In the first semester I had a task where I needed to create a map for 2020 Spon Spun festival. This is one of the hardest task to me at that time since it was my first time I had to use Adobe Illustrator.
Firstly I would like to talk about research I’ve made for this project. Since we all had a trip to Spon End I was able to see colour palettes that are used on the buildings. I was also researching some medieval colours palettes and medieval maps. I have looked how Spon Spun festival website looks to see their brand colours as well as I have looked into other festival maps to get the general idea what is used there. The idea behind it was simple, I have wanted my map to have something medieval, but nothing too much that would make it look overwhelmed since it was meant to be minimalistic design.
I had so many issues when I have started designing for project as I had no idea how pen tool works and how am I supposed to create a map using it. I also been struggling with the shapes if I have wanted to create unusual shape by adding more points to the point where I couldn’t have it anymore. And even then I never gave up and kept trying. My first map wasn’t good at all from my point of view. It wasn’t following Z fold, the shapes used were weird and had no references as to what it can be. The typography was also bad and it took most of the space.
Since I had been given a critique on how to improve my work, I took a break from this project, because at that time it was very confusing to me. After a while when I came back to it I have decided to change my map design in general, since it was bad and I haven’t liked it at all. It took me a while of experimenting and playing around till I was finally happy with how it turned out.
There’s quite a few things that I have learned when I was making this project for example that sometimes patience and the ability to keep trying is really important. I have also learned better how to work with pen tool even though till this day I feel like I still need to learn more about it, but then again it is something that I will be doing during holiday. Even though I didn’t liked this project, I feel like this had a positive impact in my development as a creator.
