Posters and Prints

I have been asked to create a poster for a poster series ran in the university by Kieran Walsh. The poster can be about anything so I have full creative freedom; although there is the restriction that it should be appropriate for public use, thus expletives and explicit imagery are to be censored if used.
I could use type, type and image or just image. Given that I have never attempted any pattern-work before, I think that I will venture into that to see what sort of communication it can deliver.


I took my signature and recreated it in illustrator, softening the edges to make it more flowing. I then seperated it into it's individual pen strokes and using subtractive colour, created a layered cmyk effect. When viewed up close, the different colours are easily visible, interacting with each other creating a sense of depth and intricacy, however if viewed far away, the colours blur together making the viewing experience jarring and difficult to focus upon. This reflects the concept of perspective that I wanted to convey.

Element 1

Element 2

Element 3

Element 4

I chose to use the first flowing shape (an M from boreham) as I felt that it was simply the most aesthetically pleasing, with a nicer balance of positive and negative space than the others.

I have also been asked to produce a set of prints for Leeds Print Festival by Amber Smith, which is to showcase a certain colour paper stock supplied to us by GFSmith. This is a great opportunity to have my work displayed at a gallery where the audience will be mostly other creatives.
My colour is light grey, so I will begin creating concepts with that in mind.

ALTERATION: my colour is now Tabriz Blue after an error with the paper delivery.




I drew a jellyfish with a 5mm fineliner, focusing on the outlines and tentacles. This would be what I foil press in gold.

I then used a light-box to illustrate plankton and bioluminescence in stippling in various sized fine-liners. This element would be screen printed in silver, contrasting against both the gold foil and the blue background. 

I used a paper screen for the white screenprinted element, and a fabric screen for the foiling glue. I foiled the design first, then screenprinted the paint second- The reasoning being that I was unsure how the paint would react inside the heat-press if I were to do that first. This way ensured no damage would be done. It also helped with the alignment, as the most visible part of the design would already be down on the paper. 

The reflection somewhat detracted from the paper's colour and texture which I felt was unfortunate, but added a sense of depth and prestigiousness to the full display. I would have liked to have created a larger poster, as this small square a4 format proved somewhat problemic when it comes to foil pressing- the glue is quite thick so getting small details with it is almost impossible, which meant some of the tentacle detailing unfortunately didn't get foiled. I would have also like to have the poster lit with LED's inside the case in order to activate the foiling more, and show off the texture and colour of the paper. This however would take time and cost more money, so it's understandable that this didn't happen. I really enjoyed the festival, and took the opportunity to talk with everyone who produced work for it.  

Triptych Poster (Photographed by Matt Moorhouse)

I was really pleased with how this came out, so much so that the pattern I have adopted in my personal branding, reflecting my love for print. 

This was a really strong week, although I would have liked if the 3rd poster was typographic or illustrated rather than photographic for continuity. I was pleased that my poster was situated in the middle so that it could be seen all the way down the corridor so that the viewing could be experienced at a range of distances for different experiences. The glass also gives an interesting element with the reflection, especially on the black areas. I think that it looks more refined thanks to the use of negative space and white, appreciating the paper as well as the design. 

REFLECTOR (LIVE BRIEF)

My course has been given a live competition brief to design the poster for the end of year LCA party. It will be called 'reflector', and the design should echo this. 

Funky patterns and illustrations would be good for this project, however they would take time that I don't have. one or two simple patterns is do-able. 

Having overlapping and reflected type like this would look great but it would also be bad for readability which I believe marketing will be hard on.

repeating patterns like this would work well also, but I think colour will be important- how a complex image like this would work with colour i'm not sure. I think it would be too difficult to read. 

Again this type of poster would look great, using a singular pattern with type set in a colour picked from the pattern. However again legibility and readability with this poster suffer.

I sketched out some designs that revolve around the idea of reflection and mirror images, not yet thinking about my use of colour (this will come later once the idea has come together). 

Whist browsing fontsinuse.com (a great website for discovering new fonts), I came across Shatter which I felt would work very well with the concept of 'reflector', having layered elements of the type looking fragmented and distorted like it's being refracted through glass. I utilized the 9letter word 'reflector' and set it in a square format to further fragment the reading process, although not so much that it becomes unreadable. It also would represent symmetry and reflection if all of the type and image fit within a single symmetrical invisible grid. 

I chose Brandon Grotesque in Bold for the body copy thanks to it's great readability at any size making it more accessible to all students. It was also more smooth and friendly than other sans-serifs such as Helvetica and Gill Sans. The bold weight but small size meat that it complimented the larger REFLECTOR typography well. 

I experimented with different usage of colour, framing the information in line with the REFLECTOR type to give the poster some more structure. 

I thought that the problem with the poster was the colour of the type and pattern, but after a while of experimenting I realised that the issue was the lack of real contrast between the white REFLECTOR type and the background, it needed to stand out more and be more impactful to better serve the typeface.

A darker blue was much better, I tried using a pink but felt that the pattern too needed to contrast against the dark blue packground to keep it visually interesting. 

Another issue was the positioning of the pattern, it finished too low and looked misplaced. I realised when doing a test print that it was also set too far to the left which threw off the rest of the poster.

I went from a bright yellow to a gold, and darkened the blue further. I realigned the pattern so that it was perfectly symmetrical, and lifted it higher to seperate the top imagery form the lower information. I set the 'LCA end of year party' text in the same colour as the pattern to make it stand out and reach the top of the typographic hierarchy as it will be the most important information for students to read, the name essentially is unimportant. 

Creative Networks

Early on in the year I teamed up with Johnathan Dawes and Sarah Coletta (Vis Com) to produce some posters for Daft Punk and Andrew Graham Dixon.

Daft Punk are an electronic music duo consisting of French musicians Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo andThomas Bangalter. The two achieved significant popularity in the late 1990s as part of the French housemovement and were met with continued success in the years following, combining elements of house music withfunk, techno, disco, rock, and synthpop.They are also known for their visual stylization and disguises associated with their music; specifically, the duo have worn ornate helmets and gloves to assume robot personas in most of their public appearances since 2001. They rarely grant interviews or appear on television.

Andrew Michael Graham-Dixon (born 26 December 1960) is a British art historian and broadcaster. Graham-Dixon began work as a reviewer for the weekly Sunday Correspondent, before becoming the chief art critic of The Independent newspaper where he remained until 1998. Early in his career (in 1987, 1988 and 1989) he won the Arts Journalist of the Year Award three years in a row. As of 2005 he is the chief art critic of The Sunday Telegraph. Since 2004, he has also been a contributor to the BBC Two's The Culture Show on a variety of subjects, and is often the main presenter of the programme.

The Graham Dixon poster uses vibrant colour mixed with a more dated beige to reflect the modern vs traditional history of art. The face is drawn in singular lines reflecting the passage of time. 

Sarah Coletta did an illustration of a clock with the time 09:09 with the date 09.09.99. This is referencing a rare interview with Daft Punk where they claimed their origin to be a technical malfunction and explosion at this time and date that turned them into robots. 

I dislike how these turned out as the colour schemes were too hectic and the illustrations were of poor quality. More continuity should have been put into the two posters as they are so different. The concepts were solid however we rushed the production due to getting the illustrations so late.