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. 

Naju

I decided to look into the work of a designer who has previously designed for Ministry of Sound to gain inspiration. Common characteristics I noticed include:

•  a heavy use of bold, bright colours throughout, which really catch your eye and make the designs aesthetically pleasing. 
• Fonts used tend to be sans serif, very easily legible and very modern. 
• A mixture of weights throughout the fonts in order to make certain parts of the image and text stand out more. 
• A heavy use of geometric shapes which makes the image look futuristic. 
• Interesting use of mixed media in some designs, more original and imaginative. 
• Contrast of brighter colours against darker backgrounds which brings certain parts of the image forward. 
• Basic shapes and colours make the posters easy to read and seem quite simplistic but there is actually a lot more to them such as layers and effects applied. 

Studio Output

I continued my research to gain further inspiration for my Ministry of Sound brief. I decided to look at a design studio which had previously produced work for Saturday Sessions. I noticed a range of certain successful characteristic throughout their designs including:

• Bright and bold colours. 
• Bold fonts. 
• A focus on interesting graphics and images to draw in attention. 
• Very modern and attracts the target audience successfully. 
• Interesting use of mixed media and photography. 
• More detailed, eccentric fonts used in images, then bold and simplistic fonts used throughout the copy which creates a contrast. 

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.