New Fedrigoni photos

Finally finished the last bit of foiling that I had to make a screen for due to its size, and screen print glue to foil onto :

These are the new photographs for my final boards....

Edited pictures of 3d type

These are my photographs after editing. I made a colour palette for each season using the images of the colour tool that I had collected. I chose a selection from each category (Cool, warm, neutral-warm and neutral-cool) to use when re-colouring my photographs so that they match the colour palette we had discussed for the publication and calendar. In hind sight  it would have made more sense to spray paint all of the words in pure white to allow them to re-coloured more easily. It would have been better if I had made one word and tested the whole working process beforehand, however I was under a two week time restriction so I think I worked with the time I had available and it has all worked out fine in the end.

finished 3d type

I have finally finished my four pieces of 3d type for the Fedrigoni brief - laser cut followed by hand assembly and finally spray painting the designs. These are the initial un-edited versions....

In hind sight it would have been better to spray paint with matt spray paint as this looks much more effective - like actual paper which was the idea! Also it is easier to photograph as it has no shine to it.

Foiling experiments

Chris has been working on the layout for the publication, calendar, invite certificate and tickets for our Fedrigoni brief. We have been meeting each day and discussing the progress of our work so that we are both on the same page about what our final product is going to look like. Today Chris gave me some of the designs for me to experiment with foiling. Most of the designs I can get away with using the laser jet printer in the mac suite but I will have to prepare a screen for the cover of the pack that will contain most of these elements as it is larger than A3. We have chosen to use foiling as it will hopefully give the designs a high-end, print process heavy feel which is relevant to our target audience.

crafting 3d letters

I am taking the laser cut design and removing areas and then elevating them on scrap booking sticky tabs to add some other dimensions to the designs. 

type development

Chris and I decided to change our four key words to 'Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter' as we felt that these words suited the colour  palettes of the paper selection tool effectively and allow us to deign a calendar as part of the deliverables. I laser cut the designs that I prepared by vectorising the type and then manipulating it so that it cut certain areas. I cut it backwards so that I could tape up the upwards-facing side after it finishes cutting to ensure that the pieces don't fall out when I take it out of the machine. This worked well and everything went exactly to plan. I then used a scalpel and tweezers to remove certain areas and to pull sections out and then replace them again on little stilts that I made from scrap-booking squares. This is to give the design some added dimension - multiple levels. I spray painted the first design in a brown shade I sourced which matches the 'Autumn' colour palette.

laser cutting text

Today I had my first laser cutting session for Fedrigoni. This session was purely experimental - with the hope of finding the best way to create the four desired words for the content for the printed media that Chris will be designing.



I think that it looks really good so far - however I cant decide whether the letters look more interesting left in the card that they are cut in and photographed like that :

...which restricts the design to one colour, or whether it looks more interesting taken out of the card and re-arranged like a jigsaw onto a different shade of green :

I definitely think that the colour and lighting of this image is more interesting, but the one above was taken outside in daylight which could be why it looks slightly more flat.... 

I will discuss this with Chris tomorrow and see what he thinks. We plan to make the publication itself as colourful as possible, so it may not matter that the images themselves are not multicoloured. 

We also decided today that we might add a calendar to our list of deliverables, and so I am going to change the four words to 'spring' summer' 'autumn' and 'winter' as we feel that these words reflect the colour palettes really accurately and it wont confuse things.

Preparing type for laser cut session tomorrow

Today I had a meeting with my group from the workshop on friday - we had a productive crit of each others research and then Chris and I had a meeting about where to go with our Fedrigoni brief from here. Interestingly, in our research we had picked up on a couple of things that were the same, as well as some completely different angles. We decided on Friday after the workshop, that we would continue researching and discussing deliverables and ideas today, but by the end of the day would settle on an idea and go with it. We decided that I would start on the artwork - I have a laser cut session tomorrow so I am keen to try out some ideas as soon as possible. I investigated a range of typefaces and the have prepared two out of the four we need for cut tomorrow at 11am. I have a session on wednseday, thursday and friday so it will be good to see how tomorrow goes in order to prepare for the other sessions. We are aiming to be finished on the artwork by friday and photographed by monday.

Workshop notes

More Paper cut designs

Ribbon paper cut design

(See red annotations)

its not what you look at.....

I have been working on a design for a same colour cutout. The idea is to create a more subtle message. I experimented with a variety of fonts but I felt that Futura condensed light worked the best as it still works and reads comprehensively when the counters are removed. After some consideration I decided that the quote 'It's not what you look at that matters, its what you see' works better in terms of concept as it suits the subtlety of the aesthetic. I think that it could work well landscape to go across a double page spread in the publication.

paper cut design

This is my next paper cut design to be cut on thursday. I think I might add a bit more detail and really make the most of being able to cut a really intricate design on the laser cutter.

First design development

These are my initial designs for Fedrigoni - the first of a proposed series of paper and type driven illustrations to inspire graphic designers in the target market and promote the paper. This particular design will be a paper cut done on the laser cutter on Thursday lunchtime and then later sprayed the correct colour to match the Fedrigoni paper sample colours.

Fedrigoni design sheets

I have got stuck into my Fedrigoni brief today defining target audience, themes, styles and the exact processes I am going to use. At this stage I have decided to promote the 'Imaginative colours' by Fedrigoni by way of a series of typographically driven illustrations using paper engineering as my medium. These will be photographed and presented as a promotional publication. The theme of the illustrations is imagination - I intend to inspire as well as inform - as the target audience is primarily graphic designers in the fields of high end fashion and publishing. I have been researching all morning and I feel confident that no one has done quite the same for Fedrigoni, but I think that my work could easily look like an imitation of a number of paper cut designers and artists which is my main concern. For this reason I am trying to incorporate more than one style of paper based illustration - at least until I have found a style that I think I work well with.
In terms of working with Fedrigoni's stock, I have found a good solution. I researched Rob Ryans practice methods and was surprised to find that he cuts all his designs (by hand usually) on white card then spray paints it later. Provided I can source spray cans of the correct colours to imitate the paper samples I have, this will be a fantastic solution to otherwise having to source similar coloured stock. The other up side to this, is that I could laser cut my designs - as i can spray them afterwards so the dirty burn marks wont matter- and this will save a huge amount of labour time as well as getting a more polished professional result.

Fedrigoni YCN Brief