OUGD402 | Studio Brief 02 - New design direction

After leaving my mood board on display in my room for a few days, I tried to decide which side I preferred - the neutral browns and greens or the brighter colours. I decided that the brighter colours appealed to me more and I began to realise that this reflected my personality best. 

My original experiments had a very sophisticated, classy feel but did not seem to communicate "Graphic designer". I decided to begin experimenting using my favourite image on the mood board, which was a women stood in a white room with a bright blue striped jumper, with a colourful lamp in the background. I own a lot of stripy tops myself and I am now desperate for a blue one like the photo.

So, I then began to create bright stripes in the colours from my mood board. I started to play around with the Sans-serif typeface that had been a favourite from other students - bebas. I tried to make my designs as fun and playful as possible. I introduced shape and pattern, which I commonly use in my own work.  I decided to add the tag line "Playful graphic design and illustration" as I felt this tied in with my design as well as my approach to design. 

I had previously played around with a the typeface in a way similar to my new approach, however I felt that the colours here were to pale. I did create an ampersand with a flower which I felt could be a potential symbol for me but I still felt that this didn't match up to my personality. I feel like this was the design stage where I began to move from the sophisticated look to a more playful style. 

I later came across the following branding, I was inspired by the colours and the more interesting striped pattern. I then began to zig-zag the stripes rather than keep them straight. I continued to play around with the inspiration and designs I had until I came up with something I was happy with. I did this using illustrator, primarily the pen and line tools. 

From my designs, I was most happy with a turquoise and black scheme, with stripes either side. This composition appeared the most balanced. I began to construct all the elements of my self branding on to a board. However, when I completed this, I felt that the black was too harsh and did not truely represent me. I also felt that this did not feel as playful and fun as I was trying to communicate myself and my designs. As I had already began my web design using 'weebly' as advised by other students the template I chose on this influenced my next development. This was because there were some elements of the templates that could not be changed - I had no realised this prior to designing the website. The template I chose had a bright pink strip that appeared when scrolling down the page. This bright pink was exactly the kind of colour I felt represented me and by designs. I worked on combining this and other bright colours from my mood board to find the perfect combination for my logo. The website template also influenced my type choices as I had to stick to what was available for the template. Bebas was an option, and I found a typeface 'Montserrat' that I felt complimented Bebas and worked well for body copy. 

 I then made some very simple mock ups for the website on illustrator. The design appeared far more friendly without the black. I decided to create a varied colour palette that consists of harmonious colours, with a pastel and bright colour of each. This wide colour palette will allow consistency within my designs. I was stuck between some of the colour choices, so I began to experiment with creating an animated GIF.  I found an online tutorial that explained how to create this on photoshop, but unfortunately it did not work. If I have time left, I will add a GIF to my website later on.