Instantprint - Design Development

I took one of my inital concept sketches into Adobe Photoshop and after a couple of hours worth of experimenting came up with the result shown. 

To get the images of flowers I used a mixture of high quality photographs as well as scans, all of which were sourced by myself. With the images ready for editing I used the pen tool to carefully select the parts of the image I required. Using the Hue and saturation tool on a colourised setting I adjusted each colour until I was left with a range of soft, pastel like colours. Using a coloured background caused issues due to the amount of colour already contained therefore I had to use a black background. However after viewing this again I am not sure if the black works.

 

Instantprint - Save the Date

Whilst researching into florist and nature themed business cards I came across this example below. Judging by the amount of detail contained in areas such as the leaves and the crisp edges of the petals, I would guess that these are high quality scans or photographs which have then been carefully cut out on photoshop or illustrator. The flowers show signs of alteration especially with the colour in terms of hue and saturation, tones and highlights, and exposure. 

The image gives the illusion of two whole flowers however upon closer inspection it appears as if the designer has employed a collage like effect, using multiple images arranged together to form the body of a flower. The other image on the other hand goes for a different approach and continues with the same style yet opts for a symmetrical layout.

The overall design gives of a very soft and elegant look, which is very similar to the colour quality of old posters, which presumably is the reason for the saturation and exposure levels. The collage effect is something which works really well and the absence of drop shadows works in its favour. The majority of the work would be achievable in photoshop with the image editing.

Instantprint - Brief

Recieved the first live brief of the second course today which focuses on branding and promoting businesses. The client is Instantprint, an online web to print company that specialises in fast turnaround. 

“Our core product areas are Flyers & Leaflets, Business Cards, Large format and Stationery. We strive to make print buying as easy and straightforward as possible for those without knowledge of print or design. One way we have tried to achieve this is through our new Design Online feature that allows people to edit templates for print without having to know how to use more advanced software such as Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign”

My objective is to create a set of design online templates that focus on a category of my choice. In doing so it is important that I consider what the printed media is going to be used for and who the people that will use the printed media to promote themselves or their brand will be. All templates should be designed with a target audience in mind and be tailored to that particular audience. It is important to remember that these templates are intended to be edited by customers online and so I need to allow for easy customisation and consider factors such as text but also allow the opportunity for customers to add their own images and shapes. So no lense flairs and chrome text please

The target audience is small to medium enterprises. This area covers a very wide range of people from self - employed tradsemen through to restaurants and takeaways right up to medium sized organisations that operate on a national scale. Target audience has a very limited knowledge of design and little to no expierence of using design software such as Adobe. Bleed and safe zone can be lost on them.

The client emphasised no lens flares.