exhausted, sorry for boring morose posts!

pretty much finished setting up my exhibition boards, was at uni til 5.45, ive literally spent the last 2 days moving things around on my exhibition board and squinting at them. constantly feel like I'm going to faint! feel sort of guilty for not being truer to a kinda riot grrl diy aesthetic and more personal design work for the last few months, but i did learn some important stuff.

Will try to do some completely different & expressive work in the coming weeks.

Eating a pizza.

oh, my boss gave me the day off and is giving me an advance of some money, also i got paid! hurrah
 

I've been thinking about the message of my brand and whether the figurative illustrations clearly communicate the brand message and values.

I think that there is a lot of noise interfering with the message if I use the rather conceptually complex octopus-person theme, eager though I am to use figure drawing. I'm also not quite up to anatomy enough for it to be perfect.

An octopus by itself is clearer. We are taught to remove any unnecessary flak from the visuals of an idea: to pare the idea down to its basics. The basic concept is that the brand values come from the attributes of an octopus: intelligent, sophisticated, strange, beautiful. So an octopus rather than an octopus-person is all that is required to represent the brand. Octopus anatomy, it turns out, is also pretty cool:



I was also underestimating the beauty & complexity of tentacles as you can see above.

This makes my brand much simpler and easier to implement. Erroneous emotions and messages would be flying all over the place in using a humanoid figure or face. The eye can still be used, and that's the important part: an octopus with the iconic eye shape would be simply strange, rather than the arbitrary amalgamation of human and animal. I have a feeling that my tutors would have pushed me away from the humanoid/illustrative element.

This then leaves me with some characters & illustrations to use for my portfolio, and in particular, artwork to submit as donations for the 'creature' themed fundraiser.

Was playing with the idea of a 'strange is beautiful' interpretation of the International Day Against Homophobia & Transphobia event 'A Day In Hand' (solidarity in same-gender hand-holding):





 

These won't be finals but I'm mocking things up with what I've got as I go along. Going to do some more illustrations and refine the style a bit.

taken from a book of packaging templates, made up a teeny version out of A4 to get a feel for it.





And started designing typeface:

*weirdo*

the character is too complex to be something like Hello Kitty. I need to refine it and think about how it's going to work as a brand.

Also this one is a bit too wrong, and naked, and showing off its bum, possibly.

At the moment it lacks the loveability factor that Suki had, but I am reluctant to do something saccharin. I want something more complex.

I like how the suckers look. Those and the simple markings might translate well onto clothing (e.g. jackets) as a pattern.

I used the forbidden Live Trace tool on an inked drawing, and I actually quite like the effect, I think.

The concept is a 'mimic octopus', I think. Possibly the 'octopus' 'mimicking' different species could be limited edition themes...for the exclusivity factor...

I liked the shape I drew for pupils so I'm thinking about using it in the logo.

Going to create a custom typeface I think, but I do rather like the stand-in one I've got...

Hello, this is my non-professional blog, rambles about uni, design & whining, friends only at the moment, but just comment & I'll probably add you back.