BRIEF 03: ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS//DESIGN DEVELOPMENT//OUGD603

design development - preparing designs for screen print
images:
After looking through the bank of images we had collected and searching for appropriate quotes these were the final two images we decided would work best in terms of capturing the feel of the show, how they fit with the quotes and what they would look like screen printed (colour and layout between type and image.)

quotes:
We selected two quotes that we feel would fit with the images properly and would also work within type and image.  For the picture starring the both of them we have decided to have the catch phrase, or one of the most well known quotes from the show, 'sweetie darling' and for the Patsy image: Darling, if you want to talk bollocks and discover the meaning of life you're better off just downing a bottle of whisky. At least that way you're unconscious by the time you start to take yourself seriously!

Colour: In terms of colour we have decided to try and base the choice on the Ab Fab logo which consists of four colours, purple, red orange and pink. Emily and I discussed using purple ink for the quotes on both posters, we think out of all the colours, with it being the darkest, it'll be most appropriate for the written part of the design, we also felt this could give the designs more of a consistency to work as a pair.

For the half tone image we have decided to do one in pink as this is quite a colour associated with the shows logo and also the orange because we thought the orange and purple would compliment each other. As well as feeling the red wont be quote suitable for images of people.

prepping images for screen printing:

black and white half tone images, in terms of type something fashion inspired, vogue style, high end fashion, pistilli etc.

designing print: testing colour, typefaces et.

We started off laying out the quotes using Prada, as it resembles a kind of high end fashion typeface, we used the colour swatch from the logo to start off.  Originally we wanted the text in purple and the images pink and orange, however the orange halftone image didn't work very well for the photograph.  We found the purple worked better as it gave better lighting and more definition to the faces (left poster) but the orange typeface over it still didn't work - due to what we thought was typeface and colour scheme.  The right design featuring just Patsy, we though suited the pink half tone, also suits the character - again the both of us agreed the colour and typeface didn't work.  The quote was too long and so awkward to position over the image in a way that worked - I thought you need to be able to see more of her and it over layered the character in a messy looking way.

 We decided to change the typeface as something wasn't right about Prata, and also to ignore the colours for now as this wouldn't matter when actually printing, this was just to get a rough idea.  We felt italic looked better straight away - because it was a quote but also because it suited the images more.  We also decided trying to place a long quote on the image of Patsy didn't really work and the quote was short enough for the type of impact we wanted the designs to have.  The quote also fit perfectly with the photo.

 We tried changing the quote to see if we could get it to read any better, we felt the word darling should be in italics because of the way its said, however having the rest of the quote not italicised didn't suit the image as much, even though it read better like this, we felt as a whole the design worked better with it all in italics.  We also tried to do it in reverse so all of the quote except the word darling was italics, but that still wasn't as strong as the original.

I also tried using bodoni italic in caps lock, at first I thought I preferred it in lower case but I feel as though there is something that works with this - more so a high end fashion magazine spread or an article, I think it also depends on colour - the black text is probably helping create that kind of editorial elusion.

 This is a bit more what we had in mind - obviously the colours will be completely different depending on what we choose in the print room, I think this is something we can decide on more whilst actually doing the process - as the outcome will be a lot different to what we design on screen, in terms of colour.