Design practice

In December, Foals announced a competition to design the t-shirt for their upcoming tour in europe.

I began by looking at recent designs by foals such as the t-shirts from their last tour and their recent artwork. The most recent artwork os very colourful and uses unusual imagery and almost kaleidoscope like imagery.

As well as using a lot of colour, the imagery used for the more recent album is all quite dark, with very high contrast and lots of fluorescent colours.

From here I looked at some more imagery. I researched into kaleidoscope imagery and from the first image here I went on to look at more ways and mediums to use to create interesting looking imagery.

I really like the use of a mix of hand made marks and digital manipulation to create a design and so this is what I decided to try with my designs.

Using acrylic paint, I tried a few different ways to make marks on a page that could look interesting after being digitally manipulated. I also tried to use colours that weren't traditionally 'pretty', ones that stood out against one another and looked much more interesting than similar shades.

From here I started to play around with the individual images on photoshop, changing the colours and contrasts to create brighter and more interesting combinations.

I think that these are really successful and are exactly the type of thing I was aiming for, and so for the T-shirt design I want to use these in a very simple way, alongside the bands logo for my design.

In the brief there was no specification of how many designs we could submit and so I have chosen to send all five variations. I am very happy with my final designs. I feel like they represent the band with the bright colours and variety in designs. I also like the simplicity of the designs as I think the contrast of simple design and complicated and bright colours looks really good.

There is a huge variety in bakery branding out in the world, but I did find it hard to find any branding that looked high end or exclusive which is what will make my bakery different from others, as well as it being a pop up shop.

This bakery has a very simple colour scheme of grey, white and gold which I think works really well going through many different mediums. The thing that brings all of the brand together is the use of a single pattern throughout, but also using this pattern in different sizes to keep it looking interesting.

This packaging design for doughnuts is really interesting in the use of simplistic line illustrations and colour. Using the stock of the packaging as part of the colour scheme is a good idea as this will lower costs when printing.

Although I like this piece of branding, I don't think hat it works well for a bakery. The layout of the menus is slightly confusing and doesn't look like a conventional menu. Though this is probably what the designer was aiming when creating this brand, I don't think hat it would work well for my bakery.

This is some branding for a macaroon shop done by Anagrama which I really love. The colours are simple and match the food that it represents, and so when you look at the packaging, you think of something sweet and delicious. The use of gold as well adds an extra special element to the brand. The inconsistency in the design, i.e. the patches of colour, matched with the simple gold lettering works really well for a bakery brand as not everything in baking is consistent in look, but in taste it should always be delicious. The actual packaging is quite simple and does exactly what it is supposed to do, and nothing more. I think that this is important in a bakery as the food is the main product, but it needs to be looked after when being transported. It should be easy for a customer to open and close the packaging without damaging the product, and they should also be able to eat the product daily without messing around with the packaging too much.

For my brand I think that simplicity will be the key. I need to take into consideration the ease in which a customer can recognise the brand and associate the brand with a high end bakery.

The meringue girls brand is really simple but strong. The use of colour is the most important part, especially using the colours of the food and products as part of the brand. The packaging uses the colour of the stock as the base, not using any other colour on it, just simply the logo, which I think works really well although it doesn't say much about what it inside the package.

For the branding of my bakery I was inspired by a piece of collage I stumbled upon in a book of my sisters. I thought that the use of colour and texture was really interesting and the simple shapes would work well to bring a lot of elements, such as packaging, menus and signage, come together well as a brand.
Using the texture and colour of food would work well for a bakery as cakes and patisserie traditionally have bright and exciting colours. Patisserie and baking sweets is as much about the look of the food as it is about the taste, and so the colours I use have to be inviting and colourful, just as the cakes are. The colours also have to be fresh and bright to give the customer an idea of what kind of flavours and colours they can expect from the bakery.

From here I wanted to try and use the idea of collage and colour to create a few variations for my logo. I want the logo to be fairly simple so that it can be easily transferred across multiple mediums such as packaging, menus, signage and any other elements that will be needed for a bakery.
For the logo I thought about using a handwritten typeface, like the Meringue Girls logo, to give the bakery a more personal feel.

When drawing the logo ideas, the handwritten type looked very good, but thinking about the brand I want to create, it needs to be more exclusive and formal looking rather than homemade. The bakery also has to be typography themed and so using an iconic typeface I think would look great.

In the end I thought that using Bodoni worked really well, and would make the brand look and feel more of an exclusive brand and more up market than using a handwritten font.
When it comes to the colour of the logo, I think that white would work really well as I want to use some colour as part of my brand. Keeping the rest of the brand fairly simple and plain will let the colour stand out over all of the mediums I will use it on.

With this logo I wanted to try and create texture and interesting variations using colour and food. I got the idea of adding texture using food from 'The Taste' logo, that uses coloured powder, supposedly a spice, to create the type logo.

The use of colour I think works really well and would work just as well across many different platforms, however I would like to experiment with texture a little as I think this could make the colours more interesting and give it more depth.