As i will be working for a low end market an envelope of a flat colour will be most appropriate with no finer details. As my cards will need to retail at a low price this should help to keep the cost down; however, still appeal to my younger demographic. When doing my market research it was consistent throughout the low end stores that a plain envelope was used.
To ensure the envelope coordinates with my card the colour of the envelope will match the hues on the card. Within my card for the formative assessment i have added an orange hue to the inside of the card. If Matt thinks the addition of colour will be achievable at a low price, it will be the inside of the card and the envelope which match in their hues creating a consistent connection between the two.
As i was going to have to add my name, module number ect to my sketchbook i thought i may as well make it interesting and use the font i have created. Because i have letters within the text for the front cover which i have not already created i had to draw these letters out from scratch using the same technique i did for the previous.
Overall i feel a lot happier with the information in this style as it directly reflects my theme and what is contained inside my sketchbook. When laying out the text i decided to use a variety of scale in order to make it appear even more interesting. So the text was some what easily readable i decided to not reflect some of the letters. Although not a highly productive use of my time i have throughly enjoyed doing this as i now also have my name in this font which i can display in my desk space.
For my gift tag i have decided to experiment with a range of imagery which relates to my previous designs. For some i have extracted key elements and others used whole monsters. Overall i will not know which will work best with my bag until i have it constructed; however, i have sent this off for printing which i will not get back until Wednesday. So it is essential i have a range of ideas prepared which could work with my bag.
To start i experimented with the use of eyes in different shapes. Eyes would link nicely with my gift bag and entire collection as they will be featured on every product. To start with i experimented with singular eyes; however, i fear stand alone they may not look like an eye and more so a random blob. Because of this i then started to experiment with pairs of eyes facing different directions. At first i had them facing forward; however, then thought it would be good if they are looking at the monster eating all the smaller monsters on and within my gift bag. Out of my eyes i feel this last pair is the most successful as it should link in with the imagery on my bag. Despite this i will not make my final decision until i have my bag constructed.
For my second experiment i decided to focus on the mouth/ teeth of the monster. I would have liked to have experimented solely with the teeth; however, fear like the eyes they would not be resemblant enough of the feature that they are. Within these experiments i tried a range of shapes in order to find one which would really suit my gift tag. I tried to make the mouth as circular as possible so the gift tag would not be a long flat shape.
Despite these initial thoughts when assessing my outcomes the one in the top right which is in fact the longest and the flattest is my favourite. I feel this design has the loosest style which matches my overall collection. Out of all the designs the whole mouths with a circular top and bottom jaw are my least favourite. Except from the one with an additional colour, unless you knew it was a mouth it is not really resemblant. With additional details i could make this more clear but i want to keep this as simple as possible sos not to distract from my gift bag.
Reflecting on my eye and mouth designs if i were to use them as my gift tag i would add a background colour and could also add some finer details just to make it clearer of what they are. Before experimenting with these any further i want to create my gift bag and make these minor changes later to ensure they do in fact match my gift bag.
Following on with these experiments i then started to extract monsters from my roll design. As the monsters were all drawn in one go and not as individual elements i had to get my original black and white drawings and then use the rubber in photoshop to remove the monsters surrounding the one i wanted to extract. Luckily as my photoshop skills are far more advanced than they were this time last year this process did not take a long time.
I selected two monsters which differed from each other and i thought would work well with the monster on my gift bag. The first monster featured in red also had an interesting outline so will make a fun shape for a gift tag. To colour this monster red i simply used the paint bucket on photoshop which filled all the red areas in one go. I selected red as this is featured on my monsters lips on the gift bag creating a strong link between the two. Following this i then experimented with the colour of spots on the monster. First i used a blue hue which will also feature on my gift bag and then a green which is the main colour of the monster on my gift bag. Overall i find the both visually attractive so it will be the case of seeing which goes best with my gift bag.
Secondly i then wanted to use a monster eating another monster which also features on my gift roll. Between this and my red monster i do feel a young boy would prefer this one because of its interesting composition. Much like the red design this monster will also create an interesting shape for a gift tag. Although the orange and purple do not feature within the main monster on my gift bag they will be featured on other areas of the bag so there will still be a strong connection.
Following these experiments i also wanted to try a gift tag with my happy birthday font. For this i simply took my text an arranged it into a position i felt appropriate. As my bag will have so much going on i did not want to include an overly sporadic layout so went with a simple curve. To make it seem more interesting to children i also turned some of the letters so they are facing backward. Overall i think creating this tag design was a good idea as i am not sure as of yet whether i will have space on my bag to include this text so this still will allow me to include it as a separate element.
