Final Critique

Stock was a very important part of this project because it added a lot to how the designs would turn out. The first impressions brought on by the texture of the business card is a vital part of my design choice. In addition I also decided to definitely use a hand-rendered font for the name on my business card because it showed the honesty of his personality. I looked at different finishing techniques I could use for my card, this included foiling and embossing which both I thought would work well to create an elegant design solution

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During this stage of my project I came across a very subtly textured maroon coloured stock which I thought fitted well with the emotional and deep side of Steinbeck. This colour also emitted a sense of professionalism as well because it was bold but in a stylish and underrated way.

After I had the business card sussed out, I needed to update my letterhead and compliment to suit its style. This wasn’t that difficult though I found that some of the transparent feature of the business card was difficult to translate onto a big piece of paper without it looking out of place.

Tutorial

After having a tutorial about the initial sketches I had drew, my tutor commented that the hand-drawn typography worked well to represent Steinbeck’s personality of being down-to-earth, human and realistic. Although my sketches of original business card designs wouldn’t be something he would want to represent himself as as he wasn’t a gimmicky sort of person. So I needed to go for a more honest card design, something that didn’t require fancy pop-up bits but instead was simpler. I then had the idea of having a 2 in 1 business card, maybe a double-sided one, which reflected his personal peaceful lifestyle and the other showing his professional novelist side.

My finalised meaning behind the two sides was that one would show his strong exterior and the other to reflect that he was a caring, emotional and compassionate human being. I wanted to use my business card to represent how John cared about the characters in his writing, how he took the time to understand through experiencing it himself. In addition, I wanted an exterior cover to protect the emotional business card, one which showed strength, determination and professionalism.

Starting Business Identity

With the 1^st project still ongoing and the 2^nd project just starting I knew I had to keep up to date with work, it was so difficult being motivated to do anything for the 2^nd project because I just wanted to carry on and finish the previous one but on some level it was also nice to have the choice to switch between the 2 projects so I didn’t get too bogged down with one of them.

I began my research of John Steinbeck, trying to get a feel for the type of person he was, his lifestyle and what he was best known for. I slowly became aware that I had too much research and was getting behind with actually coming up with ideas. I was really confused about which path to go down so at this point I just took a step back and did the simple thing of writing adjectives that I thought represented him well. I started looking at typography that would reflect 4 of the best adjectives because (I feel) this is my weakest area of graphic design. From this I started drawing out initial sketches of what typeface he might use for his business card. I decided to hand-draw my typeface as a starting point because I thought this fitted quite well with the fact that he was a novelist.

Secondly I began researching the shape and layout of business cards. I drew some innovative sketches of cards that may work, things like cards with a swivelling mechanism or ones which were transparent or a collection of cards that when put together revealed a bigger image.