This has been really interesting in doing research for my chosen brief Buddhism.  I have learnt so much more Photoshop tools, and this has given me more ways to produce the sort of image that I wanted to.  Also I am quite proud of my poster and the way it has turned out, I have also had a chance to design my own fonts.

I would have liked to have had more time to practice more tools and I would have liked to have tried different things out especially the gradient tool.

I would say that I have fitted the brief together as requested I have tried to make my fonts fit the atmospheric mood for the Buddhist religion and beliefs, I have tried to get the colour to suit the mood and feel of things.  Also I think I have completed my proposal pretty well everything matching and turned out the way I said I proposed to do my poster.

Given the opportunity of more time I would like to have played around more with my first poster which is the one with the fish I would like to have had it a bit more brighter and I wanted to do a masking on the eye of the fish, apart from that I am quite happy with it, as for my other poster I am very pleased probably because I have spent more time on this, I really like the effect of the hue and saturation, I would say at first I was to scared to go a bit wild on my first poster, but I think the bright effect puts words colour and fonts fitting perfectly together to make the best poster.

I would say you have to try out and experiment with colour and fonts a great deal before you start your final project, saying all this I am happy with both my posters. I also wanted to put more in about the matcha tea, I was thinking of putting an add on my second poster saying come in have a cup of matcha or evening Buddist classes and teachings meditation and so forth .

Poster 1

Poster 2

Julia Hinchliffe - Creative Process - Click on image to view

]]> http://dgl3feb2009.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/creative-process-7/feed/ 0 dgl3feb2009 julia_creativeprocesslink http://dgl3feb2009.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/final-product-review/ http://dgl3feb2009.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/final-product-review/#comments Mon, 23 Mar 2009 01:01:44 +0000 therese123 http://dgl3feb2009.wordpress.com/?p=1038 ]]> FINAL PRODUCT REVIEW

I think my first blog, the proposal, was clear in what I wanted to achieve and portray about Yoga.  Never having designed a poster (or anything else for that matter) I hadn’t realised how constricting the size of a piece of A4 paper would be.  I concentrated on the business aspect by  ’talking’ to CMP rather than thinking of the final product.

I was quite pleased with my mood board, especially the left side that symbolized the stresses and pressures of life and the unhealthy avenues that people take to try to cope.  But I wasn’t fully satisfied with the right hand side that symbolized the benefits of yoga.  I wasn’t really sure what a mood board was until I’d finished it and by this time I had spent too much time on it and it was the Yoga side that suffered so as to meet the deadline.  In my opinion the Yoga side seems to state what I wanted the poster to say rather than to set the mood for the overall appearance.  However, I do think it meets the proposal.

I had great difficulties with my plan of action.  I never really understood what was required.  I have just re-read it online and it does say that I was going to do what I eventually did do (apart from producing a leaflet due to running out of time).  There aren’t many technical details included as at the point of writing the plan I felt very unconfident about my Photoshop skills and I knew I would be unable to produce a fabulous poster with lots of effects.  Again, this blog took me far longer than it should have done.

By the time I began my poster time  was extremely limited.  I think the poster is very poor and it proved what I had feared, i.e. my Photoshop skills were extremely limited.  I had spent far too much time on the previous 3 stages instead of practising using the software.  I used more images than planned but they took a lot of time making selections and cropping them hence I didn’t finish the poster.   But I do think that the poster does meet the aims and objectives that I laid out in my proposal and plan. It was always meant to be an ’image’ based poster because it was the leaflet that was to hold all the text based details (venues, times etc.)

Time had become so precious whilst creating the poster that I completely forgot to keep up with the creative process diary so a lot of this had to be constructed from memory.  So yet again I think this stage is poor.

On reflection, lack of understanding on what was required and too much time spent on the blogs, rather then spending the time getting to grips with Photoshop, has caused me to be extremely disappointed with my final results.  However, in a very short period with absolute zero prior knowledge of digital graphics I managed to produce:

A Proposal

A Plan of Action

A Mood board

A Poster

A Creative Process Diary

A Final Product Review (without any images as I am at home doing

this  & my images are at Beaumont St.)

So in my mind, on some level, I suceeded.

Many thanks to Beaumont Street Studio.

]]> http://dgl3feb2009.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/final-product-review/feed/ 0 therese123 http://dgl3feb2009.wordpress.com/2009/03/21/creative-process-5/ http://dgl3feb2009.wordpress.com/2009/03/21/creative-process-5/#comments Sat, 21 Mar 2009 07:38:04 +0000 therese123 http://dgl3feb2009.wordpress.com/?p=783 ]]> CREATIVE PROCESS RE. YOGA POSTER

 CREATING BACKGROUND

A new file was created.  Resolution was set to 300 dpi  and the paper size set to A4.  The background was filled with a lilac colour.

 A new layer was created and the eliptical marquee tool was used to draw a elipse shape in the centre of the background. 

