Throughout my journey as a graphic designer I have had one consistent client that continues to come back to utilise my services. Over the past three years I have produced a range of t-shirt designs, flyers and also a complete album for the band who are based in my local town of Blackburn.
I was recently approached by Ed, lead guitarist and band manager of Egos At the Door asking if I could complete a quick band related project for him. Despite a very heavy workload I decided to accept the brief as it for an established client and is only small making it a nice quick addition to my range of responsive projects.
The live brief set simply asked me to create a digital geometric pattern to fill the background and header of their 'Bandcamp' page. Currently, the design consists of dull, uninviting colours that create an aesthetic appearance which has no relevance to the band.
RESEARCH
The brief is very straight forward with what it is asking for and so there is no need to re-write the brief or develop a range of ideas. Therefore, to ensure that I move through the project quickly I immediately started collecting research into geometric patterns. Due to the nature of the brief collecting an informed body of research into geometry is an essential part of the project, not only will research help me to create an informed outcome, but it will also allow me to review a range of geometric patterns before creating my own.
Research Link - Link
OUTLINED PATTERN
Once I had completed my research into geometric patterns I started progressing with the project by outlining the pattern from which I will work from to create the briefs response. Initially, I wanted to create my own pattern so that the one featured on the bands site is original. However, after assessing the timescale which I had to complete the project along side work accumulating from other projects I decided that creating my own pattern was implausible.
In response to deciding not to create my own geometric pattern I decided to choose one of the patterns reviewed in my project research. Numerous patterns were reviewed from the book 'Islamic Patterns' by Keith Critchlow, therefore I decided to outline a geometric composition from the selection of pages reviewed.
The image below documents the chosen pattern which was outlined due to the various pointed star shapes which look almost like small explosions. Egos At The Door have a very sporadic, explosive way of playing songs so the pattern seemed to represent their music quite well.
DIGITAL DEVELOPMENT
Once I had outlined the pattern I stated developing the outcome digitally using Adobe Illustrator to create a vectorised version of the featured pattern.
Vector shapes were used to create the pattern that was formed from the symmetrical placement of hexagons and squares.
CLIENT CONTACT
While progressing with the patterns production I took a screen shot to send to the client so they could see how the illustration was progressing. Having an on going dialogue with the client also allowed me to assess the success of the chosen idea before progressing with its production any further.
After creating the pattern the line weight was increased before the pattern was cropped making it appropriate for tiling. The reasoning behind this decision lies with the function of the Bandcamp website, if a background image is uploaded and it is too small the image will be tiled to fit the size of the screen. Therefore, by making the pattern appropriate for tessellation if the background is tiled then no aesthetic problems should arise.
After creating the pattern I tested it on the Egos At The Door Bandcamp webpage to see if it fit. Unfortunately, the pattern did not fit the screen size and so was tiled leaving a small white gap. The client specifically wanted to avoid this, so despite the fact the illustration tiles accurately I decided to re-size the pattern.
The project underwent a process of trial and error until the pattern was large enough to not get tiled when uploaded to the Bandcamp webpage.
After finalising and uploading the background pattern I progressed with creating the banner for the page. The client specified that they also wanted the banner to be patterned to fit with the aesthetic of the page. Therefore when creating the banner design I simple re-used the geometric pattern created and changed the colours slightly.
The banner dimensions were available on the Bandcamp website, therefore when creating the design I started by making a base shape that fit the given dimensions exactly.
Once complete the banner was added to the Egos At The Door Bandcamp webpage to finish the brief.
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