Jon Lawrence Learning Log

‘A new TV programme exploring historic road journeys around the world wants you to pitch some ideas for an opening credit sequence. The programme will be showing car and cycling journeys along America’s Route 66, Land’s End to John O’ Groats and the Tour de France.

Develop your ideas for an opening credit sequence through a storyboard. The opening sequence needs to give a general feel of the programme, as well as presenting the name of the programme, the different journeys it’s going to explore and the name of the presenter.

This exercise is an opportunity to explore moving typography, drawing on the visual cultures of roads, maps and signage.’

Well, where to start… The idea of drawing and storyboarding is something that fills me with dread, but hey ho I gave it a go!

I started off be doing a bit of research on all of the individual routes, and the landmarks that would appear along them. Below are a gallery of landmarks for each route:

Then I began to sketch plans of what I wanted to go in each section of my storyboard/title sequence:

Using these as a starting point, I then settled on four scenes which will transition into each other. Hopefully my story board/draft below does this justice…

With this part decided on, it was then onto deciding the font for the title and cast names:

With bold being best, when it comes to the title font, I decided on option 4 (above) which is Helvetica Neue Black Oblique Condensed. The italicised nature of the font gives a nod to the movement and dynamism of the programme itself.

I think overall with this task, the final product could probably have been better, or neater perhaps. But I really put a lot of effort into this task, which was quite a way outside of my comfort zone, and I was especially pleased with the concept that I had come up with.

Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5p6uUR3nF0
https://bellefrance.com/blog/guide-to-tour-de-france-sightseeing/
https://www.alamo.co.uk/inspiration/top-attractions-along-route-66/
https://www.cyclinguk.org/routes/lands-end-john-o-groats

‘A Sunday paper is running an article called ‘Pixels – An Alternative National Heritage’ looking at the legacy of onscreen technology over the last 40 years. They want you to playfully represent traditional views of heritage through the lens of the pixel.

Working within the limitations set by a grid of square pixels, and a range of no more than six colours, recreate a range of national landmarks, personalities, characters, flags, landscapes, names or other indicators of traditional national heritage.

Set your grids to any size and dimension, but remember that they want the qualities of the pixel to be dominant so the fewer pixels you use the better. You may want to work on graph paper, work at a low resolution on Photoshop or set up your own grid system on your DTP package.’

The first question I had to ask myself with this task was what are the things that make us British, and what do I associate with our heritage. Below is a short list of the things I came up with…

Very stereotypical, I know. But I figured that is sort of what this brief is asking for! I then chose a handful of the above to think about and develop into ‘pixellated’ illustrations.

Using the above grid to help me plan and draw out my illustrations, I ended up with the below result: Which I am pretty pleased with, having captured what I feel is a great snapshot into the British heritage.

‘A small publishing company called Pine Marten Publishing wants to develop an online presence. They produce a wide range of books that focus on different aspects of nature writing: short stories set in distinctive natural landscapes, volumes of animal, plant and insect illustrations and photography, volumes of poetry and travel guides. They employ traditional paper-making, printing and binding techniques to produce limited editions of their books and pamphlets, and pride themselves on their craft ethos. As a consequence they have tried to avoid the internet, but as many of their customers are abroad, they have realised they need a website to be economically viable for the future.

Pine Marten have asked you to research the competition online, analysing the visual feel, layout and navigation of small and large publishing companies as well as online craft and book shops. They want links to some of these sites and some narrative about what makes them successful or which elements might suit Pine Marten’s needs.

The company also needs advice on what is currently the best way to present and sell items online. They would welcome any suggestions on which kinds of technology would best suit their needs, bearing in mind that they want to update their current stock on a weekly basis. As a small company they are keen to know whether there are any freely available web design tools or shops already online they could use instead, perhaps linking together different elements from different sites.

Finally, they want a website to show their back catalogue of books, the different ranges they offer, as well as their current stock and forthcoming publications. They want to sell this material online, provide links to a range of organisations such as the RSPB, and create a space for writers and customers to review and write about their work. They want you to suggest a suitable way to organise and navigate this content into a menu by developing flow diagrams of how the content links together as well as mock-ups of how a number of the web pages will look.

Put all your research, links to examples, recommendations on existing options, flow diagrams and mock-ups into either a PDF document that can be emailed to the client, or a series of web pages they can view.’

I’ve touched on this type of thing in my working career already, where a client comes to you wanting advice and help on how to update and refresh their brand, and really bring it up to scratch and in line with what competitors are doing. Usually it’s a full rebrand that customers want doing, but in this case it is just a website build, and direction consultation.

The first place to start was to research the competition, and understand what Pine Marten needs to have in order to compete. (All of this research is in the document supplied with my submission)

I then discussed potential payment platforms for the website, followed by more example of competitors’ websites. And finally rounded off the consultation by providing a flow diagram of how the website would function, and a taster of what the homepage could look and feel like.

‘The signage of previous eras remains with us in the form of street names, plaques, older shop fronts or other signs that have never been removed. Streets and public buildings are therefore a potential source of typographic archaeology in which we can discover forgotten or obsolete forms of signage, identify a wider history of typographic styles, and pick out different forms of signage from hand-rendered, metal cast type to amateur hand-written signs. Different places have different traditions or vernaculars of typography and signage, which gives each place a sense of its unique identity. However this wealth of public signage also creates problems as signs compete for attention, take up space within our field of vision or interact with one another in unexpected juxtapositions.

