The Illustrator Success

Hurrah for last night! I managed to install Illustrator on a 30 day trial, and after much experimentation of colour ways, shape, form, expressions …. I have produced a group of characters. Although these characters have not (yet) been individually named, they can collectively be known as ‘the sustainable crew’ or ‘the sustainability crew’. I haven’t quite decided which one yet. The characters were inspired by the ones which I have analysed within my sketchbook, yet also inspired by more natural forms such as leaves, stones, and trees – making sure that they connote a sense of the environment, in order to coincide with the theme of sustainability. Each character is a different colour / shade. The main palette is earthy; browns and greens.

After creating the characters, I experimented with a suitable backdrop for these. I knew from the outset that I wanted some sort of paper, because I wanted to show the assimilation between the fact that, yes - this was a digital submission, but at the same time I am discussing issues to do with paper, and the reuse of resources – therefore to have a paper backdrop seemed very apt. I initially experimented with a square paper, much like that seen in maths books. However I decided that this detracted from my theme, as it did remind me more of mathematics than anything else. I then tried for of a chequered backdrop – this worked to an extent, particularly behind one of the characters as the colour scheme was spot on. However, I had to consider this with text on top of it, and I inevitably decided that this was not going to be suitable, as it would be too challenging for the eyes.

I then tried a lined paper which I acquired from FLCKR. This worked really well, yet the image became quite pixilated when I increased the size of it, therefore I decided that this simply wouldn’t be effective enough or to a suitable standard. I was also concerned that, because there were specific lines on the page, this would mean that my text should be in line with these, which would be very difficult to achieve. In order to overcome this, I used the live trace system on Illustrator. This produced a solid white piece of paper. I then had to fill the hole punched sections in with the same colour as my backdrop – which I decided should be brown. I then began to insert my text into this, which was a very lengthy process. I ensured that there was at least one character on each page, to break up the text.

What next?

I will experiment with the finer details, for example page numbers, borders and margins. I will also see whether it is more visually intriguing to change either the colour of the plain paper, or the colour of the backdrop throughout the report, in order to add a bit of variation and diversity.