YO

Because if I see another one of these posters I will not be keeping anywhere in the vicinity of “calm.” 

As you can tell from two blog updates in two days, I am finally getting back into the creative mindset after the stress of the last few months.

It is by no small thanks to amazing pieces of design such as this book/poster design titled, “Ilha Formosa” by Tien-Min Liao. Liao says, “When I came to the United States, I noticed that many people don’t know my hometown Taiwan. Some people even cannot tell the difference between Taiwan and Thailand, just because they sound alike. As a designer, I think I should do something to promote this beautiful island.”

She has used simple paper cut illustrations to bring the information to life, befitting Liao’s aim to not create a “boring government-published book.”

What I love most about this is you can see how Liao has thought about every bit of the design process, so that the final product is a carefully considered, charming, and ultimately, a very interesting guide book. I’m unsure how feasible it would be for all infographics to be this beautifully designed. It would be wonderful but the paper craft must have taken ages.

For a while now i’ve been keen to dip my toes into the world of infographics. I have a few ideas but have yet to choose one to create a project around. Seeing this is a real kick up the boot to get going.

It’s been a while since I’ve updated my blog. To be fair, i’ve been busy. The past three months have involved the race to hand-in, degree show, new blood, graduation, and then finally commencing the search for an actual job. So my humble blog has taken a wee bit of a back seat. However I am back with a vengence.

While purveying the shelves at my local Waterstones recently, I came across these absolutely beautiful book covers. I think it was the sheer simplicity that struck me, especially against other covers which seem to be making use of large typography, coupled with photographic images. Hate a photographic book cover, so lazy!

Here are some pictures of the book covers:

The lines that are used are thin, allowing for intricate details, while the repeat pattern ensures that they work as a “set” while visually remaining simple. What really sets each cover off is the dusky, complementary colour schemes used for each one. I particularly liked the design for War of the Worlds, while I thought Pamela had the most lovely colours. 

I had the urge to shove them all in my basket, with further visions of placing them on display on a fancy shelf, to go in a similarly fancy living room. Sadly, due to the events mentioned above, I was not in a financial state to do any of these things, so sadly walked away.   

Here are my finals for the a3 posters. They make use of the colourscheme and concentric circles that the stopwatch uses. They are different enough to have new visual interest but sit inline with the rest of the materials. 

Once I had come up with the a6 postcard image I started to think about how I would develop the a3 posters. I wanted to have a design that kept inline with the stopwatch image.

Here I considered different ways to visualize the runners having a sense of speed and energy to them. The top two images show a simple track drawn underneath them. I was going for a clean line to put the runners at the forefront, but decided this was quite boring and didn’t have much of an idea behind it. 

The third image shows Usain behind a overlay of different coloured triangles. The fractured triangles are intended to convey a sense of breaking, like when an athlete “smashes” a world record. The bright colours also give a nice celebratory feel. Since I was doing 5 different athletes I tried the triangles in a different colour for each athlete. 

I felt like I was trying to fit too much information in before with my previous infographic-type postcards, so here I started by just displaying the times of the most relevant athletes. The athletes I chose were Usain Bolt (Fastest Man in the World) Florence Griffth-Joyner (Fastest Woman in the World) Oscar Pistorious (Fastest Paralympic Man in the World) April Holmes (Fastest Paralympic Woman in the World) and Alan Wells (Fastest Scottish 100m) 

I simplified my design into a simple stopwatch image that I think works well as it draws the eyes straight to the relevant information, and provides a colourful focal point over other competing posters. 

As you can see I tried a few different colour schemes, and also a paper texture style, before settling on the final image for the postcard. 

I started out by thinking that for the postcard promotional material I would create an info-graphic that people could look at while they were waiting for their chance to run. Seeing as the event would be marketed particularly to school children I thought this was another reason why this would be appropriate. 

I started by creating a graph of all the 100m record breakers for the past 100 years. This was hella complicated. Because it was so complicated, I quickly realised that it did not translate well to an a6 sized postcard. 

So at this point I ditched the graph idea and went for a starker visual that would locate the information to one area on the postcard. As you can see I started by containing the times in circular areas, to reference the classic Olympic rings. I particularly liked the final development piece shown here, the red yellow green to signify “READY SET GO.” (relating well to the event itself.)

Here I added the shape of a running man over the explosion to include the human element the clients were after. The second logo shows the colour scheme I liked best. 

Here I tried using the image of light at speed for the logo. A less obvious choice perhaps than Usain, as his image will be on a lot of the promotional materials anyway. I think these might look better with a bit more shape to them. 

Logo idea’s including the figure of Usain Bolt. 

Some prototypes for the Google packaging brief. Like that this box has so many sides, as this lends itself well to displaying each product in the family in a tidy way. Currently through the boxes dont sit up properly, so I am still investigating other ideas.

designcloud:

Good Fucking Design Advice 

So true. Loved the simplicity of this. Not sure its something id have on my wall though.

The first two images show where I tried a more subdued colour scheme, trying to convey the constricted atmosphere of the institution. On the third image I went for a different colour scheme and I tried removing the cage from the front cover. I think this was the way forward, as it is beginning to look like more of a whole front cover, less like a mish mash of objects. 

tumblrbot asked: WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE INANIMATE OBJECT?

Toothbrush

designcloud:

KL30 by yago hortal

acrylic on canvas

130x100 cm

2011  

I’m not normally a big fan of this kind of painting but I just love the colours in this. It looks really vibrant and happy. A welcome contrast to the dull street view outside my window.