Old School Type Poster

I picked up a copy of Computer Arts Projects the other day and low and behold it was the 150th issue and it was celebrating typefaces.  In this specific issue of CAP you got a disc (as usual), and on this disc was 150 fonts and Computer Arts Projects 150 fonts you cannot live without, which is fantastic.

I was reading through and came across a tutorial which was to design a classic Serif poster I was interested so tonight thats exactly what I did, using the typeface 'Baskerville' I let rip in Illustrator and this is what I came up with.  The poster was made up of using a Serif font and one of your favourite quotes, not knowing that many quotes off by heart I hit our dear friend Google and found this Albert Einstein quote that caught my eye.

Baskerville Old School Type Poster

I quite like this, the only thing that puts me off is the 'A' between Made and Mistake it just doesn't seem to fit properly.  

I would advise anybody interested in Typography to go and get this magazine (even though it is a ridiculous £7.50), did I mention the price of fonts on the disc comes to £450?

Cheers folks

JT

How to Be Nang!!

This year at Sunny Wolverhampton University I attempted my first ever Magazine Spread.  Ever.

The spread was for a magazine article called 'How To Be Nang'.  I found the article in The Times newspaper in 2006 by Ross Anderson.  The Inspiration from one of my boys from London, James Luisis and his brother Andrew (West Ham fan).

I tried to make the spread to look 'urban' and something that would be considered to be 'down with the kids'.

As far as magazine spreads go I think this is 'OK' for a first attempt, I think it's safe to say that as a creative magazine spreads are not my strong point but you know what they say.  Practise makes perfect.

I chose a bright yellow due to the simple fact that the colour is eye-catching and keeps your interest.  The two typefaces I have used are 'hit the road' and 'Baskerville' which work quite nicely together, Hit the Road is an Bold typeface where Baskerville is easy on the eye.

Opening Spread for 'How To Be Nang'

Spread 2

Spread 3

Thanks for reading

JT

Shakespeare!!

Bloody hell.

Meant to upload a few of these the other week, my apologies.  Anyway now that university projects are over I can finally get down with my personal projects.

Any way this project was to create 10 double spread images (20 pages) of 10 of the 156 Shakespeare Sonnets.  A big mistake.  It was the hardest project, in the world.  I am happy with some of the results but am a bit... meh on the others.

Feel free to praise and bash me folks!!

See ya soon

JT

Major Project Covers

Think its about time I uploaded my Final and Major Project Images.  Don't you?

I will Upload The images in drips and drabs because there is approximatley 50 odd pages, I'll start with the front cover for American Idiot (Major Project).

I produced multiple covers for this project with the same basic feel,  I gave each character in the novel his or her own cover.  All the covers are pretty much the same, the only notable difference is that the characters have changed and the colour has also changed to give the feel of that particular character.

Feel free to rip into me in the comments...

Thanks

JT

Johnny/St. Jimmy Cover for American Idiot (Chosen Cover)

Tunny Cover American Idiot

Will Cover American Idiot

Whatsername Cover American Idiot

American Idiot unused Front Cover

Hand ins... And BEYOND!!

So, the time has come, handed in final (Shakespeares Sonnets) and major projects (American Idiot: The Graphic Novel) and now I play the waiting game.

I'm strangley confident I will get a decent grade (I'm hoping for a B) I'm no where near as nervous as I was for hand-ins in past projects and considering that these two were arguably the most important projects in my Further/Higher education span.

Considering I put a shed load of hours into these two projects alone (nevermind my dissertation, video, magazine spread and CV one) I can't get a D, I'll take a C at lowest.  I think the nerves just kicked in now talking about it.  Nevermind I have faith.  I feel the Graphic novel grade will be higher but I hope they are about the same.  Anyway just wanted to post about how nervous I am!!

And now the project Creative Industries and How to be Nang magazine spread:
The Creative Industries is basically self promotion i.e. CV, create a postcard image, portrait, Letterhead, write a letter to a company for a Job (do not have to send it).

And the Magazine spread is pretty much done, I have the basic type down however I need to mess about with composition and type.  It's really frustrating sometimes when you can't figure out how to make it look OK.

Keep ya updated folks,
I'll post some images soon
Cheers
JT

Print (cont.-ish)

Panic Stations!!

After yesterdays moan about the extortionate pricing of print (£10 of the £45 I payed for the print of the book was to get it here... FAST!!) and I got an enote today saying that my book has failed 'pre-flight'.

Why!?
 I double checked and triple checked and probably knowing me quad-rouple checked it and apparently the front cover was only 145dpi, have I mentioned I my get charged £5 for another proof check? No? well yeah that might happen, uber horse-s***.  Seein as though I've just been ripped off in the first place and this is making me absolutely be scared for it not to be here by next tuesday (12/04/2011) I may have to resort to submitting a dummie book, which wouldnt be too bad but it would have to be printed on some high quality A4 paper with some rather excellent binding.

