_placards: digital process

1.) Initial Concept Sketches + Notes:

I toyed around with a number of different concepts during the initial stages of this placard project: where sushi is found, physical attributes of the dish, cultural associations, symbolism, etc. In the end, I decided to explore sushi in regards to its physical attributes and cultural associations.

2.) Image Collecting:
To get some idea of what kind of direction I wanted to push in for the placards, I began to simply collect as much imagery as I could find. The fact that the final placards were to be of a relatively small size, the process of collecting images I could use was much easier, and resulted in a larger cache of possible pictures I could use.
There weren't any real restrictions I set down for myself during this phase of the project - a lot of the images were related to my concepts, but some weren't. All in all, they helped me to brainstorm for possible solutions.



3.) Slicin' n' Rollin':
Question: So what can happen if you take an image and treat it like you might a piece of sushi? At this point, I began playing around with making slices of my selected imagery, and interweaving my icons into it.
Also, I printed out my three selected icons (temaki, maki, nigiri) onto sheets of vellum and cut them out, to give them a quasi-translucent quality. That way, when they are overlain on my images, some of the colors and hues could bleed through. It felt like a better thing to explore than the simple starkness of a black and white icon.






4.) Placards
Early drafts of my placards.








5.) Placard Revisions
At this stage, something I needed to seriously consider was how to integrate my type/copy writing. I scanned it some handwritten text of my selected words, and composed them digitally in Photoshop:


Placards with hand-generated type:




There were some problems with these first placards with hand type though - some of the writing felt too awkward (i.e. "cold"), and needed some refinement. I also adjusted some of the colors in the placards.

6.) Final Placards:
The final three placards I presented for final critique:



Notes, points for improvement from today's critique:

• Rework, refine "Raw" placard. Raw meat is somewhat illegible.
• Push more with type, such as in "Raw" or "Colorful."
• "Cold" - perhaps lighten image, to help with type's legibility.
• Think about how to make the type expressive. (ie. "cold" could be white?)