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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.

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