Design for Digital Media

The first mini-project tasked us with the redesigning of a local business' logo, as well as the creation of a style guide that would instruct its appropriate use.

The new logo design I created features a much more minimalist and compact design, with modern typography as well as a simply white and turquoise colour contrast. It was designed in Adobe Illustrator using a combination of vector tracing and geometric construction.

The reason for the simplicity of the design is because this enables vast options of use as black and white silhouettes, which are outlined in the style guide. It also outlines the non-permitted uses and changes to the logo, such as size distortion and colour changes, in order to mirror professional practices.

The second assignment was focused on the creation of web banners for Absolut Vodka. The name of my campaign is Absolut Nostalgia, because it nods to the sense of childhood for the audience through references to animation movies, such as UP!, Shrek, Finding Nemo and Cars.

Each web banner features anthropomorphisation of various characters or items from each of those movies, using the Absolut vodka bottle to reflect on the main characters as certain personalities. Both Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator were used using vector tracing, as well as image composition to provide as much detail and life to the designs as possible.

The third mini-project featured a shift to television production, with the assignment of creating channel idents for a concept documentary television channel. My channel concept was called Military Chronicles, a military history project which would focus on ages of conflict during various points of human history.

As part of this, we were responsible for creating a logo, outlining its themes with a military style font and an army star. Each ident points attention to various ages of history, such as medieval warfare, the age of colonialism, 20th century warfare, and modern military capabilities. The intention of this is to point to the diversity of warfare that would be covered on the channel.

All designs were created using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, with the use of vector tracing, geometric construction and image composition to create lively designs that encapsulate the dominant theme of military history — the hunt for power and dominance.

In the final assignment, we were asked to compile the previous skills learned into a multimedia campaign for a concept entertainment festival. This was a great chance to not only consolidate on what we created previously, but to also compose something fresh and unique.

My concept for a festival was one of classical music in the Spanish capital of Madrid due to links with traditional architecture. The cultural links with Madrid are reflected throughout in various artifacts produced, which include the logo, posters, web banners, livestream thumbnails, tickets and merchandise. This allowed to promote not only classical music as a medium of beauty and imagination, but also the city of Madrid as a place where tradition and modern entertainment can collide.

The entire module has brought many opportunities at consolidating my previous knowledge of using Adobe Photoshop, with acquiring new knowledge of using Illustrator and InDesign. Furthermore, we also learned about the technical parameters of the artifacts created, because not only the creative elements help spread the message, but also a high technical quality of the image.

It is also important to highlight that throughout our works we investigated different ways of visual and textual alignment that are successful in connoting meaning. Therefore, I believe that this module was a great introduction to multimedia design that considers intelligence in creativity and technicality.