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The Final Layout For Colourless

This is the final layout for Colourless and I wanted to challenge myself in terms of the composition and layouts that I could muster an create booklet with them.

I used “Impact” as the total font because it was bold and eye-catching and used Euphemia UCAS, as the articles were less formal than text that may use a serif. In addition to that, the font seems to fit for my target audience as it seems more of the font that would be used for text for the young adults.

I stuck with the theme of blue and orange because I think the colours are quite youthful when using their bright tones. I wanted the font to be blue, but it wasn't legible on the 45 gsm paper that I used to print the booklet. The reason Used the 45 gsm paper was because my tutor said that it would further suggest it being somewhat of an editorial and mini newspaper.

After some deliberation, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to name my booklet “Colourless”.

 The reason for this was because every decision made is colourful in a way that you get to experience new things and see through a new perspective in whatever you chose to do. 

When you become hesitant towards decisions, the world starts to look bleak and you begin to grow anxious, and that anxiety causes your “colourful” world, with all the beautiful colours that you’ve collected to be shaded out in your deliberation, as you are not looking at the past but the future.

Hence it becoming “Colourless”.

Creating the Layout For The Booklet

Whilst having a tutorial with my tutor, she suggested that I print the illustrations and the articles on paper used for broadsheet traditional newspapers and such, as well as presenting it in a way that will make it look like an editorial illustration with the article attached as opposed to a poster.  For inspiration for the booklet I would be making, I looked at the textbook “Turning Pages : Editorial Design For Printed Media” and looked at the editorial layout used for many magazines and other companies. The book looked at asymmetrical and symmetrical composition with type and photographs.

Creating my Illustration for Video Games Can improve Decision Making

For this illustration, I wanted to show the action games in a personal, yet playful way and decided to go with the finger stance of a gun. The reason for this is because people who play action games have a quicker response time to making decisions and action games usually mean violence, and so I wanted to depict violence and action games in a single notion, and decided to make it a finger gun.

The reason for the hand is illustrated as a galaxy is because your hands are essential for doing certain things, and can help or hinder many people and things, hence they can be the responsible for saving a life or causing a death. The result of that is up to us, but our hands or the hunters that carry out the task.

Video Games Can Improve Decision Making Article

I began to research a final article that I would create illustrations for and that then I came across this article called “Gamers Better At Fast Decision Making” on Wired.com. This article Intel's that gamers who play action games have a quicker response time when it comes to making quick decisions as opposed to non - gamers.

Creating  A Second Illustration For “The Rise In Emotional Decision Making In Games”

I decided to create another brain illustration for the article in order to show 2 differing interpretations of the article as well as to show the travel of information, from one part of the brain to another. I decided to use 2 contrasting colours: Blue and Orange, in order to show the 2 opposing sides of the brain that want to follow the different routes laid out by the decision that needs to be made.

Creating My Illustration for “The Rise Of Emotional Decision Making In Games”

The games listed in the article were games that tested your morality and even the values that you were brought up with and go by. They wanted to see how these values would be used in the game setting and whether you would go with the general consensus or not. 

Since these games were personal and such, I wanted to create a piece where you don't know what to choose and both outcomes are swirling in your head to the point where they overflow and start to pool at your feet.

I took inspiration from Dots & Co and applied it to the colouring of the piece. From this, I then created arrows to communicate the idea of multiple options and not knowing which one to go for. I wanted the blue and orange to be bright to capture the eye, like the decision options do. 

The Rise Of Emotional Decision Making In Games Article

I began looking into articles that centred around modern day games that had entered around our decision making, and found this article from IGN about the increase in games with emotional decision making options. This hit home for Mme especially as games such as Until Dawn and Bioshock were the games that inspired me to do this brief. 

For this article, I wanted to have some fun with the illustration and maybe even do a collage as to show going either way through colour coding. Within this piece, I wanted to keep to the theme of cerulean blue and orange as these colours stand out for their vibrancy and their contrast.

When looking for inspiration to help add my initials and overall finished product, I found a mobile game called “Dots & Co” where the techniques used to create contrast within the back ground in the mountains intrigued me to look into it further.

Creating A Second Illustration for the article

I decided to create a second illustration to accompany my other illustration for the “Brain Scanners Can See your Decisions Before You Make Them” article. the illustration was meant to depict the different directions you can take when faced with a decision. At at the time decisions can bounce around your head, and alternate timelines, possibilities and such are create from your head, growing further as you begin to think about the possible consequences for this decision. I wanted to show and somewhat induce that sense of anxiety within the audience as well as showing how not every decision has one solution or one route, that there are many routes that can become highlighted from one opinion.

Creating The Brain Illustration 

When creating the brain Illustration, I got the scan of a brain and traced it, then from that, I began to map out the parts of the brain that would be used for decision making. I decided to go with a galaxy for the brain in order to show the endless possibilities and amount of knowledge that one has in their mind, the endless worlds and narrations that we all have trapped within our minds. 