The elipse was filled with white.

A new selection was made and a Gaussian blur was applied to to create a softer, hazy edge to the white centre.

A gradient was applied at each corner of the background to make the edges of the poster darker than the rest and to give an impression of the lilac colour fading towards the centre.

At this point the background was complete.

CREATING THE FOREGROUND

I decided to create the foreround in 3 stages.

1.      THE MAIN FOCAL POINT

This was  to consist of a middle aged, caucasian woman and a young, non-caucasian white male. 

Fortunately I found an image of the two together.

First of all I reduced much of the background with the crop tool.  I then used the magic wand to select most of the remaining background.  The dark male arms against the dark blue wall prooved a problem for magic wand even with the tolerance set as low as possible.    I added the rest of the background, to the selection, using quick mask and paint brush.  The image was then inversed and cropped.  The face of the female was rather marked so I used the spot healing brush to achieve a healthier look.  The final image was held on a seperate layer.

All layers created up to this point were put into the correct order and the picture below shows the results:

2.     IMAGES PORTRAYING ANY AGE, GENDER, RACE, ABILITY, DISABILITY

 My brief was to produce an A4 sized posterwhich, to me, is quite small for a poster .  As people seldom stop and read posters I wanted the final image to contain as little text as possible.  Therefore, many photos and images were originally selected and downloaded from the internet and scanned in from books and magazines.  A lot had to be discarded due to file sizes being too small to work with or copywright laws were present, e.g. The British Wheel of Yoga logo is ‘protected’.  I finally decided to use  the 6  images below.  Each image was edited on a separate layer so that the layers could be moved around the background until they fitted and balanced correctly.

I have placed the images under the headings that were originally set out in my proposal to show how each is implying a different message.

i)  ANY AGE

The background was cropped away from the toddler after using the magnetic lasso around the dark trousers and the lasso around the remaining part of his body and added to the selection.  The selection was then inversed and ‘ticked’

Initially I tried to select the elderley lady below with the magic wand but there is too much pink in the background.  I attempted with the magnetic lasso and that also failed for the same reason.  In the end most of the image was selected with the lasso then cropped but the leg she is standing on was very jagged.  I used file/undo to restore back,  increased the size of the leg on screen with the magnifying tool and used quick mask with paint brush to add a ‘smoother’ leg to the selection and ‘painted’ out her left arm.  This worked quite well.  However, with the pole missing from the picture the lady looked as though she was falling over so I rotated her by a few degrees to stand her more upright.  The whole image was then flipped, using the menu image/rotate canvas/ flip canvas horizontal, so that she was facing the opposite way.

ii) ANY GENDER

This image was chosen for 2 purposes.  Firstly to portray that Yoga is also for males and secondly so that it could be placed near the toddler above, showing that the toddler is in a Yoga pose and not just placing his head on the floor.  A mixture of magic wand and the lasso were used to create the selection before inversing and removing the background.

iii) ANY RACE & ANY AGE

This image was chosen to give the impression Yoga is a pastime that can be shared by parents and children together.

It was editted completely in quick mask mode due to the skin tones and clothing colours being very similar colours to the floor and mat.  I had to keep flipping between foreground and background to select the background between arms/torso and strands of hair. 

iv)  ANY ABILITY

There are few regimes of exercise that a person as heavy as this lady could participate in without injuring themselves.  The photo portrays that she is supple and can practice Yoga with ease.  This photo was extremely easy to edit.  I used magic wand on the purple floor, added to the selection with magic wand on the pale blue wall but this then contained her left foot so I subtracted the foot from the selection using the lasso tool.  Then I inversed and ‘ticked’ to crop the background away.

 There are few exercises that a pregnant woman is allowed to perform but Yoga can be practised safely to keep the body healthy at a time when health is essential.

Once the above images, that were all held on separate layers, were placed onto the poster, underneath the main focal point, they didn’t fit correctly.  The move tool was used to reposition  each layer until a balance was achieved.

The main focal point didn’t have the impact I was looking for so I dulled the 6 small images by reducing the opacity on all 6 layers.

3.  HEADING & CONTACT NUMBER

As stated previously I wanted the poster to have a visual effect to get ‘the message’ across and to have as little text as possible. 

A new layer was created and the line tool, from the path tools, was used to draw a path in the shape of an arc across the top of the page.   This was where the heading was to sit.  Rulers were turned on and a vertical and horizontal line were drawn so that the heading could be centred and level.  The heading was typed in a Betastream font but was too large to fit.  The font size was decreased a few times until the text was as large as could fit across the page.

There was now not enough room for contact details so the following was performed on the main image and the 6 small images to resize them.

Layer containing image selected

Rectangular marquee tool used to outline image

Transform was turned on

Image reduced by clicking and dragging on the corner ‘points’

Transform was turned off

All 7 layers were then repositioned a little higher on the background of the poster leaving a small gap at the bottom.

