Sunday, 5 March 2017

Visual Communication: Studio Brief 2 - Sticker Development


• I made some really basic sketches using my Wacom tablet in Adobe Photoshop using a pencil tool I purchased from Jazza Studios, transferred to Adobe Illustrator to use as a base to trace vectors onto.
• Considering colours; I want to evoke the sense of danger without being too unfriendly. I want to show a fun side to these stickers as well as them having a serious message.
• As I'm making objects monsters I'm considering the classic colours conjured up in my mind of purple and green. Perhaps orange? I will need to test this out...
• I want a clear circular border around the stickers, as seen with Gemma Correll's patches, to give a clean and simple look and ensuring the stickers all work well together.
• How thick do I want the stroke of the border? How big do I want the text to be? It has to be legible alongside the shapes being obvious. Clarity and simplicity.

Development


Line of enquiry and self questioning during the process:

• Purple shade needs to be darker?
• Border is too thick? What would it look like with a thinner stroke?
• Font blends into each other and isn't entirely obvious. Need something to break it up - little shapes?
• Outer border of a darker colour would help it to 'pop' more and be more eye-catching!
• Border now too thick and takes away from the font
• A stroke of 7pt is much better, encompassing the sticker and helping it to stand out without distracting from the text
• Basic shapes of the rucksack are too reduced, more detail need to be added
• Are these too flat? Should I add a darker shade of purple to give shadows and show lighter areas? Making a 2D image appear more three dimensional? Will this work?
• I really like the darker spots; these small details have made all the difference to giving my rucksack a scarier nature and a 'darker side'!
• The handles of the bag were extremely fiddly to make! I began with the pen tool but found the curved pen tool a better solution.
• Handle was too close to the border and it is hard to distinguish - using the transform tool helps to bring it in.

Final Stickers


Successes
• Hurrah! I've actually created something I am proud using only flat vectors!
• The simple and clean aesthetic really helps to communicate the message I am wanting to convey
• Turning regular obstacles that I face day-to-day into personified monsters gives them a charm and a cheekiness
• Minimal use of colour
• Coherency between the set
• Large, clean font

What Could be Improved?
• I spent about 6 hours making these stickers. I need to get better at planning my time.
• I need to be able to identify a single idea instead of being unsure. I'm still at the stage of creating so many ideas and not being able to choose!
• The shapes in the third "scarf snake" sticker have been reduced too much, particularly in the shoes area, which made it hard for some of my peers to understand. They could have been connected to my leggings with a simple stroke around the ankle? 

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