development of final stencils

I have decided that I need to make these shapes instead of live tracing them. The edges of live tracing architectural features are coming out too textured and too rough. I got lucky with the previous stencil ideas that I created.  I am going to create the patterns by tracing the architectural features myself with the pen tool .Only this way will I get a stencil that I am completely happy with. I can fully control the design of the stencil using this process.

I do not want symmetrical perfect symbols as this would create a corporate image, instead I want quite a free flowing set of stencils that have broken lines and odd unsymmetrical shapes. 

This is starting to look much stronger now as a stencil idea.  

Through deleting one of the sides I have created a much more abstract shape that is unrecognizable as a pillar. Now, the shape looks like a stencil that is ready to be used to make printed imagery onto the building. 

With this one that I have already made and put into a design, I actually don’t think it is too bad. It has not got too man sharp edges and corners and is rather abstract. However, I will remake it so that I can make all of the lines smooth and make a stencil that is easier to create and use. I need to remember that this stencil will be actually used, therefore I also need to make sure that it can be used as a stencil. 

I am experimenting with a few places to get a pattern from this building. I am experimenting with different ways of highlighting the shapes without being overly obvious about what they are. I particularly like it when I am just looking at the shadow of the textures and patterns, and so this is what I am going to focus on when exploring stencil ideas. 

This stencil I have created is pretty powerful. There is a subtle depth of field, trickery with perspective which I quite like. 

Again, I am tracing around shadows of the building, however this one is not going as successfully. 

This is the pattern of the top of one of the roofs. I quite like it, and I think that to turn this into a stencil, I am going to take the drop shadow of the circle centers and the background sky to make the solid colour of the stencil, and the actual brick I will make the negative space. 

This hasn’t worked so well. I think that the shapes need to be isolated, and not be contained in a squared off background. Therefore I am going to try other areas of this image to vector. 

I am really struggling with this shape. The problem is that I cant create a shape with circles cut out of the centre because then it is not a stencil that works, the middles will fall out. I need to rethink it, so I am going to move onto another stencil design and come back to it. 

I am quite excited by the prospect of making a stencil out of this one. It  should be quite fun to make and it is a bold shape this is going to stand out. 

This is my first attempt at the shape. I have done it so that the x is not immediately obvious, and just highlighted the shadows. It think it is fairly effective  and when the texture is applied so that it looks like it has been applied to a wall surface, I think it will look most effective, but I am also going to try it where I have the whole shapes in the image rather than just the pattern, as I can delete areas of the stencil when I create the textured wall patterns. 

This is much more successful, it is bolder and more confidently produced. It will make an interesting wall pattern. I will apply a heavy grain on this image when creating patterns. 

This is another really nice simple pattern that I have found. I am going to do a similar thing to what I have done with the previous stencil idea, however this time I am going to make the stencil out of the light areas, this way I wont be creating shapes with holes in the center that will fall out. 

This is a successful stencil. Its bold and striking and should look great when I put it on a building as a pattern. Also, the rough edges and almost childlike construction of line reflects my concept well. 

This is a pattern on a medieval building. It is quite stereotypical of historical building pattern and is something that I was thinking about staying away from, as I want the stencils that I create to have a quirky and fresh feel to them. However, after looking at this, I think that if I inverted it so that the stencils were made out of the white zones then I would have a stencil that was a little bit different but still reflective of this building surface design. 

I quite like how it is not straight and parallel  and that the corners have slight curves. Again I believe that this is going to make a very interesting pattern when I come to designing final building surface patterns.

This pattern is also quite interesting. The stencil here is pretty much done for me. I just need to turn the black areas into a vector shape. 

These are the 3 patterns that I have got from this, but I think I need to neaten up the shapes before I use them and call them a final stencil idea. Either that, or I just focus upon one shape.

I have decided upon one shape that I will use as a final stencil. It is very simple, but on a large scale I think it could work. 

