Penguin Brief - Inspiration Book Cover Designs

Noma Bar - Book cover designs

Avinoam Noma Bar, is an Israel-born graphic designer, illustrator and artist. His work has appeared in many media publications including: Time Out London, BBC ,Random House, The Observer, The Economist and Wallpaper. Bar has illustrated over sixty magazine covers, published over 550 illustrations and released two books of his work through Mark Batty Publisher: Guess Who - The Many Faces of Noma Bar in 2008 and Negative Space in early 2009.

Inspiration 01: Haruki Murakami Book Covers by Noma Bar

As Haruki Murakami is one of the most popular novels to read, I wanted to research and investigate more about the illustrative style, as it's minimalistic, simple, clever concept fits so well with the themes of Murakami's writing.

Murakami's work has a sense that something has been lost or hidden, what is real and what is not...

Therefore to match this playfulness for the covers, the  Random House creative director Suzanne Dean commissioned Noma Bar whose powerful graphic illustrations cleverly utilise negative space concealing secondary images and illusions. Noma's illustrations were then screen printed by hand to give them a personal and softer edge.

Here are some images of his book cover design work: 

Why did Noma use this type of illustration style?

There are his answers during an interview with Ego-creative: 

The jacket layout, with the typography, colours and the important circle device was supplied by the publishers so I just had to concentrate on the illustration. I then worked like I tend to do, sit in Highgate Woods and sketch as many ideas as possible - the peace and quiet helps me focus. Once I felt that I had enough ideas I would come back into the studio, scan or photograph the sketch and then trace them with the computer. Concepts then went to the publisher and they made their selections.

These pieces have a different flavour to my other work, a more ‘normal’ illustrative approach and a bit darker in tone. I often liken my work to music: you start with a basis of notes and lyrics but you then can play it with different instruments and the same music will sound different.

Hebrew is my native language so I am used to communicating with symbols - I just took that idea and applied it pictorially.

Jeff Kinney - Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book cover design

Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a satirical realistic fiction comedy novel for young adults written and illustrated by Jeff Kinney. It is the first book in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. The book is about a boy named Greg Heffley and his struggles to fit in as he begins middle school.

Jeffrey Patrick "Jeff" Kinney is an American game designer, cartoonist, producer, actor, movie director and author of children's books including the Diary of a Wimpy Kid book series. He is also attributed as the creator of the child-oriented website Poptropica. He also appeared in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid films as Holly Hills's father. Kinney was born and brought up in Fort Washington, Maryland, United States.

Interview with Jeff Kinney based on the book

I define wimpy as powerless. I think lots of kids in Greg’s age group know that they don’t have much control over the course of their lives.

My family has a real culture of retelling stories. It started with my grandmother who would tell the same exact stories again and again and again, but we'd always indulge her and enjoy the stories as if we were hearing them for the first time. And now today I still call my siblings and we rehash these old stories of things that happened to us as kids and I think that that's really helped shape the Wimpy Kid books. A lot of my family's stories have kind of made their way sideways into my books.

I think in my own family, my nuclear family, we're really carrying on this tradition, this oral tradition of storytelling where we're telling the same stories about family members, about ourselves, and it's a lot of fun. I think it really creates a nice family bond.

Andrew Bannecker - Book cover design
Andrew Bannecker is an American artist-illustrator with a warm and charming take on the world. He is an expert colorist and manages to imbue even people-less scenes with emotive power. Slightly nostalgic and ever fresh, his work has been recognized by Communication Arts, American Illustration, The Society of Illustrators and the One Show among others, and he was included in Luerzer's 200 Best Illustrators in the world. He's also been featured in books such as Illustration Now, Coca-Cola 125th Anniversary and Creative Inc. and has been showcased in exhibitions of note around the world.

Book Design Cover for Hector and the Search for Happiness

As I have use Andrew Bannecker as an inspiration to my previous work, I believe it will be appropriate to use him for this brief. His illustrations convey what attracts the child eye, this is through the colours he uses. They are very vivid, bright and colourful especially when he uses a combination of watercolours and photoshop in his artwork. 

This is demonstrated through the use illustrations and colours of his work of designing the theatre poster Roald Dahl's Matilda. I believe this design work style is suitable quality for a children's book cover for the brief that I am commencing. I also admire the type of typeface or font he applies on his design work. 

