Third final year

NMP Project

Internship boards

One day i took a visit to the northern quarter for a bit of inspiration. Places i visited included the richard goodall gallery and Magma book store. At this point i had illustrated my imagery for my home-ware i was looking for type based research and ideas for colour schemes. Rob ryan’s plate stood out to me - i always love his work - it was strong even one colour. I liked how the tree filled the centre of the plate, leaving the border clean. I also like how the tree breaks away to reveal the strings of words. I think they are effective broken up and more attention is brought to the capital words of importance. The lettering is clear to read but you need to look closely and they start to appear - which is nice, the message isn’t too obvious. It inspired me a bit with my plate design. I thought about the shape i was working with - the moon and placed that in the centre of the plate were it worked best. I tried my type sat on the moon to start with but then decided it worked best orbiting it. The rich navy blue of the plate stood out to me - also with the moon being cold and space being dark. What also stood out to me - colour wise, was the orange and black dockwood cover. I liked the strong contrast of the colours and the richness of the orange. So i then thought id bring the navy and orange together eventually and thats how my colour scheme kind of developed. Loopy joint-up hand-drawn type caught my eye aswell as painted style type. 

I have recently got myself an Ipad - i was looking through the ‘vintage type’ section on the app 'flipboard’ were i came across looks of old beautiful type which was create influence for my work. So here some of it is.. I was inspired by the bright blue and red colours - which i used on my cushion screen prints. The different ways the type is curved in these pieces inspired me to tye the type piece all together with decorative lines to bring it together further. These especially influenced my designs for my cushion and mug design, which are more heavy copy based so needed to be considered more. 

I bought a transfer from Foto ceramics online. The printed transfer measure 10 inches so fit my plate perfectly. I firstly fully submerged it into a clean tub of water and then placed it over my plate. I used a bone folder to smooth the transfer onto the plate and get rid of creases and bubbles. Because it had been printed on A3 the paper left a border around the plate, so i cut it off using a sharp knife. I left the plate outside in the sun for a few hours but it didn’t really achieve results as such. When i read the instructions on the website i realised it was a transfer that needed to be put in an 800degree oven - so once id realised i wasted my money anyway i thought id at least give it a go in my own oven. Which after about half an hour - did fix the design but it also burn the surface slightly. Some of the burnt bits did wipe off a bit but the finished product looked like a used plate with gravy stains! I was also disappointed with the quality of the print - as it was pixellated when it arrived - which i struggled to understand because it was a vector image i had sent to them! Owell you learn from your mistakes - will get it printed proper again before the show. I love how the type of the design fits perfectly around he raised border of the plate. 

So i planned to tryout screen printing my design on to some cushions. I bought 4 cushion covers, textile medium to mix 1:1 with the paint and 4 colours of paint! To get the cushion cover to keep flat to print onto - i cut pieces of foam that fit inside the cover of the cushion. This also meant that the paint wouldn’t soak through and show on the reverse side. I decided to stick to a two colour screen-print. I wanted the bold type a separate colour so that it would break up the design a bit. So i had two A3 acetates printed and exposed to the A2 screen. 

I did the standard procedure of masking taping around both designs and down the centre, so the other design wouldn’t be transferred by accident. I found that the textile medium had a tendency to dry up quicker than usual, so i got less goes out of the screen before it dried up and i had to wash it again to re-use. Although some of these dry patches worked in my favour and gave the designs a more of a vintage/ worn feel to them. What i also found difficult was making sure both screens lined up perfectly together. What i found was quite effective, was after id done a print on a cushion id do the next on a piece of paper and it would print out the cotton texture. All in all it was a long tedious task - but was worth giving it a go. I didn’t get a final cushion for my set because i have now decided i want a colour scheme through-out - but i got some nice development pieces. 

I then finished my cover off by ironing over the design side to fix it more permanently - so mistakes would wash off after a few washed due to not being fixed properly. I now plan to order a cushion through either the asda printing service or society six.  

Here you can see the development work i have done on my CV. I walked into the cv workshop with the standard word document version - knowing full well i needed to work on the content and the design of it. After taking notes and getting some personal advice, i then went on to these designs. I decided to work with a three column grid - this way i can have more important information and titles starting at the top of the page to attract the reader. After placing my content into the gird i realised how much easier it is to read - having less words on each line. I added a thumbnail of some work in there to reference to the achievement - it fits to the grid and is looking a bit like a page in a newspaper. Im thinking that this style of cv would be suitable for an editorial type of job. I will need to have other versions of my cv to cater to the job. I think my logo and image create a nice balance to the page - sitting in opposite corners to one another. I could do with working on this further until i feel its the strongest possible, add my email address, and maybe another thumbnail image to break up the content…

Personal logo development:

I started by drawing my initials out in different compositions. I decided the serif font was a bit more friendly looking and less corporate than the san serif ones - i want to keep a good balance in looking professional but not so much i look too big and unapproachable because it wouldn’t suit me - being friendly and affordable. I tried extending the ‘r’ roughly but i thought it looked too solid - i think it works in a lengthy word but not too sure about three initials. When i tried to mould the letters together the r and c looked too close and awkward - so i decided they needed a slight gap between them. Im still not 100 percent on my final logo choice - want to try it a bit more hand-drawn to look less corporate and clean, think its lacking a bit of personality.