The Guess Who task was the very first assignment we got given at the start of Graphics Year 2, the assignment was to create a replica person from the board game Guess Who, transferring an image of ourselves into cartoon. This task allowed us to get to know tools in Adobe Photoshop more and get practice for future assignments. Below is how I done this...
The first step was to pick an image of ourselves that was clear and would be easy to recognize the features on our face, as we had to create the image into animation we wanted it to be clear to make it look realistic. After choosing the photo we wanted to use we had to put this into Adobe Photoshop, firstly I had to lock the layer so that no changes would be made to this and we could work on the second blank layer that I created afterward.
Now I could begin recognizing the facial features and using pen tool I began outlining the 'white' of my eye to create this shape into a animated shape,. I continued to do this with my features such as my, eyelashes and eyebrow etc. To create my pupil I used the shape tool to get a more defined round shape. I then added in color as I went along so I could distinct what shape was what and belonged where. After doing my eye area I went used hide tool to temporarily get rid of those features so it was easier for me to carry on with everything else. I continued to do my lips and face shape using the same method with the pen tool. To create my nose, I first used the shape tool to create the two hole as my nostrils then used the paintbrush tool to get small lines that would be the shading and outline of my nose area - to get the perfect colors, I used the eyedropper tool and kept the color it picked up or slightly changed it to make it look better in the cartoon. Below is a screen grab of all these steps put together:
As I wanted my cartoon to look as realistic I decided to add some shading on the cheeks, this made the image have a bit more depth and not look so flat. To add the shading I used the paintbrush tool and changed what brush it was to a lighter and more flared at tip - this made it so what I painted wasn't so heavy. To get the right color I once again used the eyedropper tool and picked the dark shading on my face from the real image. Below is this step:
The next thing to was to add my hair into the picture. Although the real image I had blonde hair, I changed it in the cartoon to brown as this is my current hair color! I used the same method as I did to get the eye shapes and eye brows etc, outlining the hair with the pen tool then filling it in with appropriate color, I also added in the darker layers of my hair so that it looked a bit more realistic:
I then grouped all the layers together, so that they could move all as one and i could easily move them around the page and into the center. I then added the background using the shape tool and drawing around the rectangle then filling it with the gradient of blue to white to blue below is this step:
Arms Around The Child is a Charity that seeks to provide a loving home, protection and respect for their spirit and soul for orphaned children around the world. The charity drives education for children who are vulnerable, often infected with HIV and orphaned having lost one parent or both. The also intend to provide a sense of community and safety. Arms Around The Child works around the world (Africa and India) to advocate for the needs of these children so that they may grow up with love and care and can look to the future with happiness. The charity will help to educate the general public concerning the causes and effects of distress, hardship and life as an orphan through our direct engagement with the public through events and major campaigns.
'We believe in a future for these kids and intend to do everything we can to make it a bright one. They deserve happiness' Brief Description: The charity, was founded in January 2012 in London but supports children on a worldwide basis. The Charity works to provide a loving home, medical treatment, respect and education for children who have lost their parents or are living in adversity including sexual abuse, neglect and exploitation.
Anyone is able to donate to the charity by texting, this can be done worldwide.
142 million children have been orphaned worldwide, they are affected by many factors such as shame, fear, rejection, denial of basic education and health care, discrimination, Orphans suffer with depression, anxiety, neglect, emotional trauma with little or no support and this often results in exploitation and abuse. Arms Around The Children aims to advance awareness of this horror and through Global media and campaigning they try to engage the public and translate that engagement into action.
The Other Ball: The Other Ball is an event set up in support of Arms Around The Child. The Other Ball is an annual London event designed to raise finds to protect children ant risk in India and Africa. During the evening people will come together to transcend the machine lift the spirit to bring hope to these children. Mark Ronson, producer and artist is the Global Ambassador and will host The Other Ball, bringing along some of his enlightened musical friends in a collaboration with musical direct and producer Jeff Bhasker to create a 'magical' experience at the event.
The Other Ball includes guest such as ASAP Rocky, Florence and The Machine, The Black keys, Lily Allen and many more worldwide famous celebrity that give much to the charity and also do the event to raise awareness in publicity.
Social Media: Facebook: The Facebook page is there to be able to reach out to a wider audience and be able to be a part of social media. The Facebook page can be there so people are able to research into the charity through the page, look up onto events happening within the charity like The Other Ball. The page also posts quotes, trips and news on there website that people can visit and look into. People can become a part of the charity through Facebook. The page currently has 1,945 likes.
