Year 1 and 2 practice: editorial brief

ideas for 'relationship maths' article

my first idea is to play on the text/computer typing symbol for heart...

or perhaps broken heart...

I like the idea but I don't know how many readers of the guardian would know this as I consider it to be quite a childish thing probably used more by my generation...

I also like the idea of playing on the way that Facebook represents peoples relationship stauts and the brutality of the language that is used, particularly when you want to break up with your other half...

The message Facebook sends you will read something like

"On saving, you're relationship with Joe Bloggs will be cancelled"

Cold.

I also enjoy the options available for your relationship, and how Facebook articulates these changes:

I made this image fairly quickly, but I think it is along the right lines of what I want to create for this article. I definitely think that a more digital or type based illustration would work best because I have created a hand drawn image for the other article illustration on the same page.

initial illustration for 'Doctor Doctor' article of bacteria...

starting point for Tim Dowling article illustration

....I created this image using found exising images (see context blog). I wanted to create an image of the writer himself, Tim Dowling sleeping. He talks in his article about one of his new years resolutions being to sleep more and I felt it appropriate to play on this. I was initally trying to combine a number of different resolutions he had mentioned and worried that focussing on one element was too uninformative about the theme of the article. However, on reflection, I think that creating an image that features all of these random things is just as vague as focussing on one. I want to create a visually engaging image that attracts the readers attention and as a result of this intrigues them and makes them want to read the article.

I used a found image of Tim Dowlings face and merged it onto the sleeping body. His eyes were open, so I had to use another found image of someone's closed eyes and merged them on top of his! I have not really ever used photoshop in this way but I am really pleased with the result. I worry that in print it may look less convincing, so I plan to print a copy tomorrow to allow for changes! This is only part of the final illustration... I want to develop this perhaps adding a colour and some 'zzzzzz' to imply sleep.

inital ideas for the Tim Cowling article...

I like the idea of some kind of either watercolour illustration or photomontage featuring things from the article that stand out such as the sad cat and the squirty cream. In this very rough sketch I was considering how I could perhaps make use of the 'L' shaped space by cascading the elements down and round the text; perhaps making particular use of the squirty cream... having it spell our 'Happy New Year' or something similar......

ideas for 'this column will change your life'

This is my initial effort at the bird illustration for 'this column will change your life'...

I personally like it but I'm not sure which is more suitable. I think when I see them in context, on the page I will be able to decide.

ideas for 'this column will change your life'

I toyed with the bird illustration, but felt that I might be the only one that found it funny... so I decided to work on this other idea I had which I felt was more to the point...

I tried putting it into illustrator and tracing it so that it could become a vector file, but I felt that it lost something... I think that the hand drawn aesthetic suited the style of the cartoon and the joke...

It seemed a bit like it was lacking something, and seems the wrong shape for the space, so I created this red and yellow layer to make the image stand out more. I'm still deciding whether it works... I think it could look better if the red and yellow was coming out from behind the boxes, rather than all over... also I think the felt tip pen texture works well, but I could experiment with some other textures within the colours...