Character Study...

I've started to do character designs lately and this is my second try at this guy. I've been trying to increase my speed on these but its difficult for me to create a design that I like while doing a sufficient render. I'll also probably reboot this blog since the stuff down below is complete crap and from a year ago. Cheers to the present!

International

So here's a logo I did for an Australian website. I had it approved this morning so I sent 3 color versions. Probably one of the fastest logos I did and it was nice to do something outside the workplace.

Tyranids!

Did a quick sketch today of a Tyranid (kind of) since I've had a lack of monster lately. Poor poor monsters. :(

Here's a few sketches I've done lately. I've been focusing more on vehicles and bikes since they've always been a weakness for me. Really nailing a good design is pretty hard and understanding everything (interior and engine a BIG plus) takes a lot of research. It's fun though. :)

No matter what you think...

...the customer is always right. Above is pretty much the final design for the poodle sign. I'm a bit uneasy about it but its what they wanted and hey that's great.

One thing that I've learned and have quickly accepted is to not get attached to my work. Especially commercial stuff. I mean, yes, you need to have passion. You need to work as hard as possible on each one to come up with the best solution to the problem. But you just have to accept that some people won't like anything that you think is "good" cause everybody has an opinion. Which is fine. You just need to give the client what they want.

And Ben, you're totally right. A good designer is somebody that can take a bunch of crap (or lollipops!) and bring the same level of interest and passion to it as their own stuff. On to more!

Oh, and they picked the pink one!

Bad Design part 2

So I was pretty busy today and only had a little bit of time to work on this project. This is the next iteration and while I think its an improvement over the original there are still a lot of things that I will need to change.

I decided to keep the same color scheme because I really wanted to make it work. That and I didn't want to bother with getting new colors to match. I added two photos of poodles (ones that are actually toy poodles) that the client gave me and made them gray scale, ran the PS cutout filter on them, separated the colors with paths, brought them into Illustrator and cleaned the edges, and then finally into CorelDraw.

I did what I could with the title but I still need to make some tweaks. Maybe the spacing for "companions" and the font for "poodle". I'll also play more with the inner box since the description is a bit too small. The phone number I'm not sure about. It juts off the sign when everything else is uniform so I might make the outcropping even (just a line instead of following the numbers) or bring it up. I'll see the reaction from the client.

Overall I think this one is on track. I like it way more than the last and I'm glad its not symmetrical. I have to finish one other layout (it has a poodle silhouette as the sign/ client's request) and then I'll email 'em out.

BAD design....

This is kind of a self-reflective post, but I'm beginning to realize more and more the differences between good and bad design. One thing that's really hard for me to do is find faults in my own work (whether it be design, drawing, or painting). Not because what I'm doing is necessarily good but because I get stuck in this "bubble" with the piece I'm currently on. To remedy it I really have to take it and put it side by side with stuff on conceptart.org to get my brain going again so I can finally go, "Ahhhhh....I'll change this and this and this".

So when I was at work today I was in a similar situation. Take for instance, this sign I'm designing. Cool colors, symmetrical, nothing too fancy, and utterly horrible. I was doing variations on this piece for a while until my boss finally changed my perspective by saying, "damn Nate...you suck so much I want to kill your babies" (well not in those words). So what's wrong with it?

First, with good design you need to get your point across in 5 seconds. That's pretty much the rules on the internet, and definitely the rules for when you're driving by something at 60 mph. You need to express what's important. Saying your message in a digestible form that sticks with your audience. With this sign, its a business about breeding poodles. So having the name of the business as all the same font, size or style is a mistake. "Cuddly", "Candy", and "Companions" aren't really that important. "Poodles" is the most important while "Chrissy's" comes in 2nd.

So a potential solution for this is to make "Chrissy's" and "Poodle" larger while downplaying the other three words. Also, the type needs to change. While script does come across as pretty, for readability purposes, its on the bottom of the barrel. That doesn't mean you need to have extreme bold on all the time, but you can achieve the same "style" by using a type that's a little thicker and more vertically balanced.

Another big problem with this sign is the color choices. While not bad together (see the palette) they don't really provide great contrast to each other as well. You don't need stark contrast for everything, but on a sign you need the important things to pop as best as possible. One problem with the sign is that the most contrasting colors are the background and border color while the main title's colors mush together. One thing that exacerbates things is the over use of outlines. It works fine with the phone number but the "breeders..." type is muddy and the title becomes confusing. Changing this, I would put the high contrast colors between the main font and 1st outline while making sure both colors pop against the background. Overall, I think the colors need more saturation and intensity.

For the poodles (the bitmaps) I'm on the fence about whether to just have silhouettes or to actually have detail. I do have photos of poddles (the client gave me this "family portrait" of about 8 demon poodles staring at you....claiming your soul) Generally though, I've never liked signs that use real photos. I suppose I could make it work but photos always seem to stand out way too much (well when surrounded by vector objects).

Oh....and just forget about the little design in the middle. It's an okay spacer but probably unnecessary. Soooo...that's that for right now. I'll post the new and improved tomorrow and do a compare and contrast between the two.