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Didi

Wordplay - Too much information

We had to pick a word out of a hat and produce a typographic illustrated A2 poster using the word to influence the look and feel.

I drew out 'information' which covers a very broad topic and I did loads of research.

We had a few day projects within this project, one of which was to create a zine to help with our research. Which really helped to focus my ideas, but there was still 3 or 4 ways I could go.

We had to produce the poster using illustrator and one of our day projects was to learn a section of illustrator each and to teach it to the rest of the class, learning each part of illustrator with each tutorial.

This is my final poster design, I went with the blue background as this is the colour that most information signs are and the font Rockwell as a template for my word 'information'.

I redrew a document icon, like the icons that apple use for their base of a word doc icon, jpeg icon and wrote the word information repeated on the paper icon.

The word 'information' is then made up using 100s of document icons all with their own drop shadows.

Here is a close up of the documents

Sorry about the quality, i've put up jpgs of my poster as the pdf is over 100MB, but when the pdf file opens it almost makes like an animation with the layers of document icons slowly appearing to make the whole word, which looks pretty cool!

Another one day project was to make a 3D version of our word or part of it. My first attempt was not successful at all as you can see from the photos below. I tried to make the 'i' for information out of printed and cut out versions of my document icon.

So I decided to get a look at what my idea for the design would look like before I set it out in illustrator with better results.

Great Illustrator examples

Here are a few examples of what illustrator can do. I found vector.tutsplus.com which has some awesome tutorials which I hope to try out sometime.

Here are a few from the vectortuts+ website:

http://vector.tutsplus.com/tutorials/text-effects/create-colorful-layered-paper-type-in-illustrator/

http://vector.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tools-tips/the-hidden-power-of-the-average-command-creating-swirly-type/

http://vector.tutsplus.com/tutorials/text-effects/creating-an-environmentally-friendly-green-type-treatment/

http://vector.tutsplus.com/tutorials/text-effects/create-a-vibrant-3d-pixel-type-treatment/

http://vector.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tools-tips/how-to-create-a-rainy-window-vector-background/

http://vector.tutsplus.com/designing/working-with-3d-objects-and-transparencies-to-make-a-vector-cola-bottle-design/

http://vector.tutsplus.com/tutorials/illustration/create-a-can-of-beans-by-mapping-vectors-to-a-3d-object/

Here's one from transfuchsian

http://transfuchsian.blogspot.com/2009/04/illustrator-vector-3d-lighting-text.html

I didn't even know it was possible to do but apparently you can achieve photo realistic drawings in Illustrator. I found this website which showcases some amazing drawing and added just some of the drawings below.

http://basangpanaginip.blogspot.com/2006/07/worlds-most-photorealistic-vector-art.html

Snow fun!

Nigel asked us to do some snow typography in our holidays when there was a big snow on 4/5 January 2010. I had just arrived back from sunny Sydney, Bondi Beach to be precise. We had landed in the start of the big snow and not long after we landed Heathrow was closed.

I'm not the biggest fan of the cold at the best time so this was a bit of a chore for me rather then fun. So I wrapped up warm and started to play. Thanks to my husband for the photography.

This is the end result - Where is the beach indeed!

I first started out using my comic sans d as a stamp to make my initials db.

My husband thought that db stood for Didi's bum... very funny love!

When the going gets tough, the tough get a blow torch. After a trip to the local Kitchen shop I had me a creme brulee blow torch and I was off.

Only it didn't have the required effect, which was to melt the snow double time so I could get back inside without getting frostbite. I did however scorch the grass under the snow and my parents still have Ou est on their lawn.

So I tried the good old wooden spoon and hard work method and that's how I made the final photo at the top of this post.

Comic Sans Destroyed final

Here is the final movie from my Comic Sans Destroyed project.

Tonight Cat I'm going to be...

I decided to chose Helmut Newton's YSL - Le Smoking as my iconic photo to reproduce. I had seen it on a BBC4 programme - Seven Photographs that changed Fashion, where Rankin paid homage two Seven photographers.

Here's the end result

Our Shrine the final

Joe and I got together, cut and drilled holes in the two boards which would be the top and base of the suspended skull. We then painstakingly attached Joe's printed out random images onto the fishing gut to make my skull. We used two chairs to balance the top board, which can be seen in the pictures below.


Front view


Side view


Skull

Here is the final movie, Joe got rid of the board on the floor and the chairs on either side and I think it looks rather good. We didn't do to badly either our class voted it 5th out of 23 groups, so I was very relieved.