FMP - Mindmap & Initial Ideas

This week we were given the brief for our FMP's. I decided to do a mix of both publishing and moving image, by making a magazine and promotional video to go with it. This is a mindmap I made while thinking out ideas for what this magazine could be based on:

From the middle bubble I branched out into four different magazine themes - Fashion, Youth, Skateboarding & a magazine/lookbook for a brand.

For the theme of fashion I started to think out locations, brands and models. I chose to focus on streetwear brands like supreme, palace, bronze56k, converse etc. because these are the brands which I'm most interested in and know the most about. I also asked myself where I want to shoot my photos and went for urban locations such as Bristol and Bath, as well as countryside heavy rural area's where I could capture nice light and blue skies. I think these two locations contrast against each other and will look good together. Lastly I had the task of picking models. I decided that I wanted people who look different and/or interesting, in order to stand out. I will research further into this.
The theme of skateboarding was very appealing to me as well as it's something I'm very passionate about. From this theme I wanted it to have variety, because there's lots of skateboard magazines out already so mine would have to be different in order to stand out. I also wanted it to feature interviews with skateboarders from the local area and focus on skate culture. To do this I plan to research via platforms such as Facebook and Instagram to find individuals. The magazine would be fairly photo heavy so I jotted down some ideas of cameras I could use (digital/35mm film) and different editing techniques.
I chose not to create a clothing brand and do a magazine around that however, because I had already done a very similar project to this in previous publishing lessons and wanted to do something different. Also with this idea I'd be fairly limited in what I could write about and present in a magazine, and it would take a lot of time.

I found that it would be quite hard to make a full magazine just focused on a specific theme. Due to this I started leaning towards the theme of 'youth' because through this I would be able to incorporate all of the themes into one magazine. After making this decision, I made another mind map which focused on the youth theme and what I need to do in my magazine.

I decided that it should focus on youth culture, and contain pieces focusing on music, skating, fashion and youth. I came up with these four things because I asked myself what interests me. In this mindmap I also listed the technicalities of the magazine which I need to decide. In the end I chose to make a 210mm x 210mm magazine, in full colour which is 30 pages long (including the cover). The pages will be 170gsm and the cover 300gsm.
In pre production I will have to create a moodboard, plan of pages, contact people and create a storyboard and shot list for the advert. I will also do lots of research in this pre production period.

Lookbook - Peer Assessment reflection

In lesson we rotated around the room and looked at our peers lookbooks and gave feedback. For my lookbook I asked these questions:

What did you like about the lookbook? Why?
What didn't you like about the lookbook? Why?
What stood out?
Favourite Page?
Would you wear the clothing featured?
One thing that could be improved

Here's a link to my table with the feedback

From this session I found out some useful information about how I designed this lookbook and what I should take into account next time:

Firstly, I found that people liked the overall retro and colourful style of the lookbook and it's creativity.

Something which people didn't like however was how I arranged some of the text, especially the vertical text. I think that this would work well in a print format when people can rotate the physical magazine but digitally its hard to read. Some also commented on the font choice.

People really liked page two, as 5/7 people who answered said this was their favourite page. I will keep this in mind and aim to do similar things to this in the future if I ever have a similar project.

One last thing is that 5/9 people said they probably wouldn't wear the clothes featured, which may be because everyone has different tastes and styles. I would like to reach out to a wider audience however so if I did this project again I would try and make my clothes more appealing to a wider audience.

Lookbook Project - Publishing

Research & Ideas

Fashion is everywhere in the world and part of everyday life - everyone wears clothes. That's why I'm interested in clothes and styles which are 'out there' and different. Because of this, the brands which I'm most interested in tend to be designer brands as they produce extravagant clothing which strays from generic clothing worn by the majority of people. To list some names, some designer brands which interest me are Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Comme Des Garcons Play, Vetements, Off-White & Yves Saint Laurent. Despite being very interested in these brands, the garments are sold for a pretty penny, so these brands don't influence what I actually wear that much. I will however take inspiration from these brands for my lookbook.