Just wanted to let ya'll know how stressed about deadlines looming.

Much Love

JT

The Extortionate Prices of Print

Now...


I'm all for caring for the high quality of your printed work, having just paid £45 to have my American Idiot Graphic Novel printed in a book form with no confirmation it will be here in time for hand in!! (12/04/2011), I have asked for pretty much the best cover quality paper and the best possible insides paper which if I get a good grade will be worth it, which leads me to believe that the job will be a good en.


However....


having just paid £53.98 (yes... 53.98!!) for a CMYK collection of cartridges for my home printer that is where I draw the line, I mean seriously? 53.98, I'm not knocking the quality of the print work because its a good printer but I don't think I can warrant paying such an extortionate price for it.  I may as well sell my printer and go the local print shop down the road.  An inconvenience but I reckon sooner or later, it will start to pay off seeing as though when I finish Uni I will probably have to do 10 times less home printing as I do now, might of contradicted myself there with a massive personal project I'm planning (more info later this year).  


In conclusion, it just really annoyed me that I nearly knocked up £100 on print and half of that wasn't even final piece.


Anyway guys
Have a nice day
JT

American Idiot Cover

The Cover

American Idiot Cover


The cover for American Idiot is shown left.

I did this a couple of months ago, and not really got any feedback on it or even really spoke about it.  So here it goes.

The silhouette is the main character, I decided to go down the silhouette route for the cover to show a certain level of mystery about the story and to show that the character doesn't really know where he is mentally and the story really shows off the roller coaster ride.

The vertical American flag is a reference to the Green Day music video 'American Idiot.' I decided to make the flag red to elaborate the love story that goes on in the book between 'Whatsername' and the main character.  The grunge is to retain the dirty messy style of contemporary Green Day/American Idiot artwork but I did it in a way that it has my own twist on it, with the tops of buildings at the bottom.

I'm unsure about the Typeface, it seems not full enough, if that makes sense, maybe because it appears grainy.  But it seems to fit.  I chose it because its the Typeface used on the album cover, however, part of me doesn't agree with it, I'm a funny git when it comes to type.  It takes me ages to find something that works and when I do find something that looks OK, I'm a little unsure.

Feedback welcome.  Destroy me.

JT

The Weekend...

The weekend for most is the time of week everybody looks forward to, unless you work in retail and work stupid hours..

For me, its the most uninspiring time of the week with a 7 o'clock and an 8 o'clock start on Sunday and Saturday.  It's depressing.  Most of the time I can hardly find the energy to get motivated to do a little Uni work, which at this time of the year is absolutely vital I do at least an hour or two a night.  But again Sunday afternoon/evening I find myself just staring at it, briefly glancing at one or two popular social networking sites, finding it really difficult to get motivated and even started sometimes.

Lets hope over the next 2 weeks I can find that  motivation, because with deadlines approaching thick and fast. I'm going to need to.

JT

Subject

Just a quick one to say this blogg will be based mainly in my University studies.

Cheers

JT

DeadLines

dead·line

 

–noun

1.

the time by which something must be finished or submitted;the latest time for finishing something: a five o'clockdeadline.

2.

a line  or limit that must not be passed.

3.

(formerly) a boundary around a military prison beyondwhich a prisoner could not venture without risk of being shotby the guards.

With only a few weeks left of my Major Project and final Project and major projects left (PANIC!!!) and always having looked over what I have to do and hopefully this time not leave it till the last minute, I wonder?  Ya see I always miss calcualate print times and printers let me down. But not this time, I WILL finish these projects comfortably and get a good grade, that is my vow.

My Major project is to take 10 sonnets from William Shakespeares mammoth sonnet list and create a sort of book of some sorts out of them, really starting to regret picking this project, (lost count of how many times I have said that), I just find them sometimes somewhat repeated of what the last one said.  If you examine each one and take the main points out of them you can't possibly have more than 20 sonnets there, instead of the ridiculous 154.  However, I am taking shakespeares vintage style and giving it a special Jack Taylor 2011 makeover, should look good when I'm finished with it, and I'll stick to the old saying, if I get a C. I'm happy.

My final project on the other hand is a Graphic Noveli'sation of the Green Day concept album American Idiot, I have not drawn the graphic novel I have however used photography and the quite legendary software 'Photoshop,' to create a unique looking backdrop and I think the story (when its finished) will tell the story of American Idiot quite well and will fill in the gaps that the album left, I also used inspriation from the stage show also.  I have approximately 28 pages to this project, which is alot of work and probably to much but as the saying goes, you can never have enough work eh?

So thats where I'm at, the projects will come and I believe the amount of work I did in the first part of this project has sort of lifted the weights a little bit, but I'm still scared, which goes to show it doesnt matter how much time and effort you put into your work, any sign of a deadline and your stomach drops and you get scared stiff.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/deadlines