Project 1
Tom Whalen in a poster

Specifications
- 3 weeks
- Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, Figma
- 19.25 inches x 31.75 inches

Exploring Designers to study

Picking two designers to research in-depth: After looking through several pages of designers and their work, these two illustrators caught my eye for their interesting vector graphic styles and relatable content.

Initial Pages (Quote, Portrait, Artifact)

Studying and Analyzing the Designer's work

Consolidated work from his website, news articles, google

Selected the most distinctive from different categories including diff medias

Left: Posters (some series, some individual with similar styles)

Right: Other Media (Pins, toys, branding, shirts) & Info Design (Spreads) w icons

Developing Moodboards (Print vs Other Media)

Analyzing Typography

Researching the Designer

~1500 word Biography (Link to full paper)

Developing Sketches

Creating 11 sketches of potential avenues to pursue with the poster design

Requirements: Body copy text, timeline, portrait of designer, images of their work

Creating Initial Posters

Poster 1 Process Images

Jon & Leigh Hicks

Graphic Design, Iconography, UX Design

"We are most known for our logo work for Firefox, MailChimp and Shopify, but our skills cover a much broader spectrum of services and mediums. We prefer to call ourselves simply Graphic Designers, as that encompasses everything we enjoy doing. As well as our digital skills, we still enjoy the buzz of making something physical, whether it's with ink, paint or clay."

"I really try to keep it simple as possible. Not to over-complicate it, or get bogged down worrying about fashion, but hopefully still have enough personality to avoid being bland."

"I call it practising ‘input and output’. Digest as much as you can and from different disciplines; books, articles, YouTube videos, podcasts or viewing source on webpages. Keep a scrapbook of all the interesting things you see. Trace artwork you like and work out how it was put together. Then output it: write about what you find or have learned about and experiment. This process will improve you as a designer."

https://affinityspotlight.com/article/design-icon-jon-hicks/website:

https://hicks.design/abou

thttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Hicks_(designer)about:

Tom Whalen

Vector Illustrator, Graphic Designer

"What I really loved seeing were the variations and colorways next to each other, and seeing those come to life during the process. Usually, it’s about the end result, and that's where I normally get my satisfaction. But seeing the piece completed and knowing what the watch took from the box art to become a watch was something else. Having to add and subtract to then learn where art should be, or shouldn't be, and where imagery should land so that it all comes together to create a piece that looks really cool, was a process."

"countless sunday afternoons were spent sitting next to that squeaky old spinner rack of comics in my grandmother's candy store. i loved the stories, but it was the art that stuck with me. armed with well-worn issues of character guides like "who's who in the dc universe"and "the official handbook of the marvel universe", it was sometime around sixth grade when i started to take drawing seriously. multiple trapper keepers full of my own character designs would follow. an 11"x17" drawing pad and a pencil were staples of my high school existence. a few thousand drawings (give or take) later, my own style started to emerge. now, nearly 20 years later, i relish the opportunity to mesh my passion for design and love of illustration for clients like disney, marvel, the beatles and target."

https://www.vannenwatches.com/blogs/news/interview-tom-whalen

http://www.strongstuff.net/#/spacechannel/

Creating Initial Posters

Poster 2 Process Images

Posters Day 1 Critique

Posters Day 2 Critique

Changes/ Decisions Made

Changed compositions of the images, made some of them vertically larger to break out o the strict horizontal row grid
Made "Tom Whalen" more dynamic, moving to the top and extending the letters downwards to sit behind the city, masked with the grid behind the letters
Drew in miniature cities for inside each of the letters - appear like a story inside the counters
Drew planets and clouds that flow off the page, breaking the boundaries of the box, match the gradient with the color scheme
Experimented with wrapping the quote around the curve on the bottom of the page
Integrated quote into the body of text instead
Drew in more buildings for the bottom of the poster to replace the location of the quote
Shortened body copy text to increase the type size and change it from a condensed typeface to normal for readability purposes
Photoshopped some of the images to have solid backgrounds and increase resolution