I think what most influences what I wear are my hobbies - skateboarding and music. It's commonly known that there's a huge culture around skateboarding and a significant part of this culture is skate style. Companies which make skateboards also make apparel which appeals to skateboarders. Some which I particularly follow and wear are Bronze56K, Fucking Awesome, Supreme, Palace and Polar. These brands clothes tend to have retro designs and patterns printed onto their garments and produce them in a variety of colours which tend to be vibrant and bold. I will take this as inspiration for my lookbook.

Lastly, music plays a big part in what I wear. I like rap music and a lot of rappers I listen to influence my style, some introducing me to the brands I mentioned earlier or even their own brand such as Tyler the Creator creating his own brand 'Golf Wang'.

This is a moodboard I made which shows styles and fashion I like:

Designs

I decided to name my brand 'Lowkey' and aimed for it to focus on retro 80's style designs with vibrant clothing. Here's the logo which I came up with:

Taking my research into consideration, I came up with a few garments for my brand - 'Lowkey'. These consisted of:

A T-Shirt

This is a fairly basic white t-shirt. It's a baggy fit, similar to the longsleeve
and features an embroidered logo on the front right pocket area, with a full colour
screenprinted design on the back. I chose primary colours as they were nostalgic to me
and looked good together against white. 

A Longsleeve T-Shirt

I decided to make this longsleeve a mustard colour as it's a vibrant colour which
I like. The small logo on the front is embroidered and the back design is screenprinted.
I chose the checkerboard pattern as it stands out and decided it should be a baggy fit.

A 6 Panel Cap

This 6 panel cap is a forest green colour with a yellow accent. I chose these two colours
because they compliment each other and are fairly retro. The real cap will have a flatter
peak. Both logos are embroidered onto the cap.

A pair of Slip On Shoes

These are slip on trainers with a black canvas body and thick white rubber sole.
The stitching is white to contrast against the black canvas and there is a black
band of rubber on the white sole for the same reason. On the back of the shoe
there is a screenprinted flame design. 

Photoshoot

As my clothes are aimed at youth and are similar to street and skate culture, I decided to shoot my photos in urban areas in cities. I shot my photos in three different locations - A multistory carpark, an alleyway with graffiti in in Bristol & A football cage.

The camera I decided to use for my shoot was a DSLR with a 50mm lens. I chose a DSLR so that my images would be crisp and high quality, and the lens because of it's effectiveness for portraits and it's shallow depth of field. Here are some of the photos which I shot.

Lookbook Planning

I first decided to sketch out my lookbook plan so I could make adjustments and sketch things out quickly. This is shown below:

After this I created a plan using photoshop which was cleaner and easier to interpret.

Final Lookbook

Evaluation

Overall I think that this project was interesting as well as successful on my part. I enjoyed most parts of the project - particularly the design aspects of it.
Firstly the research part of the project went fairly smoothly and the only part I found hard was thinking of a brand name.

After this I had to come up with the garments. I first made a few logos using photoshop and then applied these to pieces of clothing. This went fairly well however the mockup garments didn't look that realistic and you could tell they were faked on photoshop. If I were to do this again I'd put more time and research into making this look better.

Next we had to do our photoshoots. I did half of my photoshoot outside of college time with a few friends and the rest of it in lesson. The photos came out okay but some of the lighting was off. Luckily I chose to shoot my photos in a raw format so I could go on to edit them properly. After editing I was happy with the images.

Next I compiled the lookbook using photoshop which was not too bad, however it took a while cutting out certain objects etc. I was pleased with the end result, which followed a retro style. I put all of the pages (saved as pdf) into InDesign and printed them off onto A3 (folded to make an A4 magazine). I would've liked a bit more time for this part of the project as I had to rush the printing, resulting in me having to print the magazine off 2 times before it was how I wanted. The print was overall good but it looked a bit dull and I would've liked to print it on higher quality paper.

I am pleased with the finished product and I think it looks professional and follows the brief effectively. If I were to do this again I would've taken less time on the digital side of things and spent more timing considering the print aspect of the project (layout, paper, printer, size). Nevertheless I enjoyed making the lookbook and will consider doing something similar for my FMP.

Evaluation - FlipDeck

This is a picture of the final prototype for the board game 'FlipDeck', that me and my group decided to make after getting the brief. Our task was to design and produce a prototype for an original board game/reworking of an original title. There were guidelines for the product and we managed to overcome all of these. The idea for FlipDeck came about because me and Max are both skaters. We downscaled a game we play on our skateboards to a small board game scale. After coming up with the initial idea, we did some research to check there were no similar games on the market (online and in shops), then tweaked the game so it fitted the brief and was playable. With a group of four, we were able to get the prototype created fairly quickly, and we didn't come into any problems with technicalities.

