Music Logo // Compound Mask

I needed to be able to turn the logo into a compound mast to put over photos and throughout the publication

Glutton Club // Pantone Colours

Glutton Club Flyer // Stage 3

The latest set of developments that I sent off to the client this morning. I started experimenting with just encasing the logo in the burgundy gradient to see if the flyer looked better but I then changed back to having the gradient flood the page, and this looked good when I printed the flyer out.

Font Stage 3

Glutton Club Flyer // Stage 2

After sending the logo developments to the client I started working on the layout of the flyers and this is what I came up with. After sending back this pfd I realised that I had actually spelt 'restaurant' wrong!

The gradients seem to have come out a bit strange with patterns in it on the PDF but when I print the flyers out they appear to be normal.

Front Stage 2

Glutton Club Flyer // Stage 1

I stated the flyer design with a burgundy colour as the client had asked for the colour to be similar to that of Darwin's study in Cambridge. I had a look on the internet and felt that choosing a deep red gradient would give a warm but sophisticated feel to the flyer.

I sent these logo options back to the client and they chose page number 5.

Front Stage1

Glutton Club // Logo Design

I had to take the old design of the logo and update it, make it more sophisticated. I had been asked just to change the typeface but I started playing around with the whole design of it as I felt that the fish illustration was not doing much justice to the appearance and character of the rest of the logo.


Logo Stage 1

This was the new logo that I came up with. The second image below was where I was trying to play around with the weighting of the fish so that it wouldn't take the focus of the logo. I used a typeface I got off dafont called Optimus Principus. 

Alternative Music Room // Final Logo

Here are the range of final logo designs, I am very happy with how they have turned out. I still need to work on a design to be a clipping mask and a monochrome edition of the logo that can be printed / screen printed onto the stock. Logo Final

Logo Design // Stage 6 // Colour and Type

Having chosen the logo I now needed to chose the typeface for the text below the logo.


Stage 6_Logo and Type

I started off thinking that I was going to use this typeface for the main design of the logo however when I came back to the designs, I didn't think that it fitter very well. Although the typeface is 'alternative' from the normal sans-serif typefaces used for music pages, I felt that it gave the logo too much of a vintage feel and I couldn't see it being used throughout the publication and on other designs. 

After creating the app logo, from a distance I didn't think the broke two white outer circles looked good so I tried just using a whole circle white outline and I felt it gave the logo more of a finished feel. 

This is the chosen logo for the Alternative Music Room

New Logo // Iphone App

I was just playing around with what the logo looked like and downloaded the music blog page as an app after updating the new logo and here are the photos of what it looks like.

Here are screenshots of what the logo looks like on the blog (top left corner where the https link is).

Music Logo Colour Choice

I slightly changed the intensity of the colours within each of the logos the printed them out again to see which ones looked better.

These are the colour gradients that I have gone with, I changed the blue / green one so that the free was at the top of the gradient rathe than the bottom because it looked better print out this way. Logo Stage 5 Colour Choice

Music Logo // Stage 4 // Colour Application

I started off by having a look on the Kuler website to if there were any examples of colour that I felt would be appropriate. I started playing around with different combinations (examples are on design context blog. I then put them into illustrator and started applying them to the logo. After a couple of examples I felt that just using one colour for the logo was not giving it enough depth and vibrance. I looked back at the examples that are on my design context blog and started looking at gradients and the combinations I could use. I found a couple of combinations that worked well, below are the artbaord designs of my progress.


Logo Stage 4 Colour

At the moment, on the last page of this pdf which shows 4 logo colour variations, I have arranged the logos in order of strength. At the moment I much prefer the left two, they are brighter and stand out more.

The next step is to go back and chose a typeface for the writing below then start applying the logo to designs to see if it does work well.

Below are some of the main stages of colour development the logo went through.

My original idea was to have the vinyl part of the logo to be the main colour, however when I tried this out it really didn't work and I felt that it lost the appearance of being a vinyl and looked more like a colourful shape outlining the logo. 