Study Task 02 - Ideas For Coming up with Ideas

Ideas For Coming up with Ideas

• Gallery visits 
• Most obvious answer
• Most ambiguous answer 
• Free association 
• Key words association (tangential approaches) 
• Spitball ideas (many voices, editing different approaches) 
• Identifying what exists 
• Subconscious, recognising everyday potential solutions 
• Identifying and working with limitations 
• Discussions, feedback, interviews, focus groups 
• Recreate the brief in own words (personal interpretation) 
• Target audience
• Product feeding 
• Mindmapping 

Idea Generation

In groups of four, we had to make a mind map on how we come up for ideas when given a brief. Here are some ways we interpret the brief at first: 

• Take inspiration from other disciplines - Fashion, Animation, Photography, Illustration and so on. 
• Highlight key words - then mind map.
• Google - variety of webpages and images. 
• Start making / experimenting (even though it is not the correct approach, we can get a visual example on what we are going for and further develop it). 
• Start planning my first idea - let my head runaway with itself - Then scale back.
• Image research - Books, Instagram, Pinterest etc.
• Try and relate brief to something, I've seen, read, something similar or done before - contextualise the brief. 
• Look into studios and designers who have done a similar brief or similar design work to the brief. 

Brief Task - Making Yahoo a popular Search Engine

In our groups of fours, we received a brief on how to make Yahoo a search engine, the main deliverable for this task was to come up with two ideas and then feedback to the class. Below are some image of our ideas and how the new Yahoo webpage would be layout. 

Idea 01 - Making Yahoo a webpage which has everything

Emphasis on Functionality and Customisability

Everything you need, all in one place - The reason you never have to leave Yahoo.

The new Yahoo page is a fully interactive and customisable website - User can choose what content they want to see with an adjustable template. 

Everything is in one place - links to the web at the top - everything opens within Yahoo, cascading windows, side windows. 

Idea 02 - Making Yahoo into a social hub 

Make Yahoo a central hub compact with everything. Make everything self-contained within Yahoo so there is no reason to age or anything else. Utilises all the existing features of Yahoo, but makes it personal, customisable and flexible to fit every lifestyle. 

Makes Yahoo a collaborative platform that allows users across the world to communicate with each other; live, face to face, in real time. For older generation audience this could present itself through business collaboration and for younger generation it allows them to connect with other young people and discover and learn new ideas. 

After Effects Induction - Part 02

After Effects 

Make another composition page

Go to file - Import - File and select the image you want on your composition page.

Once you have imported the images it will be on the project section. Drag the images to the composition section and resize the image to the desire size you want

Then start animating. Again press the letter "P" to start the animation. 

File - Import - file 

Footage - composition - editable layer styles 

Footage is a still 
Composition is a composition 
Then Composition - retain layer sizes - you can edit it more and more organised and arrange ther images  

Photoshop

File - New - Change international paper to Film and video - drop down arrow to DVL widescreen 

To put images on Photoshop - File - place embedded - then resize then - save as Psd - rename 

Photoshop File to After Effects

In this we made the stars rotate. Here we had to open a Psd file, with the file - import - file. 
Once its open choose composition and the all the stars are selected. 

Then to make individual stars move and rotate separately, open the file again. Then use the down drop arrow and change it to Composition - Retain Layer Sizes 

Then all the stars will be selected individually and then you can rotate them separately. 

Speeding up or down in After Effects

Hold Alt key. when selecting all keyframes (diamonds) move them closer together to speed up or further away to slow down 

Saving Animation

Digital Light Ltd London - Work experience

Digital Light Ltd - Kings Cross, London

Digital Light Ltd is a studio which was established in 2005 as a dynamic retouching studio. The team has a broad skill set naturally prompted by an expansion into other key aspects of post production.

The studio has honed their skills in illustration, animation, CGI and grading to consistently achieve the full potential of even the most demanding briefs.

The creative process requires a deep understanding of a brand’s style and values. Combine this with our extensive technical knowledge, innovative approaches to storytelling and creativity, and that they will turn your vision into reality.

What they do

At Digital Light they create iconic and award winning imagery in collaboration with their international client base ranging from global agencies and renowned photographers to exclusive brands and prolific art directors. These close relationships are nurtured through years of building trust and rapport. The team’s friendly and personal service extends to both pre and post production advice.

Whether the client's requirements are retouching, compositing, CGI, animating, grading, or visual effects. 

