Transcripts
1. Asian Motif Trailer: We're currently in
Vietnam, one of the most culturally rich
places in the world. Behind me, you can probably
see and hear cars buzzing, shops all around, and just all this rich visual
culture around you. Hi, I'm Arnold I've
been working with creative direction in my
career over the last decade. And one of my best kept secrets, some of the best
design inspiration comes from the world around you. I'm super passionate
about this class because this is the
first time I get to take you into designing with
an asient motif in mind. In this class, I'm going to show you how to gather inspiration, build a strong moodboard, identify motifs and
visual patterns, and turn cultural references into original design direction. And this class is for
anyone that wants to build their visual eye and to create with more intentional
aesthetics.
2. Project: Okay, let's talk about the
project for this class. Now, as we're going
through this class, we're going to be looking
at different things from different places as
we walk down the street, and I'm going to
shoot photographs. And if you have a place that you can visit,
you can walk around. You can shoot
photographs and look at things and appreciate things. See what you like.
What catches your eye. Take it all in. And then
as you put it together, separate it into
categories that you like, what you could use it for and apply it to your
own line of work. We're going to go
through it together, and you can use my
examples as well. And so, by the end of this, you have a moodboard
to look through, some visual cues and examples from that
that you can take. And from there, you can
build your own work of art. And I say work of art, but
this is the beauty in it. You can use this art in
your creative career, and I've been doing it my entire ten years
working in this field. And if you really have
no idea or inspiration, just copy the one I did and
follow it step by step, and you can make your own
quality in design as well.
3. Walking Vietnam: Visual Field Notes: Alright, today we're
in Hoy Vietnam. We're gonna explore the city. I'm gonna take you
around with me, and we're gonna notice
certain things like objects, architecture, design,
things in this city that are going to help us put
together our moodboard. I'll go over some
history as well, and then at the end of this, we're going to have all these
photos that we put together and have that as something that we go off for our moodboard. No, the thing about Hoyen is it used to be an
international hub. In the 1500s to 1700s, there were Chinese immigrants,
Portuguese immigrants, French immigrants, and
Japanese immigrants that had an impact on a lot of the development
of this area. Alright, so here we have
the night market or, like, a market area. And look at it. There's lots of things to
notice, like the fruits, the colors of the fruits,
how things are organized. So here's other
parts of the market. Ton of vendors here, and you can just take images
of the vendors. Notice the shops and the paint. There's a certain color
here that's used often, and this is actually based off
how the French had colors. So it's a French influence. If you look at the
shop houses as well, you can see that a lot of
them are small shop houses, and basically they
just want it to be as close to the
river as possible, which we're walking
up too soon and have as many shop houses as possible. But this is the river that
I was just talking about. And these are some of
the tours coming by. You can see these are
Vietnamese tour bikes. They call them Sitlos.
And this is where there's a lot of the famous
there was a Netflix movie, and they had scenes shot here. I think a tourist guide
in Love was what it was. And at night, this would
be full of people and they would have lanterns and drop
lanterns onto the river. Here are some examples of
what the lanterns look like. These lanterns are, like
I mentioned earlier, a Chinese influence
on this area. Now, it represents,
fortune and luck, and you would make wishes
with these lanterns, especially the ones that
people drop in the river. Alright, here we are
at another street. If you look at these buildings, there's some French
influence in them. You can see the double
pane French style windows. You can see the color
of the building. And the top is actually
interesting because it has a very Chinese
architectural style to it. Alright, so what
you would notice here for me personally is that there are the old
ways that they built it, and then something
more modern over here, and that this is very
Chinese at the same time. Here's something else
to notice, as well, is this Honda bike from
back in the day in Vietnam. These were made in 1967, and Vietnam back in the day, had a couple of models
that were popular, and it was this one and another
one called the Honda Cub, which is very popular
in this country. And for this one, for example, you could notice a
lot of the elements that are popular or what
makes it work in Vietnam. So, for example,
it's a 50 CC engine. It's more of a
smaller bike compared to the bikes that you would
see in the United States, but it still has the masculine
look of a mainly bike. Now, for this, we could look at the way that this bike looks
and how it authentically fits into the country
and the culture of this country because it is one of the two bikes
like I mentioned, the Honda Cub has a bike that essentially made the
country back in the day. So when people would
travel around, they would use this bike. And for the men, they
would use this bike. Women would typically
use the other bike. These days, the
lines are blurred. But this is a beautiful
example of the bikes there. And you could also see
the backgrounds as well. There's a lot of flowers,
the decorations, and from this scene alone, we could get a lot of
different influences and design cues from it. So let's snag a few photos
from here, and then oh. Walking down as well, you can see that there are very small alleyways
because they want to make the most out of the
space that they have. And as I'm walking here, I can definitely feel how tight and squeezed that this is. You can see from
the framing that it's both sides from me, you're basically inches
away from my face. And on this side, you can see that it's
French inspired. And on this side, it's a
little less French inspired, but still the colorways
are very much inspired by how the French had their techniques done
back in the day. Look how beautiful
this street is with the shops and the plants
and the Vietnamese hats. And people are taking photos. And here are some of the
shop storefronts, as well. So this building is actually
very Chinese as well, with a lot of the
Chinese architecture. Maybe Japanese, actually. So there's a lot of
overlap between the two, but they have a sign
that talks about it, the old house of Wan tang and uses a lot of these
elements as well. So take note of these, and we're going to
take some photos of them as well so that we can
reference to them later. Now, back in date in Chinese and maybe Eastern
style superstition, they would have some of this
stuff in the front to ward off evil spirits or to guide the house in
certain directions. And also the sign, I think, is noteworthy, the way that is designed, the font that is used, the color that's used, and
the shape that's around it. Okay, as we're entering
the temple here, you can see that there's a
lot of different styles. Like, for example, the sign, I really like the colorway,
the wood around it, and the way that
they had structured the fonts of texts and the way that they
placed everything. Up top, you can see a very
Chinese style as well. This is ahead of a lot
of different houses. They have the lions. And they also have
this in front of their houses pretty often. And then over here and here, there are signs or paintings of these birds in
front of the house.
