Josh Watson

For my Professional Project, I wasn’t sure at first how I should present my designs. I was originally going to create a small book or a set of posters, but then I had the idea of printing them on t-shirts. I am very pleased with how these have turned out, and I think the black imagery stands out well against the white material. Job done!

I have now decided to produce hand-rendered designs for my Professional Project rather than digital, mainly because I enjoy drawing and I want my work to have a more personal feel to it. Below are my five final outcomes, drawn with an ink fine liner pen. Once I had finished drawing these, I scanned them onto a computer and used Adobe Photoshop to create a clear white background. Finally, I wrote the proverb beneath each design in a Papyrus font.

I am planning to print each of these designs on t-shirts.

This illustration is a variation of one of my previous designs, where a rotund man was sitting on a sofa with an apple sitting next to him (representing his offspring). In this design, I have replaced the man with an apple tree so that both metaphors are included in the illustration, and also because it helps to make the proverb’s meaning clearer to the viewer.

Much like with my first design, I have personified the metaphor used in the proverb (in this case, birds) in order to demonstrate the proverb’s meaning. Here I have added human characteristics to a flock of birds to show how people tend to group together depending on their behaviour, state of mind or physical characteristics. I had originally created this same design with human heads, but I found that using actual birds with human attributes was more effective.

I have kept this illustration exactly the same as my previous design for this particular proverb, because I feel it was already effective enough and I therefore had no real reason to change it. I had tried getting rid of the human heads and simply using regular nails to see how this might look, but it was boring and didn’t show the proper meaning of the proverb, so I’ve used this design instead.

I have realized that in order to portray a meaning, I mustn’t make my designs too complicated or else the viewer will become confused. So I have simplified the concept of this illustration by showing an acorn growing into an oak tree, as the proverb itself refers to. However, I have again used the recurring theme of personifying these objects by representing the acorn as a baby and the oak as a muscular adult.

This is my fifth and final illustration. Once again, I have simplified this design by drawing the actual metaphors from the proverb, and I have personified them once more to show that the lemons represent negativity but the lemonade is good.

This design was drawn by another member of my group. It shows the Driver from behind and surrounded by shadow, which links with his mysterious character in the film. Of course, we knew we had to show the Driver’s face somewhere in our final poster, but instead of simply showing a straightforward portrait, we tried to be a little more original.

Here is our final poster design for the Little White Lies project. We have kept the image from above, but we have also included a reflection of the Driver’s face - we got this inspiration from a scene in the film where he looks in the rear view mirror of his car. We thought that a hand-rendered design made the poster look more personal, which is why we decided to keep it. We tried to make the letters in the film title resemble tyre marks, again linking with the film’s overall theme.

These are some basic hand-rendered designs I drew as experiments for our Little White Lies competition brief. I produced these with an ink pen, based on a selection of screenshots from the film ‘Drive’ (they all show the Driver’s face because our design had to include the main character’s portrait).

Here are a few more early designs for our competition brief, designed by other members in my group. Some designs are hand-rendered whereas others have been created in ‘Adobe Illustrator’.

As part of a design competition, me and my group were given a brief that involved redesigning a cover for the Little White Lies film magazine, based on the 2011 film ‘Drive’. We were told we had to include a portrait of the main character in our design with the Little white Lies logo positioned at the top, but it had to be more original than some of the designs that already existed. Many of these designs have been digitally rendered, but there are also some that have been illustrated. After watching the film, we decided to experiment with both these types of design.

Here is one of our first ideas, created in ‘Adobe Illustrator’. This image is based on a distinctive screenshot from the film, where a reflection of the main character (called the Driver) is seen in the rear-view mirror, shrouded in darkness. We thought that it might be interesting to distort the image and break it up into various shapes, rather than simply replicating the image exactly. I wasn’t sure if this was a good style to use for the final piece though, so we continued experimenting.

The apple never falls far from the tree…

I’ve realised that the style of drawing I was previously using seemed a little too comical, and due to this, viewers might not have fully understood the messages I was trying to put across. For that reason, I have started using a different style - one that is still comical but slightly more refined. I have also decided to keep colour to a minimum, so that each individual line is more noticeable. In fact, I only want to use colour for the physical metaphor described in each proverb (in this case, the apple).

The nail that sticks out gets hammered…

Even though the style has changed, I have kept the concept of this design the same as it was before. This time though, I have shown more clearly that the nails represent the people, with one of them stepping out of line and consequently being “hammered” by a figure of authority. Again, colour is limited to the proverb’s metaphors; however, in this case, I did feel that colour was also necessary for the rebel’s tongue, as this helps to draw attention to it.

‘Out of the frying pan into the fire’

I have intentionally made this design more comical than the previous two, in order to see whether or not this approach is more appealing. After completing this, I did actually think to myself that the preceding designs were the more effective ones and that maybe I should drop the comical theme (although I still want comic-styled drawings). As well as this, the situation I have chosen here to demonstrate the proverb’s meaning is somewhat unrealistic, almost conforming to a metaphor itself - in other words, being chased off a cliff by a crocodile into the mouths of even more crocodiles is almost as unbelievable as falling out of a frying pan.

‘Great oaks grow from little acorns’

For my fourth design, I tried to think of a realistic situation you might find in real life that is related to one of my chosen proverbs. I soon thought of illustrating the proverb shown above with the use of a growing company business (which many people can relate to, even if they do not own a company themselves). I have tried to show a standard bakery becoming bigger and more successful over time, along with an oak tree growing bigger alongside it. I feel this idea is the strongest out of all of my current designs, and to make it even clearer, I might add a third image to show the various stages of growth (rather than simply the beginning and end results).

Another thing I might work on is the style of drawing I am using throughout. No doubt it’s wise to experiment with different techniques and decide what is working and what’s not.

‘The apple never falls far from the tree’

Here is an example of what I am focusing on in this project. I am trying to create visual imagery that relates to various proverbs I have studied. Seeing as proverbs are usually metaphors of certain situations or circumstances, I have tried not to take them too literally and instead focused on their real meaning. Above is a design I created in Adobe Illustrator, showing two adults with children that resemble them. I still feel that this image is perhaps a bit too literal, so I am probably going to work on this a bit more to make it more subtle (maybe by showing their behaviour rather than their physical appearance). I have, however, included apples in my design to link it directly with this specific proverb.

‘The nail that sticks out gets hammered’

This is another design I produced in Adobe Illustrator. The proverb in this case basically means that a person who steps out of line will likely be put back in their place by a figure of authority. Again, I will have to work on this design to see if I can make it more effective, but I would like the general concept of this image to stay the same.