Another layer was created which was used to hold a telephone contact number which could then be placed at the bottom of the poster.  Another layer was created to hold the text ‘Contact details….’ but whilst the same Betastream font was used the alpha characters do not match the numeric characters but at this point I was out of time and this has not yet been corrected.

Whilst the poster was being created it was saved at various stages as a PSD file.  It was saved in this format so that the layers would be saved as individual layers so that I could re-edit them later if needs be.  I also presume the layers would be required for the marking process.

Many screen dumps were taken throughout the process and these were saved as JPG files so that they would be small enough to be inserted into this document.  All original images and photos were also JPG files so that I could email them between Beaumont St. and my home computer.  The poster was not saved in this format as the ‘flattening’ process, whilst opening and closing JPG format would have lost pixels and reduced the  quality. 

THE FINAL RESULT   (POSTER 1.PSD)

I decided that the best way to meet the brief I had been given was to create:

•  three posters, aimed at adults, young adults and children respectively, and each one promoting both the reading groups and the creative writing sessions; and
• one poster promoting the coffee mornings.

By creating separate posters for each age group, these could then be displayed where they would best suit the targeted audience.  For example, the children’s poster could be distributed to schools, the young adults’ poster to youth clubs and colleges and the adults’ poster to, say, social clubs and public houses.  And copies of each could also be displayed together in shop windows, libraries and leisure centres.

Also, I felt that, by targeting each audience individually, there would be no confusion as to what age group each of the sessions was being held for.

Because the coffee mornings are open to all members of the public, one poster design was adequate to promote this activity.

I felt that the best way to portray the company’s current profile would be to design a header to use as a template in all of the posters, thus creating a consistent image.

The building I chose to photograph for inclusion in the header is a traditional, stone-built property which I came across whilst out walking in a nearby village, and which was perfect for the image I wanted to create.

As the bookshop I am promoting is fictitious, I decided to make up a village name, and Haverwalk came immediately to mind.  And, because the brief calls for the promotion of a local bookstore, I gave the business a made-up telephone number beginning with the STD code for Huddersfield.  Also, because villagebookshop.com, villagebookshop.org, villagebookshop.co.uk, et cetera already exist, I made up the worldwide web address of haverwalkbooks.com.  Thus, there can be no doubt that this bookshop does not actually exist.

I included both traditional English literature classics and modern books as called for in the brief, and included books by local writers to create the ‘local’ link.

In keeping with tradition and the consistent image I wanted to portray, I decided to use the same layout and fonts for the three Reading and Writing Group posters and to use colour as the differentiating factor.  So, whilst the different age groups would attend different sessions, here again, a link is created.

For the same reason, I decided to use the same font for the poster promoting coffee mornings.  The two books which I included in the body of this poster, and chosen for their titles, serve to connect the bookshop and the refreshments.  I decided not to include images of cakes because, on reflection, sticky fingers and books do not make an ideal combination!

I found that preparing a mood board to portray my initial ideas was very stimulating to the creative process and also provided an invaluable, visual point of reference to keep me focused on the brief.

Overall, I am happy with my poster designs and feel that they meet the brief.  I would certainly be more than willing to go looking for the Village Bookshop in Haverwalk, Huddersfield.

First of all, I made a list of all of the photographs I would need for my posters, and then set about taking them with my digital camera.

Image of Bookshop

I took a photograph of a building which I thought looked suitable for my fictitious bookshop (Building.jpg), and opened it in Photoshop for editing.

Using the Clone Tool, I removed all unwanted items from the photograph, such as telegraph wires, television aerial and any distinguishing marks on the property.  Then, using the Patch Tool and because I intended to crop the image, I selected an area of sky that was all white and replaced it by dragging the selection to a part of the sky that was blue.  I then cropped the image using the Crop Tool, retaining some interest in the sky.

I made an oval selection using the Elliptical Marquee Tool and applied an Inner Glow Layer Style to this selection so that it would blend into the background.  (See Screen Capture 1.)

Screen Capture 1

In order to see the effect of this layer style, I hid the background layer by clicking on the eye to the left of this layer in the Layers Palette, and created a new layer and filled it with white.

To add a sign to the side of the building, using the Pen Tool, I drew a path along a line of rendering and typed on the path using the Text Tool and font Aquaduct (downloaded from www.urbanfonts.com).  I chose this font for its plain, easy-to-read design, and added an Outer Bevel layer style to make the text stand out from the side of the wall.  (See Screen Capture 2.)

Screen Capture 2

I deleted the background layer and the white-filled reference layer and named all of the remaining layers appropriately.  I selected all of these layers and grouped them (Layer menu > Group Layers) in a folder named ‘Building’.

Header

I opened a new document, selecting size A4, a resolution of 300 pixels per inch, which is the minimum for magazine-quality printing and would allow my posters to be blown up to A3 size, and a white background.  (See Screen Capture 3.)