The happy birthday text at the bottom of my monster designs was simply used to extract the correct hues.
As well as thinking of my tags in relation to my gift bag i also have to consider them being used on e.g. my gift roll and sheet. Overall as long as i am using imagery inspired by my current collection for the tag i feel it will suit each product well.
When thinking of developing this design further i would like to add a black background and a white outline to the text. Now having seen my previous gift wrap experiments it is crucial that if i use a black background i also use a white outline to ensure the design stands out from the page. At this stage i will leave this design as it is incase i decide not to use it within my collection. If i feel this best suits a tag which coordinates with my bag i will develop this further; however, i will not know this until i have finished my gift bag.
From here i will move onto my cards as i want to get at least one of these finished and settle on my gift tag once i have finished my bag.
After my first attempts at designing my sheet i decided to take it in a different direction using text instead of imagery, inspired by my birthday cards. For these designs i created them on a 50x 70cm template as this is the standard size in shops. Although this did mean i could accurately tell the size and spacing of my designs it did mean the file size was rather large, which made illustrator run exceptionally slowly.
First i experimented with a linear structure. Overall i really like how the hues within each letter create striped lines of colour across the sheet. Despite this there is the concern that once the present is wrapped the words happy birthday will not be clear and only feature part of the text. I decided to create my sheet wrap vertically as all those i saw in my market research are in a vertical direction, most proably so they can be displayed clearly.
As i have used every hue from my colour pallet within the text i decided to use a black background. Despite making the overall design appear awfully dark it really helps the colour to pop out the page. I have experimented with a white background within one of my designs; however, i feel the black does make more of an impact. If i have time before the formative assessment i would like to experiment with the letters having a white outline instead of black. I believe this will make them stand out from the page and create a bigger contrast particularly between the purple and black. Hopefully i will have time to do this before the formative assessment; however, i want to get at least one design for each product finished first.
At this stage i decided to print off the design to scale to see how big the letters were. Unfortunately, i can only print onto A4 at home; however, by keeping the design to scale i can still get an idea of how big each row/ letter will be. Once analysing this i decided to make the text only slightly bigger. This is just so i know the letters will really stand out against the background.
For my next experiment i decided to create a diagonal repeat. Overall i feel this does make the design look more interesting; however, i do miss the linear stripes of colour within my first design. I feel this style of repeat looks a lot more detailed because of the slight movement between each line; however, is still structured in its formation. From here i want to try a back and forth method to see if i can create a balance between an interesting repeat and having the hues in a more linear fashion rather than diagonal across the page.
For my third composition i experimented with this back and forth layout. To do this i created two lines which were slightly offset against each other and then repeated them down the page. Overall this is my favourite design and most likely the one i will be submit for the formative assessment.
As this is my favourite design so far i have also chosen to display it in white. Overall against the white background the colours do stand out a lot more with the help of the black outline. Despite this, i do feel white is slightly boring for my demographic. This experiment has made me realise i do need to experiment with a white outline against the black background to see if it really does help the letters to stand out. Once i have experimented with this i will make an informed decision to whether the black or white background will be best at this assessment point.
As all my designs have been so linear up to this point i decided to experiment with a more sporadic layout which only features the words happy birthday once. Overall i really like this design as it has a much more fun layout; however, is most probably not appropriate for a gift sheet. As the text is only on the design once and at such a large scale when wrapping the gift only certain letters may be featured so the overall statement will not be clear.
Although this design is not appropriate for my gift sheet i think it would make a great birthday card so will use it for this product instead. As the birthday card will not be wrapped about anything and the whole page be visible all together this design is a lot more appropriate for this product. Following the formative assessment point i want to be more experimental with the positioning of each letter within my first 3 designs to make it seem more interesting for my target market. I want to be able to combine this more fun layout with still easily readable text so the message is clear.
For my birthday cards i had the idea of turning monsters into letters and numbers which could spell out happy birthday on the cards. At first i experimented with this using the monsters from my gift wrap design, slightly distorting them to look like letters. However, i found after two letters the monsters did not really resemble the letters unless you knew what you were looking for. I could have distorted the monsters further but i fear if i did they would not be resemblant of the original.
Because of this issue i decided to start from scratch with simply being inspired by my wrap design and the style and textures within it. To start the process i sketched out one upper and one lower case letter from happy birthday by hand. Much like in my wrap design, i want to use a combination of upper and lower case. By doing one of each for each letter it will give me a choice of which i prefer for when going onto designing. Once happy with the initial shape of the letter i would then work into it by adding an outline and facial features. As i want the cards to be easily readable i didn’t experiment too far away from the original shape.
