'The Summer of Love' Moodboard

Here I have put together a moodboard to reflect the theme of 'The Summer of Love'. Artists such as Wes Wilson, Bonnie MacLean, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley and Bill Graham.The term psychedlic can be defined as:

1.) "Relating to or denoting drugs (esp. LSD) that produce hallucinations and apparent expansion of consciousness"
2.) "Relating to or denoting a style of rock music originating in the mid 1960s, characterized by musical experimentation and drug-related lyrics"
3.)"Denoting or having an intense, vivid color or a swirling abstract pattern"

Traits of the 60s era include things such as abstract swirls, intense colour and curvilinear calligraphy. These aspects were influenced by the pop art movement.The above images include either two or three contrasting colours to create this psychedelic style I hope to achieve in my final designs. Poster designs from the 60s aimed to create the effect of visually tripping out. Wes Wilson and Bill Graham are the most iconic poster designers of the psychedelic era. In the top left hand corner is a design by Wes Wilson who made the style of font to look like it was moving or melting. This font became extremely popular in the 1960s. Another popular design feature illustrated in this moodboard is by Victor Moscoso. To achieve the vibrating colour effect he chose two colour both opposite ends of the colour wheel (blue and red). The psychedlic era also contain influence from optical art which often created illusions for the viewer through using patterns, grids and diminishing objects.The Summer of love focused on an explosion of psychedlic art on posters.

Other traits of the psychedlic era in design include:

-bright dreamy patterns of light or colour

-bold/blocks of different shapes

-text filling in blank spaces

-surreal subject matter

-bright and contrasting colours

-repetition of motifs

-manipulating negative spaces

-hand lettering

-warping shapes

- entoptic

Psychedelic Fonts

Here I have selected some potential font types which could be utilised in my logo, poster, sticker posters and website.

I looked at this font because it is warped and has a rather abstract sytle. However, if I were to use this in my designs to fill in negative spaces and used it repeatively it might become unclear as to what the text says. Therefore this might make the message of the design unclear for the viewer.

Through looking at my moodboard this font is too thin and does not have dramatic enough motifs to create the psychedelic effect that I hope to achieve.

This font has potential to be used in one of my designs because it includes repetition of motifs, a design feature from the psychedelic era. However this font type was not as bold as those illustrated in my moodbooard.

 

 The above fonts  are other potential font type to use in my designs because it is bold and has repetition of a flower pattern which reflects the 60s era.

This font type is thick and bold and aesthetically reflects the time period of the 60s which is the overall theme of the festival. Therefore this is the most effective out of the four fonts. I have chosen this font to use in my designs because this is the similar to the typography in my moodboard which shows influences from artists such as Bill Graham and Wes Wilson.

This font was chosen because one of the concepts of the 60's era was 'peace' by incorporating this symbol into the font type it is reflecting this era.

Logo Designs

(Click on any design to enlarge)
Here I sketched out some initial ideas for potential designs for rebranding of the logo for Summer Sundae festival. 

A logo is a "symbol or other small design adopted by an organization to identify products, uniform, vehicles" in this case a music festival.

The above images shows the development of my initial logo design in the top left hand corner. 
I erased this images background using the background eraser in photoshop and then moved it into illustator to create a silohette which I will incorporate as a ray coming off the sun in my design. This is a good concept because it reflects that Summer Sundae is a music festival. Anothe concept for a logo design was to manipulate text on to stand alone as a logo. However when researching this further logos tended to be symbols rather than text.

This was more effective than the previous design however it is not clear enough that the texture is ice-cream and therefore this is not a successfull. 

I then took the previous concept of incorporating a texture into a logo and developed it further by creating one main text saying 'Summer Sundae Weekender'. I then created another layer of words such as 'love', 'peace', 'communal living', 'gender equality' and 'creativity' which reflected the era of the chosen theme 'The Summer of Love'.  I then created a clipping mask.