Posters Day 3 Critique

Changes/ Decisions Made

Reduced the body copy by half, increased type size, made it left aligned instead of justified to increase legibility and fixed the rag. Changed the quote to medium weight to decrease contrast between bold and light.
Experimented with removing objects that go out of the grid, decreasing the sizes of those objects to decrease the disorganized chaos- not take away from the geometric form, changed the colors to match better
Moved the vector art downwards to show more of the letters in "Tom"
Reduced the amount of graphics within the letters to minimize confusion
Increased resolution of images/ switched out some of the blurry ones

Project 2
Tom Whalen in a 16 page booklet

Specifications
- 3 weeks
- Adobe InDesign, Figma
- 16 page booklet, Each Page: 8.25 x 10.5 inches

Day 1: Sketching

Top Left: Experimented with collaging round shapes with his work and contrasting colors in each of the shapes.
Bottom Left: Experimenting with city and rigid shapes including parallelograms and squares, heavy contrast
Top Right: Experimenting with different schemes for every page- using inspiration from the specific pieces of work
Bottom Left: Space, circular orb themed, where each circle contains a different work, use a triangle grid to create shapes

Thumbnails of my sketches

Day 2: Categorizing Information & Choosing Spreads

Day 3: Booklet Rough Sketches

Initial Iterations 1: Blocking images with solid shapes

Iterations 2: After Feedback

simplified cover to contrast detailed inside, removed all the objects, blow up the one cityscape, incorporated timeline of clients in the center, need to find a better way to incorporate top and bottom of city

Space orb theme, have text curve around the work it corresponds to, integrate page numbers into the circles

Made this page simpler by making all the text horizontal instead of facing different directions, made the shapes have 90 degree angles, incorporate quote in top left

Inserted work according to color gradient, have inspirations across the page, each of the 3 boxes discusses a different influence

Incorporate quote into the images of the work on the left. The only page with text written out. Wanted to have a page that doesn't have crossover between spreads

Use parallelograms to separate categories of work to refer to in the timeline

Iterations 3: Inserting images, editing spreads, After Feedback, inserting body copy

Removed the top city to simplify the cover, tried incorporating a drop quote, changed the client timeline to the ToC instead so that it makes more logical sense

Inside back and Inside front should parallel each other, one light mode one in dark colors. Made 2 versions with one including circles of solid color in the background to cluster objects

Inserted work that corresponds with the text for each section of the timeline, added triangles to the background to highlight the shapes and cluster sections together

Design Style: Experimenting with text and image colors (splitting image in half) and adding bright circles as light

Inspirations: Changed background colors, size of text and rag

Inserted work on the left side, created a grid for the caption system in the bottom left, wrote quote using colors from the work. Two iterations- one has text in white with white lines in between the work

3 versions one with grid, one with outline and solid color, and one with split color. Leaning towards grid one since the pullouts can be in the color of the work

Iterations 4: After Studio Feedback Revisions & Moving to InDesign

Redid the cover going back to a previous version
Removed the quote since it doesn't seem like a cover
Scaled down the letters, moved "Tom Whalen" to be on the front cover so it doesn't read Whalen before Tom
Experimented with different placement and sizes of the letters,
Drew another city for the top that fades from red to orange to complement the bottom cityscape

Moved all of the text to InDesign to properly curve along the circular shapes
Shifted the constellations and companies text to not overlap with the center gutters
Fixed page numbers inside the circles
Changed background color to better match the other page

Shifted text to not overlap with center gutter
Experimented with triangle shapes in the background
Reduced the size of the text in InDesign
Fixed rag on text
Made the quote much larger (same size as the next page) and take up more space

Minor changes in placement of title along line
Redrew line in Indesign to prevent being fuzzy
Fixed rag on text
Added more circles for the background
Page numbers and folios in white

Decided on this shapes gridded background version over the others for consistency and because of the heavy contrast between the two different colored ones and the outline appearance of the other version
Decreased size of headings and text when inserted into Indesign
Fixed placement of text boxes and lines to avoid overlap with the center gutter
Added smaller shapes around the larger blob to make the page less center heavy

Decreased size of text to match the other pages in InDesign
Changed the text back to left aligned for consistency and breathing room
Moved the dates from the center gutter
Made the diagonal colors in the text boxes line up with other images around it

