie

Van City

    This is something I picked up at the Vancouver Art Gallery. It was free and cool so what the hey. I really like the way they used instructions to make some interesting points. The fact that the only colour on the page are the "instructions" which draw the eye. I like how they used the lines to make it dynamic and movement. The writing makes one want to read and draws the eye in. The logo We:vancouver is bold and sticks out and creates hierarchy. Since this is a poster for a gallery about Vancouver and it's history and how it could improve I can see how the lines almost form a sort of simple road map. I really just like how the whole thing is simple and has a lot of white space.

   I have something else from the gallery but it seems I misplaced it so I have to find it first.

Cheers,
Melanie

Apfleminze goodness

    Haha some more international stuff. This time it's some apple mint tea my mom brought home from Germany. She had brought two teas this one and another, they both are apple something, and both are loose leaf but I opened this one first because it caught my eye. This is definitely the normal bag type for tea, closing with a fold and a tie at the top and the normal triangular shape. but the cool thing about it is the subtle vertical lines that are on the paper which adds a delicate interest to the bag with out going overboard. The label also uses the subtle shapes in the background to draw the eye with out making it an eye sore. This same design is used in the box which is placed at the top as sort of grid placer with the information following the same placement. I also think the use of only one colour, green, helps keeping the information in the forefront. I like the use of only one font too and the use of caps to make the eye go to the companies name directly after the flavour. Good hierarchy (as much as I can tell because I can't read the rest...).

Next time I'll actually get something from Nanaimo,
Melanie


This was on a website my mom's friend sent to her. It's a South African website about pet health care. Might I say that South Africans are weird...

PRONUTRO

    This week we had to find good design. I've been feeling sick so I looked around the house and I found these boxes in my recycling. This is my all time favourite cereal, it's kind of like Cream of Wheat but ten times better. This is what I ate as a kid in South Africa and since then the box has dramatically changed. My favourite thing about this box used to be the little facts on the other side which was in both Afrikaans and English. Now it's just adds and sports things in only English.  

     Childhood memories aside the the design of the front is interesting to say the least. There is a lot of movement in the picture with the cereal in the bowl having swirl highlights which is carried on by the white swoosh in the back and the halftone dots which are also carried on into the background. Even the title and sub heading helps with the movement. The bold title really draws the eye to it especially in the "original" one. The designers had to fit in lots of information with still keeping space which I think they did well. Just from looking at the pictures you can tell it's wheat free, made of corn or something like that and in the case of the chocolate flavored one you can tell right away that is that flavor. The only thing I don't really like about the design is how the title is kerned and the halftone on the bottom which is black and distracts from the title and other information.

anyways hopefully we're back to school soon,

Melanie

The Crystal Goblet by Beatrice Warde

    I partially of agree with what Beatrice Warde says in her essay about invisible text. She is right about how body type should be invisible because the audience needs to understand what the words mean not what they look like. As she puts it "type well used is invisible as type" (1). Meaning the ideas and the conversation the words are visible and not the forms of the words themselves. She uses the wine glass as an example to say this. The wine glass must be invisible in order for the wine amateurs to speculate on the wine its self. Where I do not agree with her is that type in its forms and lines are in themselves beautiful and so should be used just to show off what they really are. The fine differences and subtleties of for example Caslon or Baskerville separate them as their own and I believe that this makes them unique just as any other well made type. Type can show off the meaning of a by just the change to italics or to bold or by colour or the angle among other things. It is the balance of when to show off the beauty or the type and when to show of the meaning of the word that should decide how text be used.

   What I tried to show with my picture was the fact that type should be invisible if the meaning is not important to show through reading it. But if the text is important than the look of the type than it should be readable. If you can see it there is "invisible" text in the background just dark enough that is gives off the meaning of being invisible while still being seen.

"Helvetica Causes War" (apparently)

   So this week we watched a documentary about Helvetica which is the most common type face known to man. There is this big controversy on whether or not it is over used and boring. I know for myself I like Helvetica, it is simple yet in its simplicity there is a certain finality about it. Not only that but it comes with multiple versions of it, bold, semi bold, italic ect. which is nice. In the documentary we were watching, simply titled Helvetica, many views were shown and insights shared, but what really got me thinking was the pictures it had. Helvetica is used everywhere, road signs, corporate logos, pamphlets, billboard advertisements, warning labels, everywhere you look there is Helvetica. Not just in North America but in Europe and where ever they have a Latin based alphabet. It is amazing to me that I never noticed this. The reason for that I suppose is that Helvetica speaks so many emotions, it can be the boss or it can lend a helping hand. Helvetica really can change it's colours to say anything without looking awkward, which can not be said for many type faces.