 Screen Capture 3

 I dragged a copy of my completed bookshop image into this new document and positioned it top centre using guides.

Bookshop Name

To keep the bookshop’s image consistent, I chose the font Aquaduct for my header text.  In the Character Palette, I set the font size to 56 pt and, because I wanted to curve the bookshop name around the top of the image, which would stretch the text, I set the horizontal scale to 65% to condense it first.  I typed the name of the bookshop, Village Bookshop, and selected Layer menu > Warp Text > Arc > Horizontal > Bend +61%, and positioned the text above the picture of the bookshop.  (See Screen Capture 4.) 

 Screen Capture 4

Then, I added an Inner Bevel layer style to the text to give it some body.  (See Screen Capture 5.)

 Screen Capture 5

Then, I created a new layer and, with the Line Tool selected, the weight set to 15 pixels in the Options bar and guides in place, I drew a horizontal line at each side of the text to serve as bookshelves.

I had taken two photographs of books for the bookshelves (Books1.jpg and Books2.jpg).  I opened these in Photoshop and cropped as near to the books as possible using the Crop Tool, and extracted the books from the background using the Magic Wand Tool.  Then I dragged the images of the books into my main document, resized them and placed them above the lines on the left- and right-hand sides of the text respectively.

Using the Text Tool, I added the fictitious address, telephone number and worldwide web address of the bookshop, using font Aquaduct set at 24 pt, and the slogan ’80 Years In Literature’ using the same font set at 30 pt.  I selected each piece of text and positioned it on my header and added an Inner Bevel layer style to the slogan to make it stand out more.  (See Screen Capture 6.)

Screen Capture 6

Then, I selected all of the layers except the background layer and grouped them in a folder named ‘Header’.  I saved this document to use as a template for all of my posters. 

Reading Group Area

First of all, I created the Reading Group area of the Adults’ poster by adding two layers of Text, using font Dumbledor 1 (downloaded from www.urbanfonts.com) set at centre align and 48 pt for the heading and 24 pt for the body.  I chose this aptly-named font for its literary feel.

Then I opened the photographs of the two books that I had taken for this poster (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.jpg and Five Quarters of the Orange.jpg), cropped as near to the books as possible using the Crop Tool, and extracted the books from the backgrounds using the Magic Wand Tool.

 I dragged each of the images into my main document, resized them, rotated them and placed them on either side of the text.

 I added a new layer above the background layer and, selected the ‘Reading Group’ area of the document using the Rectangular Marquee Tool.  I selected the colour for the fill from the right-hand book using the Color Picker.

 Then I added a Gradient Mask to this layer, choosing a black/white/black linear gradient to create a gradual blend between the fill colour and the white background.  (See Screen Capture 7.)

 Screen Capture 7

 In a new document I created a text background, based on a tutorial I found at www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/tutorials/create-a-trendy-typographic-poster-design.

 With the Type Tool, I typed the word ‘READ’ set in the bold, plain Franklin Gothic Heavy font.

 I rotated the block of text to 45 degrees, holding Shift to constrain the angle, and positioned the text to encroach onto the document covering the top corner.  Then I Alt-dragged copies of the text into new positions, resizing some of the copies.  (See Screen Capture 8.)

Screen Capture 8

I cropped the text document to fit the area allowed for the Reading Group and dragged it into my main document, and set the blending mode to Soft Light to allow the underlying colour to show through.  Then I grouped my layers appropriately.  (See Screen Capture 9.)

Screen Capture 9

Writing Group Area

I photographed a pen and extracted it from the background using the Magic Wand Tool, and copied and pasted it into a new document.  I duplicated the pen layer seven times and arranged the eight pens in a circle by rotating the individual pens (Edit menu > Transform > Rotate) and moving them with the arrow keys, using a small circle drawn with the Ellipse Tool as a guide.  I selected the layer containing the first pen and added an Adjustment Layer and changed the Hue in line with my colour scheme, and increased the Saturation.  (See Screen Capture 10.)

Screen Capture 10

Because an Adjustment Layer affects all of the layers beneath it and because I wanted all of the pens to be the same colour, I moved this layer to the top of the Layers Palette.

I chose to use an Adjustment Layer for this task as it is a non-destructive form of editing, as opposed to the Edit menu > Image Adjustments > Hue and Saturation method, and because I wanted to change the colour of the pens for each poster.

I deleted the circle guide layer and selected all of the other layers except the Background Layer, grouped them in a folder named ‘Circle of Pens’ and dragged a copy of the pens into my main document, resized them and positioned them in the bottom left-hand corner.

For the next part of the Writing Area, I needed a photograph of a good quality fountain pen, which I do not have, so I opened the image fountain pen nib.jpg which I had downloaded from www.flickr.com/photos/pedromourapinheiro/1937781466/ and which is free to download and use under a Creative Commons licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/).

