Author: reffoldkeal2023

With this promotional poster, I wanted to show my most important and favourite aspect of my personality, that is,my sense of humour. I created a poster which mimics those pamphlets that get posted through your door against your will, advertisements for things you’ll maybe never use, or for food shops. In this sense, I wanted to become the product, and I also thought it would be a good way to exhibit my use of composition, typographical hierarchy, and use of good colour. I have very dry, ironic humour, and so I wanted to show that with this poster.  I turned the “introducing” typography horizontal along the side as though it’s for a cheap leaflet or pamphlet trying to get your attention for this “product” that’s being sold. I also wanted to convey a sense of irony towards the packaging of things such as toys or dolls in a new shiny box, but of course it’s just me being advertised.  The text has a hierarchy of bigger text to smaller text, and with a couple of different types of pink colours which go together very well, which leads the viewer to read from either top left and down, or from side right, then up, and down to the bottom, depending on which of the two grabs the reader’s attention first, either “introducing”, or “all new”.  At the bottom I also wanted to put a barcode, juxtaposing my human life, nihilistically, with that of a plastic doll, or an object trying to be sold; there is also a price tag in the top hand corner. I changed the usual bright yellow of price stickers, to a bright pink, to match the colour scheme of the poster. I also used a dollar sign because I feel like this type of thing makes you think of a big yellow sticker with a dollar sign on it, advertising something silly. Though it is played out, i think the pink colour scheme recycles an old concept into something new that represents me and my personality.  With this promotional poster, I wanted to show my most important and favourite aspect of my personality, that is,my sense of humour. I created a poster which mimics those pamphlets that get posted through your door against your will, advertisements for things you’ll maybe never use, or for food shops. In this sense, I wanted to become the product, and I also thought it would be a good way to exhibit my use of composition, typographical hierarchy, and use of good colour. I have very dry, ironic humour, and so I wanted to show that with this poster.  I turned the “introducing” typography horizontal along the side as though it’s for a cheap leaflet or pamphlet trying to get your attention for this “product” that’s being sold. I also wanted to convey a sense of irony towards the packaging of things such as toys or dolls in a new shiny box, but of course it’s just me being advertised.  The text has a hierarchy of bigger text to smaller text, and with a couple of different types of pink colours which go together very well, which leads the viewer to read from either top left and down, or from side right, then up, and down to the bottom, depending on which of the two grabs the reader’s attention first, either “introducing”, or “all new”.  At the bottom I also wanted to put a barcode, juxtaposing my human life, nihilistically, with that of a plastic doll, or an object trying to be sold; there is also a price tag in the top hand corner. I changed the usual bright yellow of price stickers, to a bright pink, to match the colour scheme of the poster. I also used a dollar sign because i feel like this type of thing makes you think of a big yellow sticker with a dollar sign on it, advertising something cheap. Though it is played out, I think the pink colour scheme recycles an old concept into something new that represents me and my personality. 

This is my first photoshop self portrait. I used the magnetic lasso tool to select my face from a picture, and then I used the paint bucket tool to change the colours of the shading of my face, and colours of my hair. I also layered the image on top of a circle shape to make it look more complete. I have very limited photoshop skills at this point so I did the best I could.  I chose neon/fluorescent colours for a futuristic style of portrait, because I love to play video games, and I love technology, and I embrace the development of technology in society, such as the development of AI, VR, and AR. I think it’s something that could bring forth some really amazing progression to science, medicine, and technology, through the power of machine learning. I kind of wanted to make this portrait look like an AI, or an AI character from a video game, to show that I support the integration of AI, and technology in today’s society.  I am excited for technology to keep developing at the rate that it has recently, and I feel lucky that it’s something I will get to witness in my lifetime. I am not good with communicating, or understanding people, but I spend a lot of time on my computer playing games, and being on the internet, and I feel like this is something that has raised me, and shaped me into who I am, so I feel a certain comfort with technology, that i have never felt from people.  I chose a conceptual colour theme to connote colours such as those seen in Hong Kong’s famous city lights at night, e.g, rich neon purples, greens, and pinks, as I think this is something which is often used as inspiration for futuristic video games. I also think it makes the portrait look abstract and futuristic.  This portrait is a radical change in approach from the first one, because i uploaded a photograph of a pencil sketch i did of my face, and then i used the paint bucket tool to change the colours of my face and my hair into pastel “kawaii” colours, but it did come out looking a little more bright and fluorescent than i would have liked.  I wanted it to have an interesting and illustrative quality to it so I did draw it by hand, and I like how it looks illustrative but also a little bit like how cell shaded game characters look at the same time.  My concept for this portrait was to just be myself and to enjoy having free creative reign over my portrait, and to express myself,  whilst learning how features of photoshop work, i.e clipping masks, shapes, changing colours. I wanted to have a clipping mask so that I could put my portrait inside of a shape, and I picked the cherry blossom, because I love trees and nature; My favourites are cherry blossoms, and all kinds of pine trees, so I chose the blossom shape. Some of my fondest memories are of camping with my mum and being around nature, and it’s something that I’m glad was taught to me, because I love the trees and the flowers, and all the different colours of the countryside.  Feeling out of depth with people is a common theme in my life, so I find nature to help me to feel a little less weird and out of place, knowing that I always have a place with the trees and the sky.  My thought process for this design was that the blossom shape is from my favourite tree and could represent my love of nature, and has a nice composition, as well as helping to break up the intense colouring of the portrait, and allows for some depth because of the layer mask.