Changed captioning system to take up 4 boxes rather than half of 2 boxes so that it is more easily visible
For the future, incorporate other designers work into some of the boxes and reduce the size of the text in captioning system
Edited the colors of the quote (chose version 2 that has lines in between the boxes) so that I can make the quote the same cream color as the background and blend in

Removed page numbers/ folios and added copyright in the bottom right corner (might be too small?)
Shifted timeline so that the constellations don't overlap with the center gutter
Added portrait of Tom Whalen to the back inside cover so that it appears like the "story is ending"
Chose version with colored circles in the background to increase visual interest versus plain version

Iterations on the Front/ Back Cover

Initially too crowded, too much going on with the background grid and the multiple buildings so reduced the illustration to only 2 cityscapes on the bottom and top
Large space in the middle so included a timeline with Tom Whalen's clientele

The list of clients doesn't belong on the front cover so removed it and drew more of the illustration on the bottom o it takes up 3/4th of the page.
Moved "Tom Whalen" to be sitting on top of the buildings to better integrate with the illustration
Added a quote to fill in the space on the top of the front cover using different weights and colors

Increased contrast between the background and the illustration
Decreased some of the styles in the text
Chose a blue to orange gradient for the text
Feedback that the quote is out of place, doesn't belong on front cover, and too much going on

Best Iterations for the cover

Iterations 5: After Studio Feedback Revisions

Captioning System Iterations

Need to increase the size of the box- maybe expand to take up the bottom 6 modules
Don't combine similar work with a series of letters, make separate lines for each letter

Increased size of box to work with the grid
Increased size of text, separated work
Added more letters

Added other designers' work not Dave Perillo
Added more letters and decreased font size (since the number of lines doubled since designer name is labeled)
Changed colors of the diagram to match the work

Final panel, shifted to fill the ending an used space at beginning to add title
Cut out bottom modules from the diagram

Changed subheads to not all caps
Increased size of quote
Shifted some of the paragraphs
Decreased the size of the subheadings when they are capitalized

Added images from other designers so it is not just 1 other designer's work
3 versions of the impact spread one that emphasizes the quote rather than the header
Also experimented with adding some colored shapes to complement the background since the space seems too empty

Final Iterations

Grids

Similar modular grid applied throughout the pages with consistent margins

Project 1 Tom Whalen in a poster

Specifications - 3 weeks - Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, Figma - 19.25 inches x 31.75 inches

Creating Initial Posters

Posters Day 1 Critique

Posters Day 2 Critique

Changes/ Decisions Made

Changed compositions of the images, made some of them vertically larger to break out o the strict horizontal row grid

Made "Tom Whalen" more dynamic, moving to the top and extending the letters downwards to sit behind the city, masked with the grid behind the letters

Drew in miniature cities for inside each of the letters - appear like a story inside the counters

Drew planets and clouds that flow off the page, breaking the boundaries of the box, match the gradient with the color scheme

Experimented with wrapping the quote around the curve on the bottom of the page

Integrated quote into the body of text instead

Drew in more buildings for the bottom of the poster to replace the location of the quote

Shortened body copy text to increase the type size and change it from a condensed typeface to normal for readability purposes

Photoshopped some of the images to have solid backgrounds and increase resolution

Posters Day 3 Critique

Changes/ Decisions Made

Reduced the body copy by half, increased type size, made it left aligned instead of justified to increase legibility and fixed the rag. Changed the quote to medium weight to decrease contrast between bold and light.

Experimented with removing objects that go out of the grid, decreasing the sizes of those objects to decrease the disorganized chaos- not take away from the geometric form, changed the colors to match better

Moved the vector art downwards to show more of the letters in "Tom"

Reduced the amount of graphics within the letters to minimize confusion

Increased resolution of images/ switched out some of the blurry ones

Project 2 Tom Whalen in a 16 page booklet

Specifications - 3 weeks - Adobe InDesign, Figma - 16 page booklet, Each Page: 8.25 x 10.5 inches

Day 1: Sketching

Thumbnails of my sketches

Day 2: Categorizing Information & Choosing Spreads

Day 3: Booklet Rough Sketches

Initial Iterations 1: Blocking images with solid shapes

Iterations 2: After Feedback

simplified cover to contrast detailed inside, removed all the objects, blow up the one cityscape, incorporated timeline of clients in the center, need to find a better way to incorporate top and bottom of city