Overall I would rate the product a success, which could work as a real game on the market. One thing that it could improve on however was the skill level it takes to play the game, making it hard to play for a wide audience range. To improve this we could add a dice with much easier tricks. If we had more time to respond to the brief we would have sourced and created proper dice as opposed to paper ones, and would have put more effort into the rule book. Nevertheless, I think this was an effective idea which worked well as a board game.

Board Game Brief Analysis

For this task we've been given a brief which asks us to design and produce a board game prototype in small teams or as individuals. I feel working as a team for this task will be more effective and productive as it will allow us to share ideas and help each other create. It also means that someone who might not be very good at a certain aspect of the task could be helped by a different team member who excels at it and vice versa. Therefore for this task I think I'll work in a small team.

There are some parameters concerning the board game production which are:


-The board must be no bigger than A3


This should be fairly easy to work with as for the task we're expected to use photoshop. The only thing to keep in mind is scale when working on a screen as it will be translated into a real life board.



-It should not be harmful or hazardous in any way


This will change depending on the target audience however the ergonomics of the board and pieces should be considered to ensure that they aren't sharp and that pieces aren't too small.

There are also some object requirements which are:


-The game must include traditional elements (such as playing pieces)

To follow this requirement I will have to do some research into the common conventions of playing pieces and the most effective to use considering the style and target audience.

-Must have a clear target audience

This will either be a game for adults, families, elderly people or children. When doing research I will decide the best audience to choose with my team.

-Must have a clear product identity which includes an effective logo, name, colour scheme and style


This will be achieved with trial and error in photoshop, along with research of other effective board game designs and considering the target audience.

Peer Assessment

Film Buff

Film Buff is a stylish and entertaining trivia game which is appealing to the whole family. It's original and tests the players knowledge on information about films, featuring cards with quotes & film screencaps. 

The board meets the success criteria of the brief as it is under A3 paper size. Additionally, the board is a circle, which is a unique shape as opposed to the generic rectangular board, making the board game stand out compared to others on the market. It also contains playing pieces and a stylish spinner to help play the game, which all fit in with the aesthetics of the product. Although I have only looked at the prototype, it seems safe and that there is nothing hazardous about the game. 

The logo and and style follow a dark colour scheme, with accents of bright colour which make the game come across as formal, but fun at the same time. The box has a creative touch of 35mm film around the edge, portraying immediately from first glance what the game is about and fitting in with the design scheme.

One piece of constructive criticism I would give is that the colour on the box is dark, as well as the text, making it slightly hard to read. This could be solved by changing the colour of the text to white or something similar in order to make it stand out and be readable. 

Rationale for Board Game

Create an impressive board game - In our game "FlipDeck" we featured a Tech Deck in the game as a playing piece which hadn't been done before. This is a unique selling point of the game which doubles up as a toy. Additionally we made sure that it didn't follow the usual format of a board game where a piece is moved around a board, but instead made the board a playing field. This gives a unique and fresh perspective of board games in general, and their common format.

The aim of the game is to roll a dice which gives you a trick to perform on the board, which you and all players must perform. If they fail to do it, then they get a letter, which goes on until they spell out S-K-A-T-E. This is another unique selling point of the game, as there is no limit to how many people can play. With the playing piece being a Tech Deck, it can be fixed and replaced, not to mention the opportunities for limited edition or special pieces.

We chose to aim it at a younger market, not only because it would be easier to design, but because that's who the game is most appealing to.

Board Game Research Statement

Research Statement
To research for this task, me and my team will conduct field research by going to shops and finding board games, taking photos of them, making notes, and investigating them to see what works well and what doesn't. We will also do product research online by looking at popular board games and playing online games to see how they translate to board games. We will also do secondary research by reading articles online.

In lesson, my group went to a toy shop and an art shop in search for materials for the board and blank dice in order to make the prototype. Online we found out that boards are made from thin chipboard, so we looked for this in the art shop. The closest we could find were these lino sheets which were too flimsy for a game board, so we decided we would get the chipboard or something similar online.

