Photoshop

Live Brief;

- Using photoshop, create a minimum of two posters (297x420mm, 300dpi) in response to two of the following themes;

Carlisle is...
• WILD
• SOCLIAL
• INDUSTRIAL
• REVOLUTIONARY
• RESILIENT

- Students are asked to submit work which, if chosen, will feature on hoardings around the city center.
- Title and typography should be carefully integrated into the design.

AIMS;

- develop new digital image making skills and awareness
- sourcing and implementing the means of developing your own skills

Research;

Sarah Maffeis;

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sarah Mafféïs (@sarahmaffeis)

For this project I decided to try replicating the process of the French illustrator Sarah Maffeis. She often shares time-lapse videos of her process on her Instagram, and although she works in procreate I thought that something similar could be achieved in photoshop.

Carlisle is Wild;

For the first design I chose to represent the River Eden and the wildlife that it contains. Initially I felt that the bridge that connects the north and south of Carlisle was important to include, however I felt that it was too literal so I simplified my designs.

The font I used for both posters is called The Vangelo Regular. I experimented with several typefaces before I finalised the poster design to ensure that the text and image sat comfortably together.

I hoped to create a print-like quality in the finished poster, and I achieved this by experimenting with building up layers, blending modes and texture filters.

I struggled to render the fish, trying several approaches, and was dissatisfied with how it was looking. In the end I decided to leave it out as I was running out of time for the submission deadline. I think the meaning of poster suffers from its absence, but I think the composition still works without it.

The salmon and crowsfoot were drawn on paper and then scanned, before being resized and used in the illustration.

Carlisle is Resilient;

Initially the second poster was going to be for the theme Industrial, however I quickly switched to Resilient.

I think one of my earlier ideas (see above) using coins was a stronger idea than the one I pursued, however I oversimplified it and then lost confidence in the idea. I continued to struggle to pin down what I wanted to do and so decided to go straight to photoshop.

I looked at local roman mosaics and carvings as well as the more recent carvings in the castle dungeon and some of the artefacts in Tullie House for reference.

While researching the altar stone in Carlisle Castle, I found this vector image of a different roman altar stone at Carlisle Roman Fort. Initially I was just going to use it to mock up the poster before drawing it myself, but it ended up staying into the finished piece.

(to visit the site click the image) --->

I used a very similar method to that of the first poster, however I had to adjust it somewhat to work for a less delicate illustration.

For the first poster I was using the default photoshop brushes that I adjusted slightly. For this one, I downloaded a brush pack off the adobe website which helped a lot to achieve the printed effect.