4. Moodboarding: Intro & Standouts: So you just saw
how I went around, took photos and took in the
inspiration of the history, what's happening there,
and what the scenes like, what things are just going on and building this
cohesive scene in my head and taking
a lot of photos to remember and reference
when we get back home. And I've put everything into
this moodboard on Canva. Canva is free to access, and you can use it to put
all your photos together. I went ahead and put
all the photos together already and separated them out into three different groups. Now, for you, your groups
might be different from mine. So my background is in
advertisement design, and I do a lot of design
work with lettering, with branding and social media. So I look for things
like typography, how things are organized, and how letters are arranged and put together, what
fonts they use. And then I also
combine that with design language that I'm learning from what's
going on around the area. And then I put the
rest into standouts, things that stood out to me as I'm walking around
and I think are cool. So I take photos of that,
and I'm like, Okay, I can refer to that
later when I get back home and I still want
to remember this scene. So your challenge,
your question is to figure out what categories
to put your photos into. Try to think of it in a way where if you look at
it and reference it, this is something
that you can quickly go to and reference to use. But if you don't have
anything in mind for your career or
your line of work, I'll show you mine, and I'll share why I took
these photos and what type of inspiration and design motifs
that we can pull from them. Now, if you're a photographer
and you're building a moodboard and you're
trying to capture the area, there'd be different
criteria that you would separate your
inspiration out into. So let's start out with
the standout section. Sandouts is the easiest. It's what caught my eye, and it includes photos,
textures, ambience. Essentially, I want to
make everything cohesive. So having things like
ambience and photos, photos could be like a
car driving by, a scene, a snapshot of a day
in the life there, essentially, it's et cetera. I also added things like
textures into it as well, because textures play a big part in making something look
genuine and authentic. It may be subtle, but a lot of times you might go back and
reference certain textures. So let's dive in and
see these photos. Now, to start off with, I have a tree here that has many different
roots going up. This is a very interesting
texture to me, so I saved it just to remember
the rough grittiness of the area contrasted
with this one, which is a lamp, and
you can see the soft, delicate way that
it's put together. From this, I would
note the colors, the design on it, the spacing
of how the design is done. If you look from the
bottom to the top, it seems like it's
60% of the way up is where most of the
design is gathered. And the top section over here
is mainly just atmospheric. Now, here's another shot
as I was driving by, I saw this fruit stand,
and I was like, Okay, it's cool to have an
image of a fruit stand, see how things are organized. And even even though this
is actually not very clear, you can see and get the vibe
of what's going on here, how things are stacked
and organized. It's actually very
well done and precise, and it's probably from years and decades of running a family
business selling fruit. Here I have photo
of the roof that shows this dilapidated old roof. But for me, I'm noticing the brickwork and the texture
that is going on here. Down here, I also have the floor which I
believe is cement, and you can see the interesting
texture of it, as well. This one is not as beautiful
as what I saw down here, so let's jump to it real quick. And this is a French
style floor tiling, and a lot of places in
Vietnam still have this. And I really like
how this looks. There's so many other
ones that I've seen, but this one really stood
out to me that day. Alright, let's hop
back to the top. And here, like I mentioned in the video is a snapshot
of a Honda cub. And I was saying
that the Honda cub essentially built Vietnam
because so many people were using this bike to do their business and live their
life, travel, see family. Make things happen, and a lot of it was
done on this bike. So I kept this shot because I wanted to reference
the lighting, the way that it sunk
into the background, like, the facade of
the whole place. And if you're thinking about
this in a lookbook style, like to shoot photos
and you're trying to build out a scene, how
does it all go together? So when I'm seeing
the background, I'm looking at the different
colors in the background, how it complements this very traditional classic
Vietnamese bike, even though it's
designed by Japan, but it has an integral
part in the country and everything else around I'm also looking at the
buildings behind it, the color of the
building, how that color complements the
color of this tree. It's like a darker color and how the roofing has
this certain color as well and the different, I believe, awning on the building here and how
it all goes together. Now, here I took
a shot of a shop. And for me to reference
this is like, imagine you're doing a shoot and you have a model dead
set in the center. How does this look like? And this is to reference
back into in the future, if I want to think about what a Vietnamese shop is
going to be like. This was a shot at a resort, and I was looking at the different signs
here or the shapes, the shape of the building,
the palm trees around it, the color facade,
and how it all goes together complimentary