It is fairly obvious what I need to do here to make a stencil out of this pattern. I am going to trace over the centres of these bricks, and then the pattern that is created above the brickwork that is highlighted by the sky I will also turn into a vectored shape. Then I will see if I need to do anything with the brick that is underneath. 

I have done that idea, and I think that it definitely needs the lower part, or it needs more of the top part of the stencil. I will try both ideas. 

After playing about with both ideas, I have decided that this is the successful design, as the others either look too obviously like the original pattern, or the line underneath actually looked like a face. 

So, now I have a set of final stencils. I am going to start using these final stencils and turn them into patterns that could be created by the artists who I propose should use these. 

Further pattern development- stencil creation

I need to start to give the patterns that I am creating some structure. I have worked out my intentions for the general feel of the patterns for the building. They will be repeat patterns using one stencil. The stencil can be overlapped, tessellated  rotated etc, (not scaled as I think this would get confusing and also it would be unpractical to have more than one stencil size). I need to think about the actual quality of the stencils. They have to have a rough edge to them. I do not want them to be clean geometric shapes. I want them to look rough and ready, unpolished. 

This is an attempt at creating a stencil for pattern creation. It is a pattern that I found on one of the historic buildings in Fargo Village- a piece of roof detailing.  I quite like the roughness of the lines. It has been created by fine tuning the live trace tool in illustrator. I think that it could do with neatening up a little but overall I like the texture and overall rough and ready quality it has. I am going to experiment with using it as a symbol to create patterns. 

This is looking very interesting. I like the intricacy of the pattern. Perhaps this is something that I will explore in the final pattern designs? Perhaps the patterns could be very beauitiful, intricate things and the stencil that is used to construct them be very small?

I am starting to think now about how these stencils can be produced as final objects. I have recreated this stencil. I have now taken into consideration that it is in fact a stencil and cannot be composed of elements which have elements inside them (obveously because they would fall out of the stencil). I have also heavily simplified the stencil. I inverted the image so that I could get a trace of the negative. This has produced a more interesting symbol. I like the fact that they are hard to tell what they actually are an image of. 

These patterns with this new symbol are working really well. i created a repeat pattern that I then made into strips. These strips have been overlapped with interesting results. I still like the idea of creating stencils for the numbering of the warehouses. I think that this is an idea that is going to continue through the development of the project. 

Now that I have a way of using the stencils, I am going to construct the final stencil ideas. 

Initial ideas for new, textural patterns

Above is the piece of architecture that I am going to use to be inspired to create my first initial pattern. Now, my attention turns to making patterns that have a repeated quality to them and also more of a handmade finish. I do not want these patterns to be clean in design as I have already made this mistake in previous ideas and the consequence was that the patterns looked too corporate. 

I do quite like where this is going. It is just a really quick, unrefined idea where I have taken the image and repeated it. I quite like the roughness to the image. I quite like it as an initial concept, I could imagine a refined version of this across the wall of one of the warehouses in Fargo Village. 

Here, I am just experimenting with layering of the pattern I have made over the image of the warehouse, in a similar fashion to the collages of Corinne Wasmuht. It is an initial concept of how I could possibly layer the patterns onto the buildings. Perhaps, when I give a stencil to an artist, I could suggest that instead of covering the whole wall of a warehouse they just cover a small section of the warehouse wall? This way, I could define that patterns like the above are created. Also, look at the number in the middle right of the warehouse just bleeding off the edge of the page. The image has been created by vectoring the outline of the warehouse. I only did this so that there was some contrast in the outline so that it stood out against the pattern and was visible. However, this number is particularly interesting. Generally, warehouses are numbered when they are used as their original purpose which is storage. Perhaps I could play on this idea? Instead of writing words describing the type of shopping experience in each warehouse, I could number the warehouses. 

Another initial idea for a pattern. This is definately getting somewhere. I have taken a piece of brickwork pattern and made it a vector through the live trace tool in illustrator. I have then layered the outcome with interesting results. Also, what is worth noting here is this pattern could actually be created using a very simple stencil. I am going to develop this pattern idea as I think that it is starting to work, it has the hand rendered, textured qualities and repeated but unsymmetrical properties that I am after. 