This is my first ever illustrator portrait, and so as I was getting to grips with the process, this is the portrait that happened during that, and so it is experimental, and has an abstract quality to it which looks interesting. In keeping the black outlines on this portrait, it makes it look like a cell shaded character, which are used in certain video games, and I have always liked games so I decided to keep the outlines. In addition, because of the incongruence of the face shape and length, it looks like a caricature of myself made up from broken shapes fitting together like a mosaic, which has a picasso like effect, which also makes this portrait interesting to look at, and i also like art, so this is relevant to conveying my personality.  Furthermore, my favourite colour is pink, and so i changed the colour of the top i was wearing to match with a colour theme which i felt represented myself, and in the background i also added some simple coloured shapes, of love hearts and stars, as i love the “kawaii”, “fairy keii”, Japanese aesthetic.   As a teenager i would wear rococo style dresses with petticoats, lace edging and big bows, so my love of pink today has been a certain refinement of who i was as a teenager; it has come along with me, although i have toned it down; i think through the pink colours i want to convey how fashion, and colour, has allowed me to explore who i am, and my individuality, and has evolved into who i am today.  I have kept the aesthetic of the portrait in line with this conceptual colour theme, and this reflects through my colour, and background choices.  However the portrait is clearly not perfect, and perhaps not professional, and so although I do like it, I think that this skill needs more practice and I would like to create more neat looking portraits, that bare more likeness, in the future. In this portrait i hadi started to understand the process a bit better. It is less abstract and has a lot more detail in the colours and shadows used. I believe this is an example of a radical change in my work, and the differences include more detail, and a different style which doesn’t use the black outlines on the shapes  used to create the face, although it is not fully realism, I think it is closer to it than the first portrait.  As the target audience is “the employer”, I think this portrait would be more professional looking, as well as still retaining some of my personality. I wanted to stick with a Halloween conceptual colour theme because this was taken at a Halloween party, and it is my favourite holiday of the year; this reflects dimensions of my personality because I like to embrace the darker parts of my interests such as horror books, films, and art.  Furthermore, I love to do my makeup, and I feel that my face is a canvas which allows me to express myself each day; even when I don’t feel like I can get out of bed, I always end up taking joy in painting my face before I go outside. It is an art form, and I tried to convey that by breaking down the blending into block colours.. It takes me up to 1.5 hours to do a full face of this style of makeup, and i did not, in fact, “wake up like this”, i put in time and effort into this art form and i think that in showing it in a more broken down way, it reflects my personality and my dedication to an art form that i love very much.. It gives me strength when I don’t have it, and shows that I am a resilient girl.  Finally, I added a geometric background, in Halloween purple shades to create an aesthetic colour theme, and to make it look more professional. 

