Tutorial 6: Assignment 5 - Theme - LOVE

After having learnt about the colour pallette and various possible colour combinations in the lecture, we were given this week's assignment: Design a Love Card focusing primarily on colours rather than design elements to get our message across. Not being a romantic at heart with average design skills, it was a rather hard challenge because many love cards out there are usually artistic in design and have elaborate textures in the background (including in the lecture examples) and it would be tough to match up to these standards. Nonetheless, my aim is to keep the design simple but effective and let the colours do the talking.

Having got down to work, coming up with a creative and original idea for a love card is never going to be easy. Nonetheless, I had two ideas which I toyed around with, both with a central object being 'split into two' in the centre of the design to represent the coming together of two different people:

1. Autumn Spring Romance

This is a cheeky and humorous idea with the left half of the card showing half a tree growing its leaves against a backdrop of cool colours to represent spring while the right half features the right half of the same tree with falling reddish leaves against a backdrop of warm colours to represent autumn. The text reads: "When it comes to Love.. Age is but just a number ." Speaking of opposites attract...

2. Jigsaw Puzzle Romance


Heard of the phrase "the other half" to refer to one's Significant Other? Basically, this design banks on this idea by using the idea of a jigsaw puzzle which can be seen to portray love by fitting two jigsaw pieces which form a heart when put together, as shown in the above design. I decide to use a jigsaw border to represent the jigsaw theme but colour-wise, I have not quite decided yet but it would most probably feature contrasting colours (such as complementary or triad colours) to reflect the child-like theme of play. The text reads: "You are the missing piece in my life."

In the end, I chose the second idea because I can't draw trees very well and the jigsaw idea seems more original (since using seasons to represent love seems to be quite common) and the theme is not directly related to love itself, which makes it more refreshing. I decided to use a B5 size for the card because it seems the ideal size; not too big and not too small. An additional change I made to the design is that instead of fitting the two pieces nicely together, I made the right piece tilt at about a 45 degree angle to make the jigsaw pieces seem more dynamic, as well as to make it more obvious that it is a jigsaw. I have finally settled on the colours of purple and green for the puzzle pieces and orange for the heart because according to the lecture, these three are complementary colours so they should go well together. I used a cooler shade of green (more like blue-green) for the background so that it does not clash with the more vivid colours of the centre jigsaw pieces, while I used purple for the text to make it seem more romantic while I separated it into two lines to give more balance to the design. The back part of the card would feature just the same coloured background with Cupid Greetings' Logo and URL (I did not think I should spend unnecessary time adding a barcode and all as I wanted to focus on the main design).

To add the icing on the cake, I adorned the centre puzzle pieces' edges with a rose pattern to bring out the theme of romance, as well as add a '3D' effect to the heart so that it does not seem flat. To give the whole card a 3D look, I added gradient to the colours, including the alternating purple puzzle pieces of the border, as well as the background and the centre pieces themselves, so that the whole card would come 'alive' by not seeming to be so 'flat'.

Here is the card before the gradient effect:


Here is the card after the gradient effect:


However, my classmates did not like the use of gradient on the border, with one of them suggesting embossing the purple puzzle pieces instead. Also, some of them questioned the usefulness of the border. When it comes to the most important thing - the colour scheme, they also thought it did not appropriately convey my message across because the colour combination seemed too "delicious", more suitable for a birthday card instead. Siti said it was good that I utilized techniques from the lecture (triad colours), but suggested I go down the pallette to see which colours best convey my message. Hence, I had plenty of food for thought, no pun intended, when it comes to re-colouring my card.

After experimenting with different triad colours, I found most of them to be rather inappropriate since a variety of contrasting colours and the theme of love do not seem to go hand in hand. Hence, I tried analogous colours instead, centering my choices within the pink-red-orange-yellow paradigm instead as I feel these are the best colours to convey the warm fuzziness and tenderness of love. Also, I removed the border to avoid unnecessary distractions. I first tried using a light yellow background, as shown below:

However, I felt that the yellow was rather out of place, for some reason. Maybe because I used too many colours already (purple, pink and red) and the yellow seems like the odd one out as it does not go well with the rest. Hence, I changed the background to light pink instead, which I feels gives more unity to my work and its underlying message: