Week 6

Rationale

My topic was the coolest streets of Wellington. I wanted to convey adventurousness and fun, and make the streets look exciting to visit and explore.  I used bright colours with various patterns and images to bring a sense of fun into the spreads and then included an illustration of a certain landmarks to visually identify the locations. I adhered to the grid with some aspects of my composition like the location of body text but otherwise was a bit loose with the grid to keep a sense of fun going on in my composition. I wanted my type to have a mix of serif and sans serif to add some contrast and playfulness to the spreads. I learned that I get stuck with creating initial concepts or new ideas but as soon as I find something I like the process is a lot quicker. In future projects I’ll have to work harder on just getting lots of ideas out in the beginning and gathering more inspiration, and then I can move on to working on my projects faster.

Week 5

Courtenay Place development: I decided to use the light boxes on Courtenay Place as the base for my illustration because they're something that I think is very recognisable. I was thinking of putting in images of the benches in front of the panels because they're also quite distinctive.

Quick development of my extra spread: I decided on a 'survival kit' as my extra spread. I tried to use items that you'd actually need but also use versions of the symbols (such as sunglasses and shoes) that would appeal to my target audience (younger people, newbies to Wellington).

Week 5

Screenshots of the progress of my map: I always wanted to just show a section of Wellington instead of the whole Wellington region and I thought that the waterfront was recognisable enough to be able to locate the section of the map in its context. I messed around a lot with light and dark, different colours and different ways of making each street recognisable and distinguishable from the others.

My symbols went through a couple iterations, I had the idea to use a straight line for boring, wavy line for fun and squiggly line for exciting but it was a bit too vague and didn't look quite right for the key. Originally I was going to use the burger and mannequin together as one section showing the types of shopping available at each destination, but then separated them into two categories showing the quality of each type of shopping on each street. I also varied the colours of the symbols to match each spread (dark green for Cuba, navy blue for Lambton) because I felt it made them look a bit less harsh. 

These are my final symbols underneath the symbols from the noun project that I based them on. I added a shine to every symbol to make them a bit more my own and I thought they looked a bit lighter and cohesive with the aesthetic of my whole brochure.

Week 4

Here I've got some progress pictures with screenshots of different stages in the making of my spreads. 

 For my Cuba Street spread I started off with a colour and an illustration of the bucket fountains and worked on it from there, trying different arrangements and fonts. I adjusted the colour scheme of the bucket fountain because the plain primary colours didn't really sit in the composition too well, it sat more on top and separate so I tried to change it to have slightly duller colours. that would sit better on the green background.

In my Lambton Quay spread I tried switching the dark/light values, adding and subtracting features and colours and generally messed around with the whole thing.

Still have a bit of work to do on the Courtenay Place spread but have used a pattern from the seats found near the St James Theatre to add more texture and layers to the composition. 

Week 3

Wednesday 11 March

Colour versions of my illustrations thus far.

I need to find a common thread/style to link my illustrations more because at the moment they aren't very cohesive and don't speak very well together. In the second illustration the colours work well to convey what the image is however I'm not sure I'd like the colours to be my colour scheme or feature in it as they are quite overpowering. I'll have to think of different ways of conveying Cuba Street without necessarily relying on the colours of the bucket fountain and other Cuba sculptures.

Week 3

Tuesday 10 March

We were tasked with creating 3 iterations of an illustration (or a sequence of illustrations) and handing them around for the class to critique and write emotive qualities they drew from the images. I wasn't entirely happy with the set of illustrations that I handed in as I don't feel that they worked very well together as a whole, I was missing an illustration for Courtenay Pl and I also printed them in black and white by accident so didn't feel like the full effect was showing thorough in any of them. Some good feedback, might need to work on making the illustration for Lambton Quay look less strict and informative and more adventurous, I'm hoping adding some extra layers or a better colour scheme to the image might convey the more adventurous/exploring vibe I want to convey in my brochure.

I heard a mention of a website called thenounproject.com during class and decided to take a look to get some possible ideas from symbols that matched the key words I was choosing for each destination and found some obvious and not so obvious symbols and shapes I can use for both ideas for illustrations and the secondary communication points I've chosen (personal rating, type of venues - food/clothes/bars, and diversity of shops/attractions). 

Week 2

Tuesday 3 March, Session 1 + 2

In class we made a 3 column 'mood board' for each of our options, however I didn't have much material to work with so I'm not satisfied with this iteration of it. Regardless, when we swapped our mood boards around my partner easily identified the locations and general feelings I was trying to convey.

In the next session we were tasked with drawing some illustrations relating to our favourite option of the three and using FADP's to inform the drawing. I did Cuba St and Lambton Quay because I couldn't choose which one I wanted to do more, and had a few designs in my head for each that I needed to get out on paper. I'll need to use these drawings to find a common thread between the designs of each street, so  my brochure will look cohesive while still maintaining a unique feel for each location.

With my illustrations I tried to have lots of straight lines and angles with the tall buildings that are unique to Lambton Quay. In contrast, for my Cuba Street illustrations I wanted to convey a very fun, lively, artsy feeling through lots of movement, such as wavy lines, splashed paint etc.

Fay showed me how to blow up and invert my compositions to test their effectiveness with the light and dark values reversed. I found this worked really well with the two compositions above.

Week 1

Secondary Research - 1

I found a great article on http://www.wellingtonnz.com/ about Cuba Street detailing most/all of its highlights.

Further research into Courtenay Place revealed that its theatre/movie scene is something that people often talk about when discussing the street. The Embassy Theatre gets a high amount of mentions for being the location of a number of premieres of Peter Jackson's movies, which would interest tourists in particular (my target audience). This leads me to think perhaps the Courtenay Place spread should feature the film/theatre aspect. The nightlife is also a strong feature of the street so will be a focus of some of my ideas/sketches.

Websites and books put emphasis on Courtenay being an entertainment based destination vs Lambton Quay which is a shopping/business destination.

Week 1

Research

During the week I made several visits to my chosen streets and took photos and notes as I went. 

Courtenay Place

Cuba Street

Lambton Quay

I then wrote brainstorms based on the notes I made and any other ideas that came into my head. I plan to use these as a basis for my colour/pattern/texture collection and when considering FADP's when making my brochure.

Each location showed itself to have its own unique qualities and feelings which will be helpful when designing the particular pages for each location. 

Week 1

Monday 23 February, Session 1

For our first session we were tasked with brainstorming different destinations and activities that are unique to Wellington. We used these ideas to come up with matrixes, featuring a destination or activity and three sub categories that tie together under the main activity or destination.

I chose 'Streets of Wellington' as my best matrix, as the three chosen streets are undeniably unique to Wellington, offer a range of ideas, information and emotive qualities, and are cohesive together as a set of destinations to explore in my brochure.