FMP - Progress - closer to print

This morning I finished off my block letter prints, which I may well use, will have to experiment with them digitally.

I spent the remainder of the day simplifying my posters by selecting the best images of my work and re-composing them. They are not quite finished, they need some fine editing, and then some perfect type to go with them, and then they are ready to send to the printers!

With the general poster I have tried to give it a slightly different layout.

I have also started to put together the leaflet -

I am now going to crop the best images for complimentary postcards, and then make the order tonight!

Ashley

FMP - 1 week to go!

Quite a bit has happened since my last blog... I decided on a new logo from the ones I had produced, and had to put it through a series of refinements and am now so confident with it that I have ordered 50 business cards- I have bought a bass drum skin which will have the logo screen printed onto it, for the exhibition which will have the bass drum of my drumkit to make it interactive. The logo has been printed in stages of colour layers in black ready for prepping for the screen printing process.

I also bought some old vinyl records which I plan to stick the new logo onto as well, also for my exhibition.

My rock school posters I produced have been printed through a SAM contact and 1000 copies were handed out around Worthing high secondary school - I feel the poster does the job, but I'm not entirely happy with it - SAM love it, and the artwork is also on the web, however for the poster series for my FMP I will be working in a newly developed minimalist style.

My posters were nearly all there, but were very cluttered due to my habit of producing more work than needed. After some thought and help I have decided to crop parts of the 'busy' artwork from my posters, and have them centered with the information around the artwork, on the top and bottom - Kept short and sweet. The cropped artwork will also be made into complimentary postcards.
As you can see the posters before have nice artwork but too much on the page - so, as an example I have just the cropped image centered, with an un-finalized choice of font, but information/logo top and bottom.

I have made a template to put together the tri-fold leaflet which will be made up of the existing artwork I have created. I also need to create gift vouchers.

Early this week, I was working on festival posters in the style of Reading festival - this was for SAMFEST, an event SAM are hosting to publicize their services. They sent me a few logos and the information - I even had to come up with the band/time layout, and due to low resolution, I had to re-draw most of the logo's, endorsements and support graphics in illustrator (even their map) - So the poster/flyer really got some good work out of me - I will need to swap the logo over at some point to make it stand for all my hard work! The current artwork is in process of printing - 30,000 copies around the Adur community and beyond. The artwork is also on the SAM website.

I have signed up to www.fontstruct.com to get access to some nice simple block typefaces for the new simple 'less is more' approach to my posters - This morning I spent time in the print workshop taking photo's of woodblock letters and doing prints, which I am finishing tomorrow morning. Either way I am hoping to find the right typography to really finish my posters.

After that, it should all be plain sailing - I need to try and finish all the work to be printed by Monday, and SAM should be able to get it all done for me, possibly even stickers. Come Monday I need to know, and look for a backup printers.

The guys at SAM have kindly asked me to give them a little information about myself for a bio on their SAM friends section of their website, www.sussexmusic.com - This is great because it will act as a 2nd portfolio. They have also offered me plenty of work for the future.

Ashley

SAM logo development & rock school news

Heres something exciting - SAM have been accepted by the very enthusiastic Worthing high, for their rock school workshops. More money trade to help them break even, and exciting news for me...
I've finished the rock school poster for SAM, I will be tweaking and modifying the design for purpose of my project with new logo etc later on, but these posters will be sent A4 to 1000 school-kids, and printed large scale around 15-30 times. Very exciting indeed.

As for the new logo, I have converted some sketches into illustrator and have begun deciding on my favourites, and will need to put them through tests with my current artwork as to which goes best.
I'm liking the plain black bold design, and the turquoise design that took some inspiration from the London olympics logo.

Next job is to trace around the sketches for urban/jazz & blues/ intermediate rock posters.

Ashley

FMP @ SAM - Crunch time

So I have three weeks left on my Final major project... The last meeting at SAM I let them know this, and they are more than happy for me to go off and create freely for purpose of my exhibition - This also means I will be designing a new logo, so that all the work is my own.

They actually like their logo, and I think it works - They may even like mine when it is made. The good news is I have been promised plenty of work with SAM after the course is over, from further advertising to guitar graphics designs with Hutchins guitars in Lancing.

