Design Principles - What is a Book - Image Development

Design Principles

What is a book? 
Image Development 

With my content generated and final design direction chosen I felt confident that I could start to develop my images for the rest of my publication. Due the positive feedback  I Received from my second informal critique I chose to develop the rest of my images in a similar style to Geraldine Georges work. I started by looking at the words and seeing what type of sinister connotations I could place upon the word. 

This image was for the Hanging quote page, I thought of the fairly obvious connotation to keep the theme of my publication simple and direct.  I wanted to juxtapose the literal interpretation of hanging with the typographical definition of hanging quote. 

I started by combining tree silhouettes in photoshop to create an eerie image that incorporated an extra long branch that I could use for the hanging. I then added in a human silhouette and vectorised the image in illustrator to create a striking image that reflected the context of my publication. 

I then wanted to add more elements within my design so researched quotes about hanging, I found a short quote that I felt would work effectively with the tree silhouette image I had already created. "if you won't be my valentine, ill hang myself on your christmas tree" - Ernest Hemingway.  I felt this quote would work well as it has a sinister nature to it and works well with my imagery. I wanted a creepy typeface but after experimenting with digital faces decided that a hand rendered typeface would work more effectively within the image. I created a hand rendered letterforms scanned them into illustrator and vectorised them to enhance the quality,  I then individually kerned the letters and placed them around the tree silhouette.  I feel this made the image far more engaging as an audience would want to look closely and read the quote thus interacting with the illustration more that at a passing glance. I think the oversized quotation marks work well demonstrating the nature of the hanging quote set outside the text perimeters. 

Final Design 

I then implemented my geometric shapes that my target audience felt worked well in containing the expressive illustrations and balancing it against the minimal design of my typesetting and page design. I experimented with a range of different textures and effects however after asking for other students opinions came to a combined decision that my final design worked best in highlighting the illustration, while creating a bold statement through block colour and texture. 

Overall I really like the final outcome of this design, I feel it works well with the context of my publication pairing the typographic definitions with engaging imagery highlighting the sinister  sounding nature of the words. This aesthetic has been popular with my target audience of design students who liked the contemporary style of the image, my final design also reflects my inspiration from Geraldine Georges with the use of mixed media such as photography illustration and texture to create an engaging aesthetic that is expressive yet tastefuly contained within the geometric shapes.