Graphics Evaluation

Final Draft (with notes)

Colour Schemes

 Above I have changed the colour scheme of my final design by susing a complementary colour scheme. This type of colour scheme uses colours that are directly opposite each other on the colour wheel. In this case I have used orange and blue.The blue gives the design a calm feel while the orange gives the image more appeal and makes it more eye catching and vibrant, therefore catching the customer's attention.

This design uses an monochrome colour scheme, which means it uses one colour over a spectrum from light to dark. The use of water colour made this easy to achieve as thinner amount of paint, often made the same paint look lighter than usual. The green colour makes the design look quite calming, however monotonous due to the repetion over few and similar colours.

 This design uses an analous colour scheme. Analougous colours are next to each other on the colour wheel, which means that a similar but slightly varied shades of colour can be given. The colours I have used icnlude red, orange and yellow, which are thre colours that often go well together. However, after creating the design with this colour scheme I can see that it isn't something I like or would have used in my final design as the colours blend too much into one another and also these specifc colours create an overly warm feel to the piece, which is quite offputting and wouldn't work when attracting the cusotmer. It is also fairly in unrealistic in some aspects, expecially with the earth as the colours use a more complement the original and look slightly unnatural.

Finally I used a traidic colour scheme, which from the name means the use of three different colours. I have chosen to use red, green and blue, which has allowed me to create a more realisitic design, for example I could use more natural looking colours for the earth, which are the blue and the green, while also adding some vibrancy to the the design.

NOTE: The scanner used to scan in the designs has made the colours bright than inteded, which means there is more variety  in shades of each colour.

Final Piece

I began by adding in the basics of my design, which were the background conventions. First was the front cover. I added in a photo from the range I had taken for my photo shoot. I chose this particular photo, due to the fact that it was fairly central and the lighting was of good quality, as it wasn't to dark and also had very little glare, which many of the photos did have.

I then began to add the background to the rest of ym design. I wanted to opt for a scrap-book type look, so added an effect to a shape, which i coloured blue and placed across the majority of the design. I achieved the crinkled paper effect by scanning in some scrunched up paper. I then composed the image as a pattern in Adobe Photoshop. This then gave me the ability to use it on this shape, by clicking on fx underneath the layers panel and choosing 'Add Pattern'. I clicked on the crinkled paper effect and then multiplied it, therefore causing the shape to look like crinkled paper rather than the effect resting on top of the shape and hiding it. I also adjusted the size of the pattern to be medium, as the larger it was the less clear the pattern became and the smallerit was the more overly detailed it became. I also adjusted the opacity to 100% in order to add clarity to what the pattern was.

Next I added in the suitcase pattern to my book cover flaps. I created them by editing drawings of suitcases in my sketchbook in Adobe Illustrator using the pen tool, in order to add a more cartoon look to the images. I then for each one applied the same effect I had used on the blue shape, used for the background of the cover. This was done in the same way with similar settings.

I then began to add in more detail, in order to express the purpose of the book (Travel) and also to impress the target audience of teenagers or older children. I tried to make it as colourful as possible by adding in a wider colour scheme. I created the arrows using Adobe Illustrator, once again using the pen tool. I used the arrows to enter more colour to the design, as you could quite easily create singular blocks of colour that stood out, by using the pen tool. I then added drawings of different landmarks onto the globe. I angled them all differently to fit in with the shape of the globe and create the effect of them 'popping out' of the earth. I uswed drawings instead of images and it was easier to do, I could include a variety of different styles of work by myself and also it added to the scrapbook theme of the cover and also the fact that they were like doodles, which would have appealed more to the younger audience I was designing the book cover for.

I then added in aeroplanes that I had also drawn out and then silhouetted using the pen tool. I wanted to add something like this to make it look more proffesional because of the the skills I was using but also add in more subject matter to focus of the theme of travel.

I then began to add in the title of the book, on the front cover and spine. I used the chalk type face I had created by self using chalk and lettering that I had drawn myself and then combined digitally. I thought the idea added to how I wanted to make my travel book seem like a book that also helped my audience to learn, while at the sme time used this particular typeface as it was different and worked well as a display type.

Finally I added in my instituional information. This included a bar code/ISBN number, price, synopsis, publishing company logo, image of the author, author's name and biography, publishing company website and reviews. Due to the fact that my cover was an original idea and not for an already existing book, I had to choose a random author to put on the front cover. I tried to choose one that came as close to the genre as possible. For the author's name and biogrpahy and other information I used a a digital typeface that I found on Dafont.com. I thought was suitable as it was simple yet attractive and was also easy to read.

Above is an image of my final finished piece.