PROJECT 3 DESIGN ANALYSIS AND INTERPERTATION
PROJECT 3 : VISUAL DESIGN ANALYSIS AND INTERPERTATION
WEEK 11- WEEK 14
Lecture and brief
In week 11 we were briefed about our final project and given a lecture on what different techniques and arrangement can be used to stay on time line and produce a fair outcome.
The project is about design analysis and interpretation and has 2 parts.
Part 1: Visual analysis
phase 1
- choose artwork of any type , posters , illustrations , covers etc.
- After choosing our art work we had to write a around 500 word analysis of the art work the first part of the analysis was observing the artwork without any previous information about it and describe what we can visually see in the artwork.
Phase 2:
- Second part of analysis, after observation we had to connect our observations with the designs , How the different elements are places , why they are arranged , what design principles are used , What impact the visuals give and how the whole art work moves the viewer through the artwork
Phase 3:
- Phase three is interpretation where we give our own opinions about the visual elements and artwork , what is our thoughts about what it means and why we think they give us those thoughts , Along with that we had to do research about the artwork , where do the basics of it originate from , What kind of design techniques we think are used there and why and what message does the design want to convey
Part 2: Design creation
- Create your own design which reflection of the analysis along and explain what and how the analysis influences your design
Part 1: Visual analysis
Starting off my visual analysis i had to choose a artwork , i went for mostly illustrations and band covers instead of posters , just because of personal preference i find working on those sides better
Few of my posters to choose from
I'm personally not very good at choosing stuff so these are just a fraction of the amount of artwork i went through, however i got a good idea of what type of artwork i was going to have to produce
p.s ms jinchi helped me a lot here in these choosing parts , or else i would still be choosing till next semester
Chosen Design
I chose this design because i'm a big fan of historical and fictional stuff , along with that I'm a horror fanatic , this was also my first poster . I found it better for choosing because through self evaluation i have always noted i work best with like portraits or design which have to reflect a character instead of an object and i find it easier to reflect that stuff.
Analysis phase 1
This design work is in portrait format. As for visual elements, the main colours observed are black, shades of grey, turquoise green, and a little yellow golden. Overall, it is a not a too colourful design but uses same colour family design. There are swirly, organic lines applied throughout the composition. The composition doesn’t have any type of borders. There is one subject which in the middle of the design, a woman’s face. The hair of the women seems to be portrayed as snakes. She is also wearing a crown possibly ancient Greek and some golden jewellery, a necklace. Instead of normal eyes she has white spaces. The composition also has stone rock texture behind the subject. There are words at the bottom half of the composition which is in some kind of different language.
Analysis phase 2
From observation the design asymmetrically balanced. The main focus of the design is the women in the middle, which is emphasized upon by using a lighter colour scheme (contrast) . The design uses the principle of movement shown by the snake hair. To further grab the viewer’s attention the women does not have eyes which attracts the attention to the subject because of it’s difference compared to real life. The snakes on top also look towards the viewer to attract the viewer’s eye, there is also a fair amount of repetition shown by multiple snakes in different sizes to show contrast between the subject and background and majority of them lie on the upper half with the face . On the upper half of the design the back ground has a stone texture using repetition and harmony , which also acts as an emphasizing factor to lead the eye to the top of the design. The snakes also all coil around the face and inwards towards the face which shows more movement. Towards the lower part of the design i saw the snakes in smaller sizes leading towards the text . At a wider look it can be seen that the snakes and the necklace all come together acting as a frame for the women’s which is unity . Lastly the text at the lower half is in a contrasting colour scheme with the background to keep it’s secondary emphasis after the face .
Analysis phase 3
This is a cover of a movie which shows the illustration of a mythical half human half creature named medusa. This illustration is inspired by an old Greek mythology legend where a women is cursed to have snakes instead of hair because of her pride in her own look along with the snakes she was also given the punishment where if she looked at anyone the person would turn to stone , this all grouped up into this one curse where she could no longer be proud of her beauty and no one could look at her and neither could she look at anyone else .Greek mythology had some of the most amazing art work of its time , this mostly includes sculptures , interior design on walls. Along with that most sculptures and artwork was very detailed because of its connection to religious beliefs and mythology.
