Creative Typography - Layered Photoshop Final Piece

Carrying on with my creative typography work in graphics after working in Photoshop and Illustrator, the next thing I was assigned to do, was to produce a layered image in Photoshop which reflected my chosen cliche: 'Honesty is the Best Policy'.

 

First before even looking online for photos, textures or any of that I jumped straight into my sketchbook and quickly sketched out with pins & markers a few test placements for what sort of image placement and text placement i wanted to work with. As I knew straight away I wanted to use the human form in some way with the text from my previous experimentation's in Illustrator/Photoshop.  

So after a quick plan I went online and I found a free high resolution image from the internet. In this instance I didn't want to have just some generic photo for my cliche of people just talking or someone being honest. I wanted to dive deeper into the meaning of the phrase as I've been doing with all the work. So I searched for someone who was distressed or looking down, as if they had been lied to or something dishonest had happened to them as I feel thats the true meaning behind the phrase. Even though Honesty is the Best Policy people still tell white lies or small half truths which spiral out of control. So I went on a search through www.freeimages.com and after finding a male [http://www.freeimages.com/photo/653183] and female [http://www.freeimages.com/photo/1044602] which i think both would work, i went on the search for a good texture that would work. Since I was thinking of human nature and how my cliche is very much part of human nature, lying and telling the truth etc it made sense to me on some level to use some sort of naturist texture such as trees, leave etc. After searching on www.lostandtaken.com i came across just what I was looking for [http://lostandtaken.com/blog/2013/9/10/giveaway-three-joomla-templates-from-templatemonstercom.html]. After a LONG wait for the college internet to download the high res wood and tree texture pack I started to edit away on Photoshop. 

 The first layered image i created considered of the male photo I found looking down or lost in this own thoughts. I didn't touch the image at all, however I did add a tree texture next. I chose a neutral coloured texture so its mainly just stripped back bark and I add a colour burn effect to it to help bring out the colour of that layer and changed the opacity to let the original photo pop through. At this stage I really liked the photos but next i faced my biggest problem and that being adding my cliche. I wanted to use my original cutout Photoshop piece of the cliche 'Honesty...' However i faced the problem that the colours were to vibrate and stood out for this piece so to try and counteract this I add effects. The main one being I changed the hue and saturation of the whole piece to a more rounded orange to bring up the dull colours and down the strong vibrate colours. This helped a little but not completely so I brought down the the opacity and got to the final piece above.
The only thing that I feel brings this layered image down is the cliche but that is down to the colours I chose in the original edit of letter. If I were to use this method again I'd make sure to choose and stick to a colour scheme from the very beginning or go crazy and have each one different.  

The second image works alot better I feel. This one is of the female image being suffocated and with that image I left it as it was off the website again like I did with the first one. Once again I added a tree bark texture but this time with the bark not stripped and added the colour burn again which with an opacity change really let the image below pop out and in this case it almost looks like the suffocating girl is trying to emerge from a trapping force or lie.

Lastly I went into Illustrator and quickly wrote up the cliche and added a brush stroke to it giving it a very rough feel which in my mind works very well with this piece and gives a final feel of it popping off the page but also falling back with an opacity change.

Out of the two layered images I created, and looking back at them both now. It is clear to me the second piece is mainly better than the first. This comes down to the use of text and how its not so abrupt and in your face which may have worked if I used an extremely striking photo but I was aiming for the more thought out approach where the viewer would have to think about this piece and the reasoning behind it. Such as why is the girl being suffocated by something and trying to break through this bark like wall.

Overall I like both these pieces and have learnt a great many things and can't wait to keep experimenting in Photoshop and creating unique and thought provoking pieces. 

Creative Typography - Letter Cliches from Photoshop

Carrying on with my creative typography [Part 1, Part 2] the next step was to take my new alphabet created in photoshop from my oriental photos and to create a word/phrase out of it. For this I worked with using cliches. I used the cliche 'Honesty is the best policy' As i have always felt this saying held a lot of weight behind it and would work well with my different letter forms as they no longer hold there original form. I feel with this phrase it add an extra element to it as the phrase itself is very much centred around not lying and always behind honest with ones self and others around you. By hiding it behind a new layer of language it creates that wall around the phrase showing what effect it has on the reader/person trying to break down the lies to get to the honest truth.

Honesty.

Honesty is the Best Policy.

I really liked the way the final letter forms looked together in an A-Z style but now I've formed a word i don't really like how some of the letters work next to each other. I feel this is because of my choice of harsh vibrant colours but what i really love about it is the way some of the letter forms have been lost making it harder to read the words giving this saying a lot more weight behind it! I'd decently want to go back and revisit this and add a consistent colour scheme throughout the whole piece to see what sort of change it would have on the piece.
Looking at the single word of honest as above with the 'HITBP' i feel the lose of letter forms works really well with the message of hiding honesty as so many of people do. However unlike the colour scheme in the 'HITBP phrase' above, i really like the way the colour worked in the 'Honesty' piece. I didn't plan on this and just got lucky as i used the 2 letter forms going 1 cutout filter, 1 threshold and repeating. I fill this styled worked a lot better then the use of the same style for the whole word.