PPRD #2 alice in wonderland.

ALICE IN WONDERLANDFor my live brief, I was asked by the company, Direct Theatre School to dezign their leaflet for their new adaption of Alice in Wonderland that will be performed at The Life Centre, on the 23rd and 24th March. For this brief, I will be in contact with the 2 directors and owners of the company, Peter Courtenay and Juliette Malan. Throughout, they will be letting me know which direction they want the design to go in to help me create a piece of work that they think will communicate the correct message about their adaption. They are looking to have the flyer design done within about 4-5 weeks to get a good amount of time to tweak it and make it just the way they want it to reflect their adaption of the performance appropriately. This is where I can use my wide range to technical and handmade skills to produce the right piece of work. They plan to produce around 5000 flyers to distribute all around Bournemouth to promote the production as much as possible as well as for their business. The flyers will aslo be featured in the 160 printed programmes of their production which will be sold to members of the audience.

RESEARCHINGAs I know exactly what they are after, I can now start doing some research and look into other pieces of work people have created around the movie and story of alice in wonderland. Because they are very specific of what they are after in the way of the format of the design, my research is refined to what is relevant to create this sort of design. Below, you can see poster designs, textures and typography used for the

movie poster designs of Alice in Wonderland. They all seem to be very digital and detailed which really gives the posters that realistic feel to them and makes them very whimsical and fairytale-like. The things in these designs that seemed to catch my eye were these really nice textures which gave me an idea to use in my own design for the flyer. Seeming as Peter and Juliette like the format with the keyhole, it makes the design simple and

very nice to work around. One thing I need to work around with this design is the header and footer they want to insert above and below the design, rather than it just on its own. This is an element of the flyer I will have to try and fit around the design when I come to it.

Above: Poster design for Alice In Wonderland with keyhole design.

Here, are images I found on the Alice In Wonderland movie that display interesting textures in the background and really nice images I can definitely gain inspiration from. The crazy wallpapers displayed behind the subjects on the left are very nice and would definitely make for a great backdrop for my flyer design. The thing i really like about them is the grungy feel of them which give it a really different spin on the original plot of alice in wonderland.

ISOTYPE DESIGN STYLEIsotype design is a style of design you see everywhere in day to day life wether your on the road looking for directions, to the instruction manuals you get with your flatpack drawers. The reason I decided to have a look at isotype designs for my project is that I am trying to communicate my flyer to a very wide range of ages and audiences who are interested in seeing the show. Communicating the correct message to my audience is the most important thing I have to achieve in this brief. I need to make sure I am making this appealing to all ages. Simple isotype graphics achieve the message they need to convey sucessfully, everyday. I really like this style of making it a very simple but effective graphic piece. Communicating my message like this will be very hard however just taking simple elements of this style will work very well with my flyer.

ANTHONY BURRILLLooking at effective graphic design that I could take inspiration from for my brief, I chose to have a good look at Anthony Burrill’s work. Anthony’s work varies from purely typographic pieces, very hand-made processes, to using typography and imagery with eachother His design pieces communicate a very simple typographic message with minimalistic graphic images which work hand in hand together. His pieces work very well much like the isotype pieces I looked at previously. Anthony Burrill’s designs, much like isotype design, communicate to all audiences as it is simple to understand. He plays upon the purpose of isotype which contains very simple and almost generic messages. Using a very similar sort of style, he has been able to play upon this.

DESIGNS AND SKETCHESSo I started to produce some quick sketches and scamps to get a good idea of how lay out my designs in the way of typography and layout for the leaflet. One thing I really want to get an idea for is the imagery inside the keyhole. I’ve been experimenting with a few designs for it which look good and are appropriate for the flyer. One important element of the design is the typography and for it not to get lost in the entire design.

Small landscape design idea for imagery inside keyhole.

Here, I have started to work on the typographical design for the flyer. So I decided to have a look at the original Alice In Wonderland Typeface and work off it to gain some ideas of how to tweak the design and make it fit the imagery and theme appropriately.

Above, are a couple of ideas on typography and how lay out the type alongside the imagery design inside the keyhole.

So after gaining a good grip of how I could lay out my typography alongside the image, I then decided to start creating a digital sketch of how I could make all of them link in together to produce a really great typographical piece. To the right, you can see I have layed out the typography ontop of the top part of the keyhole, not to get in the way of any imagery I want to place inside the keyhole. The text is diplayed in 3 seperate lines, one line for each word in the title to make it nice and easy to read. The typography is based of the original type in the film to give it almost the same feel in these posters as the adaption of their production is very similar to this. The general layout of the design is very simple to make the message easy to communicate and not to over-crowd the leaflet with unnecessary information.

CREATING DIGITAL DESIGNSCreating the digital design for the flyer, I have decided to create as you can see a very simple idea to start off with, using basic tchniques to produce an effective final product. Starting with the textured backdrop, I decided to take inspiration from the previous Alice In Wonderland movie posters. The reason for this is that I really liked

the grungey, worn feel, as if the posters were telling a different story to the original and putting a darker twist on it.I havent used it in the exact same way for this design, instead I made it slightly brighter to make it appeal to a wider audience such as young children and families however I really wanted to keep that dark feeling to it, so

I did. Creating the typography, I managed to find a font online which was very similar to the movie font. Using this font I played around with it and tweaked it untill I was happy with it. In the way of a first draft I am really happy with it and hope my clients are too.

