Every Day Astrology - Designed by Always With Honour

Everyday Astrology by Gary Goldschneider, designed by Always with honour. This is pretty much exactly what I had in mind when I thought of simple iconographic visuals working across a publication. As AWH show here, shape is really iportant when producing a pictogram. An image can be built up of shapes, can be one simple but well crafted shape, or a mixture of the two using negative space as well as filled colour areas.

I like the way the pictograms have been considered, but also how they have actually been applied on the page. Cover, and top corner of page. It works well, possibly the icons themselves could have been tightened a little but other than that this publication is pretty great. Well done AWH!

I'm going to develop some deep sea creature pictograms after looking at some imagery I think.

Pictograms & Striking imagery, Olly Moss

Olly Moss is pretty renowned (at least amongst BAGD year3) for his simple and highly effective use of a limited colour pallette and his combinations of type & image for making great treatments, usually in the form of posters. Its this sort of approach im thinking about exploring for my front cover of the publication, and possibly for some imagery on the inside of the book. Im thinking for now at least that the illustrations inside the book will be much more detailed.

The reason I think iconography could work is because of the printing factor, a simpler image would translate better accross a range of different printing techniques. It also opens the window a little bit more for using specialist mediums like foils and UV and glow printing mediums. Plus a striking image is easier to get from afar than a very detailed image.

The most relevant Olly moss image here is the search poster, two colours and a heavy patterned page which still manages to look striking and high impact. My favourite two is the evil dead poster and the search poster.

Nobrow publication - Research for Book Fair.

What a lovely publication! Picked it up in OK Comics yesterday for £8.00. It's issue one. Its so nice how they have dealt with limitations here, it obviously cuts down costs using three colours. Its helping me think about how I can produce my publication for the book fair, and what limitations I could use to simplify print production methods and help me keep to a smaller budget. The look of the cover is also making want to screen print my front covers. Cheap, easy and handsome print!

I thought this image was a really strange coincedence, Seen as how my publication is about deep sea fish... Helped me to get a really clear idea of how what I'm starting could potentially look. This issue of Nobrow is full of great, engaging illustration, all with a uniform colour scheme.

The book also has all the illustrators names and contact details in the back. Maybe t would be worth contacting some of these people...!

A range of mailable products.

This set of products shows clearly how the same approach can be applied to different formats, I want to relate this approach to a similar range of products for a mailshot. I like the simple approach with the use of colour and point sizes, and also the way the logo is distributed across the pages differing formats.

business cards - Di cut and bespoke

Found these di cut business cards on the tinterweb, I would like to produce something with a cut out which compliments my logo because I think the form of the logo will work well using negative space and cut out in a business card format - it will set the card apart from others that bit more. The optimum photography is a really nice touch because the whole idea is the cutout means you are seeing through a lense - this would be a good idea to incorporate into my cards - for example let the viewer see through the eyes of a roots music record label.

Promotional tool: Myspace

The myspace designs for electronica artists and labels alike are always pretty simple, as you can see here - colour just makes them look a bit naff, the layout which is working best for me, is the top one - Monsta dubs because of its simplicity it gets its message across quicker. I think if I am going to do a promotional myspace, it just needs to act as a simple tool used to promote the artists on the label and the label itsself. I think the simpler it looks the better - because the products will speak for themselves as long as they are well documented.

Distribution: website - Tempa's website

Tempas website acts as an archive for all their releases, a showcase to promote new releases from artists and also a showcase for their artists. Tempa has :

• A news page
• An artists page
• A releases page
• A press page
• And a Roots and culture page.

They also have a search bar and the newest releases are always shown at the right hand side. The information included on every page is:

• Tempas logo at the top and bottom left of every page
• Home
• Artists
• Catalogue
• Press
• RSS feed
• Who designed the website, and who built it.

It looks like this:

This is the first page you see when you come to the website off a search engine. It shows the artists new releases. The simple 2 colour approach to the body and the type content on the website does its job perfectly because this label want the design to be functional as apposed to decorative. Doing a website in a similar approach would be a really effective way to communicate with Alius' target audience and makes the distribution a straight forward endeavour for the target market.

When you click artists at the top, you are presented with a list which then links out to:

Which ever artist you click. From there there is an image of the artists newest release and a mini playlist of samples from that release. This page acts as a promotional platform for the artist and the design of the website caters for that in a very simple but effective way, Straight forward type and page layout.

When you click releases you get a list of best selling releases along with new releases and the option to listen or buy, again promoting and selling the artist.

Tempa's "about" section is different to that of other websites I have seen, It is just a scan of influences that have been written on paper. This was probably selected by the designer because it says alot about the label without even saying anything but a list of artists.

Just wanted to put this image here to show what has been included in terms of information at the bottom of the page and how it has been layed out visually.


Tempa's website is very simple and effective, there are alot of links there which I probably wont be inclluding because tempa has its fingers in alot of pies such as radio, events managing and a record label. But the simple body of this website was really useful to look at because it shows not tonnes of information is needed on the website to make a website effective and easy to navigate around.