The Charitys twitter works in a similar way to the Facebook, it is there to be able to connect to a wider audience so more people can get involved within the charity. Similar to the Facebook page the twitter will post events and trips that are happening around and for the charity. They retweet people that are supporting the charity and also give links to different pages on the website. The Twitter can help to interact with celebrities and the public who are involved in the charity. The page currently has 1,656 followers.
This next part of work links to the Ethical Designer we studied. We took inspiration from the designs to make our own and join them and make them relate to Arms Around The Child. The research helped me come up with different facts that I could link to pictures and make them into a graphic. Below are the 4 designs that I planned out:-
The first design on the bottom is an idea that immediately popped into my head. I personally feel this is the most effective design idea out of the four i came up with. I took a lot of inspiration from James Victore's existing artwork firstly I chose the orphan silhouette because it linked directly to the fact that is shown ('3.5 million children are infected with the HIV virus'). The type font was restricted at the time but if I was to choose this design I would possibly changed the fonts and sizes, giving a bit more life and complexity to it. Once again if I chose this design I would alter the colours, instead of black font and white image I wanted to switch this so I had a black image and white font excluding the word HIV as I want this to be red.
My second design once again relates to the fact that is written in the image. Clearly the shape is of a medicine bottle and the fact is '£20 per month helps to provide life saving medicines and treatment for a child'. I had the idea to have a white medicine bottle with black writing apart from the cross shape would be shown through certain words and letters in the writing being a bit lighter. I did think the idea was good however I didn't think it stood out as much and it wasn't so eye catching.
I didn't want all my design ideas to look the same, so i varied the next two ideas. The top idea was to support stopping trafficking. I wanted to really make this design different and stand out. The idea was to have the typeface in a 'paintbrush' written way and go gradient from black to red , then from the letter 'T' at the beginning of trafficking have the children again from gradient black to red, running and climbing away from trafficking as though they are trying to get away, and they want it to stop. The second design was to represent the fact that '5.8 children die of hunger a year', I wanted to make the design for this really powerful. My idea was to have at top top of the poster a silhouette a collection of food or perhaps food shopping, then underneath the fact 'falling' from the picture, but joined onto it. Then once again beneath that, the children in silhouette reaching up and trying to get to the food, but they cant quite reach - this all on top of a red background.
So I decided on doing my first design, and I had different ways that I wanted to do this, my first idea was to have the writing of the fact in black 'paintbrush' like writing filling up the shape of the orphan, so there wasnt actually an outline of them but the writing would make it look as if there was. My over idea of how to go about this was to have the orphan painted in black as if it was a silhoueete then have white writing on top of it, in different fonts and sizes. I decided to go with the second idea as I think it related more to James Victores designs, below is how I did this:-
The first thing I had to do was create the silhouette of the 'orphan'. I done this by tracing an image onto a A3 sized paper so it was big and clear enough to type onto on the later steps. I thought the best way to get the clearest black was to paint it, therefore I used water colours and went over a few coats to get this really strong black colour.
The next step I had to take was to transfer the picture of my painting into Adobe Illustrator where i'd be able to begin putting in the text. After putting the picture into Illustrator, I firstly cropped it down so that the table round the outside was not visible. And as I wanted to make the black colour a lot stronger, I used the Levels - Curves tool to alter the contrast and brightness making it look full white background and dark black image. The I then began to insert fonts, I found two fonts on dafont.com that I thought suited great to this graphic and to match James Victore style of work. The two fonts I used were called 'Levi Brushed' which is the one that looks like a painting and 'So Thin' which is obviously the smaller one - i thought the contrast of the small thin font and bold large font worked really well and made the image stand out but not look to compact. Finally I added the Arms Around The Child Logo round the bottom so people knew what the image was representing. Below is my final outcome!...
Ethical Designing GIF
As part of the Ethical Designing we began creating a GIF that will reach out to the people and notify of the problem going on out in India and Africa and why Arms Around The Child are helping. We had to include how people can help and a fact about the charity all through different images and typeface making it look creative, enticing and appealing therefore catching someones eye if it was an advert.
