Finals Development (1-3/9)

I have been working on these images one at a time, completing one and then moving on to the next. I am hoping to see some progress and development between my first and last illustrations. I have chosen to work in this way because it best mimics working to editorial briefs, you are working to a short deadline and you can’t go back and change things once they are complete. 

1. Aromatic Spices

• This page about winter dishes and warming spices relates to Scandi lifestyle because of the very cold weather and the warming tones they use in their homes to contrast this. This feels like the same but in food-form. 
• Drawing style - controlled, elements of detail but not too much, just enough to give an idea of shape and form. 
• Layout  - I arranged each component as if fitting them into a grid format. 
• Colour - I liked the original colour palette of the page so decided to carry this through to my illustrations. I used Adobe Kuler to get a colour palette. 
• I tried a shape based approach to adding colour but this didn’t turn out how I expected. It made the design look more cluttered which was counterproductive. 
• I chose to fill the shapes normally with some parts kept blank.
• I liked the textured background as it added to the warmth of the page and made it look like my drawings were done on brown paper. 

2. Berry Smoothie

• This recipe relates to Scandinavian lifestyle because it is simple, uses natural ingredients and is healthy. 
• I continued with the grid format as I had used before, using guides on Photoshop to make things accurate. 
• I used Adobe Kuler to get a colour palette from the original image because I didn’t think the content of the image would be recognisable without realistic colours (especially the berries where colour is their only distinguishing feature). 
• I experimented a bit in an attempt to bring in some textile influence but this made the colours too weak. 
• I like the shapes of colour without the texture, they look much neater than my attempt in the previous article. I am still not sure this is the best option though, I still think the normally coloured drawings look much cleaner and fresher which fits with my aims better. 
• While playing around I shifted my colour layer slightly and I like the highlight and shadow this creates. I feel like this adds another element of detail with very little effort, you could say it was ‘efficient design’. This is clearly relevant to Scandi design principles but is also good for editorial briefs as time is often limited. 

3. Happy Kitchen

• I wanted to simplify my structure even more and try to use stripes as my layout for this article. 
• Colour - I chose a picture from the IKEA website for a bright colour palette. I wanted to move away from representational colours to work with something more limited and see what I could do. 
• I tried applying the colours in striped but felt like my drawings were lost within a mass of colour. This was improved a lot by removing the background, there was more space for them to breathe. 
• I tried the reverse of this as well but having my drawings plain white made them look flat and uninteresting against the background. 
• Instead I continued with the process I had used before by adding colour and then shifting it out of place. 
• I understand that bright colours are uplifting but they can be overwhelming when used in excess. 
• So far this is the outcome I am most pleased with!