OUGD406 - Design Is Doing

I started creating thumbnails and a spider diagram of ideas that I had for the song Better Off by Haim.

From these thumbnails I picked my favourite ideas, then went ahead doing further sketches, research and experimenting on Illustrator.

I decided to take the hot air balloon idea further. The hot air balloons represent the three sisters, and they are flying away because they're 'better off this time'. The baskets are decorated like drums because that is a prominent instrument in the song, and the balloons are in the shape of parts of the song that I think are relevant: the frequent references to 'time'; the 'beating of the heart'; and the eye for the mind 'flashing back' and 'seeing you, seeing me'. 

I drew a couple of anatomical hearts so that I could trace them on Illustrator and with the graphics tablet. 

I drew how I wanted the clock to look like as well as a hot air balloon.

I printed out these letters then redrew them by hand using the graphics tablet to create a hand produced look  on the clock.

When I started drawing the letters, I decided although I wanted a hand produced look, I preferred the more polished one on the left as it looks more professional. 

 I began by creating a basic shape of a hot air balloon on Illustrator.

 I began by creating the heart on Illustrator using what I had already drawn.

I used the Width Tool to make the veins on the heart look better.

 I removed the ones that were on the left, as I don't think they worked very well.

I tried to add a grain texture but it didn't work out very well, as it made the design look very faded.

Regular

Soft

 Speckle

 Sprinkles

 Stippled

 Vertical

I then tried out lots of different grain textures, and my favourites are Soft and Enlarged.

 I tried adding a gradient to see what it would look like with a sky background, but it just looked tacky.

After I had finished the illustrations, I altered the colours so that they worked better together, as I don't think the red looked very appealing.

I thought that it looked quite bare, so I decided to add some smaller balloons around the frame.

Final

Although this was my favourite idea, I'm not too keen on what I've produced so far.

I then started doing some more research and came across the illustrator Fernando Volken Togni, and I really like his style and how he uses shape and saw the piece 'Caapua'. I wanted to work in the style of this because it would allow me to incorporate lots of different parts of the song into one collage of ideas, and would also portray how she is 'going crazy', because it is an abstract style. 

The guitar and drums represent how these are prominent instruments in the song. The three hot air balloons represent the three sisters going away from the relationship. The door represents the door slam which is heard in the song, and how they are leaving the relationship. The sun and icecream represent how 'good we used to be', focusing on positive parts of the relationship. The clock symbolises 'better off this time', and the holding hands represent the couple. The heart shows the 'beating of the heart', the leaves falling of the trees show that the relationship is ending, and the eyes looking down on everything represent 'seeing you, seeing me'.

Here is the design before I added any colour.

I scanned in the drawing that I did, and started tracing over it using shapes in Illustrator. I then turned it into a live paint object, and started filling in the colours.

Before the crit I changed it slightly, by correcting the closeness of the squares in the top right corner, adding another triangle on the sun, and filling part of the sun in where it wasn't before, and editing the hands on the ice cream slightly. I'm not very happy with this one, but I like the concept behind it so I will edit it again after the crit.

I then had the crit, and here is the feedback that I received on it. I changed the design according to the feedback but I now think that it looks bare and boring.

Although, as this was everybody's favourite, I did try and edit it again...

Final

... and again, but I still don't like the design. I don't think the shapes or the colours represent the band very well, and although people chose this design as their favourite, I don't think they realise that it doesn't fit well with the song, as most the people I showed it too didn't know the song.

Now I'm going to do an idea which fits both the lyrics 'I'm better off this time' and 'how good we used to be', as it is a montage of different icons that represent the positive times at the beginning of a relationship, or after one. 

I started drawing some icons that I could use:

The icons represent the beginning of a relationship, and I got the idea from the lyrics 'how good we used to be' and 'I wanna get back to everything that I had'.

Then I went onto Illustrator.


I wanted to make a sun, and I've never understood how to get perfect rotating rays so I looked at a youtube video.

Here is the sun I made after the tutorial.

I tried different variations of these colours, and these are the nine icons that I created.

I then started working on how to lay them out. I got inspiration from a piece of illustration that I saw, which can be found on my design context blog. I made sure that the width between each illustration was exactly the same to keep it consistent.

Final

Here is the final design, and I changed the opacity down slightly to give it a washed out look, and I really like this design because it is quite simple and I think it reflects the band.

Four my fourth design idea I decided to create three birds to represent the three sisters, and how they are going away from the relationship.

I liked the colours that I used in the previous design, so I used them again here.

For my fifth design I decided to focus on the lyric 'I keep seeing you, seeing me, and how good we used to be'. This reminded me of nostalgia and wanting to back to the past, so I thought of ways I could incorporate that into an image. As 'waves of nostalgia' is commonly said when talking about nostalgia, I decided to go with this idea, and use an eye to portray the 'seeing' part of the lyric.

I then went onto Illustrator, and started creating a lot of different variations. These included changes to the eyebrow, adding/getting rid of a grain texture, trying different colours and shades, and different eye shape.

Final
Here is the final that I went with, I like the yellow and the blue together as it has a high contrast of hue, but it is quite subtle cause of the lowered down opacity. I used three colours to represent the three sisters, and moved the glint to the corner of the pupil so that it didn't look like a sun. Although I produced this after the crit, and people liked the second design, I have decided to go with my instinct and choose this one. Although it is simple, the illustration fits well with the lyric that I chose for it, and it is the design that I am most happy with.