This exercise is aimed to get me used to creating images to go alongside editorial content. I ended up taking a long time on this exercise to try and really make sure I explored the topic properly. I found this a little ironic, because in my research I found that editorial illustration can sometimes have deadlines in hours, not days!
To start with , I was asked to analyse various different editorial illustrations. I had bought a number of weekend newspapers and some editorial magazines, and went through them, selecting the editorial illustrations. I had just started to paste these in my sketchbook when I re-read the instructions. I was meant to make mental notes for my analysis, not write everything down. This thankfully saved me a lot of time, but I think I would have preferred to write down some notes in general of my observations.
There were lots of different types of editorial illustration. There was a good mix of satirical, conceptual, metaphorical and reportage. The reportage illustrations were particularly interesting, and I started reading a book on the subject[1] which I think will be really useful for developing my ability to be observant and loose in my drawing.
The next thing to do was to pretend I had been commissioned to do an illustration for an article. There were a few made-up article titles to choose from. I chose "How Green is Your Food". I didn't want to make anything up, so I did an internet search for the article, and I managed to find an internet article that was really close [2].
I followed the suggested approach in the instructions to read, print & highlight, re-read & doodle, and write down my key takeaways. I found this process really useful, the themes kept on evolving in my head as I went through all of this exercise, but the core concepts stayed true. I am not sure they would have done so if I hadn't taken time to distil the messages. I then moved on to develop my concepts as roughs:
My ideas continued to develop throughout the roughs. I really wanted to juxtapose the different sides of the article, and hopefully get the reader to question their assumptions. I really liked the second, isometric rough, but I wasn't sure how to really make it work well, and the instructions also told me to be mindful of my current ability. I felt that this idea might be too challenging for me to do justice. The fourth rough was my second favourite, and I like the ying/yang aspect to it.
I then developed it more as a rough by importing it into Affinity Designer, my digital software. I noticed that the composition and balance was off, so I used the selection capabilities of the tool to cut apart and re-position the major elements.
I was much more pleased with this revised layout. Having the two sides equal in size meant that they worked better as an ensemble piece, but also allowed me to split it apart should that work better with the page layout.
I blocked in all the major shapes as vectors. In doing so I played around with elements of the design, including things to include in it, and locations. I realised I really wanted to get a "dark mirror" aspect, so I moved the chicken and Fish to mirror the cow. Once I had the basic elements in place, I made sure to think about colour. I created multiple different colour schemes, then printed them out so I could play around with different combinations.
Nothing really worked for me. So I left it alone for a while, and sure enough while I was doing something completely different, the notion hit me - the title is how Green is your food - so how about I link the two halves together with green? I adopted basically the same palette for both sides, only adjusting the right side to be more dull and grimy. This seemed to work very well so I started to render in texture, playing again with halftones, patterns and gradients:
I am extremely happy with the result. I also split the image into two, so I could afford to play around with page layout when it came time to making the mockup. Using Affinity Publisher I imported the text from the actual article. I also found a headshot of the actual author so I could play around with page spread layout. I used a font that seemed modern, yet had a vintage feel, and coloured it green to mirror the main green of the illustration. I chose a body text that was serif for readability, but also married well with the display font used for the title.
I then worked out how to used the image above in a mockup. Photoshop does mockups easily using smart layers (which are a proprietary feature). However I dont use photoshop, so have to do this step manually for all my coursework. I had to chop the above image into 2, then manually transform each half to map onto the pages of the mockup:
I am very pleased with the final result. I learnt a lot about the use of colour particularly in this exercise, and it's the first time I have experimented with page layout and the relationship between type and illustration in this way. I found it really fun.
Embury, G. and Minichiello, M. (2018). Reportage illustration. 1st ed. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts.
Cho, R. (2012). How Green is Local Food?. [online] State of the Planet. Available at: https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2012/09/04/how-green-is-local-food/ [Accessed 6 Jun. 2019].
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