Creative report publication design

 Creative report publication design 

After finishing my animated interview for my creative report, I now need to translate the animation into a printed publication, allowing me to also include my intro, rationale and reflection alongside it. Visually, I want to use the same colour palette and similar style to the animation in order to maintain consistency throughout the creative report. I also want to stick to using the same typeface as well.

Cover design 

A key motif used by Alexis Jamet is flowers, so I thought it would be nice to play with flower visuals as the focus for the cover of the publication. Like I said previously, I kept the same colour palette, but the main change in illustration style was that the edges of the flower have cut off edges instead of the airbrush effect I applied to the animation. I think this worked better as having everything super blurred made the design seem quite flat, and it gave me the opportunity to work with more refined illustrations.

I wanted to experiment a bit with applying the illustration style to a typeface, but I don't think it was very successful. I think it looks a bit too illegible and strays away from the minimal design rules I wanted to adopt. I think it would be best if I just stuck with using Times New Roman for the type elements of the design. 

 

Again, I wanted to experiment with combining the illustration with type; this worked fairly well, but lacked the strong composition that the flower design has as a cover. Due to this, I think I'm going to stick with that version as the final cover concept as i feel like its the most well rounded and aligned with my style. 

Interview pages

For the initial interview page design, I decided to use the exact same methods used for the interview by creating some simple illustrations and blurring them; this was mainly inspired by Alexis' way of working and his illustration style. However, after speaking to some peers for feedback, I feel like this blurred effect makes the pages look a bit flat and dull, so I wanted to create something more eye catching. 

These double page spreads have less of a blurred effect, but still i feel like they look a bit too flat and don't draw the eye anywhere visually; I think this style worked for the animation as obviously it was moving image so it didn't look flat, but in the context of printed matter I think the illustration style could definitely be refined.

Experimenting with alternative forms

In light of peer feedback and my own personal response to the initial illustration styles, I wanted to push the concept further by creating some more refined and improved illustrations using clean edges. This was mainly down to the fact that the flower cover design worked really well, so I felt like I could apply the same methods throughout the report. I definitely prefer this style as it still features the recognisable colour scheme, but feels more contemporary and playful. Also, because I used this style for the front cover, it only made sense to use the same style for the rest of the creative report. 

Still focusing on Alexis' influences and style, I decided to create a flower and mushroom to relate to his inspirations taken from nature. I experimented more with composition, which ended in a really fun and playful outcome. 

For each question and answer, I illustrated something inspired by the animation and subjects of the topic; for example a skateboard as Alexis got into design from skateboarding.

The caterpillar illustration represented the topic of Alexis evolving as a design (the symbolism of a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly)

I'm really happy with how this illustration style worked out, and my peers agreed that it worked way better than the airbrushed effect. Due to this, I'm going to crack on with illustrating the rest of the questions so I can finish the creative report and write up the other elements of it. Ideally, I want the design to remain consistent so I need to illustrate the other parts of it too.