Critical Overview

For my project 'The Summer of Love' I initially researched into the design features of the 60s era and what aspects were successful in poster designs. For example, the type of font, contrasting colours, bold shapes and patterns, text filling in blank spaces, manipulating negative spaces, repetition of motifs, hand writing and warping shapes. These aspects are illustrated in my mood board on my blog by artists such as Wes Wilson and Bill Graham. Other research included looking at the Summer Sundae website to give me a grasp of some of the design principles and the type of pages I could include. For example 'tickets', 'line up', 'contacts', and 'photos'. Although when evaluating the Summer Sundae website the design was not very effective because the header did not fit the browser and to view the rest of it the user has to scroll right. Although the information architecture was good and the information was there in a clear format it was hard to access.

Further research included looking at other festival websites such as Bestival and Reading. These websites gave me an insight to some of the principles of graphic design. For example repetition, proximity, grid and alignment rules. Through looking at these websites and creating a mood board of psychedelic posters it is evident that this portfolio of work reflects research into graphic design which supports my project. Thus this demonstrates that as a project objective this has been fulfilled.

One aspect in my project which I found initially challenging was keeping the continuity in my designs. However this was one aspect which turned out to be the most successful. When developing my designs I overcame the issue of continuity by choosing a variety of different colour schemes so I could pick the one which was most effective in all three of my designs. One successful colour schemes was the red and green heart design which was influenced by Wes Wilson. The most successful colour scheme was yellow and purple which I have used in my final designs.

 The final poster was successful because it kept to the principle of using two contrasting colours and included warped text which dominates the design, both of which are design features of the 60s era. It is also a good design because it includes the line up for Summer Sundae. My final website design was another successful aspect of my project because the header and footer in all five pages were consistent and all contained the name of the festival, when it was and also the re branded logo. The final website design was also successful because it complimented both the final sticker and poster designs. The final website design also includes a contact page with icons to link the user to Flickr, Facebook and Twitter which are concerned with the user's experience and interaction. Thus this is another reason why this design is successful because it exemplifies good user interface if it were to be made. Another successful aspect of my project was the documentation of the development of my designs, in particular the variety of different backgrounds I experimented with for my poster designs. These backgrounds reflected the artists in my mood board because the concept of Wes Wilson's posters is that the text is melting and that it is visually creating the effect of tripping out.This effect is also reflected in my final poster design because I used an envelope distort to warp the list of band's names.

One agreed objective of my project was to ensure that the selected media types for my project were appropriate to promote Summer Sundae festival. This objective has been achieved by

completing a final design of a re branded logo and the creation of a sticker, a poster and a website design. However, as my project developed it became obvious that there was a range of other media types that could have been explored to make my project more established. If I were to develop this project further I would like to have created a separate line up poster to one that could be put up on billboards. Other media types which I discovered were apps and an interactive map of the festival site. Throughout my designs I have also included a consistent message in the discourse of my designs, for example the name of the festival, the psychedelic style of my designs and also the dates of the festival. In my blog, the development of my designs have also been underpinned by an explanation of the processes which exemplifies that another of my projects objectives has been accomplished. 

Time management was an issue constructing my project and therefore the time to improve my skills in illustrator were limited. One element of my project which was weak was the logo because although I showed the development of how I hope to achieve there were quite a few initial sketches that were not very successful and therefore were not very well established. For example when creating the initial concept for my logo design the idea was to incorporate texture into the words 'Summer Sundae' to create a logo. This was one aspect of my project which did not work very well because the audience of the design would not be able to read what it says inside the main text. Therefore, this is not delivering a clear message to the audience of the festival and this is one reason why this initial design did not work. Although this design is not very effective it demonstrates that I have achieved another of my project objectives because it shows I have thought about the communicative and creative aspects of my designs. It also allowed me to develop my illustrator skills through learning about the clipping mask. 

When creating the initial sticker design with the green background, one problem which occurred was writing the text around the bottom of a circle and it appearing the right way up. For example, in my initial sticker design I managed to arc the top text round the top of the circle but left the bottom text straight and unmanipulated. As a result this design had had poor composition because it is not very balanced therefore it was not very successful. To overcome this problem I used the ellipse tool and by using the direct selection tool I was able to flip the text at the bottom the correct way up. The green background of this design was initially chosen to work as part of a poster although according to graphic design principles the texture of this background is too busy and distracts the viewer from the message in the text. Therefore this design is not very successful.

Another problem I encountered in the production process of my designs was creating a design that worked across my three selected media types. For example, the easiest design to transfer across each media type was the pink and yellow design and worked particularly well on the sticker and poster design. One design which did not transfer across the different media types was the red and green design. This worked well as a poster but when it came to creating the sticker design to go with it it was challenging because the font inside the heart had to be a particular size so that it was still possible to read it. This design was also difficult to transfer onto a website design because with just one heart centred on the page there was too much negative space for it to be achieve the psychedelic style I wanted to achieve. 

During the production process I initially focused on manipulating images in photoshop to create a psychedelic effect. However, through looking at even more psychedelic posters it became prominent that successful psychedelic designs were dominated by text. As a result my project developed a new direction and I focused on filling in negative space by manipulating and warping the text in my designs. Through examining the aspects which worked well and the aspects in my projected which failed it has allowed me to critically reflect and evaluate the production process as well as my final designs. This overview demonstrates that my project has successfully achieved the agreed projective objectives and therefore overall the brief of this project has been fulfilled.