After analysis of the back story I started connecting the elements of the picture and I found . So it’s no surprise that the illustration is very detailed also because of how important of a role medusa plays in Greek mythology , accuracy was needed in designs to not disrespect any race .
- · Stone texture in the background could represents the stone turning factor
- · The snakes are a part of her body , which i later saw was also illustrated by making them go through most of her face without any disturbing facial expression from her
- · The jewellery and face are still designed in a beautiful way to keep that beauty factor
- · The hollow eyes can represent her being a mythological deity or the power of turning people to stone in her eyes.
Besides the backstory connections and its mythological importance to me this design also showed me how much times have changed but the art is not very different , the quality in artwork back then even though was in sculptures has a very striking resemblance to modern designs even though they are hundreds of years apart.
Part 2: Design creation
After completing my analysis i started sketching out ideas about subjects that i think i can portray using the same principles and visual effects of my analysis poster.
I distributed my ideas into categories of themes
- Ancient gods / horror type theme
- A normal horror type theme not only focused on the ancient times.
Sketch 1
My very first sketch fell under the ancient god theme similar to my analysis poster which was about a mythical deity , i chose a god KRATOS who is known as the god of war , using my analysis as a reference i tried using the same principles like movement , repletion and harmony to show a fierce god , i intended on using the background half as yellowish flames and the spears coming in from each side of the page towards the character for emphasis
Digitized draft
Sketch 2
This sketch is also in the ancient category however i did it about a demon incubus which is basically a demon that comes in a form of a handsome guy and ends up well taking girls, the design didn't really reflect my analysis poster but i was doing a contrasting theme where half of the picture is all dark and ragged up but the other half is all bright , i used the flowers and torn bedsheet as extra contrast
Sketch 3 (Chosen design sketch)
This was my final sketch i designed it to be a general horror theme not ancient since i was going to do a movie poster , i though of it as like a simple reflection of character therefore one subject in between with design elements around , during this sketch i also reflected on my analysis that's where i noticed a couple things like
- The back ground is the secondary message conveyer
- All emphasis is on the main character , which is reflected by elements of the character itself
Keeping those points in mind i designed this poster with majority of the elements on the character itself , like the smile , pointed leather jacket , messed up long hair , the neck tattoo, and i also gave his facial features a very eerie kind of vibe, At the end i did a simple back ground that does not attract too much attention away from the character but works as a unity . Also i sketched a very scratchy almost torn or cracked wall kind of type face and used the positioning of my character's head to lead the eye towards the heading , and the chains in the background to keep the eyes focused on that certain area of the poster where the character and typing is placed.
Feedback from lecturer
In this week ms jinchi looked at our ideas and told me that the last sketch PSYCHO is the more dominant one and i should probably just do further variations of it .
Designs and variations
Starting of Ms jinchi had told us that we can use elements from internet and stuf but she wouldn't recommend it as it is our own design , so that's what i did
Design 1
This was my very first attempt at the design , it was very reflective of the sketch i had chosen but i changed a couple elements like the back ground and the knives as design elements because i couldn't find any random area with chains hanging around to take a picture off so i shot some different pictures.