We searched for blank dice in a toy shop but only found these dice with symbols on which could work, but were too expensive. Therefore we decided to source these online too and write on them.

While we were in the toy shop we also investigated the price of board games to get an idea of what ours would retail at. We decided that we should price our game at around £5-10, considering games of this size (A3 board) were fairly small and priced similarly, and our game doesn't have many expensive to make components.

Skils Development

Throughout my first six weeks on this course, I have learnt a lot and started to develop many new skills in a range of areas.

Firstly, in Moving Image and Media Theory I have developed my knowledge about film and the history of film. I've discovered how films have changed over time and how different shots connote different moods and feelings to an audience. I've found out how sound helps to tell a story and make it more effective, and the process of how it's done in the real world, which I didn't know before. Through this I learnt about foley artists and how to use a sound recorder to get my own sounds for my films, and how to edit them accordingly. I've also learnt how to effectively use Premiere Pro (which I had some knowledge of before) so that it backs up my project as I work, and lays out my footage in an organised and effective manner.

In my Audio lessons with Tom Grey I have learnt about audio and sound in more detail. He helped us further understand about sound in film, and how to use Premiere with sound design and music, so that the sound is mastered and doesn't clip. He also taught us about making photomations, and how to edit them in Premiere by importing photographs in a group called an Image Sequence.

Publishing with Ty has helped me learn how to be more efficient with photoshop, as well as develop my knowledge about graphic design and film posters. I already had basic knowledge of photoshop before these lessons, however he let us experiment with the program and discover new things individually. He also taught us a range of keyboard shortcuts and techniques to make us more efficient with the program. In these lessons I've produced some of my own film posters that I'm proud of, and gained some useful knowledge and skills which will be helpful later in the year.

Film Poster Mashup made
in publishing (Design 1)

Film Poster Mashup made
in publishing (Design 2)

Sprited Away Poster (Made in Publishing)

Final Design of Spirited Away poster

Lastly, Interactive lessons with Steve Spicer have been really useful in helping me develop my knowledge in design and how I look at pieces of work me or others have made. In these lessons I've learnt a lot about very important parts of Media such as colour, text and design. Steve taught us about colour theory and colour harmony, typography and connotations of typefaces which are very useful to know about, and have helped me in other lessons when designing things. I also learnt the basics of Adobe Illustrator which is a complicated program, made simple to understand in these lessons. Using it I have made infographics as well as gained knowledge on how to use it for making posters and 3d graphics.

Colour Wheel made in Interactive

Image made in Interactive showing different parts of a typeface

Overall I think that in this first six weeks I have learnt a lot about programs and theory which will be very helpful as this course goes on, and now I feel a lot more confident approaching tasks with this knowledge. I still have things to improve on however, one is being more effective at planning and putting more time into planning before getting into a task. Another improvement I could make to help my learning is to spend time doing independent research and work (i.e. outside of college) and giving evidence of this. In the next term and half term holiday I will definitely try to act on these improvements, be it watching a few films mindfully, reading a book or getting outside with my camera and experimenting with it.

This blog shows all examples of all of the skills I have listed, as well as the video below, which shows some examples of skills I have developed:

         

Self Evaluation

Over the past six weeks I have improved and learnt a lot. When we first started I already had some basic knowledge of photoshop and had used it before. But by being able to play around with the program and try using things in it that I hadn't used before, I learnt about new things I could do in it. One of these things were layer masks and another skill I learned was the content aware fill. This was very useful and I used it in my photomation that I had to make for another lesson. My teacher also showed the class hotkeys and shortcuts in photoshop so now I can use the program a lot quicker and more efficiently as I don't have to click on every tool to use it. I also learnt a lot about posters like the common conventions of a poster and what makes a poster look good or bad, despite thinking that I knew about film posters already.

Next time I would spend more time perfecting things I make in photoshop and I'd spend more time planning my projects and researching photoshop as I spent a lot of time sitting looking at photoshop not knowing where to start. Overall however I have learnt a fair amount and produced some images which I'm proud of.

Final Design & Evaluation

Here are the final two posters that I made, which are a mashup of films Léon: The Professional (Léon) and E.T. For the purpose of this task I will be analysing the red one, which I made secondly, however it is my favourite.