 This was not successful as the font inside the main writing was not clear enough for the reader, especially if it was going to be a smaller size when put into my poster, website and sticker designs.

This is my initial design for the festival. I have chosen a heart to symbolise the theme of the festival 'The Summer of Love'. However to improve this design I then repeated the shape and added some colour to create more depth to the design.

 I then looked at logos such as nike and considered taking the text out of my design. I preferred this because most logos are known for symbols rather than text. 

 

Adding the repetition of hearts layered on top of one another added more depth to the design.

Sticker Designs

(Click on any design to enlarge)

Here are four inital sketches for the sticker design to promote Summer Sundae festival. The first design features a 'peace' symbol because this was one significant idea from the 60s era.

For the above image I tried to visually create the effect of tripping out just as Wes Wilson has demonstrated in my moodboard. However he tended to do this with text and this texture would be distracting from the main message when transfered to my other media types. This balance of composition of this design is also poor because the title of the festival is arched and the date is straight and not manipulated. However I did use the design principle of alignment and aligned the date with the QR code.

This design was effective because it contained two contrasting colours which is a design feature of the 60s era demonstrated in my moodboard. For this design I experimented by using the envelope distort tool in illustrator to achieve a similar effect to Wes Wilson.

For this design I tried to incorporate a bold flower pattern to go with the theme of 'The Summer of Love' however the placement of these flowers makes the sticker look unbalanced. The QR code is a good idea because if the website design were to be made it would generate more online traffic to the Summer Sundae website.

I took the colour scheme of this design from Wes Wilson's poster in my moodboard. I chose to do a love heart to symbolise 'The Summer of Love' theme. I then decided to incorporated words associated with the 60s to give the audience more detail about the theme. In this design it is also evident that my skills using the envelope distort tool has improved as I managed to shape the text around the curves of the heart.

Here I experiemented with the idea of including a bold flower pattern and kept the design pretty simple. This design also allowed me to try out a different colour scheme with two different contrasting colours.

Poster Designs

(Click on any design to enlarge)

I started experimenting in photoshop to create different backgrounds for my poster designs. As Wes Wilson did with text, I took the concept of wanting to manipulate my background so that it was melting and creating an illusion to the viewer of my design.

 

To achieve this effect I created a new layer in photoshop and filled it with any colour using the paint bucket.

I then created a gradient overlay. I selected the gradient to modify it and created a noise gradient. I clicked on randomize until I was happy with the colour scheme. I then clicked ok and closed the window. To complete the background I double clicked on the new layer and selected merge down. I then went to filter and added a 'radial blur'. I then cotinued to experiment with the amount of radius the blur would be and this is the effect that I achieved. I will now experiment with different colour schemes using the same method. 

 I then continued to experiment with the amount of 'radial blur' that I applied to the image. 

I then moved onto using a different method. I started off in a new document and again creating a new layer and filling it with any colour with the paint bucket. Instead this time I added a pattern overlay and selected the 'nebula pattern'. I then double clicked on the image layer and chose merge down. I then went fo filter, stylize, glowing edges. I then went to filter, liquify and changed the settings in the tool options.

 

I like this effect and think it reflects the 60s psychedelic era. However for a poster background it is too busy and would distract the reader from the message in the text. It would also make the text unclear to read.  

 These backgrounds are well developed and achieve the effect of visually tripping out, however when moving them to different media types it would be very distracting from the promotional literature in my designs on other media types. My first poster design was not successful because as I inititally thought the background was too busy because the texture distracts the viewers interest away from what the text is saying. According to design theory the balance of this design is not successfull. I wanted the text to dominate the posters because in my moodboard some of the poster designs focused mainly on the text. However the text appeared in straight lines and therefore this design was not very effective.

 To improve the above design I experimented with the warp tool in illustrator which improved the design and gave it a more psychedelic feel to it. Although this design was still not successful because the balance of the warp on the text was not quite right.