Overall i am very happy with the outcome of this experiment and think it works well with my gift wrap design. Although each overall letter does not resemble a monster from my wrap the features and textures are still the same meaning there is an overarching connection.
For my numbers i followed the same process of drawing out each number and then adding details before finishing in pen. What i have also considered prior to this experiment is that i am most likely not going to be able to fit the word birthday with this font on my cards so will use an abbreviated term of B’day. This i feel is appropriate to my target market and also my low end sector. If i was designing a card for a middle aged woman within a high end market this is something i most probably could not include. For the ‘ symbol i decided to create some mini monsters so it still ties in with the rest of the letters and numbers on my design. Overall i think this will be a lot more appropriate to my target market and my style.
From here i have scanned in each image and managed to image trace them on illustrator. Once doing this i have selected my size of card which will be 5x 7 inches. This size is rather large and common within the children’s market. I believe by having my card this size it will allow space for my font and really appeal to a young boy.
Once i had image traced the letters i then added hues from my colour pallet in a sporadic order in order to give the card a fun appeal. As i am aiming for a younger demographic colour will be key for catching their attention. As well as this when doing my in store research the low end market stores such as Card Factory had a wash of multitudes of hues on each design.
Once happy with the tones of the letters i then started to think about the background. Blue was the colour of the background i used within my gift wrap so i settled on this; however, just as a flat blue background the card appeared awfully 2D and very boring. Because of this i decided to experiment with some wavy lines to add texture. Overall, i am not happy with this design at this stage. Although liking the font and positioning of each letter, vast improvements can be made for the background.
From here i will revisit my sheet design in order to give my mind a rest from my cards. Hopefully when creating my sheet it will in turn inspire me for the background of my birthday cards.
Learning from my experiences when creating my gift sheet i selected a monster from my wrap design to develop so it can be used on my gift bag. My initial plan for my bag is to have one big monster mainly featured and then to have a coloured or textured back ground. By including one big monster it will a low my collection to be more experimental with scale. For my gift bag i have selected a standard size which is around 32x 36 cm. I need to be using a standard size available already on the market so my product is cheep to produce for my low end market.
As my bag is for younger boys i need it to be more exciting than your average bag already available on the market, so am planning to make the monster bigger than the bag. This means certain features of the monsters will overhang the edges of the bag which will make the shape more interesting. I selected this particular size of bag as at this age the boys will most likely still be getting larger gifts of toys and games; however, not as big as they were when they were at the age of around 6 or bellow.
I selected a monster with an open mouth from my wrap design as i want to include a clear plastic area within the bag in the mouth. By including this it will make the mouth appear open and more lifelike rather than having a block colour or textures within it. As well as this when using the gift roll to wrap the present, when this is placed in the bag it should look like the one big monster on the bag is eating all the smaller monsters on the gift roll. By doing this i feel it will really lie the collection together and encourage customers to buy more than one item from my collection.
To ensure the monster fitted onto the bag with elements over lapping i did have to make some small changes. To do this i printed off my monster at the scale i needed him and then traced him. When doing so i kept moving the paper back and forth to change some of the angles. When doing this there were two main objectives, one to make the mouth bigger so more monsters would be visible within and two, to move the legs so they would over hang the bottom of the bag. When making these edits i was very careful not to change the monster too much to ensure it was still recognisable. Page 27 of my sketchbook shows the print out of the monster i traced, which is surrounded by other monsters i could have used, and page 28 is the edited monster, ready to go onto my bag once colour is added.
As well as the monster imagery i will also include text which says happy birthday on the bag. Although this is not necessarily required as the wrap will say happy birthday my design does not fill the width of the bag so there will be a lot of negative space. To fill this i could have edited the monster further; however, am hesitant about distorting it any more as i need it to still resemble the monster within the wrap design.
For the formative assessment i will use the same monster both on the front and back of the bag as i am worried that matt will say it will cost too much for a low end market. Once gaining his feedback i will review this design to see what changes need to be made.
Now having developed my gift wrap to a standard i am happy with for the formative assessment i felt my best next move was to create my gift sheet. For this i wanted to use similar imagery of monster forms as i had done on my gift wrap; however, have them at a much larger scale to vary my collection. Inspired by my previous designs i started drawing by hand with a fine liner.
For my initial designs i ended up creating two separate ideas. As i did not want them to repeat, this made the designing process a lot quicker and more straightforward as i only had to consider the imagery and not how everything would fit together.