Similar to the sketch my main theme was a psychotic violent character , so as the character i just used a portrait of myself and i used the arrangement of the knives to lead the over all viewer eyes towards the top of the page where the typing is located , along with that i used a very simple blood drip kind of back ground which i made in illustrator to just get that non friendly message through and the tattoos , smile for the psychotic reflection and i intended it to overall work in harmony and unity because all the elements had a common theme that reflected and complemented everything around them
Pictures used :
Design 2
This was my second design i didn't base it of a sketch but kept the same theme , this was more reflective of my analysis poster , i this design i tried to use the same arrangements of elements like in my analysis poster , with a very minimal amount of design elements , i wanted it to be fairly simple yet very reflective of the message so i added a simple blood dripping background to reflect the violent image and along with that i also intend on using the blood trickling down to lead the viewers eye towards the subject and at the text at the bottom , also to emphasize on my main subject i slightly blurred the back ground and added similar tattoo features on the portrait , even the words i used for tattoos i wanted them to be reflect the psychotic nature , i gave the main subject a contrasting theme than the rest of the poster , and since it was a poster i did not actually want the colour of the face to be realistic i wanted it to be more reflective of the idea , in the end the type face i used i chose because of the pointy edges and that it's not too thick or thin to get just enough attention but not all attention away from the subject
Pictures used:
Design 3:
In this design i used the same principles as the other two designs but i changed teh theme a little , here my message was well a little more on the cult side , in this design i did not include a lot of elements to reflect the message but a few elements that reflect the idea very well like the inverted cross necklace and the wording on the inverted cross , the wording i put in a very bold type font to get that emphasis through along with that i added some minor details like pentagram eyes in the first variation and no eyes in the second to give that non human effect which also kind of reflected my analysis poster , i placed the inverted cross as an eye lead towards the character and wording similarly for the blood drip background , again keeping a level of harmony and unity.
Pictures used:
Finalized design and submission
Call me a psycho one more time :) , i would probably name the movie that
Rationale and concept
Okay so for my last final design my concept was the same as my sketch , i made this as a movie poster , which is based on one character , the character type i chose is violent , disturbing , intimidating.
My analysis poster gave me a very intriguing fact , i noticed that they used very minimal colours however it was all very harmonious and there was a lot of repetition and movement but its just felt like all the repetition was different elements and using those same repetitive elements for the leading of the eyes gave me good ideas , Along with that the type of elements used to reflect the concept , like the stone texture in the background and the hollow spaces for the eyes , and the jewellery there was so minimal elements yet they described the whole character if not her whole backstory together in such a nice way
so keeping those points in mind i reflected and made this movie poster
i conveyed concept using the same principles as my analysis and also a big mix of the different variations i had tried.
The main principles i used here are repetition , contrast , emphasis , harmony and Typography
Repetition : Most of the repetition i used here was in the knives in the back ground , similar to my analysis poster where the main subject had a repetition of different sized snakes i used knives to lead the eyes from top to bottom through the character and towards the main text .
Contrast and emphasis : The colour scheme i used was a very high contrast yet harmonious colour scheme, so that the emphasis and contrast in obvious yet the design all looks in unity , The colour for the top bigger knives , the face and the text is all of very same shade to keep the emphasis on them , with the back ground which i kept black to give the contrast
Besides that i added the upper half of the poster as this blood drop effect which i got from the stone texture idea i thought it's simple but got the point across very well, the colours i used for it was a little different than the bottom that's because wanted the upper part where the subject is to be emphasised on first and then the text at the bottom , and the blood element for the violent effect
Harmony: For harmony what i did was not only use the colour scheme which are harmonious but also the design elements that i used , the knives i used in the back ground were petty straight so the bloody background i somehow showed the flow while still not destroying the unity of the composition along with that the placement of my portrait itself i placed it in the centre but in a way where my hair like flows down into the black background instead of just abruptly , and of course the tattoos another fact the tattoo under the eye i used the same language as my analysis poster
Typography: When i was thinking of text idea i tried different ways but normal text fonts well they were just not reflecting it , so i made my own here , i basically just sketched it out and then started cutting random positions and chunks to give it a teary effect and also i gave it a very pointy image just to reflect that psychotic factor i think it worked very well the whole composition
Overall yeah that's how and why i used all those principles and elements in that way while also keeping the effect that my analysis poster had on me , pretty simple and minimal but a lot of good arrangement and well used principles to tell a whole backstory
pictures used :
Here is a little process just in case
Reflections
Well wasn't this a really super long post XD , overall i thought the project was very fun , to be honest this module is my favourite so my reflections might be a little biased , but come on when was the last time a student went to a teacher with designs like cults and anti christ and the teacher was like ohh not bad, Exactly XD.
Yeah fun module i think that's a better description and i think this module really helped me a lot not only just in designs but other stuff like expression of ideas , or like how to to use simple things to make better designs. yeah amazing , okay then see you next semester miss,
