Orchard Road field trip part 2 Yoshinoya

 

These are some advertisements by Japanese food stall Yoshinoya at Takashimaya. The aim of the ads were to promote their various set meals. The 3 ads are similar in a way that the color orange is always present, either near the brand logo or around food items. The fonts used in the ads are also very similar, being very playful and cartoonish. The background colors used are all very vibrant colors, which suits their image. Overall I feel that these 3 ads are very well done as each ad has a different theme and message to it, but overall they don't stray too far from the image of Yoshinoya. The fun colors also draws people's attention to the ads.

Orchard Road Field Trip part 1 CK

These are advertisements found inside and outside of the Calvin Klein store at Ion Orchard. I feel that all the advertisements are all very uniform in terms of theme and feel of the ads. In all ads there is a green glow surrounding the brand logo or at other smaller areas and the visuals are of models in CK clothes having fun or simply smiling for the camera. I think the meaning behind the advertisements is that CK is a brand for fun and young people. However, my biggest critique with these advertisements is that the clothes are not the focus of the visuals, and CK is primarily a clothes brand. The older crowd might also find it hard to understand the meaning behind the advertisements.

SP Open House 2

Design observation of Open House- I think this year's Open House design was very simple and consistent throughout. There were no creative visuals but instead the focus was on using basic typography to grab people's attention. Black, grey and red were the three main colors for the open house, which I really liked as the school's logo is also red, thus making people remember SP. (60 words)

Original CCA banner

Improved variation of above banner

SP Open House 2012

So the theme for this year's open house was #PossibleWithSP and it was a huge success! 5 visual media used in the open house were banners, signboards held by student facilitators, leaflets and information booklets, life-sized cut-outs of graduates and tall 3D information booths.

Tall 3D information booths

A banner

Information booklets given out to students

Cut out of a graduate

A signboard on the left

Illustrator pictures!

FISH

ELEPHANT

TOOTH

GIRL

Sketches and lessons 4

Posters and Adobe Illustrator. Yup those were the 2 things we did for design class this week. For posters it was similar to what we did the week before, we got into pairs, and had to re-design posters the teacher showed to us. It was pretty challenging, as certain posters were by renowned companies such as Levis and of high standard, thus having little flaws to improve on.

Okay next we started to learn how to draw with Adobe Illustrator, which is much harder than you think. It is totally different from using Photoshop, where your cursor draws a line wherever it goes. In Illustrator, drawing straight lines are pretty easy. Just click on a point, click on another point and a straight line is formed between the 2 lines. Now the hard part: drawing curves. To do that instead of simply clicking the second line, you hold your mouse down and pull the point, and a curve forms. The angle and shape of the resulting curve depends on how you pull the second point, which gets pretty easy after much practice. Oh one tip is to hold the 'shift' key down while forming your curve, which helps form shapes that are more proportionate. 

Our homework was to use the pen tool to draw the outline of images which I will be doing in awhile, and besides that I didn't do much sketching the past week as it was all about Illustrator. Projects are flowing in like mad thus I don't really have much time to create a long post but I'll upload more sketches and Illustrator pics next time round!

Design and sketches 3

Third design lesson! 
Okay this lesson was pretty much about poster designs, like what makes a good poster design such that it effectively communicates the main idea of well, the poster.

Basically your poster can't be too messy such that it makes it difficult for the reader to digest. You can do this with the use of columns to neaten the words. I'll show you good and bad examples of posters below!

This poster may be very amateurish but I feel the designer did a good job by having 2 columns at the bottom, one for pictures and another for the words. Placing the pictures and words in separate columns is a good technique to use when your poster is quite wordy. The pictures at the side can also be really helpful to highlight certain points in the words, or in this case the more prominent artists in the line-up of performers. I would rate this poster a 6/10, with my major complain being that the entire top portion of the poster looked like it was done by a kid using Paint.

Okay this is a real mess. If I was the designer responsible for this poster I would quit my job immediately and deny ever being a designer. The background is hideous, the guitar looks absolutely awkward and out of place, the logo is plain ugly and the font is a disaster. All these would still be tolerable if not for the final nail on the coffin: the huge clump of words around the poster. I mean how could anyone bear to read this poster without getting a headache from all the badly placed paragraphs? Is every single word that important? 1/10. No question about it. If there is a perfect example of an ugly poster it would be this right here.


 
Now this is a nice poster. Its neat, but not awesome. I really love the background with lines, which fits with fashion event theme of the poster, as it represents the lighting effects at fashion shows. The words are kept simple, with the more important information in bigger fonts than the other boring details. It would be even better if it wasn't so plain, perhaps by adding more colors to it. 7/10

This is a nice poster. Just words without any pictures or effects and it still manages to look presentable. The main points such as the name and date of the event are in big fonts so that a reader's attention is drawn to them first. The other minor details decrease in font size along with their importance and overall is a simple yet easy to read poster. 8/10

I really like this poster. Firstly the designer used the colors really well to grab attention but at the same time doesn't make it too loud. I like how there is a progression from top to bottom, where we see the image, followed by the name and lastly all the minute details. Seeing the image first really generates interest in what this poster has to say, and the image is pretty creative too. Even the shape of the poster is unique, being curved at the edges gives it a really 'fun' feel to it. 10/10

 I am pretty sure this poster is done by a kid, and I don't mean that in a bad way. The whole event is about children so its only natural to have a design that kids can easily relate to, thus the simplicity of the poster. The slightly neon colors help gain interest, so do the picture of pandas. However the words could be arranged a little bit and if possible, reduced as kids most likely won't read all that. 7/10

Okay enough of posters, back to what I did in class. We formed into groups where we had to pick 3 ads or posters from magazines, and then re-draw it on a piece of paper. The aim of this exercise was to spot mistakes in posters and attempt to correct them. Unfortunately I kinda misplaced the drawings so I can't show you here but when I do find them I'll upload it!