Digital Applications - Roberto Perrino

Roberto Perrino is a graphic designer specialising in advertising and print design. One of his main influences in music and his portfolio features a lot of music related event posters, which have a style I personally feel is very aesthetically pleasing. 

There is a heavy use of typography throughout a lot of Perrino's poster designs, again, similarly to Sebatsian Nikolaou, Perrino tends to use a lot of sans serif, bold fonts, simliar to the likes of Bebas. 

There is a heavy use of textures and gradients and light effects to draw the eye into the centre, throughout Perrino's work which I feel are little touches which really finish off the final designs. I feel these techniques work most effectively in the `blue exhibition' and the `mountains beyond mountains' posters. He also tends to use darker colour palettes throughout his designs which are also very effective as they are very bold and always work well together. For example, in the  `mountains beyond mountains' poster, it has a very simple brown and neutral colour palette, however with the imagery, gradients and textures this rather simplistic colour palette still works very effectively and the design is most certainly interesting to look at. Again, smaller touches such as the second `mountains' actually being behind the image of the mountain, really shows that a lot has thought has been put into what the most effective layout would be. 

Digital Applications - Sebastien Nikolaou

Sebastien Nikolaou is a graphic designer with a focus mainly into illustration and typography. I personally like how his colour palettes always seem very effective, with colours complementing eachother in all of his designs. 

A lot of Nikolaou's work tends to feature collages. I like this effect of layering up many different textures images and shapes and is a technique I have always wanted to improve on personally. For example in his `grmin!' peice there is a combination of mixed media and shapes, all layered up in the centre, against a neutral, blank background, which effectivlely draws the eyes attention.

Typography is another heavy feature in Nikolaou's work. The majority of his fonts tend to be very bold and the majority of the time sans serif. He creates an interesting and bold effect by using contrasting colours. Or, for example in his `tonic' poster, he has used both gradients and individiual coloured backgrounds behinds each peice of text in order to draw the eye to the bolder artist names. I personally like the effect all of the gradients create in this image, as well as again the collage style with many vector shapes all built up behind the main image. Again, the texture just finishes off the image, giving it a less flat and plain feel.

 Another effective technique is that used in his `Animals' image, where the colours of the image behind are the fill of the text, only darker, which brings the text forwards and makes it stand out, rather than blend into the background. 

Pawel Admek

I looked into some of the designs created by Pawel Admek for Ministry of Sounds, Saturday Sessions in order to gain further inspiration. I found common factors included bright and bold colours, plain black/white/grey text which stood out against the bright busy backgrounds. There is an overall modern style to the designs due to the more futuristic fonts used. The posters are also kept quite simple with not too much information therefore making the designs easier to read whilst still getting the point across. 

David Carson

• Perhaps one of the most influential graphic designers of the 1990s
• Best known for his innovative magazine design and experimental use of typography.
• Broke traditional mould of simple type by making the point that letters on a page are art. 
• Signature style uses "dirty" type combined with non-mainstream photographic techniques. 
• Experiments with a range of sizes, alignments, fonts, colours etc. 
• Work produced for Quicksilver in 2011 uses a range of bright colours, bold, large, eye-catching fonts, hand rendered illustration and photography. Reflects the target audience well, however completely different to a lot of his other work which is a lot simpler, yet just as aesthetically pleasing. For example, in his designs created for an exhibition where he has simply combined photography with a much simpler, smaller type and again, in some, has included some basic hand rendered illustration.
• Carson claims his work is "subjective, personal and very self indulgent". 
• Carson takes photography and manipulated and twists them together and sometimes confuses the message. This technique draws in the eyes of the viewer and in turn makes them look deeper into the composition.

Andrea Tinnes

• Andrea Tinnes created her independent one-woman studio 'typecuts' to promote her own fonts. 
• The ‘typecuts’ font library consists of a wide range of typographic forms, including text faces over graphic fonts and also dingbat illustrations. The typefaces Tinnes designs seek to explore the relation between geometric construction and also more playful decorative form while also considering historical contexts as well as contemporary tendencies in typedesign. 

Illustrators #3

    MARK WEAVER

Weaver’s style is has a very vintage feel, whilst also being very modern due to the use of digital manipulation. This vintage style is shown in the particular colour schemes,  textures and photograph manipulations he uses throughout his designs.  Weaver uses a mixture of textures, brushes and patterns throughout his designs and created digital collages by layering these with photographic images which produces a very modern feel.

These designs will have been created using digital programmes such as Photoshop and Illustrator as the majority include digital collages. These would have been created by cutting out parts of photographs with the pen tool then possibly editing the photograph in Photoshop to give it a vintage effect. These would then be layered up with other images, text, brushes and textures to create the collage look, and the final image may then be edited to again create the old, vintage look.

I like how Weaver creates these digital collages within his designs.  I believe these look very individual and interesting as the combination of quite random images makes you look longer at the image and makes you think about it more. 

Illustrators #2

    PEDRO VIDOTTO

Vidotto mainly designs film posters. The style throughout all of these designs is very minimalist however work very effectively. Vidotto makes the designs more interesting by reading between the lines and picking out certain symbols which represent the film and are recognisable by all audiences; in particular those who have already seen the film will understand the images he uses.  Vidotto has also added a creased paper texture to these designs which makes the final image a little more individual and interesting, than a plain, basic image would be. Vidotto has also very carefully chosen his colour palettes in these designs in order to stay relevant to the film and its themes and work well with the symbols he has used.  Although the designs seem quite basic, it’s obvious that a lot of thought has gone into the final images.  These designs are very modern and work best as film posters or book covers as they pick out a particular symbol to represent them which works very effectively.

These designs are quite simple and it is possible that they have been created completely in a digital programme such as Illustrator as all of the lines and shapes are very crisp and precise. However, they may have also been originally sketched out then traced and manipulated in Photoshop or Illustrator afterwards in order to create that very crisp feel.

I like how these designs seem quite basic, yet are very effective due to the imaginative images used to represent the film.  I also like how there are no outlines to the images, this makes the designs look more original, bold and keeps the design looking less like an obvious cliché. 

Illustrators #1

    ADHEMAS BATISTA

Batista uses a combination of photographs and digital illustration throughout a lot of his designs. This digitalillustration contrasts against the photograph, making it stand out of the image. In addition, Batista uses a lot of bright colours in his work which adds a very light-hearted, positive tone to the image again make the image very striking and bold. I also feel that these designs look very modern due to the fact the images are very digitalised.  These kinds of designs I believe seem to work best in advertisements as they are very eye-catching and bold, therefore grabbing the attention of a wide audience, making a successful advertisement.

Perhaps Batista creates his whole images in a combination of Photoshop and illustrator. It seems as though a photograph is taken, then manipulated in Photoshop. The swirl designs would then have been created in illustrator and added to the image and possibly altered a little more in Photoshop again, therefore digitally producing the whole image. 

Personally, I think these designs are very effective. I find them interesting and imaginative and I like how he uses this  signature style throughout many different pieces yet it still produces a very effective design and works well  with any audience.