So I have recently been coming up with new logo ideas, which need to be finished digitally and professionally.
I am trying to create lettering that symbolizes an academy, and/or building blocks, to show building and creating/molding people musically. I also found some nice waves on a packet of dishwasher salt at work that may inspire me if I were to incorporate the 'Shoreham by sea' location of the academy.
I also may be compromise the range of final pieces I produce for purpose of my course, but here is the list of what I hope to achieve...

- New logo/stickers etc...
-Rock School posters (general, junior and advanced)
- Jazz/Hip hop and funk workshop posters
-Band management workshop with Paul Roberts poster
- Percussion/body percussion with 'stomp's Theseus Gerard workshop poster
-VAT 'SAM shop' poster TEMPLATE
- SAM band DVD offer poster
- SAM gift vouchers
- Leaflet/general poster (collection of artwork from the above)
- SAM font(s)

The font's are more working with the idea of making everything as re-usable templates for the company. There are ways of creating fonts, and I have been experimenting with scapel cut stencils and different textures and backgrounds, with a scanner and photoshop for my posters.

My last meeting i VERY ROUGHLY pieced together some images I had created for a mock-up composition of the Rock school poster.

The background I created using the company's original logo, which I may well keep as it looks like a spotlight and I quite like the effect.
The School and workshop posters aren't going to take too long to get done, the band management is pretty much in the bag - Once a strong logo is made it should all start holding water.
SAM are going to help me print all of the work to a high finish through their contacts, and possibly aid me with either some live acoustic music or a 'rock school' class for the exhibition. This could be good - I envisage a 'wall of fame' with a sticker on a vinyl record behind a frame, and a table with maybe a banner, laptop to interact with SAM font maybe, and an acoustic guitar with artwork on maybe - definitely a bass drum with the new logo spray painted/screen printed on. Ben from SAM is looking into getting artwork vinyl printed so it can be applied to a guitar. Nice ideas, but as of now, back to work!

Ashley

FMP - recent SAM meeting

The last meeting before today was a bit rushed, and I was a bit unprepared, workings still in tracing form etc... This was followed by an amazing singing lesson, courtesy of SAM, which really got me motivated and was a great insight to the cause I am promoting.

This meeting was a little more productive, and very positive... Although there is plenty of idea development to do I decided to start using the computer to produce taster work for SAM. This went down very well as we are getting closer in the way of thinking - My ideas are starting to go where they would like them and vice versa...
I firstly showed them rough illustrations of Paul Roberts (ex long term 'The Stranglers' frontman) as a puppeteer to be used for the 'Band management' workshop SAM offers. Although I used an image of Paul with slightly longer hair, I was told he wouldn't be offended, if anything it would be a complement. So that went down well - We decided out of the body variations I presented, on using a portrait tall stance, which leaves plenty of room for type information and would house a silhouette of a band neatly in the middle with "your band here" in white... The puppeteers strings will be 're-jigged' in place of the band.

I next showed them rough photoshop work using their logo in different themed situations, for possible future developement - They really liked these for the various things they offer.

Next were illustrator based experiments with musical objects, vinyl case patterns etc for the SAM logo and different themes to tie in within. A cassette idea was one that could possibly be used as a flyer or elements of it could be used, mainly the label 'index' to use with different titles of say the posters. All nice ideas that can be played about with and either used or scrapped in the long run.

last but not least were some VERY rough ideas for the bumper sticker Ben wanted for a lot of his friends. It could be very good promotion of the company... The flame idea needs a lot of work, they look to fat/generic/precise, and Ben described the look he wanted to be that of a 'pimp my ride' car he had seen, with paint layers almost melting/burning/peeling off with the force of speed... My current rough ideas don't give the impression of speed or do any of the design justice so this will need a lot of experimenting and fine tweaking...

It has been decided that the utmost priority are the rock school posters, as a Worthing school has shown incredibly enthusiastic interest in SAM - So the posters will be put to the top of my list - All the artwork can be used and tweaked for everything else - and this also gives me another nice twist in the project, a new piece of work... The rock school posters, but for 'RAW' - 'Rock at Worthing'. So it's 'SAM @ RAW'.

Should be fun!

Ashley