OUGD505 STUDIO BRIEF TWO - FRONT COVER IMAGERY DEVELOPMENT

Using the below two photographs as inspiration I carried on the developments I earlier undertook into leaf illustrations, as I really feel this is the way forward for the front cover.

Started off by using two colours to get a range in colour, and these work really nicely however they are quite dark in parts. I found the stem with several leaves worked much better aesthetically than individual leaves, as there wasn't suite the same need for detail and accuracy.

It was suggested by a peer to just use one colour and change the tone by using more or less watercolour ink instead, to produce a more natural, neutral appearance. I do think this works a lot better, and it makes you pay attention more to how you apply the ink to the page.

Digital Manipulation:
The leaves were scanned in and uploaded to Photoshop, where the background was removed from each leaf individually, and in the case of the one colour leaf, the colours were slightly altered to make them look a little brighter, as in the scanning process they looked a bit washed out.

Front cover application:

Initially I just place all the different leaves on the front cover, and arranged them in a way, I'm not sure. The ones at the top were supposed to look more like a canopy. Anyway it looks cluttered and not great.

Then went for a more orderly fashion, using the leaves as a pattern rather than as leaves themselves. This creates a much more balanced appearance, and you can appreciate the leaves fully.

It was suggested by a peer that the title should either be central or clearly further top or bottom, so I tried it further bottom and therefore had to alter the top leaves to make them fill in more space. This just made them larger and out of proportion to the other leaves.

So I stuck to having the title properly central, which achieves the same balance.

The leave layout extends onto the back, creating a banner kind of appearance.

I have had much more success with the leaf illustrations this time around as I was in the right mood to draw. I could focus properly and was in the right frame of mind to do this kind of careful work, which in turn produced effective results. A mock up is the next stage to see how the guide looks as a whole.