or complimentarily. This one, as well, you
can see that there's this pastel orange the green that matches the Patel orange, this light blue, and the
French style molding, it's made out of concrete, but the French style decor
outside of this building. Over here as well, I was just capturing the scene,
what's going on. Behind it is actually
a river right here. Now, this one was very cool. It was a beer can, and
people were putting incenses for praying inside. So they put sand here and
then incenses on top. And I was like, Oh, this is
a very cool shot real life and what people
actually really use. So now I have this inspiration. I could think, Okay, maybe I use a beer can
on the bottom and have flowers coming up on top or maybe actual
instances coming out. And then if I'm
doing a photo shoot, I can shoot that photo with brand new instances and a
beer can on the bottom and have that be a real
reflection of something that is found and
inspired by Vietnam. Now, moving over here, I
thought this house had a very cool tropical feel with the banana
leaf right there, the older house building, and you could still see there's wooden like to open
out your window. I don't even know
what that's called, how there's these
designs on top, as well, how this looks like. And for me, this is
a reference shot. If I ever need something that is vintage in Vietnam or
I'm designing something or something that is referencing Vintage Vietnam,
this is a shot for it. Going down some more, I took a few shots of the
river and boat right here just so I can get a reference of what that
looks like and feels like. Here, you can see that
there's a walkway right here. If we're doing Hayyan, we can imagine all the guests
here walking at night. Right now, it's kind of empty. Same with this,
just to get a feel of how this place looks
like here, as well, also shot photos of the
boat and the decor of this boat if we wanted
to think about, like, maybe a flower reef or
something or how they decorated around there with Asian style lanterns or
Chinese style lanterns, I believe, here, I would go
back and reference this. Here, just a shot of the street. I thought it was
interesting to note just to have reference of what
the place looks like. And then, as I
mentioned, textures, I like to see what the brick looks like, how the bricks made. Certain areas have
different brick layout. Like, I went to the capital of the ChampA kingdom from
hundreds of years ago, and it's been absorbed by
Vietnam at this point. But I went to the
Capitol back then, which is in Vietnam now, and the brickwork was
amazing for that time. And you can see how it was
just made different than this. Even though this
could also be good. I'm not a brickwork expert, but just referencing
the texture and see what's the most cohesive for maybe that time period that you're referencing important
to have these shots. This one just a mood shot to understand what's going
on, what it looks like. This to me, feels
kind of French with the very sharp roof and
the opening in the middle. I think there's
got to be a reason for the French to have that. And more boats and the floor
that I described earlier. And these three,
I just wanted to capture some shots of houses. This is a shop where back
then, this is an old shop, but they refurbished it to be something new here
to sell to Taurus. This one, on the other hand, is a house where somebody lives. It's more new. It's probably built within the
last few decades. And it's just unique to
me because it's both new, but uses some of
the old elements that were commonplace
in this area. So like the French doors, the French colors
of the early 1900s. And this one, too, you can
see, it's also very unique. Like we just looked
at it, but this has a very Chinese or
Japanese style roofing. And these beams are also
Chinese or Japanese. These lanterns are Chinese. Over here, contrasting with those two is something
that's a lot more French. You can see that this looks
like it could be in Europe. I don't know the exact
architectural style, but the colors, the doors, the roofing, these elements together
have a French feel to it. Now, this as well,
is very French. You can see from this design of the thing around the
rails, the flooring, the tile flooring that
I mentioned earlier, the pastel colors, this thing, very European and
the window as well. Now, these are new colors, but we can estimate it'd be kind of similar pastelish
color. Back then, as well. So here was a shot
inside a temple. I just wanted to note some
of the elements here. This to me looks very Chinese. There's a lot of
Chinese lettering, Chinese style of art, which also some
Vietnamese people did back in the day as well, and just very, very
Chinese influence. On the way back, I noticed some of these buildings
that were very nice, so I had to snap a
few shots as well. And this one, to me, just looks like a
really French building. Like, if somebody had
a house like this in America, this
would look amazing. Like, you'd feel like you're
in a luxurious house. But here, it's almost
commonplace. This was a bar. It was closed for the
night, I believe. And this was just a shot
of the day in life, I saw a lot of plastic tables, plastic chairs, and
then I put it together. Or I wanted to capture that with the mustard color and
the old style buildings. Here was a cool shot of a
plant that I saw there. It had so the purple here
is actually not the flower, even though it looks like
the flower, like, from afar. But I took this shot
to emphasize that. The flower is actually just
this little white part. And from afar, you would
see this big green tree with a lot of specks of purple, but actually the purple
is not the flower.
