It’s not often that a still photograph speaks to you. However, a well crafted photograph can have an incredibly loud voice communicated to its viewers. In an episode of The Photographic Eye, the work of Mária Švarbová’s photographs is analyzed. It talks about her melancholy photographs and how that mood communicated through her creativity in the photo’s creation.

The video points out the mood and personality that shines through in Mária’s photographs. For example, the costumes her models are dressed in are all from a older period in time, they are all in matching colors, and they all have melancholy expressions. The video suggests some communist themes with the similar colors of red that mimic the pool lane colors as well as the identical colors of all the models. The few primary colors juxtaposed with the dull lighting and drab pool tiles in her photos gives off a lifeless and sad tone. In addition, as Cath Caldwell points out in Graphic Design for Everyone, Mária uses the pool lanes as diagonal lines as powerful devices to lead the eye to the subject of the photograph (Caldwell, 96).

The voice of this photographic is very dark and it is so captivating because it makes me want to know the story behind the image. I want to know why each swimmer has such defeated body language and expressions. In addition, the setting of a photograph plays a large role in how it affects its viewers. The fact that most of this photographic is made up of such a vast pool draws me into the swimmers even more to discover why they feel so small in the large pool.

Illustration ideas

Finding inspiration to create illustrations can come in many different ways. If you do not have any visual art experience like myself, it’s important to find inspiration from experiences, films, photos you like, or even other illustrators. In “The Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Illustration: Where to Start“, Anna Kuvarzina points out the importance of using your own personality in your illustrations. She says, “It may be cute floral patterns or historical events, but start with researching what you naturally enjoy and create illustrations on that theme” (Kuvarzina, 2018).

The inspiration behind illustration and photography are similar in that they both depend on the artist’s personality and its important that their own voice and style is communicated through their project. For instance, someone’s own doodle style of scribbles or loose lines may be the perfect medium for a fashion design (Caldwell, 111). Whatever the inspiration is, adding your own personal style and voice to the drawing or photo will make it much more captivating and unique.

What I’m working on

This week, I thoroughly enjoyed working with photography and color. I explored sketching, Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, and Canva to prepare this week’s assignments. I thought the detailed mood boards were extremely helpful in creating a specific tone. I enjoyed digging into my own style and dream vacation imagery as well.

I initially created three mood boards for a hypothetical hotel in the French Alps called “Grand Peaks Resorts and Hotels”. I explored photography and color of three adjectives that came from the qualities I envisioned for the hotel. I went with warmth (browns and beiges), adventure (blues and turquoises), and elegance (silver and gold tones).

When creating the brochure, I used the same color scheme, incorporating blues, silver and gold touches against the white backdrop of the snow on the mountains. I created a logo for the hypothetical hotel and used some photography from the mood boards.

I also tried to stay within the “Grand Peaks” hotel brand and created hypothetical branded ice cream that would be sold at the resort. I stayed with the blues, browns, and gold themes and made Blue Raspberry for blue, S’mores for brown, and Gold Rush for Gold. I sketched out my ideas for the logo and it gave me different visual ideas to play around with where I wanted the sprinkles. The sketching helped me see that filling the whole cartoon with sprinkles would have been too chaotic and using only one side was more visually effective.

Overall, the mood boards helped me explore the style I was looking for through color and photography and were a great way to stay consistent with brand colors and style. Just as Anna Kuvarzina says, I truly believe the mood boards reflect my own personality, style, and dream experiences.

Citations:

Caldwell, C. (2019). Graphic design for everyone. Dorling Kindersley Limited.

Kuvarzina, A. (2020, July 21). Absolute beginner’s guide to illustration. where to start? Medium. https://anyakuvarzina.medium.com/absolute-beginners-guide-to-illustration-where-to-start-aba8c097287d

YouTube. (2024, March 22). Why does this haunting photography hit me so hard?. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPa5MSd8CYk