harry potter and the philosopher's stone
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Session Notes & Type Play
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We were shown the work of Robert Massin during our session and this helped me figure out slightly what the brief could be like especially when working with black and white.
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I was looking at book covers as another inspiration but most of these are illustrated more than type but as we're allowed a small amount of illustration this could work out. As we're only allowed certain colours I feel like a simple illustration with colour would look nice or have a specific text have colour within it.
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Peter Strain was the first person in mind who I thought of when it came to typography and harry potter but I had forgotten his name unfortunately but Harry's Patronus was still stuck in my head, I later noticed he had more work that relates to the wizarding world. Harry Potter Type Art
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I really like the colours used for these designs and the darker background, I feel fore my designs I may go with a black background with white text and few illustrations.
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![]() Deathly Hallows Animation
The Deathly Hallows relate to Dumbledore as he is referred to "death himself" throughout the story and this makes sense as we all know he dies and greets Harry as an old friend during a scene in the deathly hallows. The Peverell brothers represent each hallow, the line which represents the elder wand, the circle which represents the resurrection stone and lastly the triangle which represents the invisibility cloak that gets passed down from James Potter to Harry (Beedle and the Bard). The Potters also being a distance relative of the Peveralls. |
‘You might belong in Gryffindor,
Where dwell the brave at heart, Their daring, nerve and chivalry Set Gryffindors apart.’ Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone I thought it would be best fit to look into Gryffindor related items and aesthetics as each character that is included in the script all belong to the house of Godric Gryffindor. This also ties into the correlation that Harry did grow up in Godrics hollow for a year or so before his parents where murdered by Voldemort.
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Initial Ideas
During Monday's break I decided to come up with some ideas off the spot and decided to add in some details from the wizarding world, I laid out some Ideas for the characters and their personalities, and since they're all Gryffindor I feel the best colour would be to use Red and Gold for my limited colours. I then went onto word to mess around with the script and the page layout so I knew which script would go with each page. From my ideas of the characters I will move onto research more about them that would fit the 20% illustration. |
For my first set of thumbnails I wanted to try out how I was going to use a singular colour into my work. I used some cool and warm colours with markers and then decided to try out ball point pens - I think i will have very limited colour but will use it mainly for parts of the script to really emphasise on the words.
For my fully draw Thumbnails I decided to go ahead in photoshop and make the quality look more sharp (I used a pencil for all the sketches but some turn out looking blue as well as my ballpoint pen which slowly desaturated as I'm not actually that great with using photoshop.) |
![]() Making the font was very time consuming and also made my fingers hurt from so much clicking and trying to make my alphabet have a transparent background so they would fit properly. I also struggled with the 'g' as It went from too small to too large but I managed to get it at a decent height that wouldn't end up cropping it.
I followed the YouTube video above as well as the "How to create your first font" site. The outcome came out much more black than greyscale and I wasn't really expecting that but I don't hate how it looks - Although now I need to figure out which character I want to give my font or if I will use it for the stage directions instead. |
Minerva McGonagall is the headmistress of Hogwarts and the head of Gryffindor house. she is strict but also has a soft spot for her Gryffindor's as if they were her own 'cubs'. I chose my own typeface for her (I may be biased) as I feel a more elegant looking type suits her but I also thought about Amy's as hers is based on cats. Played by Maggie Smith.
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Albus Dumbledore is the headmaster of Hogwarts, once the transfiguration professor. He comes off as an old soul, someone you don't really know but feel like you do. I chose Jessica's shell typeface for Dumbledore as I feel he would be the type of person to collect things and place them around in his office. Played by Richard Harris (for the first 2 movies).
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McGonagall Word Test
With the style of Peter Strain I wanted to test the DIY alphabets as best as possible, It's slightly different as I am not used to InDesign and couldn't manage to figure out how to warp the text so i used the pen tool and used the text option that lets you align onto the lines. I quite like this style but i'm not exactly sure on how to make it look better so I will move onto Photoshop instead. |
Warping
I went into Illustrator to figure out how to warp and exported it over to InDesign, these pages look quite minimal but I like the warp effects as It makes it ass a bit more to the design than if it would just straight. |
Magazine Style
Using the images I got for research I liked how the work looked with the capital letters where the writing was inside and around it, I fee i will most likely use this style for some pages for my final. |
With McGonagall I felt like the cat theme Amy had going on really captured her catty like attitude and just overall works better. I may however use my font for stage directions instead. I tested out on Procreate how I could achieve the Peter Strain type with scripts of McGonagall and Dumbledore and emphasized more on McGonagall to see how this would look.
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For Hagrid I have decided to go for Ayeisha's font based off blackbirds as this suits his characters the most and during the testing I also tried to turn the 'v' into their own little feet. I have linked her DIY alphabet blog below. With this I was testing out the marauders map footprints but I think I am using too much colour for this one.
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For Dumbledore I am keeping with Jess's typeface as his works best for him. If I do not like my overall designs with this typeface for him I may choose a type of my own choosing. With this design we first see Dumbledore taking all the street lights away so I thought a simple lanterns design would be cool. The text doesn't appear that clear so I will mostly go for the Peter Strain style more.
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Patronus Test
At first I was using Procreate to make my images but the quality came out bad for them and as I was looking on youtube how to make an animal out of text I came across on the perfect video for making the patronus. The Illustration of it is still simple and not overly detailed which i like. I then added text and warped it into place. I had to give the background a gradient as the face of the cat was disappearing too much. After adding in the text I'm not that big a fan of it but I feel if i change the blue colours to white it may work better as long as it doesn't blend into the text. Overall this process was fun and quick to do and I will most likely continue to do this for certain pages. |
Before I began I tested out 3 words for my thumbnails and then chose the final 2 words. My first batch was too illustrative so i re did them with more colours. I feel mobile is still too illustrative but for the second meaning I am not at all sure how to make type work with this.
Bow – to bend; Bow – the front of a ship; Bow – implement to shoot an arrow Dove – a bird; Dove – jumped off Mobile – wind blown sculpture; Mobile – moveable |
Photoshop Tests
These are the experiments I have done of my thumbnails but didn't end up liking for my final 2 designs. I feel some of the words I picked have been hard mainly due to not really understanding the words properly or knowing much English on it's own. It has also been hard to not just draw out the words with the type and what compositions I want them in. |
For my final I realised how much better it really looks being only type although trying not to add much visual elements was really hard for me as I wasn't really expecting this to turn out that great without it.
I think I enjoy having this be mainly black and white as the style really makes it look like it belongs to one script/book. I only ended up using 3 Typefaces and re used Merula for both Hagrid and the stage directions as my own font didn't really appeal to me that well when using it. I have added a slideshow to show all my finals as well as adding a link to the final publication on ISSUU. After the feedback I went back in to add some colour to emphasise on some words as well as adding colour to stage directions. I have also made sure my pages are divisible by 4 by getting rid of the last page and adding it into the previous so I wouldn't need to work too much into re making this as there was still enough space left to add it in. |
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