5. Moodboarding: Objects & Shapes: Okay, now let's move
on to design language. This has an emphasis on shapes and objects and
things that caught my eye, like certain patterns
that are very common or that I kept
seeing over and over. So I want to capture that so that we can
reference to it later. Now, I'm going to go through
and show you what I found. Okay, so you're probably
wondering why this leaf is here, the leaf, I want to get
the shape of the leaf. So this is just a leaf,
but it's from the area. And if you ever need to find a leaf and you want
to make it authentic, well, this is the shape of
the leaf from the area. So if you're somewhere else and you're trying to shoot and remember something
from the area, shapes from the leaf
or from objects, those are things take note of as you're trying to
get some inspiration. Okay, moving on from the leaf, I saw these columns
pretty frequently, so I wanted to
save them as well. I believe this is very
European looking, and I'd assume it's French. Now, over here as well, there are some of these
designs and shapes. It's very symmetrical.
This one, as well. Sometimes it makes me think
of mid century modern. Like, something about
this just does it. There's another one here that
also has that same feeling, and I went on to chat GBT
and had it isolate that and give me kind of a straight on shot of what
that would look like, and then I have it
here for reference. Now, let's hop back
to where we were. Over here, I just
wanted a shot of all of the different lanterns
light and lights so that we can go back
to if we ever need to reference a certain shape of a lantern, we have this here. There could be round
ones, there could be more pear shaped ones. There could be more
oval looking ones. So there's many
different lanterns, and we could also
see the pattern on the lantern, as well. So if you're trying to make a specific design and maybe you're going to
print out a lantern, how does the design
on the lantern look? What is a certain motif
that's commonplace here, and how could we recreate it? So, this has a lot
to reference from. Now, this as well, I thought was very cool because the way the door is shaped, if this was a line illustration, for example, it'd be very cool. So I just took a photo of this. I have a few other
doors as well. This was another
door, and there's a cool pattern in
shape in the center. So I also took note of that. Now, some doors
also had something like this, some
symmetrical shape. Square inside of a square, and then there's
a slanted square here and two circles
surrounding each other. These are just small,
subtle design cues. But if you use some
of this element in just anywhere in your design, it'll just give
this little spice to it that makes it more unique. And it's actually from the area. So if you're doing
something that is using Asian or Vietnamese
Hawaiian design motifs, these touches give it more
of an authentic feel. Now, this as well, I
thought it was very cool. It's the shape of
the scroll that said a good fortunate
spring day, I believe. And then here as
well, I wanted to capture the arch, the columns, and how it had a couple
certain three things here, because if we were to
design something like this and we essentially
took this shape, sometimes I might go and
look at it and be like, Oh, there's something
missing in this area. And since this one has, like, three objects there
to just add a bit of design element to it, it
makes it more interesting. So now I have this to
reference, as well. And here, it's in
Chinese style circle, and they put incenses in there, and I like this circle design, so I wanted to have
a reference of that. This one could have been
just a regular wall, but they cut these three
slits out in some ways, it makes me think of mid
century modern design. Not sure why I think that, but it just reminds me of that. Maybe it has to do
with the little square grid thing right here. Which is also pretty
modern these days. Imagine this was
emerald green color. You'd probably see it
at a five star hotel. This one I wanted a
shot of the flower, just the shape of the
flower to reference to. And here, the columns, again, I really like the columns just to know what
columns look like. If I ever need to
design something with columns, I have it here. This one as well on the left of that has a lot of columns, certain bigger elements
next to the columns. And for me, if I think
about design, potentially, I can use this whole shape right here and put it at the
bottom of a brochure, and then you would
just have something outlining the whole brochure. Here, as well, you can
reference the building, the arches in the building, the door, and how
the windows are. And then I also notice how
the lamps or lanterns were hanging or draped based on how this string
is holding it up. Over here, French style house. I wanted to capture that just
to get that feeling that, Okay, this is French inspired. Moving on here, some door shots. I used AI to actually
isolate out this door. So here you can see this is
the photo that I gave you, and then here's the
door that I took out. And when you take
it out like this, it's actually really good to help you see what the
shape of it looks like. And over here,
French style bench, French windows, and
the tiles that I like. And you can also notice, too, that they have
paint or they paint the wall basically all the