CREATING TYPOGRAPHYAa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx

Yy Zz

Creating the typography for the flyer, I looked around online to think about what sort of typeface i need to make it link in with the story of Alice In Wonderland. Looking on various font websites, I found a copyright free typeface. Using this font I decided to alter it to fit my preference and to make it fit in with my graphics a bit better. I edited the font using adobe illustrator to manipulate certain aspects of the typeface. I did a few simple things such as warping a few of the caracters and extending or shortening serfis to make certain letters fit together a bit better. Through doing this I have made the font a bit more unique to the flyer.

CREATING IMAGERYThis is the first finalized draft I sent my clients of the flyer imagery. Looking at the image they responded to it by suggesting maybe something a little brighter and happy, however keeping the same sort of style of the image. Elements in the image such as the darkened grey sky and the dead tree branch makes this image quite spooky giving off a feel of mystery and darkness however not particularly appealing to my target audience of a family production. Making easy corrections such as possibly creating less ominous elements and brightening up the sky can make the image more interesting to a family audience. This is what I want to achieve in my next draft.

This is my second draft, as you can see I have kept the landscape of the castle and hills. However, I have gotten rid of the tree branch and mushroom that was set in the foreground. Instead of these elements I have chosen to produce a graphic of ribbons, representing the Mad Hatter’s ribbons on his hat. I have also made the sky much brighter in the image. This will make my graphic look much less intimidating and spooky to make it seem more appealing to my target audience. I think this draft is a great development from my previous. Gaining some advice from my fellow piers they told me that this link to the ribbons on the Hatter’s hat may be slightly too tenuous and that the audience may not understand it.

above: vector graphics of close-up details which make up the essence of the overall graphic.

Creating the imagery for the flyer I have used Adobe Illustrator to create simple and effective graphics for the keyhole. Creating the keyhole shape was the first thing I wanted to get right to lay a good solid foundation to the design, from there I have created the landscape which simply makes up hills of grass which the sky and clouds above to give it a very dream-landish feel. Having this initial design for the flyer gave me a good starting point and sending it to my clients will determine if they are happy with the outcome of the graphic so far, if not then changes can easily be made withing illustrator.

This is the final draft tothe Alice In Wonderland Flyer that my clients are happy with. To make the final tweaks to the flyer, we met up in person to go through what could be changed and what could be kept. As I was already aware, they wanted me to add a border to the flyer with information such as the location, date and time of the shows for the top, then the website and telephone number where tickets can be booked, on the bottom of the page. In the way of imagery, I created extra elements to the landscape such as the teapots and railings to make it link in that little bit more with the storyline. Another thing I have added was a stopwatch in the bottom right hand corner. I really think this adds quite well

to the design as it makes it seem more three dimensional rather than it just being a flat page. With the typography of the flyer, they were happy with the overall style however they wanted to make the text seem much brighter to stand out on the page. This is where I went with choosing a yellowish colour to link in with the existing colours on the flyer to compliment eachother. Making it a yellow colour, I wanted to make it a bit more interesting so I gave it a bit of life with some texture by giving it this sort of metal feel. My clients also wanted me to add a little bit more information to the title with a sub heading with reads “A New Adaption By Peter Courtenay And Juliette Malan” which was an easy change. Adding the sub-heading

I made it fit appropriately with the existing typography and it works very nicely against it. After the small changes, i then made a few more little touches of my own, adding gradients where I thought would look appropriate, to lead the eye to certain points of the image and small touches to the text to make it stand away from the graphics a little more.

CREATING THE BACKDROPCreating the backdrop for the flyer, I used Adobe Photoshop to create an interesting backdrop that will be appropriate for the graphics. I initially use an image of a stopwatch I created in illustrator. I then warped this image to create an interesting backdrop using textures and appropriate colour themes to make it fit well. The inspiration was from the Alice In Wonderland movie posters I previously researched to make it seem quite urban and grungey.

EVALUATION AND FINAL PIECEThe brief was to create a flyer to promote the adaption of Alice In Wonderland by Peter Courtenay and Juliette Malan that will be performed at The Life Center in Bournemouth on the 23rd and 24th of March. To to this I started off with a meeting with the clients to discuss what they wanted out of the flyer design in the way of what message they wanted to send, and what sort of design they wanted. The message of the flyer, they wanted it to be able to communicate to a family audience, making the show enjoyable and suitable for adults and children. By doing this they didn’t want the design to be too dark and spooky however still keep that feel to it at the same time. To do this I suggested using brighter colours and a simple design so the flyer communicates to a variety of ages. Coming to a design, they had a very simple idea which was a good starting point for myself, It was a very simple image of a keyhole and the title running through it. They also displayed me images from previous adaptations of the story which they really liked and wanted theyre flyer to communicate. From here, ideas stemmed whilst I was working through initial stages of the design, sketching simple layouts and image ideas I could use. I produced a digital design which fitted their needs and then got feedback from my clients via email. This way I knew that they were happy with the designs and could give me direction if they wanted to alter anything in an easy way. Producing the digital design was created on Illustrator and some desired textures, on Photoshop. Once I produced the designs I then proceeded to lay out all of my elements in InDesign to produce my final product as professionally as I could, leaving the required bleeds and marks to make the printer’s job as easy as I possibly could. I think I have done a good job creating a great product for my clients that is professional and something they are happy with. On a whole, this brief has been a great chance for me to work with professional clients and get my work out there.

The following are pages from the Direct Theatre School web page to advertise their production online, displaying the flyer design.

Here are some of my flyer designs being displayed as posters at the show on the 23rd March on the front of The Life Centre. in A5 and A2 which fit quite nicely as a poster design aswell as a flyer design.

BY JAMES STONE