Skip to main content

Illustrator Workshop with Stephen - (Workshop 6)


Today in my workshop with Stephen we looked at some helpful indesign and illustrator tools that could help save time and just be useful in general. The workshop started with us looking into Adobe capture, this was an app that allowed you to take images and create artwork straight from your phone that can be transferred over to the Adobe softwares.

 


We moved onto looking into working with shapes and the ways shapes can be easily distorted in Illustrator. I found this helpful as I am not a frequent Illustrator user as I find the direct tool hard to use. We also looked at using the normal brush and the blob brush, I switched these two brushes below. (BLOB BRUSH ON LEFT AND NORMAL BRUSH ON RIGHT). These are both useful as the blob brush allows us to be able to use the direct tool to select any part of the brush which makes this easier if working to create different shapes or having more control. The normal brush only allows us to have a line inside the line and doesn't allow us to have much control.


Moving on, we took a lot into imagery and typography together and creating a similarity between the two. I selected an image of an airplane and used the trace tool to trace over this. I then looked online to find a font that would compliment my visuals and found that Scifly-Sans (dafont) compliment my vision really well.


I really like this font and it reminds me of the airline style fonts. I think this captures my eyes due to the way the font has a striking curve and follows a circular composition throughout. I worked with incorporating a pink colour that I achieve through Photography on my Adobe Capture app.

Our Task

We was given a task to create a Portfolio in InDesign using the skills we have learnt over the past few workshops. The brief was to use two different text fonts, a clean layout, imagery and create something that is clear and easy to read. My first layout consisted of just two pages and then I went to expand this on to a few other pages to see if I could keep this layout style going throughout.
I do like the idea of this style however I would need to think about certain elements. This includes: what If I had a lot of images, could I have my typography as two type boxes rather than one to make it more readable. I really like both the header and the body copy typography, I think they work really well together. Below shows my first layout presentation style: 


After the Workshop

I enjoyed this workshop and I do feel the techniques I was shown will help me progress forward. I have decided to try some of the stuff we have learnt in order to push myself to get into the habit of this being stuff I will do frequently.

InDesign Layouts

I started by applying this technique by applying this to my expound brief research document. I opted to work with a lot of negative space and not having stuff I do not need on the page for example on my other briefs I applied a rectangle at the bottom to add a sense of colour.

Past Documents (adding a bar at the bottom of the document)

After the feedback from the second and third brief from my tutors, they taught me to only add things I need on the page. I questioned what I actually needed. This was a title, images and text. Sometimes not even a title or an image or text. Something just an image as an image speaks a 1000 words. I learnt how to space things out after having this workshop and it made me go back to my latest brief and question everything.



I decided to look at a page from each of my briefs pages and apply what I have learnt today showing a before and after to see if any effect has been had on the tips Stephen has given me.

Brief 1 - Manifesto
Before
After

Straight away I can see a big difference just by using a better grid system and by cutting the text on to smaller blobs. This is more readable and the layout is more easier for my eyes to follow as a viewer. Just by spacing the spread out and adding some negative space creates something more simplistic and more appealing to look at.

Brief 2 - Identify
Before

After

I do think removing the red bar makes the pictures and text become the centre of attention. By adding a drop shadow and moving the text in to smaller blocks like the first brief, it creates a simplistic yet easier to read document which is straight to the point.

Brief 3 - Move

Finally I applied this layout to my third brief Move. I added a black bar and I do think the black bar could be taken away as it has no importance or provides any information to the page. I worked with a slightly more appealing font "Avenir" and worked with creating smaller blocks of the text to add a slightly more focus to the images above it,

Conclusion

I really enjoyed this workshop as it has made me more confident to use Illustrator and In Design. I find it really easy to stay in my comfort zone with Photoshop because I know how to use this and I find it really easy due to using It for years but in this workshop It made me come out of my comfort zone and start to familiarise myself with tools that I will need to learn in order to progress on my course. I enjoyed going back to my other briefs and applying this to see how I could improve my work and where I may have been going wrong.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Typography Workshop with John (Workshop 3)

In my workshop with John it was all about refining. However I had to make the big decision as to which typography I would continue to pursue. In my previous workshops, I designed the following: Here I have a range of three different typography designs. The first one is more geometrical and fluid at the same time yet follows the structure of my inspiration throughout. The second one also links back to the inspiration however I am unsure on some of the letters for example the C. Finally the last one hasn't followed any inspiration and instead was my own type that I wanted to try. I do like it however their was no process or stages for this one. I decided to refine the first one as I have seen it develop thoughout. I developed this on graph paper, below shows the outcome:  I choose to have some letters slightly thicker than others for example the M & N is thicker than U and V as I know this is a more used letter and I wanted it to be more dominant. I like ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Editorial with Stephen (Workshop 2)

In my second workshop with Stephen, the main topic was Editorial design. We was focusing on the US standard size for the size of the In Design spread. What is editorial design? Editorial design is for magazines and websites. Once designed, this would be passed on to someone to code. The workshop We started off by setting our page up. I used the following settings below: Once I set up my spread, I then pasted in the image we was using to refer too and scaled up to my margin. I reduced the opacity to 50% so I was able to see what work I was doing on top of the image. I stared working with kerning, tracking and working with scale in order to scale the letters Alanis to fit similar to the document on the back. The reason why we was playing with these metrics and spaces was for us to have more attention to detail and to work away from the default settings.  Below shows the settings I decided to go for and what this looked like. Below shows after me playing with dist...
Post a Comment
Read more

Self Taught After Effects - Illustration & Animation Trial (Inspired by Workshop 2 with Sara)

After my past few workshops I decided to try and use the techniques I have learnt to create something of my own. I have recently been working on a new project and wanted to try and utilise what I have learnt combined with my own illustration. I decided to work with the position and animation presets in order to set the scene and create a sense of realistic movement in my work. Below shows the outcome: Milk Sea Animation from Amy Winson on Vimeo . I am really happy with this as in the past workshops I have always stayed with the idea of using text or photography and not an actual illustration. I always felt like I couldn't work with anything like this in my work as It wouldn't ever be strong enough. Although this is a short video, I am really happy with where this is going so far and I am looking forward to extending this into something longer and progressing my narrative forward.
Post a Comment
Read more