Visual Mood Boards

Moodboards

 So after researching into the book, I understand the setting and theme of the book. As the book is set about the Greaser gang culture i created a mood board about Greaser culture that would be an inspiration to me when creating the book cover in the future.
So for my mood board i included images of James Dean who is an actor and cultural icon in America in the 1950's, often portraying greaser roles in his movies.
I also looked at Elvis Presley who was a musician in the 50's who was dubbed "The King of Rock and Roll" as rock and roll music was an influence to the Greaser culture as they often wanted to rebel.
Another image is of an old motorcycle from the 50's. This was a popular choice of transport for Greasers as often biker gangs would use motorcycles like the one pictured to travel together on to give a tough impression.

This is another Mood board i created using images of the different book covers for the book over the years. I did this because i wanted to see any recurring themes and imagery types that are similar between them so i could use that when creating my book cover.
There is also fan art and different art styles featured in the mood board such as a vintage style as well as minimalistic. I think these are effective as they show the different styles that were most effective for the audience when it was originally released compared to the Modern Classic puffin book version.

Art Style Research

Malika Favre

Malika Favre is a french designer that is based in London. Her approach to her design is to get as few lines as colours in her work as possible. She works in a minimalistic style which i think also looks like something from the 1950’s and the pop art style.

This image on the left is an illustration for a cover of the magazine “Fabric”. She uses very little lines and colours as it all connects together as one. She uses gradients for the background to represent the sky. Within this image she uses less than 10 colours, this gives it the minimalistic look that she tries to achieve with her work.

This is another example of her work called “Vogue Japan” This was the cover of Vogue Magazine in October. This is very typical of her style of work of using very little lines and colours to get a minimalistic look. I think it is effective the way she uses little colours but adds in a light source to the image so that she changes the tone of her skin and the colours of her clothing to make it look realistic as well as still being minimal.

Overall i like the style of her work as it reminds me of the pop art style from such artists as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein that we researched in our last project.

I think i will use this type of style when creating my own book cover art for my chosen book “The Outsiders”

Penguin Book Research

Penguin Book Research

The Outsiders

The book The Outsiders is set in 1965. 

An era of Rock ’n Roll, greasers and crime. With such bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley and Jimi Hendrix. Greasers were a subculture that originated in the 1950’s, best known for their greased back hair, denim and leather jackets. 

The subculture became popular as a form of rebellion.

The 1960’s was the height of retro and pop art, with such artists as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein which we researched about in our last assignment.

Also a major art style was Retro. This art style became popular in the 1940’s and 1950’s following World War 2 and the propaganda posters that were released to get people to join the war.

Here is some artwork by Designer Eric Tan

His artwork consists of retro art style which is suitable for the book and era that it is set in. Personally i like this art style that is used in these posters and will most likely use this art style when creating my own version of the book cover.

As you can see in these two examples they have a retro style which is a popular art style in the 1950’s, based on World War 2 propaganda style artwork. He would illustrate images to achieve the retro style. The top image is based on London. It has stereotypical English elements to the picture such as Big Ben in the background, a pint of beer and a plane flying around at the top of the poster.

The second image is a poster supporting the army. This could be a redesign of a World War 2 poster. The poster features an illustration of Captain America who is a famous superhero created in 1941. It is likely that Captain America was used in World War 2 to help inspire and motivate soldiers in the war.

Af101 Visual Communication

So we just finished our first Assignment of making Science Posters and have just started our second assignment.

For this Assignment we have to create book covers for one of two books.

These books are: The Outsiders and What a Carve Up!

"The Outsiders is about two weeks in the life of a 14-year-old boy. The novel tells the story of Ponyboy Curtis and his struggles with right and wrong in a society in which he believes that he is an outsider.