I think that at first glance it looks like a realistic and professional film poster, and the red and black colour scheme help it to stand out and connote what the film could feature. It contains a tagline at the top, a common convention of film posters which is comedic and suggests themes of the film. It also shows a very large image of the main character to suggest to the viewer who is going to feature in the film. Because it is so large, you can see imperfections in the poster which are something I can improve on. The glasses and beanie that ET is wearing look scruffy which make the poster look a bit more homemade and unprofessional, as they were drawn with a marquee tool on photoshop. Another thing that the poster could improve of is the blank background, as ET is on a gradient but nothing else so the poster looks bland. This is what others suggested for improvement too, and one peer said that I could add some buildings in the background. One other good thing about the poster is the production credits which I added myself, which make the poster look legitimate and add some life to the poster. 

My Design Process

To make this poster I firstly took into account that I was working at a very large scale, so I downloaded a picture of ET and vectorised it into a 6 colour shape using Illustrator by tracing it. This way I could have a picture of ET that could be scaled up to a very large size, and that was my own. I dragged the picture into photoshop and applied a gradient map to it that was red and black, to fit with the colour scheme.

After this I used the text tool to type out the title, and the character window to adjust it accordingly. The font I chose to use for the title was Akzidenz-Grotesk Pro Super as it was bold and stood out. I adjusted the typeface slightly by increasing the tracking, stretching the type to 120% wide, and making it red. I could do all of this in the character window.

After this I added some other text to the poster. I wanted the tagline at the top to look appealing so I looked for a font that looked good in lower and upper case. In the end I used Helvetica Neue Condensed Bold. The white tagline really stands out and contrasts against the red/black so that the audience see it. I also added production credits to make the poster look professional and realistic as this is something I left out in my first poster design I did at the start of my publishing lessons. I looked up what font is used for production credits, but the college computers didn't have it so I looked for a similar font. I ended up using Akzidenz-Grotesk Pro Light Condensed and again adjusted its tracking and size in the character window. It has a subscript button which was helpful in making certain words small.

Subscript Button

To finish off the production credits, I found some logos online to add to the bottom, such as the Dolby Logo, Rating, and Production Company Logo. The logos I found online were transparent however they were black so I inverted them to make them white. After this, I used the polygonal lasso tool to draw glasses and a hat on ET, by making a selection and using the paint bucket to fill the selection. I also added different coloured accents to the shapes I drew in the same way.

After this, I found a splattered brush that I could use to paint a beard onto ET to make it look like Leon. I painted it in three different shades of red to give it some definition.

Lastly, I added a black vignette to the poster to put behind the title. I did this by using the Rectangle Tool to make a black rectangle, then I used the Elliptical Marquee tool with a very large feather on it to cut half an oval out of the black shape. The finished poster looks good in my opinion and I think that by using a colour scheme it looks really effective.

Elements of Photoshop

Layers

A big part of photoshop is it's layers feature, which for some circumstances is essential. They are like stacked pieces of transparent plastic which can be moved on top of or underneath each other with different content on each layer. Within the layers feature, you can manipulate how each layer acts. This can be done by changing their transparency using the opacity, with layer masks, or by changing the blending. Blending and layer masks can be used to create double exposures like that seen in The Revenant's Poster.

Text Tool

The text tool is a very versatile tool which allows you to add text to a document on photoshop, then adjust the font, style, colour, size, leading, kerning and more. This is an essential element and can be used in pretty much anything. Text can also be arranged into certain shapes and paragraphs.

Crop Tool

The crop tool is pretty self explanatory and may seem simple, however it is a needed element which can actually be fairly complex. It allows you to crop in to a photo so that it's a smaller size, or crop outwards to make a larger canvas. While cropping in or out you can also rotate the crop window to change the area of the image that is being cropped. As well as this, you can change the crop ratio to ensure that the end crop result will be a specific ratio e.g. 1:1 (Square), 4:3 or 16:9.

Liquify Tool

The liquify element can be used to manipulate the structure of an image. Within it it has a range of different tools that can shrink/bulge an image, as well as push/pull parts of it around. This doesn't have many practical uses as it's quite destructive, however it is known to be used on pictures of models to alter body shape.