way up, all the way up here. And then there's like
10% here that is just a different color just to highlight it. Almost
like a border. Here, as well, also
very French style, French windows, French
benches, and the flooring. Again, I wanted to see
what shapes are like. So this one, we have this
very Asian shape here. Imagine you're
doing a brochure or pamphlet and you have the
shape on the bottom of it. It doesn't have to be
loud and out there, but just having this touch
makes it look a lot better. So this is something I could
refer to in the future. This one, as well, this
was just so weird. I wanted to remember it by
because it's almost like art deco is what it's making
me think moving on here, columns that I wanted to note, the different
elements next to it. So like this thick black border, the three smaller
lines under it, and then another
thick black border with a line going across. Now, for me, as a designer, you could imagine this to be a border of a pamphlet, as well. So using the same element, you can have those lines
one, two, and three, go around the whole pamphlet, and then you have borders
for the entire pamphlet, and it'll look a lot less empty. Here, plastic chairs. They're found
everywhere in Vietnam, so they were sort of
iconic. I had to have them. These lamps, I thought were French or gave me a
European feeling, so I just want to
capture that as well. Here, I mentioned the wall from earlier that I
also separated out. And to me, this also has some mid century modern
art deco vibe to it. If I were to go design
something that's Vietnamese vintage art deco, I'd probably use certain elements and
inspiration from this. Here, I took a photo of a building since I was
so far on the side, I had to use AI and tow it to essentially give me
the frontal view. So this is the
frontal view of it. It's pretty close,
good for reference. And then this shot was just
to get the vibe of it. It's right next to the
lamp from up there. And right next to it was this. I wanted to get a shot and the shape and the silhouette of this pagoda looking thing
that's here. It's super unique. This used to be a resort. It was pretty empty by the
time we were walking past it. And then here as well, some different shapes to
look at to reference. And then window shot just to see what the window design is like, the curvature up here, how many slits that it has, and how it has a covered bottom like this and the
overall rectangle shape. Now, this one lamp
more interesting. It has a hand painted
looking feel to it. Looks a lot higher quality than some of the other
ones that we looked at. And here, I can see what
this entire lamp looks like. It's a lamp it has this part right here with
things hanging down, some drawing here on the bottom, and essentially shows me how
if I were to design a lamp, I can organize it in a
way that looks good. So I could have the
main message on top. I could separate it
with this border here, this red line they have. And then on the
bottom, I can have something neutral that
doesn't have to be loud, doesn't have to be words,
whereas on there's words, there's imagery, and there's
a lot more going on. These two, I was also capturing
the shape of the roofing, the building, how the windows lay. There's three windows here. It's separated essentially
perfectly apart symmetrically. This one, too, I
wanted to see the cuts in the ledge right here,
European style roof, this as well, different
styles of house with the different cuts and columns and what other
design elements they use. Like, these are two
kind of similar houses, but they have different columns and different design
element on top. But they use a similar color, and they have a similar door. Scrolling over here, I really like this entrance to a house, so I took a shot of it,
had AI isolated out. Now, this was a wall
in front of a house, and I liked how this design of a square inside of a
square looked like on their essentially brick brick,
square constructed wall. So I took a photo of that
just a reference as well. This one just feels very French. So I wanted to capture
this because I've seen some buildings where
it's just a circle here, but this one has crosses on it, so I thought it was good
to reference. Same here. I really like that they had three of these
shapes in here, and the border was like this. It's not just a square
rectangular border. There's edges here, and there's a cut on
every four corner. And inside, it's sunk in a few inches before
you see these shapes. And then it's also cool to
notice how the shapes are done and how it's held
cohesively together. Now, another lamp,
this one looks different from a lot of the
other ones that we looked at. And this one, especially, I thought it looked very modern
in design because it has these big bold san
serif letters on it. I Sasa, I think,
is what it says. And even the element
of taking out the A away makes it feel
very modern, as well. Here, I thought this
decor in front of someone's house was very
interesting looking. It had the curves to it. It almost looks like a scroll, except this was made out actual cement and the
design in the center, how it's outlined, I
was noticing that. I was noticing how it
placed two objects on both sides and how the
sharp corners looked. Under that was some design inspiration from
a shop that I saw. It looks really nice.
