Day: April 22, 2016

Looking more into Rand’s work, I found just using simple shapes and lines is a good way to make a really professional looking character. I went back to Photoshop and using the tools available I just placed different objects in different places to create a reasonably good looking character. Because I want to show their minds off throughout the book, I decided to open their head so I can have my pattern coming straight out and onto the page. This will not only add the movement that I want within my book, but it will also add a nice contrast between what we see in person and what is going on in someones mind.

Now I have my first design finished and a good starting point. I need to make myself a character to go into my book. Because I find illustrating difficult, I to tried to make a basic character like Rand uses throughout his work. Just using different tools on Photoshop I tried to make it as simple as possible but also very effective and professional looking.

This is what I managed to achieve before I completely scrapped the whole idea. It was incredibly difficult to make some kind of character just using Photoshop and I quickly realised that I wasn’t going to be able to create a high standard product. I am going to look into the characters Rand uses in more detail to try and gain some more inspiration. I have definitely gone for the ‘less is more’ approach but in this case it just doesn’t work.

I have found that actually starting my book is proving to be quite difficult. I need a solid starting point. One idea that has sprung to mind since researching the topic is looking into the mind and using movement. I really liked the idea of having a characters thoughts process shown throughout my book using different images and graphics. I made this design using the line tool on illustrator. It was quite simple to make, yet looks very interesting and shows a lot of movement. For me this represents someones mind with autism. It connotes the differences between their thought process and how complex their mind actually is. I am going to use this design within my book to make sure I can really visualise the disorder, and so readers can learn about autism through the use of graphics and not just text.

This is just a small sample of the works by Paul Rand. As you can see he is incredibly good at using minimalistic graphics to create a story and to show a clear picture. He has a very unique style that works really well, his books flow together nicely and his use of movement is extremely pleasing to the eye. He uses a lot of basic colours but still manages to make his pages look very colourful and vibrant. I am going to try and mimic his style within my own works as I think my book would really benefit from these techniques, especially tackling such a strong topic like autism.

I am really interested in Paul Rand’s work. I love how he uses very basic graphics and illustrations but still manages to keep a very professional style within his work. The books he has created are all so visually interesting as they are not the conventional children’s books that have funny illustrations, instead he takes an obscured approach to his work that gives it a very distinct and memorable look. Another thing I love about Rand’s work is his use of movement. Although all of his drawings and text are stuck to the page, he has a certain flow throughout his books. He is very cleverly able to guide your eyes across the page and you feel like you are moving with the book. I would like to try and recreate a similar style with my book, to make the story flow better and to make it visually stimulating.

In my book I am going to have a character with autism. With this, they are going to speak and I would like the words to flow out of their mouth and across the page leading onto the next page. I struggled with layout quite a bit in the first semester so I feel like this would be a great way to improve my design techniques.