Swiss Style Frame Backing Design

Today I've designed another idea for the backing paper design project. My initial thought process behind it was that it could work either way up, and that the different orientations provide different descriptions of the size format, so one way would should how the frame is approximately 20 x 15 cm, and the other would show how it's approximately 8 x 6 inches. In terms of design inspiration I went down a Swiss style design route, probably with a good mixture of both contemporary influence and modernist influence. I've made note of some visual research underneath; I'd like to stress that I didn't want to be too cliché by using Helvetica or Akzidenz Grotesk, however much I like them. I opted for a mixture of different weighted versions of Avenir Next, and I'm happy with that choice, I think the numbers in particular look brilliant.

Here's the new designs:

I wanted to add a little extra into this design too, after last weeks crit I decided my minimalist design was simply too minimal. I've decided to opt for a bar code and a QR code. It's important to mention that the intention of the QR code would be to take the customer to the web-address of the website the frame is from, however for the sake of this project I've made a working link to my own blog.



A bar code was another design element I wanted to incorporate, it adds much more context to the design and makes it much more realistic as a product. The bar code itself also has connections to myself, only the really keen observers will find that the code reads: 'OUGD405 DB251837', which is the module code mixed with my student number; again it's just another way of adding design subtleties to a piece of work.



The way I wanted to utilise the visual research on Swiss style, would be by implementing a 15o baseline for the text to sit on. That and the colour scheme.

Careful consideration into a grid system has been put in place as to align all the elements of the design in a clean way.

Finally, I included an image of the matterhorn, just to solidify that link between my design and Swiss design. I'm really pleased with how it looks, I could see it on the shelf of some contemporary furniture store. I do think it needs one more thing though, I'm just not entirely convinced of what it is. One thing I am considering is creating a brand, just to stick some kind of logo on there perhaps.

Post-Critique

I've just went through and evaluated my feedback from the crit today, the format was where the groups were split in 2, and we walked around the room and left written feedback for each other. Also, we were told to leave 3 questions for the assessor to have an idea of what to write, mine were:

Q1. The photograph of stationary is intended to be 'life size', do you think customers would benefit from getting a good idea of size when buying?'

Q2. Do you think the Red Minimal Design could benefit from some kind of embossing or de-bossing effect on the type?

Q3. Is the vector artwork design effective at all? (I'm not convinced).

Again, I've found this process useful, when lots of other peoples individual opinions start building up, you know you need to react to it. I'll quickly go through the bits I've found particularly helpful:

Most people generally found the vector design confusing and a little hard to distinguish, I agree with them. However others said they quite liked it, one person even said it was their favourite. If I'm honest I'll probably not take that one any further.

A lot of people agreed that any kind of embossing effect on the red designs would ruin it, and the simplicity of it would be forfeited, also that it would be a wasted process as the paper is under glass, therefore making It unnecessarily expensive.

An interesting point that I found was that somebody commented about Ion's newest work on Behancé, relating it to my vector design and how there were elements of it with my work. This was were I got my original inspiration from so it's quite interesting to come full circle.

Many people liked the idea of the life-sized stationary as a size reference, however they thought the stationary itself was dull. I did originally plan to use other things, perhaps food? Others thought it was a nice touch but unnecessary, people generally are aware of what size frame they want when they are looking for one.

Regarding the red minimal designs, a strong majority of people believed it to be the most visually strong, and again I agree. This is probably the one I will develop, but I also want to experiment with photography first. Someone had a nice idea of perhaps overlaying a photograph in low opacity or with a layer blend over the design, this is something I will definitely try.

All in all a successful critique I think.

Preparation for This Morning's Critique

This morning we have a group critique to see how we're getting on with our frame backing paper design brief. We're expected to have around 3 ideas by today. I've got a set of 3 mocked up concepts, and I'm pretty sure I want to try some other routes too. We'll see after today what route my piers think is the most promising.

Life-size Photograph Design Idea

I've had another idea on how I could make the frame backing paper design.