    For our assignment this week we had to go looking for Helvetica and take a picture of it(which I must say is not a very hard thing to do). So I decided "Hey since the world is filled with Helvetica, why don't I just find as many corporate logos or signs and see how many I could find that have joined the Helvetica band wagon." I started my epic journey at a strip mall down the street from my house. Not to my surprise there were only a few businesses that had decided to go with out Helvetica. To name a few that I could photograph, Staples, Long and McQuade, Superstore, The CAA, BDC Canada, Coast Capital Savings, Pennington's Superstore 14+, and most of the government buildings around the area are all in some way on the Helvetica band wagon. Later I went down town and found that Subway, Shoppers Drug Mart, and Starbucks also uses Helvetica. I find this interesting though, that every logo or advertisement that I came across looks different and really does give you a different message. The government signage makes Helvetica soothing and seem like the business has control of situations. Where as Coastal Capital Savings seems clean and enduring. Even Subway manages to make Helvetica seem playful without ruining the finality of it. That is what I really like about Helvetica, one can play around with it and come out with different meanings. You can mix and match Helvetica and it looks amazing or you can leave it alone and it will still look right. 

Here is some of the businesses I could take good pictures of:

I like how they used the different types of Helvetica here to show hierarchy.
"Penningtons" is read first then the less important "Superstore".

Staples brings in the use of two types of typography, serif and non serif
together to make it more interesting. They also brought in the paper clip idea
into the "l" to make it different.

Coast Caplital is dynamic by not using capitals in the "coastcapital" part and 
then using only capitals in "SAVINGS" then also bringing in the bold font to 
make the Coast Capital readable when it has no space between the words.

BDC is bold so that it creates a contrast between it and "Canada"

Superstore brings in Hierarchy and makes it more dynamic by using 
colour and bold and regular Helvetica to show that Superstore is more important.

Long and McQuade keeps it simple with black but then uses colour in 
"Musical instruments" to bring in harmony with the logo next to it.

Subway uses arrow addons and italic bold to make it seem more welcoming and playful.

Shoppers uses hierarchy with bold and semi bold.

The "____" is a lie!!!

"Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth." ~Picasso

   I chose to do the early modern era for this blog because of the variety of different styles that were going on and I couldn't choose any one of them. I particularly like the cubist style, mostly because they can create something that is so abstract yet inside lies something that is very hard to distinguish. I think this quote from Pablo Picasso rings very true to his art form. One must peel back the lies of an art piece to discover its truth, just like an orange. 

   So I tried to make this kind of Dadaist because the cubist style was also so abstract. Unfortunately I didn't save when I was about to finish it so this didn't turn out as I originally planned it to. I noticed in the Dadaist movement their words didn't really match up and were kind of strewn around randomly.  I tried to keep to that but still make it readable.

Illuminating Nature

    This week we had to design a poster for an eco friendly light bulb following the styles of William Morris and Peter Behren. This poster is based off the flowery and decorative motifs and the clean naturalness of Peter Behren. My poster follows this with the leaf design throughout and the bubble "light" coming from the light bulb. I wanted it to look like the light bulb was illuminating a forest or something without ruining the beauty of nature. I didn't have room in my little sketchbook to put the words I wanted to so I'm just letting the picture talk for itself.

Thanks for looking,

Melanie

Victorian Era

   This is a very good example of Victorian era  artwork. Just look at all those patterns in the background there! Specifically what drew me to this was the use of the harmony with the blues and greens and the repeating background pattern. The Typography is very elegant as well, maybe a little less Victorian but it really helps to bring everything together. I also think the white spaces really bring some nice breathing room to the noise. That logos really nifty too.

 

   This is from the same person. I really like how he can bring in that antique feeling and make it work for now a days too. again the background is really nicely coloured and the faint writing is a neat element that helps to draw interest. The only thing about this one I would change is where the logo is he has placed a texture and I think it gets rid of that nice breathing room the first one brought.

I recommend you go to some of his sites, they have some really good examples.

