Breaking down designs to their versatile basics: Session 1
This is for those people who want versatile design ideas, I'll find designs on merch or other POD sites (preferably ones that'd sold before) and break them down to a general idea or guideline/steps that could have resulted in that design or others like it.
e.g. Design <broken down> "Text invites you to do a thing wearer enjoys. Picture is of an exaggerated whimsical version of the thing"
None of these designs are mine, and if it wasn't too much hassle I would have just linked the image by itself.
Take a thing and visually simplify it, to the extent that someone looking at it wouldn't necessarily know what it was, but that makes sense once you see the title. Optional: Elements of repetition, made of basic shape/s repeated, gradient color.
e.g. Table shape w/ legs coated in black & white stripes, and maybe the suggestion of a head and neck. Title: "Savannah prison horse" It's a zebra.
Green blocks on top of longer thinner brown blocks. Red triangles everywhere. Title: "Smoky's nightmare". Result: banned from Amazon. 'smoky the bear' is protected IP. You FOOL! ...
Title: 'The trees were cold' Better!
Take a shape, in this case a circle, and have one or more elements that conform to that shape (red sun and white band). Have the background elements not conform to the shape. Pick a thing that's roughly symmetrical so it doesn't unbalance the shape (or make sure it's balanced asymmetry, coffee cup balanced by more smoke on other side etc) and make it the main idea or focus of the design e.g. a mountain, cup of coffee, butterfly, hands praying. In this design the mountain might look unbalanced if you just see that the smoke goes to one side, but the shadow on the lower left of the mountain provides balance. Balance is an option, not a rule. Add some kind of texture across the entire thing, like it was printed on fabric, leaves, rocks, scales, make it look worn or distressed. Finally, add a word or sentence in a non-English language with appropriate font to give it 'depth' and extra meaning. Is doing elvish font from LOTR bannable? careful with things like that.
e.g. Primary circle shape, with sub-shape circular elements, featuring a fist and "fingers hug each other" written in Japanese. Title: "Digital hug"
Take a thing, and visually break part of it it down to the basic idea or shape of the thing. A hand where some of it you draw/paint (optional: in the style of old medical illustrations) and the fingers are twigs. "Take a thing, and make part of it out of other things".
Feel free to do your own here (that would be great), or tell me how I messed up the deconstruction of a design. What did you like, what did you disagree with? how would you have broken down these designs to a guide others can use to make their own original works.
He's a challenge: Take an existing design and break it down to the basics, a little like I have.
'Unicorn in a chair reading a book with some meaningful text'? your design is a bear riding a unicycle and partaking in some activity...maybe he's writing a letter. Your text has a different emotion or idea behind it that fits your image. Your version is NOT a different unicorn reading a different looking book, with basically the same words (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!). That's not what this process is about at all.
This will do for a start. I might do another in the future sometime.
Are the titles I came up with 'my IP' now? unless someone else already owns them.
'prison horse', 'digital hug', and 'the trees were cold'. I don't know if such short combinations of words are protectable. If they are it'd be good to know. If they're my IP now, I hearby release them into the public domain so that anyone can use them. Same goes for the rough design ideas I gave as examples.
Posted Jul 3, 2018, 8:43 AM UTC · edited