Ponyboy and his two brothers — Darrel (Darry), who is 20, and Sodapop, who is 16 — have recently lost their parents in an automobile accident. Pony and Soda are allowed to stay under Darry's guardianship as long as they all behave themselves. The boys are greasers, a class term that refers to the young men on the East Side, the poor side of town. The greasers' rivals are the Socs, short for Socials, who are the "West-side rich kids." "

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/o/the-outsiders/book-summary

"Godfrey, son of the wealthy Matthew and Frances Winshaw of Yorkshire, is shot down by German anti-aircraft fire during a secret wartime mission over Berlin, on 30 November 1942. His sister Tabitha alleges that he was betrayed by their brother Lawrence, but no-one believes her, and she is committed to a mental institution. Nineteen years later, after a party to mark the 50th birthday of their other brother Mortimer, Lawrence is attacked in the night by an intruder, but survives, killing the intruder in the process. The intruder, a middle aged man, remains unidentified."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_a_Carve_Up!_(novel)

Ideas and Research leading to my Final Design

So i thought i would make another post about how i've researched into Steampunk aside from looking into posters.

After doing research into Steampunk concept art and other elements, i looked into common traits that were found among steampunk such as colour and fonts etc. and i put these together to create some mock ups and come up with some ideas.

Here are some examples of some Posters in a Steampunk art style. A common trait of Steampunk is a sepia tone to create the victorian style. As these posters are futuristic there is also use of bright bold colours to get the viewers attention. Another art style used in the posters is a burn tool to create the old effect that these posters are from the victorian era so that they are about 200 years old.

So here i looked into the different font styles that was used in Steampunk, as you can see a lot of the main fonts i looked into were for adverts of products or the circus. In the victorian era the Circus was a large event and was very popular so it is a recognisable font that would be associated with that era. That style of font would also be used with such things as tobacco or alcohol products to promote them.

 So after doing my research into fonts i went onto dafont.com and looked at different styles that were similar to the ones i found and took 5 of my favourite styles to present to the group. My personal choice i used for my final design is Carnivalee Freakshow as i feel that represents the Victorian era the best. The font itself is not too over the top and is easily readable by the audience. However i made sure the font i chose was a serif font as it is more formal and again represents the victorian era better than a sans serif font.

After my font research i thought i would have to put that font to use and come up with a slogan. Often with Steampunk slogans are often cheesy and slightly humorous so i thought i would play around with that idea to come up with some ideas. My chosen slogan is "Discover what makes you, you!" This is more towards the biology side of Science however in other elements of the poster i will use Chemistry and Physics to cover the 3 main areas.

So in my sketchbook i came up with a few ideas of some sketches that came to mind when thinking of a science theme for Steampunk. So my first drawing is of a doctor that you would find in the middle ages but with some Steampunk goggles and a few cogs to give it a Steampunk look. My second drawing is of a heart but with some valves and pipes, the heart would have been looked to be made of brass as that is a popular material used in Steampunk

Finally i create some Mock ups in Photoshop and put all of my ideas together to create these. My first idea was to play with the idea of skeletons but to add some Steampunk to it, so as you can see the detail to the skeleton as it has a few cogs added to certain areas of the body such as the skull and the hips. In the background there is also some goggles to represent lab equipment.

This is my second Mock up for my poster. Again playing with the idea of skeletons but this time it was dressed in a tuxedo to give it a victorian gentleman look that goes with Steampunk. In the background there are some very transparent skeletons along with some lab equipment to give it more of a science theme.

Pop Art Research

Pop Art

Pop art was an art movement that became popular in the UK and USA in the 1950’s. Pop art consists of taking images from adverts, news stories, newspapers, magazines out of their original context and combining it with other content that is not related to it. Famous artists of the pop art movement were Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.

Lichtenstein used old comic books as a style to base his drawings on. Main features of these types of drawings would be bold outlines, bright colours and dots to get the comic book style.

This is an example of Lichtenstein's work, it very much resembles the artwork that is seen from a comic book. Often Lichtensteins work would be taken from panels of comic books that were published. This piece is taken from a 1962 DC comic: All-American Men of War. As you can see it uses onomatopoeia with the word Whaam! To emphasize the explosion.

Here is a piece from Andy Warhol, painted in the 1960’s. Warhol would often get images of famous celebrities and create his own style using a variety of colours and tones to make his own version. Often he would use the same image and use different colours to create different versions of the same image.