From my previous research and design ideas I had already plenty of ideas of what I wanted to achieve in my design. I created a storyboard which helped me get the general idea of how I wanted the GIF to go, I included the colours and font ideas in this part so that it was easier for me to do the GIF quicker and avoid looking through all sorts of fonts. Below os my storyboard:
The first half of my storyboard is shown above. I decided to go with the quote '5.8 million children die of hunger related illness every year'. Not only is this a touching fact but I thought that it would be great to represent in a GIF form. I wanted to accentuate the most important parts of the fact therefore I made the writing more noticeable and planned to do these in striking colours such as reds, blues and blacks. I also linked images in the GIF to the words appearing for example the world and the child sitting is representing the children dying all around the world due to hunger - this makes the GIF more powerful and moving. The 'ILLNES EVERY YEAR' I wanted to make the most striking, it is part of the GIF that shocks people the most therefore it needed to be the main part of the GIF, I planned to change the fonts on each word to make it more interesting and creative.
This is the final part of my GIF, just the last word of the fact and the question 'is this ok with you' and the arms around the child website at the bottom so people know where that can help.
After planning the story board, I began to transfer all my ideas into InDesign. The first thing I done is gather all the fonts I planned to use. To do this I used dafont.com - the website has a great selection of fonts that helped me achieve the style I wanted which was bold, sticking, thick but also looked rather good. The first part of the gif was the '5.8 Million' - I looked for bold writing for 5.8, as it was the beginning of the GIF I wanted it to stand out and catch peoples eye. For the The million I began with just having it in the colour green however I thought it looked more striking and with the black behind it, this alms gave it a 3D look. This can be seen below.
I continued to do the same sort of thing for the next part of the animation, using dafont to collect the perfect fonts and experimenting with how I wanted them to look. This can be seen below.
For this section of the GIF I had originally started with a image of hand I got from google images however I then had the idea to create my own. I done this by painting my hand in a white colour and putting it on a pink piece of paper, this created the whole of my hand including the details in a white colour. I done this multiple times to get the best outcome. I then scanned in the best print I had, put the image in black and white, got rid of the background and then made it so that I could change the colour of the hand - resulting in what is seen above.
After i finished designing the fonts and layout etc, transferred all my designs into Photoshop and began making the final GIF to do this I first -
Below is the final GIF, put together and moving:
What are your influences from artist & designers?
After researching into James Victore's work I had a strong idea of what I wanted to create. Personally I loved his work and the designs that he has produced as they have a certain originality about them and a look that kind of resembled that they were done quickly but the final outcome was a masterpiece. I tried to apply this to my work as much as possible, despite the fact I wanted it to look professional and put together, I took inspiration mostly from the fonts he has previously used. These being the messy, freehand/handwriting inspired designs. As you can from my GIF, multiple parts words have the same messy, freehand look. I feel as though this gives the design on a whole a more authentic feel, similar to James Victore's work.
Any areas to improve?
I think the thing I need to improve on the most is the layout of the elements in the GIFi.e the text, pictures. I had an idea in my mind of what wanted but it changed a bit throughout the process of making the actual animation as I didn't take into considerations some things like the size of the writing or the picture sizes etc therefore this part took me longer. So next time I would plan ahead more and know that the storyboard of my animation might change throughout creating so i can be prepared for this.
How successful is your final outcome?
I'm really pleased with my final outcome. I think all of it works well including the fonts, the colours and the pictures etc and it send out the message that I wanted to perfectly (not to serious but still hard hitting to) I also feel it appeals to all kinds of audiences which is good for getting the message of the GIF recognised. The completed animation flows well and its definetly not to slow nor to fast, it's easy to read with the bold, colourful fonts which is exactly what I had in mind when I was doing the storyboard. Overall I think the final outcome is even better then what I expected.
Does it reflect the ethical theme?
I believe that the principal message and ethical theme of the animation is sent out perfectly. Like previously said the message is sent out in a way that would appeal to a younger audience and also an older audience therefore the seriousness of the GIF is recognised by all people. The animation is bold and creative and I personally feel the natural colours for example the blues, greens etc keep the ethical theme strong. As well as this, the pictures for example the earth and hands both look quite rough and sketch like which I feel looks quite cultural. The praying child also puts out a strong message as it is quite hard hitting and shows desperation.
Would you approach future projects differently?
I wouldn't approach future projects different. I think I took enough time to plan my animation so that when it came to actually creating it I had a good idea of what I wanted to do and could do it with ease. I learnt a lot whilst creating the animation in particular with inDesign and I am pleased with the final outcome.