I tried to extract the pen from the black background but found it was not possible as the pen was also black and the nib had black areas which were hard to define.  Therefore, I cropped the image down the centre, copied the right-hand side and flipped it horizontally.  I touched it up using the Clone Tool and dragged this new image into a new document with a black background. 

Using the Elliptical Marquee Tool, I dragged an oval shape around the pen, clicked inside the selection and moved it into position so that the pen was centred.

I added a new layer and filled it with white and applied a Gaussian Blur Filter with a radius of 150 pixels to create a glow.  (See Screen Capture 11.)

Screen Capture 11

I renamed this layer ‘Glow Layer’, turned the opacity down to 30% and moved it below the Pen Nib layer so that the glow was behind the pen.

Then I duplicated the Pen Nib layer, selected this new layer and, using the Move Tool and with Show Transform Controls checked, I dragged the centre circle down to the bottom centre square and flipped it vertically (Edit menu > Transform > Flip Vertical).

I added a Gradient Mask to this layer, selecting Foreground to Background (White to Black) and dragging from the bottom of the original Pen Nib image to the bottom of the canvas.  I turned the opacity down to 50%.

To create the effect of a reflective surface, I added another new layer above the Glow Layer, and with the Brush Tool set to size 15, I drew a black line across the canvas underneath the Pen Nib image.  I turned the opacity of this layer down to 85%.  I also added another layer and painted a black semi-circle underneath the Pen Nib image, and turned the opacity of this layer down to 85%.

I added a Text Layer using the handwriting font Angelina (downloaded from www.urbanfonts.com)  set at 24 pt and typed in ‘unleash your creativity‘, which I lined up to finish where the point of the pen nib was.  I chose white for this text so that it would stand out from the black background.

As done with the Pen Nib layer, I duplicated the Text layer, dragged a vertically flipped copy of the text down to the reflected pen nib point, applied a Gradient Mask and turned the opacity down.  (See Screen Capture 12.)

Screen Capture 12

I grouped all of these layers into a folder named ‘Pen Nib’ and dragged a copy into my main document, resized it and positioned it in the bottom right-hand corner and added a new layer below it.

I made a selection with the Rectangular Marquee Tool to extend the black background of this image to cover the Writing Group area at the bottom of the page, and filled it with black.  Then I added a Layer Mask to this layer and selected the Gradient Tool > Foreground to Background (Black to White) > Linear and clicked and dragged from left to right part way across the black fill layer.

I added two further text layers for a heading and body text, selecting font Dumbledor 1, consistent with the text in the Reading Group area, and chose the colour to match the Reading Group area background.

Then I added images of two books (Writing Down the Bones and Writing Poems), which I had scanned into the computer.

Finally, I added one further Text Layer containing the quotation, A room without books is like a body without a soul – Cicero, and moved this text to lay in between the Reading Group and Writing Group areas of the poster.

When I had finished the Adults’ poster, I created the posters for the Young Adults and the Children by simply replacing the books in the Reading Group area with suitable books for young adults and children respectively, and also changing the colour scheme accordingly, selecting the colours for each poster from one of the books.  I also changed the text according to the target audience and to give different days and times for the various reading and writing groups.

Screen Captures 13, 14 and 15 show the three finished posters.

Screen Capture 13

 Screen Capture 14

Screen Capture 15

Coffee Mornings’ Poster 

First of all, for my Coffee Mornings’ poster, I opened the various images I had taken of coffee carafe, teapot, teacup and saucer, milk jug, sugar basin, glass of orange juice and orange, front covers of two books, and selected what I thought were the best ones for editing.

In turn, I extracted the items from the background (which I had tried to keep as plain as possible), using various Selection Tools, including:

• the Magic Wand (ideal for selecting and removing a plain background);
• the Polygonal Lasso Tool (for straight-edged items); and
• Quick Mask Mode (for edges which were harder to define).

For example, Screen Capture 16 shows my original teapot image (teapot.jpg) with the background selected, using the Magic Wand Tool.  I then inverted this selection and modified the edges by contracting and feathering to tidy it up and saved the selection as teapot.psd.

Screen Capture 16

Because the photographs of the milk jug and sugar basin were badly exposed in the camera, I took each of the cropped images and matched the colours with that of the teacup.  (See Screen Capture 17.)

Screen Capture 17

Once I had extracted all of the items, I dragged copies of each in turn into a newly-opened Header template document and played around with the layout until I was happy with the composition.

I also used three images that I had not taken myself due to lack of items, as follows: 

• a glass of hot chocolate (a royalty-free photograph taken from an Art Explosion CD-ROM);
• coffee beans (a public domain photograph downloaded from the internet courtesy of PDPhoto.org);
• a cup of black coffee (a royalty-free photograph taken from an Art Explosion CD-ROM, and from which I selected the coffee to place in the top of the carafe, which I then filled using a sample of the coffee colour).

Finally, I added some text, using the Dumbledor 1  font for consistency, and applied a Gradient Mask as a background.  Screen Capture 18 shows the finished poster.