Now being use to drawing at a much smaller scale than these designs i did find enlarging them more difficult than i first thought. Overall i am happy with my first design on page 25; however, i do feel the faces are a little too big which only allowed myself to fit 3 on the page. A sheet of gift wrap is normally 50x 70 cm and my A3 page is a lot smaller than this meaning i do have room to add extra elements; however, If the present that is being wrapped is rather small only certain elements of the design will be seen e.g. the mouth. Despite this i will show this initial design to Matt to gather feedback and to see what he thinks about such a large scale.
Although happy with this outcome except from being hesitant about the scale i am worried that the imagery does not link closely enough with my wrap design. Despite being inspired from it, the monsters on the gift sheet differ from the wrap. I believe for my collection to come together well i will need to use at least one element from my wrap in order to draw the two designs together. If Matt is happy with the scale of this piece i will re draw it using more elements closely linked to my gift wrap.
One thing i completely forgot to include within this design is any text. It completely slipped my mind. Although it may not be essential for every product to state happy birthday i would have liked to initially experimented with this to create an informed decision whether to use text or not.
After being concerned the scale was too big on my first design i decided to do a second at a smaller scale using the same/ similar imagery. With this design i tried to include more elements from my gift wrap in order to draw the collection together. Despite really enjoying the process of creating one monster based on the shapes of the previous so they all interlock, it does make the process of recreating exactly the same monster rather difficult.
Despite being more happy with the scale of this piece i feel the distorted monster copies from my wrap are not doing it for me. If i were to try this again i would have to extract sections from my wrap of interlocking monsters and then edit the border of my wrap with new monsters. I like the idea of having a boarder around my sheet which is something Helen suggested, instead of just having a cut off point which slices through the monsters faces. If my sheet is to be just one big motif and not repeat this is something i will have to consider. By including a border it will allow me to experiment further with monsters with open mouths which i think will create a more interesting edge to the design and will appeal to my target market.
Looking at my design on page 26 in my sketchbook the black areas of the mouth and eyes really stand out and overwhelm the design. I believe the addition of colour would help the black hue to blend in a lot more successfully than it does at the moment. I was really tempted to add colour to both of these designs; however, decided not to as time management is not one of my strong points. I believe it be best at this stage to crack on with creating more designs which i am happier with, rather than focusing on these. Now having previously created my wrap i am reassured my colour pallet works together so am not worried about adding colour to make sure the hues all work together like i was when creating my wrap design.
As i feel my gift sheet creating skills and ideas are limited at this point i now want to move on to creating my bag in the hope this gives me some inspiration for when returning to my sheets. I will use what i have learnt from these initial gift sheet ideas when creating my bag, such as ensuring the imagery on my bag directly relates to my gift wrap.
After not being satisfied with my first gift roll design i have created a second using a half drop repeat. To ensure i could achieve the same style i decided to create this repeat by hand, something which i have not done before. Although at first being apprehensive once i had a visual reference it became a lot clearer how i would achieve this repeat. To guide myself i created the simple colour coded guide shown bellow, which demonstrates how each section fits together. This allowed my self to confidently re arrange each rectangle, knowing it would line up properly.
For this repeat i cut out 3 A5 pages and then stuck them together to create the shape i needed for my design. Despite this seeming a good idea at the time if i were to go through this process again i would buy A5 sheets of card to know they are exactly the same size as it did take a while to accurately measure them out. It was essential that my measuring was perfect in order to create a seamless finished repeat.
Despite the shape of the paper being different the process of creating the repeat was very similar to that of creating a block repeat. I first started by filling the whole page with imagery, up to the edges and then re- positioned one A5 sheet at a time to where it would join in the repeat, and then fill in this section. It was good to have my guide with me at this time to double check the two correct edges were being placed together.
As i had an issue with my last design in that the finer lines were too thing for the image trace to pick up i decided to use a slightly thicker pen to try and irradiate this issue. I decided to go up in size by only 0.1 mm to see if this would make an improvement as i still wanted there to be a contrast between the thinner and bolder lines.
When redrawing my imagery i remebered some of the things i wanted to develop from my previous design such as including larger monsters which meant they did not appear so compact, and also a wider variety of details/ textures. With a wider variety of textures i feel the image appears a lot more diverse compared to my previous design.
As well as wanting to experiment with my monsters i also played around some more with the happy birthday text. For this i included some letters facing backward and also a greater variety of scales for the letters. I feel this creates a much more playful feel which would more so attract a 8- 11 year old. As well as playing directly with the text i also experimented further with the monsters surrounding it. I wanted to create a more interesting border around the text so experimented with monsters with their mouths open to look like they were trying to eat it. Despite this, i would still like to develop this even further by incorporating the monsters and text together or playing even more with scale; however, will first wait for Matts feedback before creating any further developments.
