Shoreditch

Posted on March 2, 2016 by Jess Claxton

The tattoo studio is based in the Shoreditch area of London.

Map of Shoreditch within London

Shoreditch is an inner city district within the East End of London and Central London, within the London Borough of Hackney.

“A triangle of influences have made Shoreditch into one of London’s most distinctive and unusual areas. To the East, Bangla-town and Brick Lane – London’s celebrated curry mile – are a riot of smells and colours from the Indian sub-continent. In the West, the looming towers of Liverpool Street and the City represent the world’s most concentrated area of money-making talent, where a number of sophisticated business hotels have sprung up. And right in the middle of it all is Spitalfields market, a citadel of the working classes and home of the cockney music hall tradition. The result is an area where trendy bars sit next to cut-price Bangladeshi restaurants, where artists and fashionistas from Hackney and Shoreditch make their own clothes with fabrics from sari shops, and traditional cockney butchers share space with exclusive delicatessens.”

– – LondonTown.com

Since the mid 90s, Shoreditch has become a popular and fashionable part of London, often combined with the neighbouring area of Hoxton, there has been considerable gentrification in the area with the rise of property and land prices. The area has become popular with London-based web technology companies, for example last.fm, Dopplr, Songkick, SocialGO and 7digital. Since the gentrification of the area, many creative industry companies have moved in, transforming old industrial buildings into offices and flats.

Shoreditch has since become synonymous with the term ‘hipster’, with trendy bars and cafes as well as vintage shops and clothing.

With this information I will look at creating a logo for the tattoo studio that has a ‘hipster’ feel to it that would be obvious that it had its roots in Shoreditch.

Solar system research

Posted on December 8, 2015 by Jess Claxton

Before I properly came to making my website and app I wanted to research into the solar system to find out more about the planets for information that could help me with the design of my webpages and app as well as for any information that I could use for my infographic. I found some facts about the planets on this website. I thought that the facts in the drop down menu under ‘Planets and the Sun’ would be interesting to have as information on my designs. I picked to use the surface area of the planet, its’ mass, length of a day, temperature and its equatorial radius as I thought that these would be easiest to understand for a teenager/young adult to understand.

The image above is the main information that I used when making my website and app. These were the crucial parts of information that I needed to get the sizing of the planets right as well as to make sure that I bent the grid enough that it would be similar to that of real life.

I also wrote down the order that the planets go in by mass, as in the image above I wrote them down in order.

Largest mass -> smallest mass

Sun, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, Earth, Venus, Mars, Mercury, Pluto

(Although I didn’t include Pluto in the designs)

The Theory of Relativity

Posted on December 8, 2015 by Jess Claxton

Initially I had no idea what the theory of relativity was so I researched into it. I looked for simple examples or explanations for kids to help me understand. This is a website that helped me start to grasp the idea of the theory. Although I still didn’t fully understand the theory I liked the way that this was laid out in a simple and entertaining way, and resembled a comic book strip. I felt that this was something that I might try and replicate in my own designs.

From my initial research I understood that the theory, in some way, related to space. Space is something that I am fairly interested in, and so thought that this was something that I could develop into a solid idea.

Circus Typeface?

Posted on October 18, 2015 by Jess Claxton

After thinking more about the typeface that I had designed and particularly liked, which I had originally thought would go well with a deck of cards, I began thinking that it may work for a circus theme and could possibly advertise a circus – this would fulfil the suitable example part of the brief. Therefore, I started to research into typefaces used by the circus.

I googled ‘circus font’ and found a selection of fonts that could be associated with the circus. Many are very extravagant and are almost always in a serif font. Below is a selection of fonts that can be associated with the circus:

These fonts all seem to be serif fonts and include extra parts that stick out the letter. As I said before these fonts all seem to be rather extravagant which fits with the idea and themes of the circus, which is over the top and dramatic. I would like to try and recreate this in a type but maybe play it down slightly to create a more modern circus themed/advertisement font.

I also noticed that circus’, and clowns in particular, are associated with the diamond shape which I had used before in my first couple of designs – which led me to playing cards. I would like to continue using this in my designs as this, at the moment, has the clear connection between my typeface and the circus – although I would like to further create this bond by maybe making the serifs more extravagant and in fitting with the fonts above.

Playing cards typeface?

Posted on October 18, 2015 by Jess Claxton

My first thought when I did the initial design of my typeface was that it reminded me greatly of playing cards, and the suits – hearts, clubs, spades and diamonds. I, therefore, decided to look into playing cards, the designs they use, as well as the suits and the shapes used.

Most English-language deck of cards use either the same serif font or, less commonly, the same sans serif font.

I was particularly interested in, somehow, incorporating the symbols of the suits into my typeface. Originally, I had used the diamonds as a cut out in the thick stroke of each letter. I decided to play around with the positioning of the symbol more, as I felt that, although the diamond works in that place the other symbols are more complicated and so might require more space, otherwise they may look squashed.

Below is an image of a couple of designs that I came up with to figure out where I could place the suit symbols:

I feel that the first and the last ‘C’, where the suit symbol is inside the thick stroke are too squashed and you cannot clearly see what is inside it. For example, the clubs and the spades symbol is fairly similar and when it is written in a small size they look very similar. I also think that as spades and clubs are a black suit there is less colour to the type and so it would look less like a cut out and just like part of the letter which I do not want.

The other three, in my opinion, work better as they have more space and you can clearly see which suit is which, however I am still not happy with a) the colour of the clubs and the spades as I think that it would be too much black and I would like to add a little bit of colour to my typeface, and b) I don’t feel that it would look good in a font as a whole as I am not sure where I would place the suit symbol in letter that are not rounded and don’t have a centre bit.

I decided to focus mainly on trying to design the letter ‘A’, ‘J’, ‘K’ and ‘Q’, for ‘ace’, ‘jack’/’joker’, ‘king’ and ‘queen’. I thought that if I use these designs I would scan these main letters into the computer and use vectors to create my font in Adobe Illustrator and then place it on to a playing card so my product would be a deck of cards. These are my main four letters:

I think that they need some work done to them as I am still not sure on the serifs on the letters and the overall shape of the ‘K’ but I think that they are in a good place to start.

I would still like to test out the idea of using the diamond shape in the letters, and maybe inside the curved letters as I think that this idea looked quite good in my first attempt and I would like to see where this could go.