It looked much better when I kept it to the inner circle of the vinyl. On normal record this is where the change in colour or applied design would be anyways. I also kept the inside logo white instead of black because otherwise I felt that there was too much black. 

Here I have increased the size of the outer white lines because before I felt they were too thin and too similar size to the inner white circular line. I realised looking through my research and also other colour combinations that sometimes having quite a drastic colour change could make the design stand out. I had previously been working with pink vs orange and pink vs purple so I decided to just combine the two different colours and this is what it came out like. I do like the combination in of these two in the gradient however I don't feel it was as strong as the blue and blue / green combination. 

These two design were also strong however they did not look as good when I printed them out. If the blue logo doesn't work I will go back and slightly edit the contrast of the two colours in each of the designs so there is more difference and they stand out. 

This is a photograph of the chosen colour design printed out. I still feel that the two left designs are the best, I will go back and make the pink and orange slightly stronger because the pink when pretend out has slightly faded into the orange and doesn't look like as much of a contrast as it does on screen. 

Logo Design // Stage 3

I have taken the designs that I like and developed them. I removed most of the outer lines and re-arranged them and I am now happy with the final result. The next stage of the design is to apply colour.


Logo Stage 3

The type under the logo design still needs work but this is will be the overall layout

Logo Stage 2 // Print out

I circled the designs that I thought were best and made developments from  them. I still think that having the logo simple is better so in the next stage of designs I will remove some of the vinyl lines and see how they look. 

Alternate Music Room // Stage 2

I had the idea over the weekend of adding the 'arm' logo to a vinyl to help represent the music element. On many of the youtube links that are on the blog, the image displayed when the song is being played is just the design of the vinyl for the EP, here are the quick designs that I have done.


Logo Stage 2

These are the 4 that I think are the best, I can't quite decide which one I like best so I will print them out and see. Gerneally I feel that the more simple the logo the better, especially when Ill be applying it to the publications and other photography, I don't want it to be the main focus. 

The Glutton Club - Brief 5

This is a smaller brief and should be a quick turn around. Here is what I was sent and below I have written a brief accordingly.


What George Sent

The Brief I have written From this


The Glutton Club

Points from feedback to develop designs with

CURIOUS EATS

- Explore print process and finishes for the high end print market.
- Develop the C behind the business cards because it is starting to look like an E (for this I was thinking of embossing it anyways)
- explore the letterhead design, different stocks and watermarks
- mock ups of business cards
- The proposed print processes for the business cards sound too much so reduce this and find out what works best.


ALTERNATIVE MUSIC ROOM - consider the print budget

- test out the logo on a range of layouts throughout the publication
- Consider producing the publication in monochrome (saves costs) - I was thinking of doing this for one of the range of publications anyways.
- Flood the page of photography in black and white
- Look at publication projects on layout / branding on Behance for inspiration & development


ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS

Alternative Music Room Logo, what can I do to improve the logo. At the moment I feel that something is missing from the vectored letters but I cant seem to develop it further. 

Focus in on the audience, use to inform your designs, what would they respond to?

Curious Eats Logo; how can I make the logo more obviously different for the 3 categories (eats meats and treats)

Keep subcategory typeface consistant and just alter the weighting / height / aesthetics

Curious Eats colour; I feel they are basic at the moment and relevant to food / home grown produce, but I don't think they are visually eye catching and help the logo stand out, what can I do to improve this?

The basic logo design works, but you could reduce the opacity of 'Curious' to ring the 'east' type out. 

Alternative Music room  publications; is the content appropriate, is there enough of it and how to can I develop layout and content so it is more plausible

It is very basic so play around with the breaking the rules of grid, try different heights. 

Think about what you want from it, it looks almost too free, use a tighter grid.

Any suggestions for sans-serif typefaces to use for the body of text throughout the publication. 

Typeface of publication will / should be based on typeface used in the logo design to keep consistent. 

Concept Crit Feedback

Overall the crit feedback was good. I only presented two of the four briefs as those are the ones that I have made significant progress with. Now that I have got effective feedback and I am at a good point with so I feel I can keep on developing these while starting on the other two briefs.

