Subeaze - Live Brief

Subeaze is a new sub-contracting company. I was asked to design their logo which included the full url of their website 'subeaze.com'. I designed the logo using a colour scheme which is seen throughout construction graphics such as black, yellow, orange, green etc. I also wanted the logo to be quite masculine and bold again in order to reflect the company and also make it stand out. I designed a few different logos and settled on the following design.

I thought this final design was quite successful, however, it is too obvious and I think a logo which goes further between the lines would be more imaginative and more successful. I could develop this further and play around with shapes in order to make it more individual. 

Penguin Books Brief

The brief provided by Penguin Books was to design a new cover for the novel 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' in order to refresh the book and appeal to a new generation of readers. It was essential that I approached the design at a fresh angle and avoided the obvious cliche's and steered clear from any promotional film graphics. The audience would be all readers, both familiar and unfamiliar to the text and the cover should be effective on its own, but also work digitally on screen for e-books. 

I began by researching some graphic illustrators in order to help inspire my self. I then continued my research and looked at many different existing book covers and existing covers for the novel its self. Again, from this, I learned what worked most effectively, and also what had already been done, so I could avoid that and be more imaginative and creative with my own designs. 

My first designs are a lot more obvious and cliched, with the use of the metal cell door and the barbed wire fence. Although I thought these looked quite effective, they didnt particularly meet the brief as they specifically stated they wanted to see original, striking and imaginative designs. I then began thinking further and developed the designs with the squares, which represented the madness within the book, arranged as though they are a circling black hole. I settled with this final design as I thought it was aesthetically pleasing and met the brief requirements. 

Graphic Design Agencies - Illustration

 The designers within the company do tend to have some similarities within their designs, such as a popular use of digital collages,. However, due to the fact there are many different designers within the company means there is also a lot of individual variation. The majority of work produced by these designers is very modern and colourful.

A lot of the particular designs I looked at seem as though they were all completely digitally produced due to the use of basic images and digital collages. However some of the designs also used a lot of photography and were created by printing images or creating models then photographing them then perhaps manipulating that photograph on Photoshop,  producing a similar effect to that created on the Kate Nash CD cover.

I personally like some of the more detailed digital collages as these are very interesting to look at and I like how the rather random combination of images works very effectively.  I also liked the photography work by Chrissie Macdonald which is seen in the Kate Nash cover and the image in the bottom left. This look very effective and individual and I feel it would work well in any graphic work such as posters, book covers, cd covers etc.

The Peepshow Collective is made up of university graduates who wanted to self promote and share clients. They are young adult designers and tend to work for the same audience, with clients including MTV, DC Shoes , Levi’s and Quicksilver, for example. However, they prove to be versatile by also producing successful work for clients such as The Financial Times,  Waitrose etc.  They meet their target audiences well by producing verstile designs which could appeal to anyone. 

There is a wide variation of different styles throughout the different designers and illustrations produced throughout the agency.  There is a lot of more detailed work produced throughout the agency, such as the  movie poster or the image of the bride and groom in the bottom left and which looks almost like a painting or a photograph manipulated on Photoshop.

Due to the different variations of styles there are many different techniques and materials which may have been used throughout the creations of the illustrations. For example it seems many may have been produced using pen and ink then scanned into Photoshop in order to alter colours or brightness or just finish off the image before printing. Then on the other hand it looks as though some of the designs may have been completely digitally produced, such as some of the digital collages, or they may have been again sketched before importing to Illustrator or Photoshop.  The image of the building may have even been a sketch at first, or potentially a  paper cut out.

I like all of the different variations of styles throughout the agency. I feel the hand drawn book cover design looks very interesting and the attention to detail draws in the audience making it a successful cover design.  I also quite like the Clockwork Orange design as I like how minimalist it seems and how the layers of colour and block shapes work together.

Due to the wide range of styles I feel the company works well in producing different illustrations for any audiences. A quote taken from their website - “We specialize in supplying contemporary illustration to clients worldwide. With a wealth of experience, our artists continue to produce excellent work from book illustrations to billboard posters.”