In this lesson we began to work on making animations and GIF's using Adobe Photoshop. Firstly I created the circle shape which I made Gradient to make the animation look a bit more interesting. After doing this, I added a new layer and added one more tab on the timeline. I then took the circle and moved it to the middle right part of the box. Once again I put another tab on the timeline and moved the animation to the bottom left corner. I used the shift key to select the first and second tab and used the tween tool and selected 15 frames to add to create the first part of the GIF to make it look like the ball was moving across the screen. I then used the shift key again to add the last tab and second to last tab, used the tween tool on 15 frames again and created the second half of the GIF to make the ball move from the middle right to the left.
For this animation we used the same method in Adobe Photoshop. We used the same sized box and firstly used the text box tool to write my name in the middle. I created a two new tabs on the animation timeline and selected the first one of which I kept the text opacity the same. With the second tab of text I changed text opacity down to 0%. The final tab I kept the text as 100% opacity. After doing this, I selected the two first tabs and used the tween tool at 10 frames to add to make it look like the text is slowly fading. I then selected the last and second to last tabs and did the same as before, adding the tween at 10 frames. Above is my result.
This final animation was made slightly different to the previous two. Firstly, I writ the name 'Els' in the middle of the white box. I then used the square tool to select each separate letter and copy and paste them. I then moved text box out of the white box so it could not be seen once the GIF was complete. Using the animation timeline, I made a new frame and moved the first letter 'E' down to be seen in the middle of the white box, I once again added two new frames to move first 'l' to the middle then 's'. Lastly I used the tween tool again to add 10 frames between the first and second frame and the second and last. Above is the result.
Factoids Workshop
France was still killing people by guillotine when star wars came out
The jewellery store Tiffany & Co was founded before Italy
Cuteness inspire aggression which is why we want to squeeze things we find cute
There was more time between the stegosaurus and the Tyrannosaurus Rex than between the Tyrannosaurus Rex and you
Cupcakes can be as addicting as coccaine
Heroic was once used to treat children's coughs.
In the mid-1960s, Slumber Party Barbie came with a book called "How to Lose Weight." One of the tops was "Don’t eat."
Pizza Hut has made perfume that smells like a fresh box of pizzas.
10 percent of the world’s 3.5 trillion photos have been taken in the last year.
For two lessons we have been working on creating an animation/GIF that will show a fact in a 'fun' and entertaining way. Using photoshop we had to design a animation that includes enticing type font and pictures. The animation had to move around and look as though it flows from begin to end. The fact that i animated is 'There was more time between the stegosaurus and the Tyrannosaurus Rex than between the Tyrannosaurus Rex and you'. Below is what i created...
I firstly had to choose what images, fonts and colours I wanted all throughout my animation. I wanted to pic fun colours and 'happy' colours. Because my fact was quite interesting, I didn't want the animation to look boring and non entertaining. I picked colours that would relate to the prehistoric time, therefore colours that relate to nature and 'reptiles', such as blues, yellows, and greens. The font i picked I wanted to appeal to all audience therefore I didn't just pick on font and chose several. I found my fonts from dafont.com, and searched for multiple different criteria's that helped me pick the ones I want, for example I wanted to go for a 'bamboo' look to relate to the kind of trees around in the the prehistoric times therefore I searched 'bamboo' and it came up with multiple fonts. Then I had to look into the images I wanted on the animation, I didn't have a preference to whether I wanted the images to be cartoon like or real life looking so I used a mixture, the only things I had to adjust with the images in the size, so they would fit in to a 10x10 box with a 72 resolution.
To begin animating I first had to compile all the images to how I wanted them on each frame for example including the text, the clock and background on the first frame and so on. To connect the next frame I had to hide all these components and do the same thing with the second part of the fact. To begin animating I first had to move all the components on the first fact out of the frame. Next I created a second frame and began moving in certain parts of the components that I wanted to animate in first, therefore I dragged the words 'there was more' down to where they were visible. I then selected the two frames and used the tween tool to make the beginning of the animation look as though it was moving down into the screen. I then did this for the clock and also the background using the exact same method, I continued this to do this whole animation to complete the GIF!
Channel 4 dispatches Documentary, Killer Coke presented by Mark Thomas, was made to show the public the truth about Coca Cola and what really goes on behind closed doors. Whilst watching the 45 minute documentary we had to take down notes that proved multiple issues behind why Coca Cola isn't as good as it may make itself out to be. Below are the notes I took down -
General:-
1.4 billion Cokes sold a day
Coca 'Cocaleaf' - Coccaine
Cocaine was removed from Coca Cola drink in the last century.