Feedback Sheets

Feedback that was written on my design sheets;


Printed A3_Written On

5 Questions

1. Alternative Music Room Logo, what can I do to improve the logo. At the moment I feel that something is missing from the vectored letters but I cant seem to develop it further. 
2. Curious Eats Logo; how can I make the logo more obviously different for the 3 categories (eats meats and treats)
3. Curious Eats colour; I feel they are basic at the moment and relevant to food / home grown produce, but I don't think they are visually eye catching and help the logo stand out, what can I do to improve this?
4. Curious eats publications; is the content appropriate, is there enough of it and how to can I develop layout and content so it is more plausible
5. Any suggestions for sans-serif typefaces to use for the body of text throughout the publication. 

Concept Crit Boards // 2 Briefs

Concept Crit Boards_October

The Boards Printed out:


Concept Crit Boards_Printed

Audiojack // Interview Layouts

There seemed to be a lot more text for this page than there have been for any other pages so far, despite it fitting on two a4 sheets in a word document. This made it a little bit harder to try and find a layout for it. In the end (bottom 2 screenshots) I went through the content again and rephrased the questions as some of them were very wordy. 

I was looking at the Loud and Quiet magazine when I made this, I was having a bit of an issue with fitting all the text on one page so I decided to play around with the number and width of columns in stead. Although this allowed me to fit all the text on the page easily, I don't feel it is very inviting to read and takes up too much of the white space, it feels more like an essay than an interview. 

I looked back at the interview for Maya Jane Coles and the layout I had for that; which was 6 columns over the double page spread. I am still trying to make the most of the white space so I like to keep the height of the columns different, also making it more visually interesting. This was the better layout out of all the above designs, I just needed to work with widows. 

I am keeping the typeface in Geosanslight for the moment until I find something better. 

Looking back at some interviews in other magazines, they have picked out important quotes, so I found one that was the most relevant to Audiojack's rise to fame and placed it under the title. For the moment I am happy with this layout, I just need to go back and work out if it fit with the rest of the publication. 

Audiojack // Condensed Interview

When I put all the interview research together in a word document it came to 12 pages, so there was a lot to go through and edit. I have managed to reduce it to two pages (like all the other content documents) and now the text makes sense and flows.

Open publication - Free publishing - More editorial

Audiojack // Biography Layouts

I have just been testing out various typefaces, leading, kerning, column widths, lengths and arrangements to see which layout will be the most interesting. I tried out a series of typefaces but in the end I feel that Geosanslight works throughout the article as it is modern, sans-serif but still very readable. I will continue to text out different typefaces and look at other publications to see what they use.




Audiojack Bibiography Layouts

There is still a lot of development to be made in terms of the layout, however I feel that the final layout design is the strongest. It is slightly different from a normal layout and I can use an image of the DJ duo in the centre of the text and experiment with the type heading above (and include their logo.)

I have also increased the kerning of the title and centralised it, making the whole page more balanced.

Audiojack // Condensed Biography

I have gone through all the information I researched on Audiojack and have condensed it so that it is less that 2 A4 pages. There was far too much information and the tone it was written in was light and playful, and parts of the article I have re-written in my own words and also added other parts of information that I have found from other articles to ensure I have enough background information on the DJ duo.


Audiojack Biography Condensed

Maya Jane Coles // Page Design

I have replace the primary image to another high quality one. The previous image was the same as the photograph on her website and I didn't think it felt right, also you couldn't see her face so it would make the article less personal. 

I have used Future for all of the text but used a combination of condensed italic and bold. 

I think this is a step in the right direction, it still needs a lot more development but I am happier with the typeface choice and it is similar to the typeface I was looking for in the Loud and Quiet article. 

When looking back at the page design I went through my notes and my design context blog, I realised that I had left out two pieces of information that I wanted to include for each artist / dj; their social media and music website links, and their tour dates (if they are available.)

I started with the information left aligned but then changed it to the right to see which one was better. I do still have to fit in her tour dates somewhere on the page but this is just testing out the layout and white space. I will decrease the size of the website links to include the tour dates which will also be in a small point size. 

