Article - MEOW!

I enjoyed doing the interview spread on my nana and granda that I decided to write an article on something that I liked. I decided to choose 'cats' as everyone knows how much I love them (i'm constantly called a cat lady :)) I created some vectors in the shape of cats and applied the patterns that I had created over them.  I then wrote a short article on the history of cats and how they are perceived in modern society. I decided to lay it out in an unconventional way and this turned out to be the spread that I liked the most.

Experimenting

I decided to do some experimenting with shapes and patterns.

I started off by creating shapes on photoshop, triangles and circles mostly. I created 4 small triangle and duplicated them over and over again. I then got some textures like lace and vintage patterns and used different blending modes.

Circles was my next experiment but I felt that they didn't work together as nicely as the triangles did.

The interview

I went to interview my Nana and Granda and I thought it would be quite easy as I'm so close to them, but i found asking questions to someone you are close to can be very formal (especially if you are recording it!) so i decided to keep it more like a conversation so my Nana and myself felt more comfortable.

I found this brief a real pleasure to carry out as i found out things I didn't know about my Nana and Granda and got to do something dedicated to them.

gathering information

I went to the shops and purchased a range of magazines, fashion, photography and film, to get a wide range of various layouts. Pinterest was also a great way of researching unique spreads.

http://www.pinterest.com/amymil2190/editorial-spread/

I also downloaded some fonts that I thought would suit my nana and grandas style.

Editorial Spread - Interview

We had to pick someone interesting to us and my initial idea was to interview a local tattoo artist as I thought it would make an interesting spread. However this did not work out as I couldn't get time to set up an interview and I also felt it wouldn't suit the style of the rest of my magazine. I then had an idea to interview my Nana and Granda, they have been married for 50 years and we just organised a surprise party for them. I done a lot of organising for the party and made a slideshow for them, so i had my hands on a lot of old vintage style photographs as well as some recent ones. I am very close to my nana and grand so it would be easy for me to interview them and a have a good idea already of their history.

Company branding

Here is the companies new logo on a letterhead, business card and compliment slip.

Final design

From the previous design i took that the 'wood' texture worked best as it the could would work well with most backgrounds. So I done some various designs of this using different fonts and borders.

The design on the right was the final logo that I created and this was the one that the owner was most happy with. I am really happy with the outcome as I feel it represents his personality well and is really modern.

further development

So after a lot of experimenting and talking with the business owner, i felt that in order to create a successful logo, it had to be quite modern, stand out and incorporate the 'builder' feel.

I started to use textures within the logo like metal and wood and use different colours to go with each.

I showed these designs to the owner and we agreed that something bolder needed to be added to the logo in order for it to stand out.

Corporate logo design - development

I researched existing and different logos that relate to builders or tradesmen.

http://www.pinterest.com/amymil2190/building-and-contractor-logos/

I found from a lot of searching and getting inspiration from sources such as Pinterest, that I had a good idea as what I wanted to create. So I started to play around with vectors and shapes on Photoshop and illustrator. 

I wanted to create a professional logo yet not too bold as I wanted incorporate the 'friendly' feel.