• http://www.imoments.org
• http://www.harmonie-interieure.com/
• http://www.graphic-exchange.com/home.html
• http://www.fabienbarral.com/

   This is my mock Victorian logo for Starbucks. I chose to keep to the same feel of the original but add flourishes on the border and on the lettering have serifs and fancy capitals. I also wanted to draw the mermaid more romanticized, I kind of failed at that but I tried. I was going to add banners to the type but I ran out of room on the page. If I had coloured it I would have made the ring green and the background with a pattern. It was hard drawing those letters by hand and I am quite proud of them. even though they're not straight.

Cheers,

Melanie

Of Silly Books and Newspapers

Found this in a news paper in the career section.

   I really like this picture and its caption. I was looking for something to put on this blog and this just spoke to me. Yes it is a newspaper article, but newspapers need good graphic design and I think this is some thing that really works for what medium it is. Is is a very big picture that took about one fifth of the page and the repeating forms with the one that is out of place really speaks "breaking out of the cookie cutter". It makes sense that they chose a gingerbread man that is smiling, he's kinda saying to the reader "read this article because it will make your life happier." In other words it is very inviting, which makes it stick out of all the other articles.

This is a graphic book I found at Wellington Secondary

   This book was in the Wellington Secondary library in the Graphic Novel section. Many artists are featured in this book and each has a unique style that is on one hand really awesome but on the other very strange. I really like how this book ties each of the artists into one book without making it awkward. The cover is a wonderful example of art and the use of the rule of thirds because nothing is centered, making it eye catching and dynamic. I think the type face used was a good choice because it makes a statement without being too overbearing on the illustration. I also just like the idea of flying whales and giant birds that people can ride, with the extra little bit of steampunk added in the mix. Not only is that combination cool but it also adds intrigue to what the book is about and kind of makes one want to open it.

Here's some examples of the inside of the book:

 

 

    These pages reflect the wonder of the cover while also adding their own elements to the book. The colours chosen were well considered and thought out to bring the emotions needed. Each short story has a theme of it's own and the colours the artists chose were to make the most of what they were trying to say. The comics were never laid out the same way, some were neat and orderly where others had lines reaching through panels before and after making for a more dynamic composition. Some of the comics aren't mainstream at all, in fact I would say none of them are. Each brings to this book a different way of drawing and colouring and each is unique making for an interesting read.

Go check this book out at http://www.flightcomics.com/flight4preview/ where you can see a preview.

 

Cheers, 

        Melanie

The Oh My God Factor

Open a magazine or look on the back of one and this is what you can see.
This picture is Men in suits of ballerinas by Artsiom Kireyau.

 
 Definitely this one was a kicker.  I picked up a magazine to read one day. A little surprise waited for me on the other side of the cover. This ad. One full page of buff men wearing woman's undergarments. When I first saw this I didn't fully understand that those were men. I couldn't help but laugh out loud when I realized what they were. First thing I said was "What the f---?".
  If you look closer at the design of the ad, it is quite well laid out. The magazine I picked up is imported from the UK so everything is designed for a global market. It is the typical magazine ad with the white stripe in the bottom containing the information of who, what and where. The why aspect is contained in the white box just above and the hook is in huge lettering in the top left handed corner. I find my self looking first to that top left corner, then it wonders to the picture and the white box where finally I see the information strip at the bottom. Very good flow and even if the layout is a bit dull the picture gives a nice contrast.

The Fotolia Website. Check it out your self at http://us.fotolia.com/.

 
   I checked out the web site and it too has a very nice layout. With clean, simple and effective use of line and color the makers of the website have made the pictures stand out more than the website itself with only the important things like the logo are colored green. I have too often seen websites that are way to crowded but this one seem to be nicely balanced.
    All in all I think fotolia is doing a good job and their pictures are amazing. Who knows what will be next in magazine ads. But hopefully they will not be buff men in ballerina costumes.

Cheers,

   Melanie

Why?

 I am attending University to get my BA in Graphic Design and in entering the second semester we have been asked to make a blog and post examples of good graphic design. Then much to my dismay we have to write a paragraph detailing why we think it is good and the impact it has on society or how it communicates an idea. Now I am all for writing an such like, but I am lacking in the grammar and spelling department. Lucky I have noticed (several times) this site has a spell check function which will save my life I am sure. Now I am not one to blog, as you can probably tell, but when ones grades are on the line, one must make the most of what they have been given. I'm going to have to write a new post every week from now until April 15th. So I hope this semester goes better than the last. Ha, here's to a few months of keeping track of my posts. Yes.

Cheers,

Melanie