Hey! So just before I broke up with college and left for my summer break, as a last project to do before said departure we were contacted to create graphics for the Southport flower show! I found this fun, and I wanted to explain the process, my design and how this came together.
So, this all started around my birthday time, June 10th~. Our main tutor, Rebekah, told us that we would be working on a new graphic for the Southport Flower Show! I thought it was quite interesting and the brief was too, with the theme they wanted us to make a 16:9 (or something close) graphic that would have to do with general gardening and mental health. I don’t remember the best, but was it something like showing that gardening is good for mental health?
This design that we were going to make would be used on a huge plant pot and matching pitchfork as a hallmark for Southport College in the flower show. They would want it to rather than be printed on this huge thing (since we don’t have big enough printers) instead to be painted on, which meant we couldn’t use things like complex photos and had to keep in mind during our designing that it should be easy to paint, Since we don’t have big enough printers) instead of being painted on, which meant we couldn’t use things like complex photos and had to keep in mind during our design that it should be easy to paint.
Well, I originally had this idea to create four panels to all go into a row of somebody going from their room to going out gardening and feeling happier overall. I thought it was a clever idea at the time (it wasn’t), so I went along with it. Now sadly I didn’t have enough time to make a visualization diagram of what I wanted, so instead I had to just jump into it which was also a bad idea
I say this because my execution of the idea was straight-up horrible, and I was so embarrassed by it that I stopped the idea after 20 minutes of working on a single flower in a rounded cube kind of style. I started to use basic colours to separate the panels, and then I wanted to make the first one a bedroom, I couldn’t draw one of high enough quality for my liking and I didn’t want to steal one online until I caved in, so found some random one from google
After this, I wanted to also add a person in the front to show that they were sad, since the story was supposed to be that the person would be sad because they're inside, but then after seeing some flowers they felt better, so I tried to draw a face using vectors and after the head shape I just stopped, since it was way too hard and took me forever to make it look even less awful then what I first had.
The tools I used were simple brush tool, pen tool, move tool, and shape tool and that’s about it from what I can remember, keep in mind this was three months ago and it was something I desperately wanted to forget out of sheer embarrassment of an awful idea with no planning whatsoever
“Plant Pot Design V1” 2023
Now, what do I think of this? I think this is awful. There was a lack of planning that I should've done beforehand, along with some practice using the pen tool and shape tool to improve the general design before going headfirst into it. This was not successful because the idea was too hard to execute for me, I would've done more research beforehand with mind maps, visualization diagrams, and Pinterest boards amongst other planning ideas, I could have developed this further by first actually finishing the idea, and I am so glad I didn’t go back to this idea.
So instead of focusing on that awful idea, I made another one that was a bit more interesting. It was inspired by looking at the mural that they have for the Southport flower show which they’ve had for quite a few years. I don’t know the specific source since my tutor showed me the image on our big monitor, but I found it quite interesting so I made a small concept about what I would want it to look like
Now keep in mind I only made this single concept for it in like 5 minutes, so don’t expect it to be the next whatever, this is a simple illustration. Anyway though, this is the second idea I had for the project!
“Plant Pot Design V2” 2023
Now, as you can see this has an interesting look, for things seem to be in order but also out of order, this is because I wanted to make a grid-like pattern as my original idea for this, to have different items in specified areas compared to the wilder look of the mural for the flower show.
What do I think of this design? I think it had something going for it, it was what they were looking for (at first, I thought) with the colours that would be used, a blue fading to green, which would show the emotional part of the work and link it closely to the theme of mental health. Some things I should have done to improve this was to make a better mockup than lines drawn in Microsoft Paint or some other old painting program, along with a clearer illustration of colours, what objects are, and the overall description of this visualization diagram is poor.
This wasn’t a successful design though due to it being rather complicated for me to design in the short amount of time that I had to create this, but also because later this design was said to be too leaning into the idea of mental health and gardening, and they wanted something that was very brand-safe and would be appealing to take photos with, which is something that has been improved on for the next design.
So, after that unsuccessful nor impressive design, I made one more that was quickly and promptly disregarded due to the same problem, not appealing to take photos with along with too much focus on gardening and mental health, but I poured a lot of effort and documentation into this one so ill quickly go through it
“Pattern Design V1 and V2” 2023
I used the same idea of having everything on a grid but first couldn’t decide if I wanted it to be a bricklayer repeat pattern or a simple basic pattern of them all next to each other evenly, so I chose that due to it being easier to deal with when it came to painting on
“Flower Design V1, V2 and V3” 2023 on side
Then I spent a good amount of time finding innovative ideas on how to design these flowers. I came up with the one on top as a quick sketch for the idea, so then I refined it. It used basic shapes using the shapes tool and overall didn’t like it because of how the petals looked and the thickness of the lines. This is when I made design V3 with improvements like thicker lines to show the colours more along with a bigger centrepiece and smaller petals to show the colours, along with it just looking right.
And with those little design choices made, we finally have a design which I am most proud of!