I've taken some photo's with pieces of stationary inside a frame size of 12cm x 17cm, that's 3cm less than the paper size of 12cm x 17cm (8ins x 6ins) providing a margin, in this margin I'm going to place arrows showing the dimensions of the frame. The idea is, the photograph will be printed at 100% scale actual size, so that the customer can get an idea of the relation of the frame size to everyday objects, if done in a sophisticated manner it could look great too. I've also measured the objects and I'm going to attach arrows depicting the size of these objects too. Here's the photo's I've taken:

Backing Paper Design Sheets

Today I've been cracking on with my physical worksheets for brief 1 of module 2 where we have to design the backing paper for photo frames:

Firstly I go through the important parts in the project, I write down the limitations, the deliverables for the deadline, initial thoughts and ideas etc. 

There were a couple of things I had in mind after doing my market research yesterday in the shops, avenues of design style. One way I want to look at it is with photography, black & white if possible so as to not distract from the frame itself. Another style of design I've considered is utilising vector graphics to compliment the feel of the frame, I've made a note to myself to remember that this design should not be too flashy. Lastly, another initial idea I had was my original one to simply get the dimensions of the frame across in a minimal, simple yet stylish way. At the moment this is looking like my preferred method, I've already had a couple of ideas on how I could achieve this.

These final 2 images show another idea I had later on, where I could photographs objects and compare them to the size of the frame. I'm going to blog about this idea in more detail next.

Vector Graphic Backing Paper Design

It's relevant to mention that I seen some work I liked on Behance that I like, and tried to apply a similar effect to some work of my own. Here is a backing paper design that uses vector artwork from Illustrator, I'll be honest I'm not too pleased with how it's turned out, it doesn't look as good as I thought. Probably because of the quality of dissected sections, or perhaps the effect just looked good in the media (Typography) for a reason.

Below is a link to the blog post I did regarding the work I seen on Behance:

http://d-bell1316-dc.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/displaced-by-ion.html

Minimal Frame Designs

Here's a quick post of a couple of mock-ups I've designed for Brief 1 of Module 2 where we are to design the backing papers for a set of 3 frames. I've mentioned on my design context blog that one of the angles I wanted to go down was from a real minimalistic point of view, and here's what I've came up with for the answer to that avenue: The colour scheme is absolutely gorgeous, I just hope it looks as good printed. I'll be honest I've nicked it from a corporate identity brand I blogged about a couple of weeks ago; I just think that the red sits perfectly with the grey. In terms of type I've gone for white Futura with extra wide tracking, because it emits an essence of neutrality and clarity, whilst also being classy. 

Hierarchy in Newspaper Design

I've been experimenting with the layout & hierarchy of a newspaper, to better understand the principles of editorial design and get to grips with grid systems more. I've taken a note of the items within the spreads that I feel are most prominent, taking into consideration: Type, Image, Colour etc.

The Quick Brown Fox Task

Todays task seen us bring a collection of Typefaces, all spelling the well known Typographers pangram: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog'. I'm familiar with pangram's, I based a project around them last year. Their purpose is to showcase all the glyphs from A-Z in a Typeface.

The purpose of the exercise was to understand the difference in legibility of Type, and how that relates to the readability of it. We were instructed to bring difference styles of type with us: Grotesk, Roman, Script and Block. I chose Avenir, Trajan and Futura ExtraBold Condensed; respectively some of my favourites from each category.

The interesting part is when you start to read certain words in the wrong order depending on their style and the order, which was intentional. It was also strange to see how this reading order altered too depending on your personal distance away from the sentences.

I've learned that there's more to Type than just choosing it because of the content. It has to be readable and legible too, as well as well informed in regard to the arena it will be viewed in.

Portfolio Labels

Here's the design of some A4 labels I've made for the module submission on Friday. Futura with really wide kerning, classy. It's the little details in design that excite me, and these little organisation tools make me feel better about my work.

Microsoft 365 Competition Entry

Here's a couple of posters/adverts I designed as a personal competition entry for a new program Microsoft launched called "Office 365", an online documents processor with the theme and tagline "Work from anywhere". I'm really chuffed with how they've turned out, the vignette and colour scheme is something I'm especially proud of.