The Crit

On monday the 7th of January I presented my almost final book cover and poster to the class, I received some really positive feedback on overall theme and feel of the cover with people liking the drawing style and the  effects used on the cover.  I received some important points to improve on aswell. 

The following points were raised 

• Make the carpet on the front smaller as it does not look right.
• Try just a black and white colour scheme for the character and objects on the cover.
• Potentially move the positioning of text boxes on the back cover.
• Reduce the brighness of the shadow on the mans legs

These were the main issues raised about my cover so I will experiment withhem to see what t on the cover. 

I also showed my poster which again was liked for the style and feel but there were also some helpful points that were raised for me to improve upon. 

The points raised were 

• Remove or edit the book cover on the poster.
• Change the colour of the text or background so the text is more visible.
• Remove on of the hats on the poster as it looks odd.
• Play around with text and it's spacing as lots of free space.

 So I will work on these points to see what lloks best for the poster, another point that people were undecided was the lighting effect on the poster a few people thought it was too bright whilst other thought it worked so I will play with size a strength to see if it can be improved.

Overall the crit was really helpful and the positive comments made me feel good about my work and design choices and the points raised gave me something to think about and improve on for the final dealine. 

Making the background for my cover.

For the background I wanted something that look stylish and fitted with the art style at first I was thinking of a dark shade of blue to use as the backcover but after trying it out it just didn't look quite right so I went with a light shade of grey based on a silver pantone colour that  I thought looked good but also made the content on the cover really stand out. 

So first off I started with just a filled rectangle of the grey I wanted covering the area of the template I can use. I wanted to add in some textures to give the background some depth and make it more aesthetically pleasing than being just a blck colour. 

To do this I used photoshop to bring in a couple of textures the first on being the patterns in the corners particulary bottom left on the back cover. I got these patterns into position and resized them in photoshop before dragging them into illustrator and live tracing them. The other texture I wanted to slightly overlay the grey and the spray patterns so in photoshop I added some blending effects to it to make it look right and make sure the colours were not to powerful or strong.

FInally I dragged this into illustrator and then just changed the opacity of the different layers to get the background to a point where I was happy with it. 

Illustrator Work - Drawing the Detective

The first thing I wanted to do in illustrator was draw the detective character I was going to use on my front cover. I knew what the art style was that I wanted to use so it was just a case of drawing the detective correctly to fit in with my chosen style. I used the pen tool and started to draw the dective free hand. I drew a number of different looking detectives some looked quite good whilsts other were either aesthetically poor or didn't fit the style I am using. 

This is the what I started with as the initial shape for my drawing tilted because the man is leaning over. 

Ii then added in the arms and legs seen here on the right. 












Another aspect of drawing the man was the shirt design I didn't want to leave just a white square as his shirt so I added some detail in to make it look better and be more effective.  I drew a collar and a tie in keeping with the drawing style I was using, I also made them contrast using black and white. 




 



One of the hardest parts I found to drawing the detective was getting the hat right as a lot of them looked odd or poor and  ruined the drawing. After drawing about 10 + different looking hats I finally made one that I liked and suited the drawing, on the plus side I can now draw hats with the pen tool really easily. 


After the hat was added to the man I edited a few paths until I was happy with how he finally looked, then I added in the final details such as the eye and the gun.

Branding Guidelines

For this project I have been asked to create a set of branding guidelines to go with my book cover, therefore I decided to research a little into what branding guidelines are and how they are used.  As the name suggests branding guidelines are essentially a set of rules to follow when designing for a company or business, they are important as they give your brand a visual identity and are how your brand or company is recognised by people this also means they must be consistent one of the main reasons branding guidelines exist. 

Branding guidelines will consist of the brand feel, typography, colours, imagery as well as potentially layout so there is a lot of information for the designer to work with. 