“Plant Pot Design V3” 2023
Now before anything more, I would love to explain the concept of this. This was inspired by some infographic work that I haven't done a blog post on because these things take forever to make, and the idea is that the empty flowers with the blue are supposed to represent being upset and sad, whilst through the design you see the green comes up more and more with the more petals, which is supposed to show that people are happier with gardening in their lives. I would like to assume that’s what you thought when viewing it though since I sadly couldn’t do any field testing and I am trying to make a quite easy-to-read graphic for it.
So, the information that they gave us was exactly what they wanted from what we knew, it was easy to paint, and it looked pretty and was quite an easy-to-read piece about gardening and mental health. For this too I don’t think I would change anything about this piece since it is exactly what I wanted it to come out as, but some things I could have done to take this further is to create a mockup for how this would look, and maybe make some merchandise with this graphic like shirts, hoodies, bags and hats! It would make sense to recoup some of the cost of the event for event-themed merchandise.
This very sadly wouldn’t be something I could revisit in projects though, due to this design also being thrown to the side due to it not being what they were looking for, despite giving us the basis of what they wanted, which I find thoroughly confusing on why they couldn't be clearer in the first place, but anyway.
After declining, they told us that now they wanted something that would be more appealing to a wider audience, a lot less focus on mental health and a focus on colours and that kind of urban-soulless design that a whole load of companies use as a quirky way to make graphics, in which I'm more than fine with creating but it's just a shame that it'll have to be like such. They were a lot better for being noticeably clear with what they wanted, for they also gave us a small Pinterest board for the general design that they were looking for which was thoroughly helpful.
“Pinterest Board for Flower Show” 2023
This was upfront with what it wanted, and because it was so upfront, I understood what they were asking of me this time, so I got to work. Now, you may know how much I loooovvveeee the pen tool and the shape tool (sarcasm) so instead of trying to try and make flowers and leaves using such awful tools, I used a separate way, I drew them! Now, I know I'm not a genius for using this tool since I think a lot of people use it, but it helps me personally so much. All I had to do was draw the flowers and scan them to my email using a Scanner, import them into Illustrator and use the “Trace Image” Tool!
To touch on the drawings and general idea before we fully go to the next step, I mainly just copied a bunch of the flowers that I saw in these murals individually along with some others to get a collection of a good couple of flowers like the ones you see down here. For the idea, it was terribly like what I saw in these murals, just a big bunch of different flowers in an agreed colourway added onto a background that could wrap around the plant pot and pitchfork, nothing too special.
“Drawings of Flowers” 2023
After drawing these and importing them into illustrator, I for the rest of the day separating some of their parts so I could colour the shaded parts differently from the unshaded ones, and after a long time of moving flowers and throwing, recolouring things like the leaves, flowers and background I finally had the perfect graphic! Then my tutors made one themselves using my graphics and asked if I liked it, which I did, to then them using it for the final graphic...
(Top is my version, bottom is the submitted version)
Yes. After everything I did for this design, it is useless. But despite this, I shall critique both My design and the design whipped up by my tutors, you could even say this is a challenge to see who did better. So, was my first design successful? Yes, I would like to think so! This is because, like the reference material, it showed a lot of bright and bold colours with fun and unusual shapes, perfect for taking photos with, whilst the second example I wouldn’t say is as much in all honesty. This is because of the darker colours used, and the pattern seems a bit too far spread apart for people to know that it's about the Southport flower show and looks more like wallpaper rather than a graphic for a sculpture for something that’s supposed to be the representation of Southport's traditions to continue to be held high. On a more realistic standpoint, sadly, the second design is more successful since that was used.
How would I do this differently? Good question! For my home-grown design, I would want to mess around with the colours a lot more since I don’t think I got them right here, it just looks off to me and I can't exactly place my finger on it. With this, I would also want to add even more different-shaped flowers rather than relying on these smaller leaves and berries to fill up space rather than more bunches of flowers. For this other design though, I would absolutely change the colours, and also the white outline, I just don’t think it looks very good with the design and could look better without it and bolder colours. I would make the pattern of the flowers closer too, so they don’t look as spaced out and more focused on the flower part rather than the simple plain green.
How could I develop this further? For my design, I would want to try and use mockups (and maybe even print) of the design onto mugs! This is because of the wrap-around shape it has, which makes it quite easy to wrap things around, along with being able to use the individual flowers as graphics for merchandise as stickers and such! This can also be done for the other designs since they use the same assets and general shape.
Would I revisit this in the future? Maybe not actually, since this seems like such a niche topic to work on, and the way I exacted this isn't exactly a deal and could be classed as sub-par to the usual work I am not hoping to produce. Let us see though.
To wrap it up, I like my design and other designs by tutors, I liked my other designs too especially V3 and I hope that one got accepted. Also, I'm sorry for all the missing photos in my older blog posts now, I may or may have accidentally dropped all of them and I do not know how to get them back so OOPS! But hey, if you really want the images, I can put them all back since I do have them, it will just take an exceptionally long time to re-add them
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