My aim for my conceptual logo was to use the icon of a swan on water, so as to show the horizon line, and therefore I could convey the relationship between the earth and the sky. I wanted to embody that feeling of breathing out a sigh of contentment when looking up at a beautiful sunset, and evoking that wonderment in my clients through the use of sunset colours. I then found a way to incorporate the sunset and the clouds inside the body of the swan. I want my clients to know that they can rest easy when they put a design in my hands, and that i will do the best I can for them to embody their values in the logos and graphic assets i will create.  I also wanted there to be a sense of irony to the idea of existential wonderment, and i executed this by something i have been doing with my art for a while, which is to have the moon and the stars hanging on nails as though they are hanging from the set of a play, on a stage. So I added these to the neck of the swan. I also think it adds to the nice aesthetic of pinks and purples, and connotes iconography from the sky.  Within the swan, which i sketched and used trace image outline, i then started to experiment with recolouring the multitudes of shadows that came through with the image being traced, and trying to create a sunset colour mix/gradient, and i then added some clouds, to create this sunset within the swans body. I did not go as well as I would have liked it to go. I think I should have created the shape within illustrator and maybe created the gradient another way, however it does bring its own textural effect to the conceptual logo which is interesting.  I also added my name typography underneath the logo, and outlined the box with the same colour outlining the typography to tie the logo together, to create the perception of someone looking into a box, as one might look down from space, into earth. This secondary logo evolved from my first logo attempt, and I still kept the swan body encompassing the sky, only I decided to place just clouds inside the swan, for a more simplistic kind of design. I wanted to create a purple themed conceptual logo to go with the corresponding name typography. I also wanted to show something more human within this logo which I chose to represent by clouds raining into a body of water. My theme of my name, and those colours, are within the colours of the clouds i put in the swan body, but also there’s a sadness there, and that is something that is a part of me, and something i embrace wholeheartedly, i believe in taking the ups with the downs, and to not run from it as it’s a part of who i am, and so i felt that the rain was a nice conceptual homage to the complexity of human emotion, and taking things in your stride. Sometimes a logo will work out, sometimes it won’t.  I feel that the purple in this logo is more on the cooler side of the colour spectrum, and whereas my first logo embodies warmth with the pinks, I think that this one maybe embraces cooler colours, and cooler emotions. However, as a business logo, I don’t think that clients will look into this too deeply, so I think it is multifaceted in that it can serve its purpose as a memorable logo, with aesthetic colours that connote ‘Sky-Violet’, as well as having a deeper conceptual meaning, as i consider this art. I think that I cannot make art that represents me, impersonal.  Despite this, i do not think that this is the best logo in the world, and i think that if i had better skills using illustrator, i would have been able to encompass and represent these logos to a better ability.

The audience for these typographical name logos are ‘potential employers’; my thought process behind this typography is that I wanted to create a name logo that I felt represents my stylistic preferences, and to give insight into my personality through my tastes. The typography displays my name, and because I have a long name with two hyphens, I tried to (almost) line those up to create a feeling of balance and symmetry in a sense.  Furthermore i wanted to use the colour visuals that originate from my name, which is the purples and pinks that can be seen on certain sunsets. I chose to do this font in purple, which was an evolution from my first name logo, which was in pinks, and I decided to use a moon instead of a star, as I wanted to use iconography that pertains to my name ‘Sky-Violet’.  I also decided to make the width of the font larger so as to make it seem a bit more like bubble writing, and therefore aesthetically pleasing, and more girly looking. Through the use of a script font i have created a name logo which is neither quite sans serif, or a serif font; the text does have swirling accents which are hyper feminine and could be considered born of serif font styles, but it also maintains qualities of a sans serif font. I feel this reflects my personality, neither fitting in here nor there in my life. It is a unique name logo which is multi faceted, and displays the ‘kawaii’ pastel tone colours which are my favourite colours, which i have fought to be able to love;  Trying different styles and denouncing ‘girly’ colours to be someone who I am not, has been a recurrent theme in my life, but now these colours are my colours, and I want to show that through this typography. This was my first typographical name logo design, and it is using a script font that is a bit more curly and traditional than the secondary logo. I did not make this typography too wide as I wanted to keep it looking elegant and aesthetically clean. I used pink as this is my all time favourite colour, and most things I own are baby pink or a shade of pink, so it felt correct that I should choose it for my own name logo.  I also chose a brighter pink outline to the logo to make it stand out, and to make it eye-catching, and also staying in theme with sunset style colours. A difference from this logo from its secondary evolution, is that it does not have symmetry, and actually plays around with space, having indentations on the bottom left, and top right, which I felt looked quite nice. It also allowed for the tail of the ‘y’ to be mirrored with the ascender accent on the ‘R’ of my last name, so although it is not symmetrical, it does bring a sort of harmony between the letters which is pleasing to the eye. I think that there is also a theme of white space being diagonal from each other, which presents a nice composition for the letters.  Overall I feel that this is my favourite typography from my two choices because of the eye-catching outlines and the diagonal white spaces, in addition to the tail and ascenders of my first and last names aligning to show harmony amongst the typography. I also kept in theme of my name, and decided that the space indentation on the upper right hand side might look nice with an icon to represent my brand, and so i chose to place a star, which i feel most people associate with the sky, and also with the wonderment of looking up at the sky, which is something that aligns with my personal values of loving the earth, and nature.