Space orb theme, have text curve around the work it corresponds to, integrate page numbers into the circles

Made this page simpler by making all the text horizontal instead of facing different directions, made the shapes have 90 degree angles, incorporate quote in top left

Inserted work according to color gradient, have inspirations across the page, each of the 3 boxes discusses a different influence

Incorporate quote into the images of the work on the left. The only page with text written out. Wanted to have a page that doesn't have crossover between spreads

Use parallelograms to separate categories of work to refer to in the timeline

Iterations 3: Inserting images, editing spreads, After Feedback, inserting body copy

Removed the top city to simplify the cover, tried incorporating a drop quote, changed the client timeline to the ToC instead so that it makes more logical sense

Inside back and Inside front should parallel each other, one light mode one in dark colors. Made 2 versions with one including circles of solid color in the background to cluster objects

Inserted work that corresponds with the text for each section of the timeline, added triangles to the background to highlight the shapes and cluster sections together

Design Style: Experimenting with text and image colors (splitting image in half) and adding bright circles as light Inspirations: Changed background colors, size of text and rag

Inserted work on the left side, created a grid for the caption system in the bottom left, wrote quote using colors from the work. Two iterations- one has text in white with white lines in between the work

3 versions one with grid, one with outline and solid color, and one with split color. Leaning towards grid one since the pullouts can be in the color of the work

Iterations 4: After Studio Feedback Revisions & Moving to InDesign

Redid the cover going back to a previous version

Removed the quote since it doesn't seem like a cover

Scaled down the letters, moved "Tom Whalen" to be on the front cover so it doesn't read Whalen before Tom

Experimented with different placement and sizes of the letters,

Drew another city for the top that fades from red to orange to complement the bottom cityscape

Moved all of the text to InDesign to properly curve along the circular shapes

Shifted the constellations and companies text to not overlap with the center gutters​

Fixed page numbers inside the circles

Changed background color to better match the other page

Shifted text to not overlap with center gutter

Experimented with triangle shapes in the background

Reduced the size of the text in InDesign

Fixed rag on text

Made the quote much larger (same size as the next page) and take up more space

Minor changes in placement of title along line

Redrew line in Indesign to prevent being fuzzy

Fixed rag on text

Added more circles for the background

Page numbers and folios in white

Decided on this shapes gridded background version over the others for consistency and because of the heavy contrast between the two different colored ones and the outline appearance of the other version

Decreased size of headings and text when inserted into Indesign

Fixed placement of text boxes and lines to avoid overlap with the center gutter

Added smaller shapes around the larger blob to make the page less center heavy

Decreased size of text to match the other pages in InDesign

Changed the text back to left aligned for consistency and breathing room

Moved the dates from the center gutter

Made the diagonal colors in the text boxes line up with other images around it

Changed captioning system to take up 4 boxes rather than half of 2 boxes so that it is more easily visible

For the future, incorporate other designers work into some of the boxes and reduce the size of the text in captioning system

Edited the colors of the quote (chose version 2 that has lines in between the boxes) so that I can make the quote the same cream color as the background and blend in

Removed page numbers/ folios and added copyright in the bottom right corner (might be too small?)

Shifted timeline so that the constellations don't overlap with the center gutter

Added portrait of Tom Whalen to the back inside cover so that it appears like the "story is ending"

Chose version with colored circles in the background to increase visual interest versus plain version

Iterations on the Front/ Back Cover

Initially too crowded, too much going on with the background grid and the multiple buildings so reduced the illustration to only 2 cityscapes on the bottom and top

Project 1
Tom Whalen in a poster

Specifications
- 3 weeks
- Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, Figma
- 19.25 inches x 31.75 inches

Project 2
Tom Whalen in a 16 page booklet

Specifications
- 3 weeks
- Adobe InDesign, Figma
- 16 page booklet, Each Page: 8.25 x 10.5 inches

Design Style: Experimenting with text and image colors (splitting image in half) and adding bright circles as light

Inspirations: Changed background colors, size of text and rag

Shifted the constellations and companies text to not overlap with the center gutters