The guidelines come with ways to use a brands image and includes special exceptions on when you can change a set guideline for example when you should change the colour of a font as well as clears "don'ts" which show what you cannot do or change with the elements you have for example where a logo is positioned or the background it is on. 

Branding guidelines usually include the following  - 

The Brand Feel - The guidelines will explain the feel a brand wants to give and how they should come across to the consumers or the public it also lets the designer learn a bit about the company or brand before designing for them which would be helpful, because you would then know what kind of feel your work should give off and what it should suggest about the brand.

Typography - The guidelines will show the fonts that are used by the brand and how they should be displayed in particular the primary font used for the brand. As well as this the guidelines will also include the font sizes, kerning, leading and possibly other info depending on how detailed the guidelines are. They will also feature secondary fonts for sub-headings or other text on a design.

Colours - The guidelines will show the primary and secondary colours used by the brand and give there pantone values (if available) there CMYK values, RGB values as well as there hexadecimal value.Most branding guidelines will also give clear do's and don'ts on where to uses the colours and what they should and shouldn't go with. 

Imagery - The guidelines will suggest the type of imagery you should be using when designing for them, for example telling you what to avoid and what the images should be featuring.

The Pitch

On moday 3rd Decemeber I pitched my idea to the class using a presentation I had made, I covered the research I did into existing book covers for the big sleep as well as the main art styles that I got from the book. These being film noir but that was an obvious choice for the book so I wanted to mix it up a little and use a different type of drawing style for my cover, so I covered Saul Bass and modern interpretations of his work as the direction I wanted to go with my art work. 

I spoke about my colour choices that were heavily influenced by both film noir and Saul Bass so they would fit with the art style and give the cover the feel I wanted it too have. At the time I pitched my project though I had not made a final decision on my font choices so my pitch featured 5 different ones that I needed to decide on.

Finally I pitched my idea for what will be on the cover using the before mentioned art styles and colour.  


Feedback - 

I received some really positive and helpful feedback on my pitch which really helped me going foward. The art style was a positive with people liking it's different feel but agreeing that it would suit the big sleep and the colours were something else people thought would work. On the font choices I recieved some useful opinions which helped me make my final choice which was the betty noir font. 

It was also mentioned that one of my earlier ideas which was based around a gravestone that I had dismissed was really liked so I decided to try and use this in some way and bring it back into my designs whether it was on the book cover or the poster.

Overall the pitch was really helpful and made some of my design choices as well a giving me a few more ideas to think about.

Colour Scheme

The  Colour scheme I have chosen for my book cover I went for a mixture of film noir and modern interpretations of Saul Bass work as these were the art styles that have influenced my book cover. I tried to mix the tow styles by using the red and blue to link back too Saul Bass' style with the grey, white and black linking in with film noir. 

Art Styles - Saul Bass

I didn't want to go with just film noir as the influence for the art style on my cover as it is what is expected from the big sleep and has been done numerous times. This made me want to mix it up a little and look at other possibilities that I could combine with the film noir feel, my initial art led me too look into Saul Bass as his style was similar. 

By similar I meant that his drawing style of people was similar because of the way they are distorted and not all the body parts are fully connected. For example looking at the range of posters he created here you can see the people are done in a unique style, i found it interesting that you could still tell even though some of it was pretty extreme like the arm in the bottom left which is very jagged and looks very different to an actual arm.  

However after looking through a range of his work I thought his style might be a little too extreme for what I wanted to and for the big sleep in general. So I started looking for different takes on Saul Bass' work and from this I found the "Catch me if you can" title sequence which is a modern take on his work and is reminiscent of the 50's with the it's colour style and the clothing on the people. Another aspect of this title sequence that I liked was that it reminded me of film noir with the men in suits, leaning against walls, wearing hats all reminiscent of film noir style. Also the colours linked back to film noir with blacks and blues and there were also some other darker colours used at different sections in the title sequence. 

So I decided that this modern interpretation of Saul Bass' work mixed with film noir style would be the main influences on the art style for my cover.