I am really liking this idea. i have taken a pattern inspired by some architecture detail underneath the edge of a roof, vectorised it and repeated it to turn it into an interesting pattern. The number on this warehouse front idea is just a visualisation of an initial concept but I think that it works effectively against the patterned surface. The numbers too could be produced by using a stencil. Maybe I could experiment with creating numbers out of these stencils? 

Moment of Inspiration

I have been thinking about the work that I have produced for the rebranding of Fargo Village so far. I think that the concept of creating patterns to go onto the front of the buildings is strong, but the whole design is becoming too corporate. I want a handmade feel to the patterns and I want more texture in the design, like my research.

I need to further explore the way in which I am creating and using pattern. I want a rougher edged feel to the designs. I will further explore the way that I can use the patterns that I have found on the historic buildings down Far Gosford Street. I have an idea that involves artists of the community to get involved with the redevelopment of the site.

FINAL CONCEPT TO DEVELOP

 I would like to design a set of stencils/pattern templates and text that could be used, and then allow local artists to create their own designs on the buildings that cover the complete facia. I would like to create 4-5 stencils, and then allow the artists to make their own adaptations of them/ use them in interesting ways. I will produce examples of how the stencils should be used, and a general style guide for producing the artwork. The result will be a colourful, vibrant place to be, much like London’s Brick Lane which the developers of Fargo Village have been heavily inspired by. It will heavily involve the local community, and will be fun to create.

branding development

This is the development work for my initial concept for the branding of Fargo Village.

The background pattern here derives from a pattern that I found on the top of a wall in Far Gosford Street. I thought that the stone shapes were interesting. I definately think that this pattern needs development because at the moment it is not very visually dynamic. It is just a series of circles repeated. 

This was an idea where I would place a large letter in the typeface that I have designed onto the front of the warehouses as a way of catagorising them. I really dont think that this idea is successful, but it was worth a try. There is too much going on in the letterform and it becomes very confusing. Plus the texture I have put over it is too large which doesnt help. Its starting to look a little child like and a little circus like. 

I do quite like where this idea is going. It has reference to both the Industrial Victorian steriotypical signage and also the modern reinvented pattern. 

Here, I have started putting colour into the work. I have created an arrow as a sign that would be placed near Fargo Village to direct people to the site. I could create a range of these with different patterns and designs. The text is the typeface that I developed but without the drop shadow. I actually think that this typeface works really well. It is structurally sound, easy to read and has a contemporary feel to it. I am trying to create an asymmetrical feel to the layout of the type, hence why it is right aligned. 

I do not like the idea here of putting colour in the drop shadow of the name Fargo Village. This is overcomplicating the idea far too much. 

This is a mock up of one of the warehouses and an example of where I could place the pattern. I have also created a seating area outside the warehouse that could be created out of plastic/cast and that match the pattern on the building. Each building could have a different pattern and colour and this could be the way that they are visually separated, rather than having a large name across the front. 

Initial development of patterns/concepts

This shows my thinking process and development to one of the patterns that I am creating. Fargo Village has historic houses with really interesting roof guttering/underlining (I am not sure of the technical term). I replicated this through vector imagery and then starting experimenting with repeating it, deleting areas of design and playing around with divide tools and merge tools in illustrator until I was happy with the end product/pattern. I quite like the black and yellow ochre coloured pattern, second from the bottom. I think this is getting somewhere. Perhaps I could put these patterns under the roof edge of the warehouses in Fargo Village? Then I would really be bringing the history of Far Gosford Street into the design of Fargo Village, though I worry that this would perhaps suggest that I am being ironic. As I have said before, I do not want Fargo Village to start looking like a toy town. 

This is another attempt at the same process. This time has not been as successful, the final pattern lacks the conviction of an interesting repeated pattern.