Germany & Coca Cola:-
1936 Nazi's
Coca Cola supported the 1936 Berlin Olympics
When Coke ran out of syrup being used in Berlin, Germany created Fanta
Discrimination:-
Protests against Coca Cola all over in Atlanta
Martin Luther King jr wanted a boycott against Coca Cola
Martin Luther King jr thought against the fact that Coca Cola companies did not employ black people for normal working conditions but only for heavy manual labour and for much less pay.
India:-
Local farmers protested of the large amounts of water usage Coca Cola wasted
Protesters claimed it as though the water was being 'sucked dry'
2 and a half litters of water was used to provide just 1 litre of Coke.
20000 billion litres of water used around the world
India protesters also claimed that parasites were found within the bottles of coke however coca cola fought against this accusation
Death:-
AUC Black Eagles killed nine people who were protesting against Coca Cola, one of which was killed one of Coca Cola's very own factories.
In 2002 a man was also threatened whilst delivering coke - he asked for a job were he would be safe and not threatened by however Coca Cola did nothing.
A workers family was killed in 2004.
179 human rights had been broken and nine was under Coca Cola's watch
The Global Boycott began - 'Killer Coke'
Latin America - El Savaldor:-
330 ml of Coke contains 80tsp of sugar
Coke Sugar supple comes from here
Child Labour used to collect sugar Kane despite the fact that all workers should be over the age of 18.
$1.50 is earned per tonne of sugar cane collected which is why families bring there children (more sugar kane collected - more money)
30000 children employed
Workers try to hide that children are employed
Coca cola says nine thousand children have been removed from working for coca cola
Coca Cola Factorys:-
Complaints about contaminating and polluting the water ignored.
Bio Degradable waste in water due to the soap which is used to clean the bottles.
Dead fish found in the bottom of the lake and locals have complained they do not feel safe using the water as it cause rashes on the skin.
the river turns black due to all the chemicals.
Using all the information, facts and stats collected from watching the documentary, we now have to create a poster for the boycott 'Killer Coke', Showing the truth behind coca cola, below are some examples of posters already made for the campaign...
My Killer Coke Campaign Poster
Rough Ideas -
I initially had 4 ideas each of which showed different aspects from what we found out in the Killer Coke Documentary. Some of my ideas would show separate problems that surfaced and the others showed all different kind of things e.g the dirty water, the killer worker. I believe each idea effectively reached out to the audience in a different eye catching way. However I chose idea number 1...
..Reason for idea No.1 I chose idea number one firstly because it showed all different kind of problems that were shown throughout the documentary. I thought this would be a good way to reach out to people and show them the real truth instead of just one problem which may now be as effective. I decided to include, the killer coke protestors, to show people something can be and is being done as much as people can; the coke worker whom got shot, the reason I included this was because I believe most people wouldn't expect that killings would relate to coke however the poster and documentary prove this; the murky water in relation to the Coca Cola bottling factories polluting and finally the floating bodies in the glass of coke to shock the audience and really reach out to them. I also like idea 1 because of it relation to existing Coca Cola campaigns. I like the original posters with the coke bottle at the bottom at the ‘coke’ with images and patterns in bursting out from the bottle. It really caught my eye and I think that my poster could work in the same way. Just using the ‘bad’ image.
I wanted to base the poster on ‘cartoon’ images so that it was still hard hitting but wouldn’t be to tough to create and merge together. I started by finding a cartoon glass bottle of Coke that I could put at the bottom of the page. If you look at the rough idea I wanted to create the look of the ‘coke’ bursting out the bottle and I thought that this was the perfect image. All I had to alter was the logo, from ‘Coke’ to ‘Killer Coke’ I copied and pasted the middle part of the glass where the logo didn’t interfere and used the copied and pasted image to go over the writing and this gave the effect that nothing was there, I then used font website ‘dafont.com' to find the ‘Coke’ signature font and this allowed me to get write ‘Killer Coke’ where I wanted.
Secondly, I started to pile together my ideas. I began by putting in the protesters. For the whole poster I wanted to use dark colours such as black and dark red, not only would this represent things like bad, evil, poison, death etc but the dark red would also represent coke and possibly blood. Because of this I decided to to most of the images of people in silhouette. I found the perfect image on google of people protesting which also merged into the distance I thought this looked eye catching and also gave a ‘3D’ effect. I only had to alter the image using the magic wand tool to get rid of the white background and make it transparent and also resize the picture to fit to A4 and how I wanted it to look.