I prefer the right alignment more because it makes the page design a little different and more exiting. I am going to make the web links much smaller as they are not as important as her tour dates and review of her music. 

Potential Typefaces

I have cross matched a couple of typefaces from a few other publications which I like the design of and here are the suggestions that I found...

This is the typeface that I would like to use for the all the headers, quote and titles of each page in the publication. 

Maya Jane Coles // Print out

I printed out the articles so far on A4 sheets so I could see what they looked like. I then remembered that I had originally intended for the whole publication to be A5 size so I then printed out just one spread at the intended size to check the point size and readability of it, and then compared the two to check if I was making the right decision by having it at A5 rather than A4.

At the moment when it is printed at A5 I have used Geosaslight throughout (but this will change), for the biography it is 9pnt and for the interview it is 8 point. When pretend out at A5 the 8point is a good size, I have increased the leading so the article is more readable, and I could afford to go 0.5 to 1 point smaller if necessary.

At the moment I am just focusing on getting all the content of this publication then moving onto the design.

I have taken a couple of photographs of the print outs, they are just printed on my home printer on normal matt 80 gsm white paper.


Maya Layout Printout


For the biography page I accidentally placed them the wrong way around before I took the photo but it still looked good, so I included both layouts to see which one looked better.

I definitely think it is the right decision to keep the booklet at A5 size for the majority of the range, however I could produce one at A4 for a 'special edition' on, or one that combines all the artists, almost like the collectors item....

The point size of the interview I am happy with but each of the layouts on every page needs to be properly designed. I am going to go back and look at the Loud and Quiet layout and typeface chose and take points of direction from that.

I will also be placing the logo and page numbers on each of the pages, but those are minor details that will come when the rest of the content is in place.

Maya Jane Coles // Tracks & Reviews

I have found a collection of review and information about the selected tracks and the album and chosen the most appropriate feedback to go with each of them.

Maya Jane Coles // Initial Publication

At the moment I am just working with all the information that I need for the article and working out if I can fit it all on one page. 

Front page; I want to have a large scale photograph of her covering one page. This may extend into having the photograph covering the double page spread. In the screenshot of the more developed page I have added her music genre and a short statement about her. The design of the page will come slightly later, at the moment I am still choosing which image I want of her on the front page. This image I have at the moment is the same one on the background of her website. I chose it because I love the image, the effect and colours however I do feel that it is copying the website and I should maybe look for something different, possibly a place and white image then I could play with the colour of the text. 

This is the third double page spread of the piece, on the right side I want to have discography and reviews on the songs. If I can't find any online then I will write them myself. The left side of the spread is reserved for the interview. 

This is what the front page of her section looks like at the moment, this is all the information that I want to have on it. I have no focused on the design yet, just concentrating on getting all the information. 

I want to have the biography easy to read and on a white background. Many of the long articles that I have read in magazines that are on either coloured or black backgrounds are much harder to read. When I come round to the design of this I will be focusing on having as much white space as possible. I am not sure as of yet if I want to use this photograph of her yet but I placed it there as a starting point. It is a good shot of her. I may go back and edit some of the photos in photoshop and make it duotone. This isn't the set layout yet either, just a starting point. 

After chugging the typeface to Geosanslight the whole interview did fit on the page, with a squish. When I zoomed out and looked at the whole piece I had an idea of moving the discography to the front page which would mean I could have a double page spread for the interview and include more photography. 

RE-ARRANGING THE PAGES

This is the initial design of the having the interview over a double page spread. I think that it looks much better and allowed the focus to stay on the interview without trying to cram too much. It also means that I can have large scale pictures and use the white space on the page. Naturally I will keep developing it and look back at other publication page and interview designs to see what I can do to make it look professional and relevant to the publication but this is a starting point. 

This is what the cover of her section looks like at the moment, I need to move the cover art around and design the page properly but I feel it works much better by having all the main photography and designs on one page. People may have seen some of her songs on youtube and recognised the graphics so it is more logical to have all imagery together. 

I now for her tracks and album I need to find the record label they were released on, the release date and the feedback / reviews.