My first design entry since my formative assessment; Overall I felt my Formative went really rather well - I got some great feedback - and I'm extremely excited with the direction my practice is going in - Although, this is my first blog entry - I have been up to loads with-in my practice - So let me catch you up!
So far, I have managed to produce 8x separate watercolour sample background designs; utilising a past method i used to consistently follow with my practice over the duration of my college Education; An expressive, mixed media technique using water-based watercolour pigments; Through carrying out an Easter workshop, 'Art Hour' help by fellow artist and strong influence, Claire Murray.
Below, are my notes for my 'next move' within my current Greetings design brief, practice;
My next progress step, is to scam each on in, separately, at 300dpi while simultaneously running them through Adobe Photoshop Software; in order to improve the white balance, curves, and vibrancy - while also cropping to a central canvas and saving each design as a separate high resolution file.
Once saved, swiftly edited through editing software and saved in both JPEG and PSD software files, I then; Shared my files to my iCloud, to allow for me to access my files on my iPad pro, allowing me to import them quickly and easily into further design software apps, such as Procreate of Adobe Draw, to allow me to begin working it the designs and start my illustration process.
Firstly, MY DESIGN THEME: -
After I decided to take a trip to my local supermarket, Sainsbury's - to view all greetings cards that were currently available for purchase on the shelves; This gave me the chance to inspect and carry out some primary investigation, as to what style of designs are currently out there, and to try and uncover any 'gaps in the market' for greetings card design categories, and i felt i uncovered two.
1 being; being a male demographic (I thought they were all crap, and dominantly blue toned or related frequently to alcohol.
& the 2nd being; Genre neutral, generally relatable funny cards, open to any audience - anybody who finds them funny - 'Blank' if you would - with a non specific target audience/demographic.
The most accessible cards that were there, that day; were for girls, women and children. Therefore, after carrying out this live exploratory research, I initially narrowed down my current, available themes, that i could focus my deign brief on; and I decided to go with punny, humorous, blank greetings cards - due to this genre being my most favourite style of cards to illustrate, or purchase for my own family or friends.
This immediately got me to start thinking about collecting and purchasing some influential samples, to help guide my practice further; Which immediately links to my first artist/agency influence 'PIGMENT card designs'. Designs I was immediately drawn too straight away, due to the style, choice of textural card and initial traditional design.
After, carrying out my initial research, as explained in my - separate Pigment Artist influence blog post - That I was very obviously leaning towards the theme of groceries/fruit and vegetables and humour/puns!
Below, are examples of my edited PSD multimedia background files, that I'm going to utilise and illustrate my initial chosen theme into;
Furthermore, as analytically written in much more depth within my 'pigment artist influence research blog post', briefly; The greetings card collection i was most inspired and influenced by was the 'Pigment' collection 'ETCHED', as shown in the screen shot image below;
Although this collections designs are focused solely on 'puns', they do have a few designs within the collection. But the ones i found during my visit too Sainsbury's I found myself be drawn the most to the 'food' related design theme, simply because i found them cute? but relatable? however, i also found them funny, and I instantly knew, that If this was the style I'm more influenced by why not design my own similar themed collection - but maybe even better?
Pigment.(2020).PIGMENT productions.Retrieved14 May, 2020, from http://www.pigmentproductions.com/Collections.aspx?IND=0
Primary example images below, depict my live-action research for scoping the 'greetings card market for possible design themes or gaps' within my local supermarket of Sainsbury's;
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