I managed to find cartoon images of a hand gun, silhouette of a person jumping or being shot which is what I wanted it to look like and dripping blood, which was a last minute addition which I thought looked powerful and also filled up white space. The only things I had to change with these components is changing the white background to transparent and adjusting the sizes to fit.
Finally I added the red/black murky river water to represent the polluted water, i think this really pulls the piece together and also gives a 3D effect. The glass of coke with the floating bodies, I used to fill up white space, which wouldn't of looked good with writing as I wanted something to fully fill up the blanks. I feel that the use of space looks direct and forceful. I altered the image by changing the white background into transparent using the magic wand tool so I could still see what was around it. The finishing touches were just to add in black paint to fill up the white spaces so the poster looked fully together. Below is my final outcome:
James Victore James Victore is a self-taught, independent artist and designer. Clients include Moet & Chandon, Aveda, Esquire and TIME Magazines, Bobbi Browns cosmetics, and The New York Times. He has been awarded an Emmy for television animation, and Gold and Silver Medals from the New York Art Directors Club.
Victores posters have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and are also permanent collections in the Lourve, Paris, the Library Congress, Washington, DC, the Design Museum in Zurich and many more. He regular lectures and teaches around the globe in School of Visual Arts in NY. His book 'Victore or, Who Died and Made You Boss?' was released in 2010. He currently lives in Brooklyn, NY and continues to work on his art.
Art Work
To the left is an example of James Victore well-known work. I think the great thing about this piece of art work is the use of colour. Although so simple, the image and use of the colours is very forceful and vivid. The black makes the font look bold and despite the limited colours, I think the use of just the red 'C' is simple but in a distinct way making it stand out. I think the choice of these particular colours works well because both relate to or are associated with energy, war, danger, power, innocence as well as passion - all of which in some way have a strong affiliation with 'Racism' The art manages to stick out so well with its use of colour and type face, the big red 'C' right in the centre successfully makes the art work catch the eye.
The use of text is notably original, you don't usually come across a piece of artwork about racism that is so forward with its message despite the fact it is a one word piece of art. I would describe the type face as expressive and it looks as though it is freehand. The type face looks 'scratchy' and It would be the sans serif font as it isn't so 'put together'. The scale of the writing varies throughout the word, the 'C' is clearly larger than the rest of the writing this is something that especially makes the art work bold. The typeface relates to the fact that racism is related with hatred and intolerance of other races, it look powerful and could almost be described as angry.
The only bit of imagery that is within this piece of art work is the 'monster'/toothed letter C, the artwork is abstract as it expresses word racism in a powerful way. The use of the monster is specially effective. A monster can be described as something that is ugly, or monstrous or something that is wicked and cruel - this entirely links in with the fact that the piece of art work is giving of a message that racism is a evil and a cruel belief. Looking at the image I assume that the piece has been hand drawn, Victore is well-known for his work being drawn freehand using Sharpie pens, and I believe that is what he has used to create this artwork as well. Although, I do think that the colours had most likely been enhanced on a computer. I don't think that more imagery should have been used, James Victore has managed to get a good balance between imagery and text yet still making the piece powerful and eye catching.
The great thing about this image is the fact of although it is just one word and a small image, the use of text, imagery and colours is something so forceful. Being one of his most well-known pieces of art work it is clear in the fact that the piece has managed to attract so many to it. I feel as though there is something individual and intriguing about the image that no other artist matches because of its look of being something that looks as though it was quickly sketched out on a rough piece of paper, this making the piece so successful.
"It's about whittling. It's about taking something and whittling and whittling and getting it sharp and perfect. Then you've got something" - James Victore More Artwork
Pretty Powerful for Bobbi Brown Makeup
Selection of Artwork - Cultural Poster for the city of NY (Disney Go Home), Racism, AIDS images, Advertising
Artwork for Empire magazine
There Are No Shorcuts, poster for NYC Department of Probation
Videos & Interviews
How do I find my voice? My style? Youtube video with James Victore
'What's the value of your creative voice? A lot, according to designer James Victore. Using some of his own creative challenges as examples, Victore argues that it is only through finding your voice, your fears, and your passion -- and expressing them -- that you can make great work'
James Victore on The Great Disconnect
Interviewer: What was your path to what you;re doing right now?
