Postcard inspiration 2

This design was a cheeky find when I was in the digital print room, as James had printed these himself and let me take one. They are very much in the style of how my final promotional designs look, with type set in blocks of colour layered over a black & white image.

Postcard inspiration

By complete coincidence and perfect timing I received a mailshot in the post from Creative Review:







At this stage I was thinking about promotion and how I could design an advert to slot into the newspaper and this set of mailshots were a great inspiration. I decided to go with my postcard idea and seal them together by a band like this one above.

Manual

Manual, a graphic design and branding consultancy based in San Francisco, work across a broad area of design from branding and corporate identity, art direction and exhibitions to packaging, printed matter and illustration. They also work digitally with web design and signage, but I chose to look at their design campaign for Slice:

"Slice collaborates with world-renowned designers such as Yves Behar and Karim Rashid, to create award-winning ceramic cutting tools for the home and office. Manual created an iconic brand identity to illustrate this cutting edge product. We articulated the brand identity across a packaging system, print literature and exhibition graphics to showcase the angular nature of the logo." (manualcreative.com/slice)














However, it was their printed media that really caught my eye:














The combination of the subtle grey and vibrant orange type against the crisp, white stock is the reason why I love simple, limited colour palettes. Not only that, but it is in fitting with my design direction of having a publication that opens up in a creative way to reveal further information as a large poster design.

This design offers the choice of looking through a quick guide in the style of a leaflet, opening up as a concertina style piece, before opening up completely to reveal the full instruction manual:

Kutchibok

Kutchibok, a graphic design company based in Cardiff Bay, have produced this beautifully crafted publication that uses a two colour design that even goes into the detail of the binding. Simplicity is definitely the key here and it works really effectively.

Simple colour palettes

Büronorth, a multidisciplinary design company in Melbourne, show the idea that I am going for, with a black and white photograph with use of just one colour layered over the top of it. However, they have considered an idea that I really like, whereby it is not just the type that is coloured. They have a boxed colour that the type is laid onto with the blue design, and on the green design they have sectioned out an area of the photograph and used a monotone effect to apply the type onto.























This Remix Issue is an edition of the A5 Magazine made by creators from Isreal. It contains work from all aspects of art & design but I just love the natural cardboard stock against the vibrant blue front cover peeking through. Even though its content links to visuals for music, I like the idea of having a box cover for the magazine with a cut out area to entice the viewers to take it out and read it; it definitely adds that curiosity appeal that the average magazine lacks.

Daydream Magazine

I love this simple use of reversed out type and the slight textured pattern on the 'no lemon' breaks up the white nicely, adding the look of a tint to it from a distance, when really its the same pink as the background but used as fine lines.

Developing colour 2

I don't particularly like this Berlin café poster as the imagery requires personal taste and I'm not sure what it has to do with the opening of a café, but I chose it as an example of how a one spot colour layered on top of a black and white photograph can work solely with the use of hierarchy. The varied font size, use of bold text and lines sectioning off the body text gives a sense of structure to how the viewer reads it.

Developing colour

(found on graphic-exchange.com)

Using multiple colours is not something I usually consider, as I like simple colour palettes consisting of one or two colours. However with the black substrate, these colours work really well and the added patterns within the type grab the viewers attention. If I were to produce something like this with my black and white photography in the background, I think it would really bring out the cultural feel to the regions I am designing about. It could work as a poster design advertising the overall full set of 5 supplements that will then be coming out as monthly editions with their own colour theme.














(found on speckyboy.com)

If I decide to keep the colour choice simple and complimentary using a two colour plus stock theme, I could think about tints and overlays like the example above. I just need to finalise my layout and then I can experiment with different colour combinations to see what works effectively.

Layouts

As my design direction is leading me to developing a mini dictionary I don't have a lot of body text to play with so looking at examples like these below shows how I can play with white space and column widths to make it look creative. My use of photography is another solution to this that will be used as backgrounds with text overlay, as a full single page image, or even as a three quarter fill for a double page spread like the third layout below.











































Found on Speckyboy.com

Shout campaign

Visual branding and design for ‘Shout’ – a promotional campaign to the creative industry for the UK’s largest paper merchant. Of course the colour helps draw attention to this piece but I love the layers and hierarchy going on in the design that turns what could be a lot of dull text into something that you really want to read.

Jamie Delaney

Looking at various options for layout and format:

The Gloss magazine:

Irish Museum promotional materials:

Camouflage:

Taking my ideas digital

Proving that once I have settled on a design consisting of type, layout and photography, it can be applied to any media, digital or print based.

La garçon bleu - Sebastien Gram

Idealismo

I came across this amazing website that holds so much design relating to this current brief and the combination of layout, type and photography that I love in general. They are a graphic design company based in Switzerland and have a design style that I envy running through all of their work. I have chosen the designs below to represent how I would like my layout style to look and how they play around with scale and use of space creatively is something I will take on board:

A2

Bikini Test

Compagnie Anonyme

Design Against Fur

Eject Management

Epitalam - poetry festival

Matthieu Spohn

Static Records