Lanterns were nice. Food was expensive and
people were going in, so I figured this type of ambience might be
something people enjoyed. I had another similar
lantern shot as well as a bit of noticing the
background going on. Like, for example, this railing, it could be the
border of, again, a brochure or pamphlet, and here just to notice how
lanterns could be designed. This one, I really
like the shape of the building and the
elephants out front. Now, if we were to use
this as inspiration, there's a lot to go off of. First of all, the
shape of the building, you could also consider three
different elements on top, maybe two similar elements, and then one center one. And then as we're going down, we can see that there's
a big welcome sign right here, how the doors, the wide doors are placed, how certain parts of
the window can be, and that they accented
it with lamps here. And if you take a
little step back, it almost even looks French as well because of
this certain area, the paint, and some
of these doors here. And then they have two elephants out front
guarding the place. Now, here, these buildings
looked very Asian, so I wanted to capture
the railings on this, the way that the
wood is laid out, and the wood accents here
on the bottom underneath. I didn't see that too often,
so this was very cool. Over here, another
window painting, but it has this cool
element on top. It's essentially highlighting
the window pane, but it has two layers, and it's more interesting
to look at than just a straight line or just painting or just something
a small border around. Now, let's go to this one first. So, this one, Shamrock pub,
they had this out front. It looks very modern
compared to some of the other lanterns
that we're looking at. So I wanted to capture this. If we were to design, we
can pull this silhouette and use this silhouette and then design
something inside here. I think they probably
did a pretty good job with design because
their logo and stuff, this all looks pretty well
put together and cohesive. Now, save this one for
last because this is my favorite has so many different elements
that we can use here. So, here there's some bordering, and if you noticed, I've been using these
as my title card, which came from this image. But there's so much more to it. For example, we could
even cut this out, isolate out just
a small part here and use it as design elements
for anything modern, and people wouldn't even
know that it's pulled from a Asian design motif. So there's that. There's the
way that it's organized, that there's one
thin outside border. There's another border on the
inside before it leads to the centerpiece of the bird and the flower with another
border as well, the red border around it. So there's many ways to bring your attention
into this centerpiece. And so I really love this design
6. Moodboarding: Typography : I Alright, so let's hop
into the typography part. We'll look at the
letters, the design, how they arrange the letters. And this is essentially what I look for when I take photos of branding and design
work that people use to advertise and put
their self out there. So first one here, I
like that they had this element outside
of their name. So it just has this kind of
luxurious feeling to it. And then there's the fine
wines and spirits since 1995. Now, this is a good reference, as well on the font that they're using and then how they made
this custom part right here. Now, this is actually
probably better if you get an artist to the
middle section here, and then here on the bottom that shows what your store is, you probably have a normal font. Moving on, this one, I
thought was cool as well. It's just simple,
straightforward, easy to do. It's got that metal border, which is very utilitarian, and it's part of
what holds this up. So they probably didn't design it with the
border already. But when you design it, you think that there
will be a border. So you just print
the black behind. So this says Benzo in Aing so it is advertising this bread
that they're selling, and it has two different
fonts as well to notice. Like, the top is one font, and the bottom is
a different font. Now, I don't like their
bottom font so much, but the placement, the sizing of everything is good
to reference later. And even on the bottom, you can see how much
space it takes compared to how much the other
top part takes. Moving down here, this
was a vintage sign. Paint was falling
off of it already. But back in the day, it was probably very nice,
clean, beautiful. And from here, there were a few things that I wanted
to notice that first, it was a very vintage
sign, an old sign, like old wood,
probably painted over and redone many times already. And here, it was carved in. So probably at one point, this banana and cafe
part was yellow. And then this part here
didn't have any paint on it, so I'm guessing it fell off. So maintenance
probably could have been done better, but this has, for me, good arrangement, so you can have the big
bold, whatever it is here. Like maybe it's Arnold, certain certain restaurant
and then address, and then another
telephone thing here. Super simple, but I like the arrangement, so I
took a photo of it. This is a street sign and very easy design to
imitate and replicate, border, font, and then the
sign design emblem thing here. This one I really like
it's super vintage, and it looks like it was
hand painted as well. You can see so many
different elements here like this curved type thing, well, curves in this corner,
the writing here, Dong Tin and the
radio part here. So this is someone's name,
maybe the store name. And then this says Quin, which is specializing in fixing and selling radio
TVs and cassettes. If they have cassettes in here, it's probably really old. And so for this, I
noticed a few elements. Like this one right here, this CHUYEN and the
underline right there. Has that art deco feel
that I really like. Moving up here, this is a different vibe completely,
but it looks good. And there's so many well
chosen fonts on this that I could probably come
back over and over to reference on this sign alone. Now, let's jump
over to this sign. This sign was actually
right next to it, just a few doors down. And this, I believe is also
hand painted, as well, and it's very much the old
style of Vietnamese painting. Sign painting. And
I wanted to note the arrangement of
how the font was, how the bottom addresses, and the colors around it. So this light blue, this red, and just a placement
of everything. So if I were to have something big in the middle,
like maybe Arnold, I could have the spacing
on the bottom small like this and in the same proportions to say whatever I need to say. And personally, I think this
was arranged pretty well, so I aim to be like this. Now, this one is a very Chinese looking
scroll type thing, and I liked the
outline of the shape. I like what else
they had in here, the borders, the font, and the way it's wrapped around. And then the placement
of the wording, as well, moving down here. I like the blue, the
black, and the red, this color way is a good
