Design Assessment - Blog Promotion

Here is the assessment piece for the design module. The idea was to produce an advertisement for our blogs. I was having some difficulty coming up with an idea, when I stumbled upon an old sketch I had. After playing around with it, particularly with the expression, the idea came to me. Although I am not much of a golfer, the idea is that golf is like Design. If all the elements and aspects are in balance and perfect alignment, it is magic, beauty in motion, and that is what Design is to me. It wasn't until I was about to ink the drawing that I started to think about where the type should go, and one I decided on putting it underneath, I knew that it had to be a newsprint cartoon. After that it was about making the lines appear imperfect, deciding where to put the shading and blacks and finding a texture of newsprint for the background.

As for the design rationale, I have positioned the character so the head sits on a third, and the hole lines up with another third grid line. The flag is pointing to the hole which helps to tell the story. A lot of design went into the actual character, trying to keep to some of the rules of animation design. Squash versus stretch which you can see most notably in the right outstretched arm, and the left side of the body vs. the right. Strong silhouette. Continuous flowing lines, which is notable in the neck to hands and neck to feet. The placing of blacks was about balance, with the shoes and the suspenders, and the only tricky part was the hat, which I was tempted to black in but decided for a darker shading instead. Balance was also a factor in determining the distance of the golfer to the hole and the ball being on the far side. Variety in proportions was also used, with a balance between medium, small and large, with the head, the chest and the legs.
The flow seems to work either reading down through the figure from the top left and then pointing to hole with the feet, or down through the flag to the hole and then back over the writing and back up the figure, in which case both work fine. I thought about flipping the picture so the character was on the other side, but the flow wasn't as strong.
As for the type, I thought the Baskerville Old Face suited the newsprint well and the lack of capitals was a design choice, going for a more spontaneous feel. As for positioning, it sits just below the line that runs from the feet to the hole.

Overall I was really happy with this piece. It was the first time I have played around with textured line work and trying to reproduce a specific style, in this case newsprint cartoons, and I think I pulled it off. The main idea is the artwork gets people's attention and the blog address at the bottom, almost like a signature draws them to see what it's all about.