Blog Post 40 - Stage 2 - Completed Design: Background

My finished design for Stage Two: On Disc Label

As mentioned in Blog Post 39, the following posts will be in regards to the explanation of not only how, but more importantly why I went about designing the On Disc Label in the way that I did. For reference, my finished design is posted here. In a similar vein to that of the DVD Amaray Cover, these posts will be split into the following elements: Background; Border; Titles; Gene Hunt; Trio of Cars; Background Pattern; Logos; Information. The first element that will be discussed is that of the Background.

Background

Back in Blog Post 36, the very first element of this stage of the assignment was undertaken which was in regards to setting up the template by using guides. As I was about to find out, the guides were sincerely useful indeed and meant that the design was much more accurate as a result of using them, as well as making the entire design process much easier for me too - reason being that the allowed me to know exactly where the edges of the design were which is obviously something to very much bear in mind of course so one does not extend off of the side of the workable area.

Background

First things first was to create a new Layer for this background to be part of, so navigating to the Layers and Artboard Toolbar a new Layer named GreyBackground was chosen. Personally I chose to use layers in this as in the future if one was to come back and need to edit a certain aspect then this would mean it would be easy to find in the future. To begin with I decided to lay down a background which would form the basis for the rest of the design. For this, the Ellipse Tool was used which would allow me to draw circle that spanned the entire area that I previously set out with the guides. When using the Ellipse Tool it was important to also hold down the Shift and ALT Key which mean that the circles orientation was 100% true, and that when the circle is being drawn it is being drawn from the centre. I decided to use this feature as I could place my cursor at the mid point of the guides and draw a perfect circle outwards. I decided to firstly not create a circle to the correct size, as I thought that this would not be the most accurate way to go about this first stage. Instead, I decided to draw a circle of random size, and then go to the Transform option on the toolbar. This mean that I could then type in the exact size of circle that I wanted. 

Transform Options

Reverting back to Blog Post 36 and the dimensions of the On Disc Label and guides that I had previously set out I was able to conclude that for the background to extend to the entire area I would be looking at a circle with diameter of 125.5mm. Having typed these in and pressed Enter this meant the dimensions of this circle was absolutely perfect to what I was looking for - something that would be much harder to achieve by manually adjusting the dimensions of the circle by using the mouse. With the circle now in place I decided to head over to the Appearance toolbar which mean I could then choose how I would like this particular circle to appear. This was something I had been thinking about and reverting back to my previous comments in regards to the House Theme I wanted to keep to, I decided on the same grey colouring that I used on the Spine on the Stage One: DVD Amaray Cover. My reasoning behind this is that by using a House Theme I feel that this ensures that even though they are separate designs this means that they subtly link in and work together as a whole. Over in the Appearance Toolbar this colour was selected, and I also decided to add a Stroke of 1 point to the edge of the circle too. Admittedly as the circle was extended to the edge of the guide and thus into the bleed area this will more than likely be cut off in production, however in the production I felt that it was worthwhile to add this as it makes the overall appearance clean and crisp which I feel is important to have an aesthetically pleasing piece of work to work with. 

Having now placed the background, and explained my reasons behind why I did what I did, this means that the next element is the Border.