Screen Capture 18 

File Types

Throughout this assignment, I have been working with two file types, PSD and JPEG.

PSD is the Photoshop format and retains all content created on all unmerged layers within a document.  This allows images to be saved for further editing.  However, due to their nature, PSD files are large.

PSD files are required when, for example, working for a client, as the client can backtrack through the document to see how an image was created, and changes can easily be made if he/she is not happy with something.  This is particularly true if the designer has used Layer Masks and Adjustment Layers for non-destructive editing purposes.

PSD files would also be needed to retain the quality when printing a document.

The JPEG format, on the other hand, compresses an image, thereby reducing the quality.  By saving a Photoshop file as a JPEG image, all layers are flattened, therefore backtracking and editing are not possible.  Because JPEGs are compressed, the file size is considerably reduced, making this format suitable for, say, uploading to the internet, the quality usually being adequate for screen display purposes.

 The digital camera that I used to take the photographs for this assignment only allowed images to be saved in JPEG format; therefore they are not of the best quality.  However, after working on the images in Photoshop, I saved them as PSD files so as to prevent further loss of quality.

 References

The following is a list of the books that I photographed for use in my posters:

Chocolat, Joanne Harris, 2000, Black Swan Books

Five Quarters of the Orange, Joanne Harris, 2002, Black Swan Books

Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Translated by Peter Carter, 1982, Oxford University Press

Holy Fools, Joanne Harris, 2003, Doubleday

Little Green Man, Simon Armitage, 2001, Penguin Books Ltd

Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, Peter Høeg, 1986, The Harvill Press

One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1978, Picador

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, Roddy Doyle, 1994, Minerva

Runemarks, Joanne Harris, 2007, Doubleday

Secret Sacrament, Sherryl Jordan, 2003, Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Edited with an introduction, prose translation and notes by W R J Barron, 1974, Manchester University Press

Sula, Toni Morrison, 1991, Picador

The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown, 2004, Corgi Books

The Hunting of the Last Dragon, Sherryl Jordan, 2004, Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

The Magic Toyshop, Angela Carter, 1981, Virago Press Ltd

The Wind In The Willows, Kenneth Grahame, 1971, Methuen Children’s Books Ltd

Thorn Ogres of Hagwood, Robin Jarvis

Thursday’s Child, Sonya Hartnett, 2002 Walker Books Ltd

Woods Beyond a Cornfield:  Collected Poems, Stanley Cook, 1995, Smith/Doorstop Books

Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg, 1986, Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Writing Poems, Peter Sansom, 1994, Bloodaxe Books Ltd

Published in 1986 for The Great Writers library by Marshall Cavendish Partworks Ltd:

Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

The Mill On The Floss, George Eliot

Published in 1987 for The Great Writers library by Marshall Cavendish Partworks Ltd:

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll

Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy

Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson

Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

Published in 1988 for The Great Writers library by Marshall Cavendish Partworks Ltd:

Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift

Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe

The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer

The Pilgrims’ Progress, John Bunyan

Mood Board: The creation of the Mood Board was good in that it gave me a chance to try out the design in my head before taking it any further. At this stage I was not totally shore on all the images i would use until I cut them out and placed them on the board.

   

This was my first attempt at a  mood board. The board looked a little bear to me, I needed to keep telling myself this is not the end design just a sample of the conponant within the design. 

Production: The actual sitting down and producing the poster, I found very enjoyable. Each stage needed different Photoshop skills and tools, some of which I needed a little reminder as how to use as I only used them once before.  At the end of each stage I found my self stopping to reflect on the design so far. Most of the time things where going to plan, but not always. I put this down to the computer can not always display an image or design just how the mind can see it and sometimes you just get it wrong the first time. For me one of the biggest lessons I have learnt out of the design process, is not to be too concerned in getting it perfect within the first draft. A good idea will take a number of drafts before the end product is achieved.

Digital Graphics Course: This was not my first introduction to Photoshop but my first professional course on the subject. Up to this point I have only messed around within the software at home, trying to follow instructionswithin a book (The book as become a good door-stopper). For me, I found the course easyer to follow than the book and having a tutor to explain made it much quicker to pick-up the basic concepts. I now feel I am at a stage were I’m confident to progress to the next level within digital graphics and will now look to take it further.

My Thanks go out to Beaumont Street studios for providing the course, not least “Paul Scar” the tutor for is time. I would definitely recamend this course.

1) First I opened the images in Photoshop using (File / Browse) which in turn opens “Adobe Bridge”. From here I selected the Folder then the images I would like to use by double clicking on the image or dragging the image across to canvas.
                                                                                                        

2) Now I have the image on the canvas, the next step was to separate the main subject from the background. This was done in the following steps:

• First I needed to open the background Layer by double clicking the layer title in the Layers panel. This changed the Layer to (0 – layer).
• Next using the Magic wand tool, I clicked on the background in a number of places until I selected it all (making shore the add to selection is selected in the selections bar).
• Now I have the background selected, I pressed “Delete”. This deleted the background, leaving me with just the main subject on a transparent background.

