Exercise: Seeking inspiration

I love to play games. So, it was the first choice. I made a collection on Pinterest: Game graphic design

As a first step, I tried keyword in google around game design, game graphic design. I have got nice games board designs. There are plenty of examples on Pinterest. I like the balance of colours and the package design. Together it appeals to play them.




As a next step, I was looking for video games posters. Here are the best examples. I like the simple idea and how it represents the game. I know them and the posters are great. I like the simplicity, colours again. We can see the sanserif typography which fits well.



I especially like how space is built by the monochromatic colours in the board game Totem Tower and these posters.



I was searching on OCA resources as well.

Bridgemaneducation: I found old board games:


UCA:
The book VideoGames and Art was exciting to read I decided to buy one.


Thanks to the book I founded the first video games and read about indy games which I like.



I wanted to see some real things which you can get as an accessory:



And I especially like these earnings :-)




After a few days, I came back and was looking for a thing which could overlap game design.

It was not easy and it revealed that it depends what words you use in explorer. So I was looking for things around games and I have got these: I love how Arkanoid idea was used here against smoking.



The aloneness in this piece playing a game. Alone with my console.



And this piece is amazing as well:



2. TENIS

I followed the similar steps as in game area. Here is the Pinterest collection: Tenis graphic design

Not all graphics are green/yellow but these colours prevailed.



I like these because it is not clear what they represent for the first glance.



I found this very first tennis video game when I came to additional searching, I love it. Here is youtube clip how it looks Tennis for two



I found some products with a tennis theme.





And finally I found these illustrations which are amazing. I like how the pieces are fresh, smart and the play with lines, gravity etc.

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Conclusion

Today is not a problem to find an inspiration on the web. There are thousands of examples. For me, the problem was to find something not familiar for me. The cause was in the right words and to be out of the box of searching machines (Google, Pinterest) which "know" your taste. Especially Pinterest shows similar pieces to the one you have as the main. I really liked to search by words which not directly address to the subject. I was surprised with some results as in tennis area. The Tennis for two was a great surprise.

This exercise gave me an experience how to get more broaden results which overlap original area.

Exercise: Learning to learn

I have access to Adobe Creative Cloud. I mostly use:

1. Lightroom - Expert
2. Photoshop - Proficient/Expert
3. Illustrator - Competent
4. After Effects - Competent
5. Muse - Advanced beginner
6. Premiere Pro - Competent

I want to master the Muse skills for web production. I found this course on Muse essential course

What I feel like a novice is hand drawing, and I love to use pencils, watercolors etc. I would like to learn in that area more. Maybe start here tomorrow: Sketching-for-beginners

Seeing this course https://www.udemy.com/sketching-for-beginners/ I ordered it immediately + https://www.udemy.com/watercolour-painting-techniques-a-must-have-for-painters/

Exercise: Too many carrier bags

Analyse the brief. What's the problem: an amount of discarded carrier bags at a beauty spot. Local businesses are worried about the implication for their trade. They want to fix the problem.

What research I need to do? Somebody has already tried to solve that problem. How? Which media he/she/they used? What was the result?

As a first google research, I found this: 4-ways-to-reduce-the-waste-of-plastic-bags .
1. Decline the bag
2. Bring your reusable bags instead.
3. Recycle the plastic bags.
4. Re-use the plastic bags.

Second, great article about the problem with bags and its Plastic-bag-problem.

It is not easy to persuade people to get the used bag back to a recycling centre! Only 3% of the total. It does not work. The big problem, bag in marine and in the air are flooding our planet.

Next, plastic-bag-for-life-recycling

"45% of shoppers bought a reusable bag but only 12% use them regularly. if we use reusable cloth bags, we could save up to 25.000 plastic bags in an average lifetime. 
Many large supermarkets already offer loyalty points when we use our own bags, which is a good start. Instead of criticising those who use reusables, shouldn't we be doing more to educate those who still use single-use plastic bags?

An interesting information for the global solution: mutant-enzyme-that-eats-plastic-bottles

Rebbeca Hosking: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/16/plastic-bags-activism

My process record:

Having more time I would like to make some posters.

Anyway, the great thing was to doing research around the carrier bags. It helped me a lot to get "quickly" directions on how to address the problem. 

The brief: it was great to notice that local businesses are worried. It should not be hard to get them involved and persuaded them to think differently.  

Make the bang: I am still thinking about a statue made by carrier bags. Maybe a tree covered by those bags in the central square make a point which can appeal to residents.  Put questions etc.

And yes, I love Tom Eckersley's keep the Britain Tidy. That style I would like to use for the design to get people informed about the problem.

Exercise: One hundred and one

I like how many ideas with a dead cat we can see in the series. I was not so successful. For the best way was to draw it. I completely forgot to use a creative tool like a mind map. Anyway, some of the ideas were funny (trap) some of them could work (camera obscura, flower pot). I should back and make more broaden.

Colour workbooks

I found in my library this pile of books around colour. It is enough reading about colour.

Exercise: Visual play

I like how just chaotic juxtaposition, in the beginning, led to the clean design when I played with the cuts in the exercise Visual grunge. The design is more attractive than the design where I tried to express what kind of design I like. I think the experimental approach would help me to produce several pieces which show me an ideal result. No doubt.

Overall, I always have a bad feeling in the beginning process when the canvas is empty. The helplessness in these first execices was the big problem for me to overcome. I really did not know how to go through it.

The next problem was to take the right colours. Even I use the colour wheel still I am not sure the colours fit together.

I decided to rework the beginning exercise Areas of practices.

Here is the original picture. Really I did this? :-)

I used the shapes from exercise Visual grunge. I liked the circles and fitted them in my best opinion they could work in this piece. But, somehow the text was disturbing, so I put it away.

I played with shape and their position.

Now, is it was time to change the colours. I used the Adobe CC library and chose the first I liked. The colour palette was nice for the first glance but the result in the piece was not I expected.

So, I choose another one and it turned out it is more captivated. I was satisfied.

Anyway, there was something missing. I wanted to use black colour and add a shape.

This shape fits better than the previous :-).

I added the text. It really looks enhanced.

And final touch. I must say it really looks better than the original piece.

This exercise showed me that playing with shapes completely changed the design. What looked like a boring design (I can say awful), in the beginning, the original one, showed as a "mature" design at the end. 

Still, I am not sure about the use of colour and its combinations.