SKILLS & SERVICES

• Creative Direction 
• Photographic Retouching 
• CGI Creation 
• CG Animation & Visual Effects 
• Video Grading
• Concept Design 
• Matte Painting 
• Epson GMG Certified Proofing 
• Secure Client FTP 

What experience I have gain from them?

During time at Digital light in the summer holidays, I have gained more skills within the software Photoshop. The work experience that I had was only around five working days, within these five days I had a different task to complete. These were in the following order:

• Retouching images 
• Creating an advert poster for the perfume "Alien"
• How to colour a photograph professionally 
• Adding jewels, eye lashes, eye shadow and retouching a photo of a women.
• Practicing on outlining an object
• Practicing on photo filters

When retouching an image of a person skin by using either the plaster tool or the stamp tool. This can cover up any imperfections on a persons face like spots, moles, beauty spots, blemishes, pores or tattoos. 

Then creating a advertisement for the perfume "Alien" I had to use vector images that they had stored for me and use the layer effect to help blend or brighten perfume. This could either be in form of a velvet or silk fabric, smashed or shattered glass or diamonds. Then on I would build up the image until I was satisfied with the finish results. 

For the colouring an photograph professionally, I watched one of the employee colouring professionally. She had a range of layers in the photograph that she was editing, the client which was a photographer gave her a brief that he wanted the image to look more vintage looking. So first she highlighted to me, was to retouch the model this include the skin and figure as the brief stated for her to me more thinner and have more polish skin. Next was the background of the photograph it should have a deep shadowy colour which showed vintage but in a sophisticated matter. The colour professionally part was very technical and complex, there are so many layers for each part of the colouring part. For example, lighting and darkening the areas, getting rid of reds, blues and greens (curving layer), using a brush but lowering down it opacity to make the image look softer than shaper, adding more exposure and contrast to the image, and adding colour on specific areas e.g. eye shadow on model should be more brighter and have shimmer. 

Next task was an edited image of a photograph of a women models face, they showed me the original and the edited picture. By learning the new skills, I had to recreate the same edited photo with the same details e.g - more eye lashes, glowing plastic skin, jewels on eyes and blue eye shadow on the original photograph. During this task, I did find some difficulties when doing adding the eye lashes. One of the employee in the studio, advise me to use the pen tool to draw the lashes, however once I did this for a while the lashes looked very illustrated than realistic. Then the boss of the studio, Dan, advise me to use the square tool on the area of the lashes on the model had. Then copy and paste it, use the darker layer to make the skin merge and only the lashes showed. Finally place it and shape it on the lashes which are much smaller. After that trial and error, I was able to use the same technique when adding the jewels on the upper lid. Another technical part of the process of editing the photograph was adding the blue eye shadow on to the lid, I had help from the boss of the studio and he advise me to use the colour curve layer to make the image blue, then make that image multiple and place it underneath the original image. Once that is down use the rubber/brush tool on top of the lid to get rid of the skin and there is the blue eye shadow on the model. 

Then I had a practice of outlining an object on Photoshop, I usually use illustrator for this kind of process. However, it is helpful for me to know how to outline an image on PS as well. It is a similar to outlining a object in illustrator, but there is only minor differences when doing it PS. 

Finally, the last task of my work experience was to practice testing on a photograph. In photoshop there is a filter section on the top on Photoshop. There will be an variety of different filter effects to test on, this is what the studio does when editing a photograph professionally. 

Overall experience, I really enjoyed doing work experience there. The studio has taught me new things on how to edit my photos professionally especially in a higher quality. Even though the studio focuses more on photography work than graphic design work, I still believe it was helpful and important for me to do work. I can bring this type of techniques in to the future briefs that may involve this type of work process. In conclusion, I would definitely do work experience at Digital Light again, especially when you get an actually feel of working in a studio, using tablets to work on, what technology and software they use. 

 

What is going on?

What Events are currently going on?

In todays session, we need to find some events, exhibitions, workshops and so on. which can account for our Personal Professional and Practice. 

