My manifesto is a battle cry to inspire me when things get tough. The goal was to develop a typographic piece that would inspire me to persevere and that would capture my ethos as a designer. This was then included in the hero section of my first attempt at building a website along with a series of iterative pieces on a simple object (my group selected pencils) and a typographic piece featuring the lyrics of one of my favourite songs.
It can be easy to get discouraged as a designer and to overlook the little steps towards progress. There will be lots of obstacles ahead and plenty of learning moments. Therefore, I wanted to create a visual reminder of what really matters to help me along the way. This must feature in a simple webpage alongside additional illustrations and typographic pieces.
I have created an illustrative and typographic piece stating “It’s the process that’s impressive”. This will provide me with encouragement when I’m struggling to find solutions to problems or to come up with that brilliant concept, that it’s the struggle that I’m learning from and not the end result. I should always be grateful for the progress I’m making no matter how small it seems. I was also able to combine this with the additional illustrative and typographic pieces to create a balanced and cohesive webpage.
I began my research by reading inspirational books, articles and re-watching some of my favourite motivational talks. My biggest influences when developing my manifesto were Earl Williams, Albert Einstein and Napoleon Hill. I also took time to explore a variety of design movements to help provide me with a creative direction.
Above is a mind map that I created on non-project specific ideas including a number of my interests. I used this to help me to consider a wider variety of areas to explore and draw influence from when writing my manifesto and considering the visual composition.
In the above mood board, I have included a number of visuals that I found helpful in the development of this project. These include items taken from various art and design movements including Surrealism, Minimalism and Baugasm. I also included fun and interesting design outcomes found on Pinterest and in magazines.
I was able to draw from the above-mentioned influences to consider different approaches of how to present the text including typography choices, scale and colour. I also drew inspiration from my non-project specific research.
I produced a number of sketches presenting ideas on typeface choices and placing emphasis on the word “process”. I also considered alignment, horizontal and vertical text placement and the inclusion of background patterns.
Above are the first series of outcomes I created. They focus on the background design which I felt drew too much attention away from the text. I did however like the idea of the first three outcomes displayed above being shown in a series with moving backgrounds.
I really liked the second set of iterations I created. The idea was to present the concept of process by layers of torn pages. Each new page represents another attempt at reaching a goal or final outcome. I carried this concept through to the song lyrics typographic piece and started to form mock-ups for the webpage. I struggled to create the torn paper effect at a quality level I was happy with so I decided to go “back to the drawing board”.
My final set of iterations drew from the layers concept established in my second set of iterations. I began by attempting to present the layers behind the typography however this revealed too little of the effect. I then brought in the concept of a lightbulb as the lightbulb is often associated with enlightenment, inspiration and eureka moments. I was very pleased with the effect and carried the colour palette through to my illustrations and typographic pieces. You can find the final outcome of my first website including my manifesto on GitHub.
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