Mark Conlan Artist Analysis When creating my illustrations, I don't want them to be overly complicate and complex, to have a range of colours that can be simplified and a background that doesn't need to be busy and congested. I began to look into Mark Conlan, who uses simple backgrounds, yet busy foregrounds in order to create contrast in not only his use in colour theory button regards to the themes that he is illustrating. I liked the way his work was almost like a window in a room, where the room sone bland colour, but the window gives you a look into a world that is free and a new experience to be had. 

Snake Bird

Whilst looking at inspirations that could influence the brain editorial illustration that I was wanting to do, I found an interesting mobile game what visually appealed to me and my ideas for the finishing product of the illustration. 

The game, named Snakbird, is a visually vibrant puzzle game where you move the birds around the grid in order to collect food to sate their hunger, however each level becomes trickier than theist. The main reason for my interest in the game was it’s appearance.

From the article “ Brain Scanners Can See Your Decisions Before You Make Them”  I started creating initials and began to explore the possibility of creating. an editorial where the background is consistent and inform in its colour and theme, whereas the foreground which will be the brain is the complete opposite, serving as a distraction.

I had created a mock up of my idea in Photoshop, and this was the result:

This was meant to represent the distortion of reality from fantasy, that we sometimes don't understand the extremity of the situation or the decisions made, and live in fantasy lands.

From the initial the I had created prior on Photoshop, it linked to the character of Lewis in What Remains of Edith Flinch in which the character of Lewis enters his fantasy world in his head (fig 2) , in order to escape his mundane reality of his job of repeatedly cutting off the heads of fish in his local fish factory. 

Over the course of the play through with his character, the world starts off as a simple maze that can be solved quickly, but it soon develops into his own fantasy land where he is a king and a traveller. He starts to branch away from his real world and dived deeper into his ideal world that resided within in his head. 

Researching MRI Scan Articles Linking to Decision Making 

I found that my focus has dwindled from my project’s original brief, and although I have decided to do an editorial illustration, I needed to look at articles that communicated that.

In order to do this, I started looking at decision making within video games and the process that our brains take to reach a decision. The way I wanted my illustrations to be laid out was to communicate a story, where

I found 3 articles with each looking at a different aspect of decision making. The first by Wired showed how MRI scanners could see what decision we would make before we did it physically, IGN looked into the rise of emotional decision making in games, and Wired again looked into various studies that backed up the claim of Video Games helping us to make quick decisions.

When focusing on the first article, I made a mind map illustrating what the article was showing me, the reason for this is because it helps me to form ideas when the article is broken down, and helps me to look into the connections that could be made between certain themes.

The first article I looked at was “Brain Scanners can see your decisions before you make them”, which was written by Brian Kim on Wired.com. The article features a study in which the researchers that were able to see the brain’s reaction to certain decisions before the subject’s physically responded to them.

I found this to be quite interesting and decided to delve further into the subject at hand.

Today I had my assessment with my tutor, and she gave me some critiques for my work. The illustrations that I had done do not communicate what the article represents, it didn’t show any luring of children of capturing the children’s interest psychologically. Instead, it was just Slenderman’s portrait. Due to this critique, I decided to reform the illustration and instead had Slenderman’s image collaged into iPhones. 

The reason for this that due to the internet, this folklore became a phenomenon over the 2 years, where everyone was captivated by it. I also wanted to symbolise what the article said by the girls killing their friend to get mercy from Slenderman. He is always watching, and always listening. I wanted to showcase that paranoia by having him within the phones, like he is always watching us, even through our screens.

Today I was given my interim and my tutor was concerned about my subject as I had become muddled within my own project and confused about the direction to take. She opted for me to make an. Editorial Illustration, as it was too late for me to develop anything that needed more preporation in such a short frame of time. After the interim, I began researching into my target audience once more, and looking into the Slenderman Stabbing. The Slenderman stabbing is significant to my project as it shows the consequences of bad decision making, of losing your way and not knowing the difference between reality and fantasy.

I analysed the article and noted down the things that I would be expanding on later on. I created a portrait of Slenderman with black fineliner to emphasis on the rugged creepiness that embodies him. I wanted it to resemble that of a mugshot and formatted it into an Editorial Illustration on InDesign after I scanned the illustration in.

I then decided to play around with the colours and various settings on Photoshop to see all the abstract colour combinations that I could do with his portrait.

in addition to that I then went on and reformatted the article into a simplistic layout that didn’t outshine the illustration. I also created another illustration for Slenderman because I wanted to use a different layout that used a landscape drawing, rather than a portrait illustration. In this illustration, I used the same techniques as the other, tho the surroundings were seen, as the scene takes place in a forest.