Brief 11 _ Jamal Edwards (Creative Networks Collab w/ Sam Lane)
Abbas Mushtaq:
Extended Practice Submission 22/05/14
Context
Brief
Produce the branding + identity and spatial design for the second Creative Networks event hosting Jamal Edwards, the founder of SBTV.
Creative Networks are a series of speaker events hosted at Leeds College of Art aiming to provide a platform for numerous inspirational and notable speakers in fields related to the design and arts industries. The second event is Jamal Edwards, one of the brightest young entrepreneurs out at the moment, being the founder and brains behind the revolutionary media and music platform – SBTV
Targe Audience
The target audience for this event will be predominantly 18-25, college / university students. A big turnout is expected, for an event not normally associated with the college.
Produce suitable and relevant material to transform the canteen space into an environment and experience
Deliverables
Promotional Poster & Application Suitable and relevant material to transform the canteen space into an environment and experience, such as posters, murals, projections, idents etc. Photographic documentation of process and deliverables in context of event.
#01
Reference Imagery
Digital
Jamal Edwards is the founder, and driving force behind SBTV - a purely digital media, and entertainment platform. For reference we looked into SBTV as a digital platform and visual references and cues we can take from it. The SBTV website and broad identity informed the final outcome, in terms of content and aesthetics.
Brief 11 _ Jamal Edwards (Creative Networks Collab w/ Sam Lane)
Abbas Mushtaq:
Extended Practice Submission 22/05/14
Glitch
Looking further into a digital platform in a visual manner, we heavily used glitch and digital noise as a reference. In particulr the colour splits of Red, Green and Blue. SBTV’s own idents glitch, so we felt it was a logical, and recognisable reference to further extend this concept across.
Grime
Grime is a genre of UK urban music that came into prominence around the early 2000’s. SBTV came around at the time of the internet boom, and YouTube, and drove Grime music to new levels. Grime and SBTV are synonymous with each other, so it was important to look into notable Grime artists, songs, visuals. Just any kind of reference or subject to work from we could get.
Colour
We wanted the projections, or colour we chose to work with for this event to be very bright, almost neon. To further hit home about a digital platform, and to stand out and create a vivid experience in a darkened canteen hall.
#02
Contextual Research
Lenticular Process
We all agreed we liked the basic concept of pushing a digital aesthetic as far as we could, even through print. Lenticular printing is a form of printing where the image changes depending on where you tilt it, it’s pretty much as if you could print an animated .gif. This was absolutely perfect for our experiments with glitching and image disintegration.
Brief 11 _ Jamal Edwards (Creative Networks Collab w/ Sam Lane)
Abbas Mushtaq:
Extended Practice Submission 22/05/14
Projection in Space
‘Anti-Art’ Style
Anti-Art is a growing style of design, similar to postmodernism in the sense it is the complete antithesis of something, anti-art creates what is perceived as a desirable visual quality by going against the ‘laws’ of design. Hip-Hop artist M.I.A is a famous example of this style of design, which also relates well to the research into glitch and disorientation.
Projections also suited our concept of digital glitch. We also wanted to take full advantage of the large space we have on hand in the canteen, and create more of an experience than simply a few stalls. We looked into how projections have been applied to space and surfaces in a creative form in the past.
#03
Development & Process
Brief 11 _ Jamal Edwards (Creative Networks Collab w/ Sam Lane)
Abbas Mushtaq:
Extended Practice Submission 22/05/14
Glitch Process
Image > Text > Image
Glitching isn’t a manufactured outcome, it comes from a random amount of data and errors, it’s organic in quite a beautiful way without any human effort in the process.
We glitched the photos in a variety of different processes, some times we did the more straight forward route of taking an image into photoshop, distorting it, and chopping it up, and finishing up animating a variety of different frames.
We wanted to take a similar approach, with doubts about manufactured glitch not looking quite right. We opened images in a text file, changed the code and watched the image automatically change. We animated these for projection.
#04
Promotional Poater
Brief 11 _ Jamal Edwards (Creative Networks Collab w/ Sam Lane)
Poster
Abbas Mushtaq:
Extended Practice Submission 22/05/14
A short turnaround minj-brief within the larger overarching one was to produce a promotional poster for the event, to be circulated around town in targeted stores and chains such as Chimp, and Size in Leeds town centre. I was tasked with working on the poster over a weekend. I would have liked to have implemented a lenticular process, for the glitch effect but it was out of our budget and timeframe.
#05
Brand Application 01 - Spatial Design
Brief 11 _ Jamal Edwards (Creative Networks Collab w/ Sam Lane)
Abbas Mushtaq:
Extended Practice Submission 22/05/14
Projection in Space
Notable artists associated with with SBTV were projected around the canteen area, in an infinite glitch loop. We made a custom playlist for the event, along with dimmed lighting and lightbox signage.
#06
Event Documentation 02
Brief 11 _ Jamal Edwards (Creative Networks Collab w/ Sam Lane)
Abbas Mushtaq:
Extended Practice Submission 22/05/14
Projection in Space
Vinyl Application
We cut vinyl for the bar area to also look slightly distorted and frozen in time while glitching
Notable artists associated with with SBTV were projected around the canteen area, in an infinite glitch loop. We made a custom playlist for the event, along with dimmed lighting and lightbox signage.
#07
Event Documentation 02
Brief 11 _ Jamal Edwards (Creative Networks Collab w/ Sam Lane)
Abbas Mushtaq:
Extended Practice Submission 22/05/14
Custom LCA Idents
Lightbox
We were really pleased with some improvising we did with lightboxes to create glowing signage. Aesthetically, there’s a nice quality to it leaning against a wall with a wire sprawling out of into a wall. Art direction was a huge amount of fun for this project.
We created a custom LCA ident, incorporating glitch and distortion. To be played on a loop while seats were filled for the presentation and talk.
#08