reference for me to go back to. And this font right here, it makes me also think of art deco and the
elements that they use, the triangle here and
the way it's condensed. And then to contrast that, it has some Chinese font
that looks very traditional. Underneath here, I
saw this at night. It was very modern
feeling for me. It felt like these letters were modern or the font that
was used was modern, and it was just
well put together. So I took a photo
of it, as well. This one was next to a wall, and it looked like
it was old English. So this one with
the Old English, the border around
it and the shape, this hexagonal shape, definitely something
that's easily referenced and we can
use later in the future. Over here, a Chinese style sign. I like the brown,
the gold on it, and on top, there's
a bat, I believe. This one, I'm not sure if
I'll use it for anything, but it's good to
have to reference. Now, over here, this one, I like that there's a border around it, and then the name of
the place inside. So this one I would note the borders here,
how this is placed. I could potentially imitate or replicate this border and
put it in my own design. And then over here, I don't
like the font on the bottom. That could be easily fixed
if we just switch this font up with something more
modern and fancy, it would look pretty well, I think, for a riverside resort. And just noting the placement
and how the wording falls into this area here with this type of
spacing around it. Now, moving down here, this one was just a
very cool sign that I saw that was in
front of a building, a house, and you can have
whatever Chinese letter here, maybe your name or something. And then the border outside, I did like the border a lot and also like this
a lot, as well. I think it does have to do with the feng Shui of the place. Fung si. So that's
why people have it. Now, this one, I
want to bring to attention the shape
surrounding this. And we can use that for something if we were to
have something highlighted, we could have this
shape and replicate this shape and then the
font and text inside. In a way, it looks like it's
already laid out for us. You can see the title
part right here, the body of the text right here, and then you have two design
elements on the left and the right side with a couple other design elements
highlighting it. Now, this one, I really like
the blue and the black. Something about it just
works really well. And this one easily replicable. But take note of how thick and bold some
of the letters are. This is very bold and thick. Everything's very
bold and thick. And the fonts are
pretty different. I think most of these
fonts are different. Like, this one, this
one is kind of similar. This one I feel
different with this. And this one on top also feels more different
and condensed. Now, keep note, this is actually
hand painted, I believe. Like, this looks hand painted, so great work on this. Then over here, these
two more modern and not super
aesthetically pleasing. But for me, I want to reference how they had their spacing and letter was placed and how
they organized everything. I think these two come from a very similar design
train of thought. Like they have that
logo style right here, this logo right here, too, and the font seems to be from
a similar of era for me. At least that's the
impression I get. Anyways, I saved these two
because I wanted to see how they organized and laid all
the fonts and stuff out. I do like this one on
the right a bit more, but they both have kind of that generic
commerce type design for me. So let's go and think
about how we can use some of the things that we
got on our moodboard for real actual use cases.
7. Applying & Design Examples: We're going to talk
about the applications and examples in this section. Now, I'm going to
jump in here and show you some of the
things that I made. This is going to be
a rough run through, so you can just get an
idea of what to do. You can base off these methods
and make your own thing. The first example is
logo slash banner Image. You can see here
this could be used as maybe a Facebook
banner image, or if you use this logo, you can put it on a T shirt. And this is very simple to do. All I did was take the image of this temple here that I had
in the moodboard earlier, add other reference bridge next to it that I
used to isolate. So I said, Can you isolate out an illustration
of this photos, temple and generate an image in the same style as the second uploaded reference,
which is this. And then it gave me this one. So with this, I
like how it turned out generally and
this is where it also gets a bit
complicated if you are working with a big client and
a client with a big budget, definitely have a designer
do this because they're only going to be some weird quirks
that AI pops out at times. But if you're doing something low budget and you're
testing out concepts, this is a good way
to go about it. And this is, for the most
part, pretty passable. But as you use it for applications like T
shirts or printing, there are certain
particularities that need to be noticed before
it goes into production. Moving on, I'll show you
how that was broken down. So I started first
with the text writing. So I made resort and spa here at Arnold's
just for an example. And this is half instinct, half knowing what to reference. So I have a lot of
experience dining or designing based off of
luxury style goods, and this is just how a
lot of it is framed. This could be a whole long
lecture on how it's done, but I modeled it after some of the the examples that I like. Down here, too, I use
similar instincts as well, knowing that location is a
third of the size of Huan. I made it italicized just
for the extra punch to it, and then I had Han underneath
to show the location. And because this fictional
spa is in Hoi en, where we were getting all
our inspiration from. And then moving on, all I did
was move that image that we generated on AI a couple of slides ago onto here, and
then now you have this. This could even double as
a business card if needed. Now, the next example I
have is a business card. So this is the fictional
business card, and we started off with
this sign that I saw. So this is also
in the moodboard, and we have this sign, and I took the inspiration
of how they laid out their words and made it pretty much exactly the same down here. Of course, you can move
things around maybe shop and coffee goes here or
maybe this goes here, or you omit a line like maybe
you don't need since 2020. But for the sake of pulling
inspiration from this, I just copied it exactly. From there, you can
make your changes. Now, to the next slide, I
also did the same thing. I use a temple photo or
a temple entrance photo, and I had this line art
next to it, and I said, generate a line illustration of the first photo in the same
style as the reference. And this is what it gave
me. Now, of course, it's not always going to be
usable on the first time, so I had to do it again. I said, Fill in
where the walls and solid areas are solid, so it's thick and bold.
