Roger Reiman - Design - Part 1

Design 101

Now that we have our mural location assigned, measured, and scaled, it is time to get serious with the mural design phase.

Design is a process, and the primary purpose of design is to solve a problem and then create a solution. It might help to keep the following quote in mind when thinking about design….."Your first design may be the best, but you won't know until you can't find a better one."

The process described below is loosely based on the standard followed today in the graphic design industry. The important thing to remember is that there is no absolute right way to design a mural. I suggest you take what you need from this post, and leave the rest.

Basic Design Development Process:

1. Research the Topic

2. Produce a Series of Thumbnail Sketches

3. Think about Composition and Scale

4. Sketch Comps

5. Finalize Comps

Design Constraints

Before you start laying things out and jumping into a design, you need to understand what the specifications are. These are the details of the final piece you need up front, before you begin any design work. For example, What is the size of the wall or panel to be painted? Is there a certain era or time period which needs to be depicted? What type of paint is going to be used? What is the skill level of the painters on this project? What’s the budget? Is there a budget? 

All of these considerations are going to be the rules or guidelines you must work under. You really don’t want to start designing before you get all the details worked out, because once you’ve jumped in, it can mean starting over if a critical spec is missed. If you have designed for a set of specs and then try to modify it to fit all new specs later, it almost always compromises the strength of the design. Better to know all the specs up front.

In an earlier post, I covered the topic of ideation. I showed a few basic sketches that I came up with once I was given the mural theme. At that time, I was basically kicking around some basic ideas, and couldn't take them any further without being provided the detailed specs for this project.

Step 1 - Research the topic... 

Through our research phase, we discovered that Roger Reiman had left an incredible legacy during his lifetime. If you refer back to the ideation post, there is a long list of accomplishments that we discovered in our research.

Our challenge, is to include and express to the viewer, as many of these elements as we can, in our final design.   

Step 2 - Produce series of thumbnail sketches 

Sketch like crazy. You may think you have the best, most original idea ever once you get your project assignment or have your specs, but please do yourself a huge favor and sketch several ideas out first. More often than not, each idea you get done, inspires other ideas and directions. Do at least a page of sketches if not more. Apply what you learned in the research phase to your sketches. 

If you are working on an historic mural design, try to put yourself in that era or the person’s shoes you are doing the design of. Keep an open mind to new possibilities. Observe the world around you, daydream, and collect inspiration. You might still stick with that first idea, but chances are, you will come up with something even better and usually more original, if you push yourself to think in new ways and explore.

Step 3 - Think about structure and scale

Stay abstract/block-in general composition. This is usually larger than a thumbnail but try not to get pulled into the details.

Basically, this stage involves organizing the loose thumbnail sketches that were produced, into a few more refined overall concepts.

Step 4 - Sketch Comps

Take steps 2 and 3 and flesh out a few comps. These should not be final but should follow specs and be close to finished in terms of look and feel for the major design components. At this point, one of the concepts may be standing out as stronger than the others. Or, each concept might have it's own strong element that can be rolled into the final version.

Step 5 - Finalize Concept

Mock up your concept using Photoshop and/or Illustrator (or a similar program of your choice). Or if you prefer to do things the more traditional way, render the final concept by hand. Most generally, I will use Adobe PhotoShop to superimpose the final design over an image of the actual wall, for the event organizers review.

Ta Da, all done...not so fast!

The design is done, so it's time to celebrate right? Might be a better idea to figure out how to paint it in 3 or 4 days?

I was hoping to actually start showing the design process for the Roger Reiman Mural in this post, but it took a bit more to describe the process than I thought. Once again, my hope is that the new Walldogs might learn some pointers from these posts, enabling them to lead their own project.

As mentioned in an earlier post, Ted Turner is the co-leader on this project. Ted has developed a very unique pinstriping style, and I came across a graphic that reminded me of, " The Zen of Ted."

If he were writing this post, I could imagine him coming up with a similar graphic to easily express everything I just wrote above.....something like this....

In the next post, we will dive into the actual Roger Reiman Mural Design....Thanks for your patience!