Noir Magazine - Conceptual mazine and masthead design.
I must apologise for the lack of content here recently. As a design student now in my second year of my course (part time) I am pretty busy with homework a lot of the time. I hope to have a range of different tutorials up over the coming weeks though.
Not to mention photos and assignment pictures.
*** The above assignment features photography by yours truly. The image is one I took of up and coming singer, Katie Weston.
Coastal Woodlands... and not a vignette to be seen.
Vignettes, those wonderful dark edges in photos and artwork alike are the bane of my existance. Why? Because they are overused and they are used in the wrong flippin’ way.
Vignetting should never be used simply “because [you] can”. It should be used to increase the appeal of an image – providing that the image actually calls for for that sort of treatment. Unfortunately many photographers, including my very talented friends, are getting swept up in the evil power of vignettes.
THEY ARE VIGNETTING EVERYTHING.
Always, always, ALWAYS use vignetting sparingly. Think before you use it; “Will this make my image look better?”
Please note that a craptastic photo will always be a craptastic photo. You cannot make a silk purse out of a pigs ear and no amount of digital fucking-with (oops, I sworeded) will make a craptastic photo any better. Believe me, I have tried and tried. Many of my photographs have vignettes but these were all taken long before I learned precisely where vignettes should be applied.
Vignettes force focus to the centre of the image. If the main subject of your photograph is not towards the centre of the image, then for Gods sake, do not use a vignette.
This is something I have picked up from my studies at graphic design school. Product placement isn’t as naff as it sounds. The layout of an advertisement is done in many different ways to provoke many different reactions but all are done in such a way that the viewers eye are led through the image with no bumps or roadblocks to the important information contained therein.
The same also applies to photographs. If you’ve placed your subject to one side of the frame, if all the details are very close to the side of the frame, then you should not be using a vignette. The same goes with images which are absolutely saturated with colour. Do not vignette these. The impact is already there in the colour and hopefully in the image itself. Why add a vignette that will just make it murky at the edges? And why mess with people’s natural discovery of the image itself by forcing them to look into the middle of the photograph when the eye may well lead them there anyway, thus making them appreciate the picture even more for it’s entirety rather than just the bit in the middle? Seriously, if you’re going to add a vignette to an extremely colourful image, set the vignette layer to OVERLAY or SOFT LIGHT rather than leaving it on NORMAL or MULTIPLY blend modes in Photoshop. What this will do is darken the edges by saturating the colour without adding a murky black which kills the colour altogether.
And I have to add this… if your images are white or very light around the edges, for the love of all that is good and right with the world, don’t murky it up with a grey-black vignette. That’s just all sorts of wrong.
Of course, rules are meant to be broken, you can add vignettes to anything but seriously folks, think before you apply. Criticise your work – stand back from it, disassociate yourself from sentimental feeling and evaluate what you have done with it or what you want to do with is. Visualise, apply and, if it sucks, DELETE.
About the photos in this post:
These were taken in July 2009 in the front yard of a house situated just off the beach in Portsea. The light was so beautiful – it had just been pouring with rain and there was a break in the clouds that lasted just a couple of minutes, I just had to try and catch it.
Coastal Woodlands... and still no vignettes!
This began life as a design for a friend’s photography business however it seemed to take on a life of it’s own and by the time I finished the logo, it was nothing like what we had discussed or where I had initially wanted the design to go. So, to that end, I created a “fake” business (my apologies to any real photography businesses called “Blue Lotus”, if you like this we can talk) and let the design speak for itself rather than trying to make it fit a completely different concept.
The above, of course, is the front of the business card. I achieved a sort of “cool zen” with the colours and the minimalist design.
Sorry Tam! Soooo not what I was thinking for Talisman Photography.
For the the first part of the assignment, we had to design a logo. The second part was designing stationary; A4 letterhead and and letterhead follower, compliment slip, business card and business envelope.
PS – Illustrator causes me no end of heartache!