Graphic designer Phil Baines developed his Public Lettering project in 1997 to document some of the typography he encountered on a walk in central London. Much of this typography is from public signage, while other examples are drawn from things like manhole covers and dates on buildings. See http://www.publiclettering.org.uk/

Following Phil Baines’ idea of taking a typographic journey, use drawing and/ or photography to document the forms of public typography, lettering and signage you encounter on a chosen walk. Reflect on what you find and compile your images in a poster, small booklet or other format than shows the chronology of your walk. Develop some narrative around your images. For example, identify and reflect on examples of good and bad signage from an information perspective, examples that you found interesting as a designer, and others than might reference the history of typography in some way.’

So here are the photos from my walk… I live in a pretty sleepy little village, so there’s not exactly an abundance of interesting things, but I found what I could!

To create my poster/collage then, I started by dropping the photos into Photoshop, and cutting out the elements I wanted to use. This involved a lot of trial and error before I settled on a composition that I liked.

Once I had then transferred this over to inDesign, I wasn’t too sure of it, and felt it was missing something. So I had a brainwave and decided to had some more type, based on the lettering of my car’s number plate which would have been the final thing I saw after returning from my walk. This, then coupled with a hint of colour, picked from the rear number plate, helped to finish the poster off in my opinion.

‘Developing effective signage requires a number of things: understanding what information is required, finding a suitable way of displaying it, and finding the best place to locate it. With this in mind, think about how you’d create a series of signs to direct tourists from a local landmark to cafés in the area and to transport networks such as the nearest bus stop or train station. Use your own location or experience of being a tourist to site this exercise. What information do you need to put on your signs? How many different signs do you need and where will you put them? Think about tourists wanting to go to the landmark as well as needing to know how to get back again.’

Signage, in particular directional signage is something I’m very familiar with, dealing with it on pretty much a weekly basis at work. So I felt in a good position when it came to attempting this task.

Now one of the most important aspects of directional signage is that it needs to be readable from either a distance, or in a crowd. This means either the signs end up quite large, or more commonly are on a totem-style pole which enables them to be seen when in a crowd. Also it is very important, as the brief alluded to, that tourists are able to retrace their steps to get back to somewhere, this usually means that the signs are double sided – so what they show on one side, is reflected on the reverse.

Colour scheme is also important, it can determine what parts of the sign belong to a certain area for example. Or simply, it just helps them to be legible.

So I decided to go with the totem pole idea as I believe it to be the most effective, above are some options I came up with for the sign part of the pole. Settled on a yellow over blue colour scheme as it really highlights the important aspects of the signs, whilst being more aesthetically pleasing than a basic black/white combo.

The bold arrows are clear in their direction, and the use of a condensed font means that the point size can be larger, and more info fitted onto each sign – both contributing to making the overall sign a clear focal point around a venue. In terms of numbers of signs – you don’t want so many as to overwhelm and confuse potential visitors, but not too few that they are able to get lost. But putting a number on a fictional venue without knowing its size is a difficult task.

‘A large second-hand bookshop that occupies an old Victorian terrace wants you to create a three-dimensional diagram of their store to help customers find their way around. The shop is spread over four floors: bargains and a children’s section in the basement; novels, art books, antiquarian items and new stock on the ground floor (where the main entrance is located); philosophy, poetry, literary criticism and theory on the first floor; world and local history on the top floor. The shop owner is aware that online rivals have the benefit of search engines to help customers find what they want, so welcomes any creative ideas you have to help find alternative solutions for customers seeking specific titles.

Think about the various levels within your diagram: the four floors, the sections within them, and the various book cabinets and shelves within the sections. Choose an appropriate form of three-dimensional representation to present the information you’ve been given.’

I have to confess, the only book shop I can remember going into in the past 10 years is a Waterstone’s, and even then they are usually at the airport. This meant that I was going into this task somewhat in the dark about what a traditional, in particular, second-hand book shop is like. However, I took this as a blessing as I feel it gave me slightly ‘free-er’ view on how to tackle this task.

I first had to research what was the best way to attempt a 3d drawing as it is something I have very little experience in. But I found that the industry practise is to use a 30 degree grid to work up your initial sketches on. So I found a grid, printed it and got cracking.

I have to say for my first time doing this kind of thing I was very pleased with my initial sketches/outcome. Annoyingly a lack of colouring utensils where I am currently am hindered the colour scheme somewhat – but this was easily fixable once I translated these designs to a digital format.

To tackle the issue of search engines, detailed in the brief, I took inspiration from a recent library visit, where I discovered the self-service search machine. It basically allows you to search through criteria until you find what you’re after, and then it provides you with the location of the book within the library. I thought a similar system could work for the book store, with a ‘search hub’ as such on each floor(?)

As I alluded to earlier, the colour scheme was completely fixable once I had drawn out the plan in digital format. To do this, I scanned in the sketches you can see at the top, and put them on a locked layer on Illustrator. I then essentially traced over the lines, sticking to the strict 30 degree grid. I really pleased with the outcome, especially considering I had never done anything like this before! I could definitely see this being printed out and displayed at the entrance (and on each floor) of a book store. I also think the stacked nature of the layout emphasises the fact that the shop is divided onto four floors of a Victorian terrace.