After the session I did a bit of initial research into the Oasis brand to try get a bit more of an understanding to the brand.
Research
I decided to experiment a bit with the idea of creating a digital watercolour effect for the potential backgrounds to all the different elements we wanted to design. Making something look watercolour digitally is a hard thing to do so I wanted to at least have a go before we need to use it on the final designs.
To do this I went into Illustrator and created a series of lines over an art board. I then changed the line design to one a bit more artistic and made the point size higher. I then changed the colour so it fit in with the colour scheme we had chosen.
My first attempt:
Although I do quite like what I've done here, I do think that maybe the edges are a bit too sharp and the overall design is a bit too edgy for the look that we were going for. However I do think the colour works well when it overlays itself.
To try make it a bit softer I went into the watercolour brush settings and went through those choices until I found one that I was quite happy with. I then applied it to all the lines.
I changed the opacity to this to try it out but found it was a bit too cluttered perhaps.
As there were gaps I added in a few more lines and kept the opacity of them all fairy near 100%, lowering a few when it was a bit too much colour in some places.
To check it looked ok I added the text over the top to see how well this would work. It is immediately obvious that the larger text looks fine, but the smaller text doesn't work as well at all.
I thought that this was partially down to the fact that the markings were all transparent onto a white background, so added a coloured background to it to see how it affected the text.
It does work a lot better but there still might need to be changes made to make it more obvious. I also experimented with the idea of the background colour not being at full opacity so it softens the design up.
This works well, however I do think I prefer the design where this is at 100%, however I do think this may depend on the colour used.
I then changed the colours to suit the other three chosen colours.
I found that when I did the blue, with the opacity of the background square down it became too light so this one definitely works better with the opacity at 100%. I found that in this lighter colour the small text doesn't work very well so this is something that needs to be sorted out.
In red I can't decide whether I like it in a much stronger colour or in the paler version. The text seems to work well in both versions.
In green it definitely works a bit better in the bolder version.
I think this is a good insight into how the colours work and how the white text works on top of them. However what I think needs to be done is getting the designs looks a bit more like watercolour and less like digital work. This is something that I will continue to experiment with.
After doing this I moved onto working with the text as this is my individual job while Daisy works on creating the images.
As we have already chosen the typefaces we want to use it makes my job much easier as now what I have to do is use these typefaces to try create the messages in a visually interesting way. This is only initial ideas we we don't know the formats or have the images together with the text yet. but doing this will give me a basic idea into how the text could work around the image/background designs and what page orientation they work best at.
I decided to work with one of the messages to test out a few ideas. I chose the first one: 'Too busy to wait around? Give us a time and we'll deliver it to you'.
Firstly I wrote it out in the two chosen typefaces. My initial idea is to have the question in the larger typeface, Budmo, and the 'answer' in the thinner typeface, Quicksand.
I then changed the Budmo typeface to how we'd agreed on having it, with the circles all filled in so it's much more simple.
As it is quite a thick typeface it is quite a contrast from the thinner one, and I think it is perhaps a bit too thick, and maybe something a little thinner would work a bit better. To test this out I added a quite outline and changed the thickness a few times to compare.
Immediately I can say that the bottom two are too thin and don't make the letters look very good. I am particularly looking at the 'A' & 'R'. These two will determine how good the thickness is. This leaves me with the top three. I have already said that the top one is too thick as this is the original, so that leaves me with the second and third. I decided on the second one because it is more prominent than the third one.
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| Chosen thickness |
I then started to experiment with how the text could be laid out, starting with a central alignment.
To make it a bit more easier to see it in situation, I laid it over the top of the green from our chosen colour palette, putting the text into white.
This works quite well, however I do think the layout is perhaps a bit boring so I want to develop this further.
My second idea in terms of the layout is to have the larger font as words that we want to stand out.
I think this works much better and makes it all a bit more interesting to look at. Now I am happy with that I need to work out the layout of the words and how best they fit together.
I don't like the central alignment of the words so have decided to play around a little with the words and see what I can come up with.
The image above is the most promising variation, however instead of the 'around' being in Quicksand, I need to change it to 'Budmo'.
Once I changed the typeface of the 'around', I was much happier with it overall. I then took this and put it into the green and white again.
I then started to experiment with ideas to make the words stand out a bit more, firstly by changing the smaller words to black instead of white.
I also tried changing the words to another colour from the palette, however I definitely think it looks much better all in white.
Instead I started looking into effects which could potentially be used.
However I decided that these probably didn't really fit in with the type of audience that we're aiming for and would be an added complication.
I then added the bottom half of the message.
Once I was happy with this layout I started experimenting with the idea of a watercolour effect and placing the text over this. Daisy found an effective way to make a watercolour effect using Illustrator, so following the instructions she gave, and looking at a tutorial, I started experimenting with this.
My initial attempt was ok. I can't say it looked as good as Daisy's, or much like watercolour, so I need to develop my skills in this area a bit more before confidently being able to say I can do this to the best of my ability.
Further experiments with the watercolour effect:
This one is far too complex to be able to pass off as watercolour.
This one is promising but I need to work on the spacing of the lighter colour and making the overall look a bit simpler.
This one is much better and much smoother. It does look a bit more like a watercolour effect.
This one is a bit too sharp to be a convincing watercolour effect. However I took this forward in working on overlapping the effect and making an area that was covered by this.
Overlapping the effect was very simple and works very well, I think. There is a lot more colour and vibrance in the design, so I am much more confident in using this tool effectively.
I then laid the text over the top to see how it worked.
I found that this worked very well, especially because of the simple positioning of the text. While I was a bit skeptical earlier about this, I do think it works very well simple over the watercolour effect background.
I then worked on how it could look over the different colours in the palette. Initially I tried to change the colour of the shapes, but because I hadn't done it in tones it didn't work, however it did give me a chance to see the design using two colours from the palette.
It definitely doesn't work as well as just one colour, but it gives us an option if we need it.
I then redid the watercolour effect using one of the colours and the tones of that colour for the lighter areas.
My initial thoughts are that this tool does work well and the text over the top stands out and works well against the colours. The red and the pink/purple are very strong, whereas the green and blue are quite washed out in some areas. This gives a good idea into how these colours will work in future use. There are some areas where the text is a little bit hard to see, but this can be worked on. At the minute I am very positive that this is the right direction, and hopefully with Daisy's images on this idea should shape up well.
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