 This poster design was simple but effective and focused on the manipulation of text using the envelope distort tool. This poster design is also good because as well as having the dates of the festival it includes an idea of the line up for the audience of the festival.
Hippies were associated with driving VWs. To manipulate this image I have applied a yellow and purple gradient map to create the effect of two contrasting colours just as the posters in my moodboard have done.

 

I then experimented with the colour scheme of red and blue however this was not as successful as the purple and yellow one because the VW was not as bold as the other manipulation.

 

 I then created a QR code which also includes the festival's logo. This will be included on both my poster and stickers designs because it would generate more traffic to the festival's website.

The above design showed potential because it also included the dates of the festival as well as a taster of the line up. I also tried to dominate my design with text just as Wes Wilson and Bill Graham do in the images in my mood board. One aspect of this design which doesn't work is that the image looks too solid and seperate from the rest of the design and so I tried to feather the edges but it still made the design look poor because of the different blocks of elements.

The design with the purple background wasn't very successful because the hippy van image looked too much of a solid block from the rest of the design. As a result I preferred the design with the yellow background and to develop this further I then experimented with the envelope distortion tool and warped the text.

This above design shows potential to be my final design because the composition is well balanced with the image and amount of text. It needs to be adjusted slightly because the right hand side has a thinner purple border than the left hand side.

Wes Wilson influenced the colour scheme of the above design. I like this design because is simple but has also revealed more information about the theme of the festival through incorporating words associated with the 60s era.

The colour scheme of this design as well of the bold flower patterns is effective in this design. I created them by inserting a polygon and selecting effect, distort and transform, then pucker and bloat and selected the percentage which was most effective. To create the centre of the flower I simply used the ellipse tool and filled it with a contrasting colour. This design is not as effective as I hoped it would be because it contains too much negative space which should be filled up to create a successful psychedelic style.

'Enter page' website designs

(Click on any design to enlarge)

Here I have looked at the official Summer Sundae festival website. One aspect which isn't very successful is that to see the whole of the header you have to scroll to the right. Therefore as a website this
One good aspect of the website was the information architecture as all information that the viewer might need to know about the festival was alligned in a group to the left of the page. Although again the user had to scroll down to see these options.

The intial sketches for the 'enter page' of my website have took design aspects as well as elements from my previous sticker and poster designs to ensure that all three designs show continuity.

This is a bad design because it the background is distracting from the text and also the logo is way too big. Usually a logo is quite small and to the corner of the page. One good aspect of this design is the social network icons to the bottom right hand corner because this shows other ways of contacting and asking questions about the festival. However it can be criticised because it might be more logical to have these icons on a seperate contact page.

The above design was the most easiest to transfer across my three different media. I like this design because the composition of this design is effective although one element which I would change so that it is more balanced is include the QR code in the right hand corner because the gap in the bottom corner and it looks odd and if there should be another element there. Out of all my designs the envelope distort tool was most successful on this design. 

To research for the sketch in the top right hand corner I then looked at other websites such as Bestival. This festival's website  had one main image which you had to click on to enter the website. However it did have links around the edge to buy tickets and a link to their Facebook page.

I took this concept and then tried to come up with a design which was similar to this concept but sticking to the psychedelic style of the 60s era.

I liked the way this design tuned out because the colour scheme would work well on a website. However one not very successful aspect of this design is the the enter button because this spoils the balance of the composition. Although this button needed to be included so users would know where to click to enter the website. This design also shows that my envelope distort skills are improving.

This design was not as successful as I originally hoped. I had to make a few adjustments by adding two little hearts because otherwise there would have been too much negative space. I also chose just to  place an enter button in the centre heart rather than including words associated with 'The Summer of Love' because this would have made the design too complicated especially for a website design because according to graphic design theory information is meant to be organised into groups and so that it is user friendly.

The composition of this design is effect and again works well with the colour scheme. However it is missing the date of the festival and this is crucial information which the audience needs to see from the first page.