Once happy with my hand drawn design i then scanned it into the computer and brought it into Photoshop where i played with the levels to create a larger contrast between the black and white. Once doing this instead of image tracing my design i then went and used the magic wand tool in photoshop to remove the white areas. By doing this instead of image tracing the design it allowed me to keep the style of my work yet still remove the background ready for the application of colour. The magic wand tool performed better this time than it had done previously because i had scanned my image in at a higher DPI which meant the image was not so pixilated when you zoomed in.
Once i had removed all the areas but the black outline i then brought the design into illustrator where i added colour using the paintbrush tool. As i liked the blue background from my previous design i decided to repeat this again and also incorporate some blue monsters. Overall i feel the blue monsters really do not work as they just look like an extension of the background. When producing my new design after Mat reviews this one, i will stick to the blue background and the origional 4 coloured monsters.
As well as this within this design i decided to remove the yellow. I feel this design still works without the yellow which has now been replaced with black. The extra black on the design creates more depth within the piece. I am still open to using a bolder yellow within my other designs; however, will wait and see if it is appropriate.
To try and incorporate the text in more with the design i decided to use the 4 hues present within my monsters. I feel this really does tie in the text with the monster imagery a lot better; however, now it does sink into the background rather than jump out at you. Before making any further changes to the hues on the text i will ask what Matt thinks to whether it is better if the text pops right out in your face or is better merging into the design in relation to my target market.
After finishing the design i at first could not decide which colour to outline the text with, black or white. To help myself make the decision i printed out one design with the text outlined in black and the other outlined with white. Now having them printed out and in my sketchbook i definitely prefer the white as it helps the hues to stand out against the darker blue background.
Despite that this design is meant to be a half drop when reviewing it it more so looks like a brick repeat. I feel this is a step forward compared to my original design as it is not so linear; however, improvements can still be made. From here i want to try again to create a half drop; however, one that is much bigger which will allow myself to put two sections of text saying happy birthday in opposite directions to each other. This is something i had wanted to experiment with previously as then no matter which way the present is wrapped with the gift wrap it can always appear the right way up.
Today was my first tutorial with Sian for this project so it was interesting to get a different point of view about my ideas so far. I initially ran her through my sketchbook, picking out on key pages which have really influenced my theme before showing her my first design.
It was useful talking to Sian about my first design as i have been having some issues with image tracing it and she managed to resolve this for me. Because i did not scan my design in at a high enough DPI it meant when using the wand tool in photoshop i was not getting the best effect i could. When scanning in my new design i will ensure it is scanned in at a high enough DPI which should mean i don’t have to use image trace, which was changing the style of my design.
When looking at my first gift roll design she suggested joining the text up with the monsters, or trying a design which did not include the words happy birthday. This is because of how separate the text is to the rest of the design. This i had personally noticed; however, saw this as a good thing as the design instantly stands out as a happy birthday wrap. Despite this i will ask Matt what he would think about a gift roll which does not say happy birthday before changing my design as i do not feel my imagery relates strongly enough to the theme of birthdays without this text.
A reversible gift sheet was something i was considering to produce when thinking of working for a high end market; however, when changing to a low end i excluded this idea because of the costs involved. Despite this, Sian mentioned producing a reversible design even if i am working for a low end market. For our first formative assessment i will produce a reversible design for the gift sheet and get Matts feedback to see whether it be appropriate.
At this stage i am still struggling quite a bit for finding a way of saying happy birthday that relates to monsters; however, also can be said in no more than 3 words. I want to try and keep the quote as short and simple as i can so my gift roll design is still mostly monster imagery.
In my desperation i messaged my brother to see if he had any ideas and he mentioned ‘rappy birday’ with a monster eating a piece of cake. Although this is a start it is not quite what i am looking for. Despite this i like the idea of monster eating cake on my birthday card; however, change the cake to a monster that looks like a piece of cake. This is something i can go on to experiment with later.
I have also been googling ways of saying happy birthday with links to monsters. From this there has been a lot of longer texts and slogans; however not much in the way of two or three word statements. Despite this i have been pulling out some key words such as birthday monster, monster bash, roaring, scream, wild and monstrous. Although these words do not in capture what i am looking to say directly they are a start for myself to start to think how i can combine some of these ideas with happy birthday.
From here i think my best way forward is to put pen to paper and start mixing the words in a visual way. I am hoping my plans of putting some letters backward will also help to inspire some short fun slogans.
BA Hons Textiles Consultancy Blog 