I now saved the Image (File / Save As..) to a folder with all the other images ready for use withing the final pasta.

This process was repeated until all images were together in the folder and ready for use withing my design.

Filetypes
Two “File types where used within the production of the poster, ”Photoshop” (PSD) and “JPEG” (JPG).
PSD:  File format was used mainly within the design process. The reason”PSD” Format is used, It allows you to close an image without compression, retaining relevant information such as Layers. This is a useful Format if you would like to save an image for now, but return sometime in the future to continue editing. This format can also be useful if you need to send an image to a second party for further work/editing.
JPG: This format was used at the end of the creative process. By using “JPG” format all the creative and editing information is compressed and layers are flattened. There are a number of reasons why this becomes useful to the designer. By compressing all the creative information it stops anyone altering your design further down the line. Bcause it compresses the information it becomes a smaller file this is useful for saving space on your media storage device and makes it quickerand easier to transfer your data by email.

Background
Now that the images are ready, I need to create the background that will make the images and the text stand out and also complement each of the images.
The Images and text are a mixture of light and dark colours. For this reason I decided on a gradient background starting in the top-left to the bottom right corner with the colours black and Dark-brown to Light-brown. To achieve this effect I used the following steps
1) First I created a new “Background” using the following commands
(File / New / OK)
2) Next I created a new layer by clicking on the “New Layer” button on the bottom of the layers pallet.
3) I now selected the “Gradient tool” then clicked on the “edit Gradient tool” box at the top on the options bar. There was not a gradient with the grade I needed. By clicking twice on the “Edit Gradient tool box” the “gradient Editor box opened fully, allowing me to edit a gradient by moving the “Colour stop” markers along the slider until I achieved the gradient of my choice.

4) The first Gradient I used was Dark – Brown to Light – Brown. I started by clicking on the top-Left, then holding the Left mouse key down I dragged the mouse across the page to the Bottom- Right and released the mouse. This put a gradient across the page from top-Left to Bottom right.
I then repeated the process using the Black to White Gradient to complete the background.

 

 

Production
Now that I have my background, it’s time to start adding the images to the background. I started by applying the Portrait images as follows:
a) First I opened the image (File / Browse /Selected Folder / Selected the image /Double click on image).
b) Now the image is open I need to drag the image across to the background (Left-Click / drag to background and release).
c) Once the image is on the background I needed to position the image in the correct place by Selecting (Move tool /Left-click on the image / drag across to correct position, and release).
d) Now I need to re-size the image to the correct size. first I made shore the “Show transform controls” is ticked. This as created a sizing box around the image, which will allow me to alter the size by (holding down the shift key, to make shore the image size alters in equal proportion/ Left-click on the corner of the sizing box / dragging the box to the correct size).
I now repeated this process with the rest of the images.

 
Wedding Couple
With the wedding couple, i have decided to give a reflection to the final image. To achieve this I completed the following actions:
a) Selected the Wedding couple in the Layers panel.
b) Left click on mouse and select “Duplicate Layer”.
C) Selecting the duplicate layer and making shore the “move tool” and “Show transform control” are selected, I now have the “Transform box” around the image.
d) Clicking on the “Centre point” I now drag the centre point to the bottom of the image, moving the Axis of the image to the (bottom /centre) of the image.
e)  now moving the courser over the corner of the box until the curved arrows appear. Now holding down the left-mouse key, I’m able to rotate the image on the Axis at the bottom of  the image until it  is directly under the original image of the wedding couple.
f) I now need to flip the image (Right to Left, Left to Right) by clicking on the side of the box and dragging the image over to the opposite side to make a correct reflection.
g) Next I need to fade the image by clicking on “Opacity” at the top of the layers panel. A slider now opens allowing me to change the opacity to 18% to make the image look like a reflection and finishing the transformation.

 

 

Text information
To complete the design, the text information needed to be added to the poster. Now the text as been added, it needs altering using the “Blending options tool” to create the preferred texture colour and design of the text.

 

 

  Now that all the images and Text information as been entered, all there is to do is tweak here and there until you are happy with the final design.

THE END OF CREATIVE PROCESS.

 

 
                                                                              

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

By: Simon Davison

Chosen Brief: Local Photography Studio
I have chosen “Local Photography Studio” for my brief due to the thirteen years I have spent within the Photography industry and my experience of the craft.

Task: To create a Mood board, Flyer and Poster to successfully promote the little out of town photography studio.

Brain Storm
I started my “Brain Storm” by looking at key points of the brief and the photography studio web-site. I then looked at the message i wanted to send out within the final poster and made a list of all the key points.
Name of business- Paul Rayner
Sort of business – Photography Studio
Reason for poster – To Celebrate 21 years of trading and promote the business
Main promotional points – Book Next years wedding at last years prices. 10% Discount on all Portraits.
Target audience – General public within the local area.

