Sunday 1st May 2011:

After creating quite a few pieces in my sketchbook development work which included hands and handprints, I decided to experiment with using something like this as part of a new logo design. I have already designed a few logos for my organisation ‘Sticks and Stones’, but I still felt that they weren’t very effective and not to the standard and style that I was hoping for. I therefore thought it would be a relevant and good idea to use my developmental work to inspire a more effective and eye-catching logo, and so went on to make a few sketches of possible ideas. Although they would look much better when produced digitally, I can see elements which would work quite nicely. I think one of the main problems would be trying to place the type in a suitable place and so I may need to experiment with this further when digitally developing these designs. However, I still feel that this will end up as a more successful logo design than my previous designs.

I then went on to create my poster ideas digitally using, for example, Adobe Photoshop. First, I produced the ‘calling me ugly wont make you beautiful’ idea. I think this has turned out quite nicely, but I had had in mind making the ‘ugly’ 3D and cutting out the word ‘beautiful’ and so this may change the overall look quite a lot. I will therefore need to experiment with this poster idea further. Also, the type is quite ‘flat’ and so perhaps I could try lino printing this design and then digitally including this in the final poster design so that the type was handmade, etc. This may also add a more ‘rough’ effect, which will work well with these words.

I then created the ‘lost your voice?’ idea where I have used the photo which I took before where the light was bright enough to make my mouth ‘disappear’. A few people suggested making the eyes look ‘sadder’ to enhance the image and it’s meaning. It was also suggested that I take new photos and then smudge my makeup, etc, to add the ‘teary’ effect. I will still probably experiment with this, but for now, I just wanted to get a general idea of what the overall poster could look like. I therefore added the effect of tears and smudged makeup digitally in Photoshop. I think that actually this works quite nicely as it is and a real photo may not be necessary, but I would perhaps need to ask for opinions on this. Overall, I really like this poster idea and think that it will be even more effective when the words ‘lost your voice?’ are cut out, which will further emphasize the meaning of not being able to speak up. Also, although the logo is just temporary, I feel that perhaps it should be placed somewhere near the bottom instead of at the top (and perhaps be smaller) because at the moment it looks like something is on top of the person’s head, etc.

I then tried the idea with the handprint in the centre with the message above reading ‘are you the bully or the victim’. This is quite effective and stands out well, however, as I mentioned when I sketched out this idea, it is aimed more at both the bully and the victim instead of just one or the other. Also when creating this, for the handprint I used a selection of type, and thought that this looked quite effective just on its own. However, I’m not too sure what I could do with this to develop it further.

I also tried the ‘why do you bully?’ idea with the different reasons creating the sentence. This is quite attractive, but is maybe slightly hard to read, especially with the wide range of colours. I therefore also tried it with the colours being more ‘muted’ so that the white would stand out more and with the reasons being just grey (and repeated along the page), so help to make the white stand out. These work quite nicely, but I think that perhaps there is still too much writing making it a ‘hassle’ to read it all, etc. On the other hand it could entice some viewers to look more closely to see what it says, etc.

I then developed the ‘fat pig’ idea digitally. I’m not too sure about this design. I think that I could’ve chosen a type style which was more sophisticated as this whole design looks quite ‘childish’ at the moment. However, I quite like the idea of the ‘stamp’ effect on top and so perhaps I could explore this part further.

I think I have some possible final poster ideas which I could develop further and I will probably print out the ‘calling me ugly won’t make you beautiful’ and the ‘lost your voice?’ ideas so that I can make mini versions and experiment with the cutting out and making 3D elements which I wanted to try out. I think that, so far, these are the ideas which would work best and give out the right messages.

Target for today: Create new, more effective logo designs in sketchbook and create digital versions of poster ideas from sketchbook.

Target for tomorrow: Take photos to show smudged makeup and ‘sadder’ eyes, etc, and create mini version of poster ideas.