Here are some list of craft workshops that I can go within Manchester: 

Ministry of Craft - Manchester

CLEAR CUT: INTRODUCTION TO PAPER CUTTINGhttp://www.ministryofcraft.co.uk/workshops/all-courses/p161210-clear-cut-introduction-to-paper-cutting


INTRODUCTION TO SCREEN PRINTINGhttp://www.ministryofcraft.co.uk/workshops/all-courses/p161119-introduction-to-screen-printing


INTRODUCTION TO LINOCUT PRINTINGhttp://www.ministryofcraft.co.uk/workshops/all-courses/p161119-introduction-to-linocut-printing

Previous LCA Graduate - Harrison Park

Life After LCA
Former Leeds College of Art Graduate - Harrison Park

Advise and Experience 

• Build relationship - talk to professional, twitter, Facebook. Partnerships 
• Keep up with work 
• Work hard and motivated 
• Be flexible - balancing different/various or more than one task
• "Don't be a dick" - be genuine and honest 
• Don't be afraid to ask 
• Rejection happens - learning experience, learn from your mistakes 
• Stay true to yourself - if you believe the job is not right for you, just quit and find somewhere else. 
• StudioDBD - (who he works for) research 
• Go to events that you love 
• Normal day at a studio - lots of email, then do projects, spend more on after brands, depends on the clients request, mixture of type of projects, paperwork - but rewarding seeing the billboard.
• People care more about portfolio than grade, publicity is key. 
• Most useful thing in LCA - visiting professional, might create a relationship with them, possibly work with them in the future, use the facilities in the university, the people in the university (create connections with other students in different fields) Copyrighters. 
• Apply for jobs closer to where you live - London is harder to get a job, need to commute (experience)
•  How to send an email to big studios or some professional whom you want to gain placement or work experience. Do not say, I had a look at your website etc. Do say what project you are doing, how it would be good to link there work with them etc. For example sending something eye catching (gifs with messages) highlight your personality through the email.
• More mature people gain more experience
• Twitter is a great social media to meet professionals
• Identify the studio you want to work at - keep your options open. 
• Freelance you get a good amount of money, however the job are only small things, build relationships with people you work with  
• Creating studio is more risky compared to freelance 
• Personal work can be done with freelances - Projects on the weekend, you can manage your own project. 

After Effects Induction - Part 01

After Effects Induction - Part 01

Motion Graphics Animation

The Project will inform you about what object is in place on the composition

Timeline is informs how long the animation will play for in seconds 

The Composition is were the animation happens

To create an animation the first step is to:

File - New - New Project 

Then next is to go to Composition - New Composition

Then you will get a file box, here you can change the name of the background colour of the animation file e.g 'Square'. The Preset for a general animation will be the Pal D1/DV etc. Frame rate - 25 and then you can change the colour of the background. Duration is default is usually 30 seconds, but in this case we changed it to 5 seconds. Key Frame means the evalue.

Now the colour of the composition is blue.

Like Photoshop, there will be an eye icon. This can make the layer of the eye visible or hidden. 

To create a simple animation. First create a new layer - then solid 

Then another file box will appear, here we can edit the object that you wish to animate. So our square will be 100 x 100 in size and then change the colour e.g Yellow 

This should be like this on the composition section: 

On the Project it will show where the object is and what objects are present on the composition page. 

There will be a red line on the timeline highlighting the duration of the animation, you can edit this by simply dragging the line. Therefore, it will be lowering the seconds and cropping the animation time. 

To start the simple animation, first drag the yellow square to the side of the composition page. 

Then press on the Keyboard the letter 'P' to position the object. There should be on the timeline section a stop watch icon. Click on that stopwatch icon and a diamond icon will appear. Click the diamond icon and then drag the yellow square. A red dotted line should follow the square, this will indicate where the square will move on the composition section.

Then press the spacebar on the keyboard to play the animation. 

To make the object curve, use the red dotted line and drag the anchors or with the pen tool add more anchors. 

To rotate an object - Position the object - Press the letter 'R' to rotate. 

 If you wanted to speed up the selected object on the composition page. Move the diamonds closer together on the timeline. 
Cmd - letter D will multiple the squares. 
To select more than one object - select all squares - position - click the stopwatch icon - then the diamond icon will appear. Drag them all across the composition page and move them. 

  

Letter 'U' show all the keyframes. 

Adding text to the composition, go to the letter "T" at the top of the page. 

A text box will appear, you can then type whatever you want. 

Same concept as the square to make it animate. Press the letter 'P' to position it, then 'R' to rotate it and so on. 

To save an After Effects file & video export 

H.264 for animation - high quality video