And it came out with this. Still not so perfect,
so I tried it again. I told it to continue
filling it in so it's bold. Now, AI is not going to be 100%. If you want to get
100% of what you want, you could bring this into
another software like Photoshop or Illustrator
and just fill in all the spots that you wanted
to fill in and also fix any peculiarities that are
not going to look good. Now with that being said and picking
something that works, like, for example, I
thought this was right and passable. I moved it onto here. And this, I thought would
make for the back of a good business card because it's subtle and you
can have text on top. So then from here, moving on, I dropped the original
text that we had on there. Now, of course, you can work on spacing, depending
on how you like. You can omit some things. You can have addresses down
here or names down here. You can customize
it how you want. But for the most part, this looks like a
passable business card. The next one, we
have design element. Now, this is super simple, and I wanted to
include this in here because there are a
lot of different signs and elements of
these just symbols that was in the moodboard
that we went through. And so I took one of them. I asked ChatGPT to
come up with this. And the prompt looked something like this.
It was super simple. I said, Isolate this
symbol for me, please, and generate it
into a drawn logo with solid lines.
Came out with this. Now, of course, if
you don't like this, you can go in and repmpt it a few times and
see if it works out. If you don't like
that even more, you could continue on to Photoshop or Illustrator
and trace this out. There are many ways to get
this exact shape that you want and to hit the
perfect type of level. Now, for example,
I could even say, the lines here aren't
think enough and aren't pushed in and tight enough as the original example
that we have here. So this could use a little
more where you're working. And if that ends up being something that you
like, then you can use it. So, for example, I thought
this was passable. You'll see it in some
of the next designs. Now, actually, I'll
show you right now. I implemented here in the corner design aspects that we're using that
exact same logo. So this example here is
a contemporary poster. This is stuff you'd see
on Pintris all the time, like the handwritten writing and just a poster for something. This is, for example, a gallery opening
ceremony, a fictional one. I made it up, and these addresses
aren't real, by the way. But this essentially is
very simple to do as well, and I'll break it down for you. First thing I used was a photo
that I had taken in Hoen. I made sure to edit it a bit with some grain
and make it vibe. But after I did that, I made the text down here. And text and layering is
also part of something that we could have
drawn inspiration from earlier in our moodboard
and photos that we took. And so I came up with something
like this on the fly. I like to design, so I
kind of have some of that instinct that
I could just tap into. And so I did this. I had a gallery
opening ceremony, 20th of the fourth
month of 2026, and this is just a fictional
address. That there. And essentially, all I have
to do is add the final touch, which was this handwritten font. So what I did was I
wrote it on a notebook, and then with this notebook,
I took a photo of it. I brought it into
Canva, actually, and then with Canva, you
can remove background. So I removed the background, which is the paper and all that. And then I up the contrast.
I made it bigger. And essentially, this
is what you got. So I had to cut all these out individually and align them, and then this is what
I got here with it. And putting it together,
this is what it looks like. And finally add this
element that we just did on here for that
little final touch. And so these were
some of the examples of what I did and came up with, if you don't have
any inspiration, feel free to copy
these, try it out, copy it exactly, and put your
own special touch to it. I'm looking forward to
seeing what you make.
8. Conclusion: Thank you for taking the class. I appreciate that
you made it here, and I hope your
takeaway from this is how to think in a
way for you to see and appreciate different
artistic elements around you and together putting it all and making it into a unique work of
art made by you. If you could help me out,
please leave a review. Let me know what you
think, and I'd love to see you again in
my future classes.
Arnold Trinh, Multi-Disciplinary Creative