James: I was born to do this job. I was born to be a graphic designer. As a kid, I drew and made wordplay constantly. Malcolm Gladwell has this idea that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery at something. My 10,000 hours started when I was five.
The other important thing to note is that my mother worked in the reference department of the university library in the town where I went to school. We lived outside of town, so when I’d get out of school at 3pm, I’d go to the library for an hour or more to wait for my mom to get off of work. My mom needed to make me busy and she knew I liked to draw, so she’d put a stack of books in front of me—Graphis annuals from the 1960s and 70s, Italian design manuals, and art books. She’d also give me onionskin paper to draw on. I poured through those books, which gave me a huge graphic design history at age 11.
James on life at college:I didn’t have any money because I was spending it all on beer, skirt, and rent. One of those things had to go and it was rent. I printed 5,000 posters myself and paid to have them put up on the street.
By the time I was 32, I had found my dharma. I was making these posters, which allowed me to travel the world. In fact, all of my work that’s in the MoMA was made by the time I was 32.
My Work:
This next part of work links to the Ethical Designer we studied. We took inspiration from the designs to make our own and join them and make them relate to Arms Around The Child. The research helped me come up with different facts that I could link to pictures and make them into a graphic. Below are the 4 designs that I planned out:-
The first design on the bottom is an idea that immediately popped into my head. I personally feel this is the most effective design idea out of the four i came up with. I took a lot of inspiration from James Victore's existing artwork firstly I chose the orphan silhouette because it linked directly to the fact that is shown ('3.5 million children are infected with the HIV virus'). The type font was restricted at the time but if I was to choose this design I would possibly changed the fonts and sizes, giving a bit more life and complexity to it. Once again if I chose this design I would alter the colours, instead of black font and white image I wanted to switch this so I had a black image and white font excluding the word HIV as I want this to be red.
My second design once again relates to the fact that is written in the image. Clearly the shape is of a medicine bottle and the fact is '£20 per month helps to provide life saving medicines and treatment for a child'. I had the idea to have a white medicine bottle with black writing apart from the cross shape would be shown through certain words and letters in the writing being a bit lighter. I did think the idea was good however I didn't think it stood out as much and it wasn't so eye catching.
I didn't want all my design ideas to look the same, so i varied the next two ideas. The top idea was to support stopping trafficking. I wanted to really make this design different and stand out. The idea was to have the typeface in a 'paintbrush' written way and go gradient from black to red , then from the letter 'T' at the beginning of trafficking have the children again from gradient black to red, running and climbing away from trafficking as though they are trying to get away, and they want it to stop. The second design was to represent the fact that '5.8 children die of hunger a year', I wanted to make the design for this really powerful. My idea was to have at top top of the poster a silhouette a collection of food or perhaps food shopping, then underneath the fact 'falling' from the picture, but joined onto it. Then once again beneath that, the children in silhouette reaching up and trying to get to the food, but they cant quite reach - this all on top of a red background.
So I decided on doing my first design, and I had different ways that I wanted to do this, my first idea was to have the writing of the fact in black 'paintbrush' like writing filling up the shape of the orphan, so there wasnt actually an outline of them but the writing would make it look as if there was. My over idea of how to go about this was to have the orphan painted in black as if it was a silhoueete then have white writing on top of it, in different fonts and sizes. I decided to go with the second idea as I think it related more to James Victores designs, below is how I did this:-
The first thing I had to do was create the silhouette of the 'orphan'. I done this by tracing an image onto a A3 sized paper so it was big and clear enough to type onto on the later steps. I thought the best way to get the clearest black was to paint it, therefore I used water colours and went over a few coats to get this really strong black colour.
The next step I had to take was to transfer the picture of my painting into Adobe Illustrator where i'd be able to begin putting in the text. After putting the picture into Illustrator, I firstly cropped it down so that the table round the outside was not visible. And as I wanted to make the black colour a lot stronger, I used the Curves tool to alter the contrast and brightness making it look full white background and dark black image. The I then began to insert fonts, I found two fonts on dafont.com that I thought suited great to this graphic and to match James Victore style of work. The two fonts I used were called 'Levi Brushed' which is the one that looks like a painting and 'So Thin' which is obviously the smaller one - i thought the contrast of the small thin font and bold large font worked really well and made the image stand out but not look to compact. Finally I added the Arms Around The Child Logo round the bottom so people knew what the image was representing. Below is my final outcome!...