The next step, was to make a list of all the text information I would like to add to the final design and to decide on the images I would like to use to back up the information. once I decided on the images to use, I started thinking about the Fonts, colour’s and positioning of the text and the images. I now ad to decide on the background colour and design.  
To get a rough idea of how the design in my head may finally look and to make any changes,  I sketched the design out on paper. From the sketches I could plan how everything would fit into the final design, and give each item of information its place within the poster. 

Mood Board
Now that I have a good idea of the design, the next step was to convert the ideas into my “Mood Board” to show the client a visual reference of my design ideas and to give the customer a chance to express there thoughts and any changes they may like me to make to the design.

Within the mood board I tried to show the gradient I will use for the background. two sapless of Portraits and a wedding couple to represent the two main sales points within the brief. A number of text samples where also added to show a selection of text to be used.

My next action after completing the mood board, will be to gather all the images to be used into one file ready to work on in Photoshop.
Once I have the images together in a file, I will drag them one at a time into Photoshop to prepare the image for the final design. Each image will need separating from its background ready to add as a layer withing the poster.

Now I have all the images ready for the design, i will start the production by creating a new canvas and designing the background by using the “gradient tool”.

Next I will start to drag across the images one by one starting with the two Portraits. Once I have the Portraits in position I will add the Wedding couple and the duplicate layer to make the reflection of the couple.

Once the images are all in place i will add the “Text” within the appropriate places within the design. this may need a little tweaking before the size and opacity is correct.

To complete the design, I will add the Images of the two studio lights. These will be added to each side of the name of the company. 

All that will be needed now, will be any tweaking of the design until I’m happy with the final result.

My brief from Kirklees Council was to promote healthy exercise and encourage people to explore the landmarks of the area. There are many people in Kirklees that are suffering from what is currently a national problem which is adult and child obesity. Kirklees wishes to encourage residents to take part in organised walks and exercise more. To reinforce the main thrust of the campaign I used the heading  Explore Kirklees in bold type at the top of the poster. This was a logical and encouraging directive for people to explore the area. The phrase Explore Kirklees meets the directive of the brief.

I researched the problems of obesity in adults and children and investigated the concept of exercise combating obesity. I found that there was already a campain Get out and walk being promoted on the internet in Kirklees and there were a series of organised walks in the form of a brochure that could be obtained via post.

From my research I started to evolve a concept for a poster and a tag line to inspire viewers to participate in exercise. I wanted a  line which would be  encouraging and inspirational, a line which would promote a good feeling about going out to walk and taking exercise.

My choice was – ”walk more …..    live more”

I believe that the line I created was effective and would successfully encourage a sense that you were doing something good when you walked.

The images that I used were chosen to excite and stimulate interest in the countryside in Kirklees. I think the cropped images of the Highland Cow, Flower , Horse, Butterfly and Hillside were attractive and gave a good feeling to the poster which was designed to appeal to a broad range of family members. Hopefully the Horse, Butterfly and Cow  images would appeal to young children and the idea of getting more out of life would be an attractive concept to parents.

The poster was tied together with a woodland background made by tinting a photograph of a woodland scene from the viewpoint of the walker. The coloured tint nicely complemented  the natural colours in the photomantage. Along with using green and orange for the tag line I think the poster’s colours harmonise nicely.

In an addition to the poster I created a Flyer to be given out where the poster was displayed. The flyer used a single image of a butterfly which I believe to have been powerful and attractive  giving the flyer impact . Also the image of a butterfly is attractive to all ages,  therefore encouraging a range of people to pick up the flyer.

I showed the poster to my family and both my son, wife and daughter found it ot be effective. I believe the poster I created was an effective and successful answer to the brief because it would appeal to all the family.

Thoughts on what was satisfactory and ideas on improvement

I am happy with my progress with the poster and I am satisfied that the brief was met.  I beleive the design was cohesive and effective I have learned a lot about using Photoshop during the brief and feel more confident about using the software for design jobs. Traditionally I used Quark for layout and Photoshop for image manipulation. During thie brief all my design work was done in Photoshop. This was a new and exciting departure from my traditional way of working.

I have never made a mood board before, I usually carry most my ideas in my head or produce two or three visuals for clients. These would be complete designs. I normally associate mood boards with textiles or interior design. It was interesting to use this device in my design process.

I do not feel that I approached the design within Photoshop in an orderly fashion. I did not name the layers and at the end found tha there were unwanted layers in my designs. After guidance from my tutor I labelled all the layers properly and placed groups of layers in folders making my working more organised.

The design that I produced was ’safe’ I think that in the future and with more confidence in Photoshop as a complete design solution, I will be more experimental and adventurous with my designs.

As a teacher it is vital to update  your skills regularily and now  I can place new learning in my C.V. I hopethis will illustrate to prospective employers that I am current with design skills and software.