Project Report Amber Kaplan
Contents Studio Brief 1 – Individual • A Clockwork orange – Penguin & Random House • Secret 7 • Shutterstock – D&AD • Crispin Orthotics Studio Brief 2 - Collaborative • D&AD – Design Bridge : Break New Ground in Beauty Branding OUIL503 Module Evaluation
Penguin & Random House A Clockwork Orange The brief: To create a modern design for the cover of Anthony Burgess’ – A Clockwork Orange. The design should steer clear of obvious and overused imagery as well as having a good use of typography and appeal to a younger adult audience. I chose to do this brief as I was interested in doing a book cover of some description, it is not something I have done before but wanted to explore. This appealed to me more than the Folio Society’s War Horse brief as it was more adult. I would have done all the penguin books as a substantial brief, however I am not a fast reader so elected to only do the book I was most interested in.
I started off by reading the book, I felt like I was at an advantage going in with a clear mind as I have not actually seen the film of A Clockwork Orange so it had less influence on what I chose to do for the cover, though obviously I was aware of the eyelash and bowler hat imagery. I also researched other covers of the book to see what other people were doing, what was overused and I should stay clear of etc. This brief was a good exercise in working to set dimensions, with crop marks etc. I appreciate the amount of time given to complete this brief, but feel as if I should have spent less time on it or completed it quicker as I was only doing it as a quick brief. Though it was one of the most enjoyable briefs I took on for responsive. Â
Secret 7 The brief: to create record sleeve covers for songs, there are 7 songs which you can submit as many designs as you like to. The design must not include the name of the artist or the song. I had been excited about this brief as I am love music and thought that it would be a fun opportunity to do some musically inspired work. However I was pretty underwhelmed by the selection of songs, especially as every year previously had included at least one song or artist I really liked so I lost some enthusiasm for the brief, but since I had been set on doing it I decided to continue with the brief. This was one of the quickest briefs I did, each of my submissions took about a day to do. Â
I ended up doing three designs; for the songs “Clearest Blue” by CHVRCHES, “At Last” by Etta James and “Imagine” by John Lennon. I had intended to do “Art School” by The Jam, but accidently ended up doing Imagine instead. With two of my designs I tried to interpret some of the lyrics and the feel of the song, but one was purely almost random image making. I did each song as a separate entity, I didn’t make them into a set or anything because I thought it would be more fun to just interpret the songs individually. Though it would have made an interesting challenge to create a set from this, maybe it would have given me some more enthusiasm for the brief again as this was a small brief that I kind of just wanted to get done and out of the way. Sets are something I would consider in the future if I ever did a brief like this (or Qwertee / Illustration Friday type things. None of my submissions made it into the gallery but that’s fine, none of these are my greatest works.
D&AD: Shutterstock The Brief: to choose three of the seven story archetypes and create one image per archetype, depicting everyday life events that fit the story archetypes I chose this for my substantial brief as it was a brief with a lot of creative freedom as there weren’t many restrictions in terms of size, media. Plus I’m quite interested in narrative so it was a fun brief to do in terms of storytelling and communication etc. I didn’t know anything about the story archetypes when I started this brief, so I had to research into that. I found it really interesting how most stories fit into these certain archetypes, and I immediately started being able to relate real life situations to these. To begin with I had a lot of different ideas that I had to narrow down. I wanted to focus on the really small elements of everyday life and make them seem so big and dramatic so I went for “THE QUEST” – the quest for coffee, “TRAGEDY” – tragedy of messing up your makeup, and “VOYAGE AND RETURN” – going to / coming back from a job interview or work.
As the deliverables were just images (and a 30 second video about the process) I felt really free with what I could do as there was not something that it had to be applied to. Though on reflection it may gave been better to do something like that for a substantial brief rather than this as that would have given the project more context and more of a direction, but since I’ve done a book cover design, record sleeve designs and a pattern for orthoses for smaller briefs it felt good to have a brief that I could cut loose and just make some great images with. Â
The brief really allowed me to explore media and techniques that I was interested in – Lino, textures etc and helped me really develop my practice while responding to something outside of a college set brief. The images I have made for this brief have been my favourite images that I’ve made as I think they’re really striking and overall were very fun to make
Crispin orthotics The brief: to create 1-2 patterns to be applied to orthoses. These should appeal to an adult audience. This was just a little extra brief I took on because I was interested in it more than anything. I have been interested in creating patterns for a while, but didn’t really know how to make them – this brief gave me an opportunity to try it out and since I’d done my collaborative I had a better idea about pattern creation. Since I was kind of just doing this for fun I decided to do a pattern that was really my style and would appeal to people with my interests, over anything else. I did a really witchy pattern in cute pastel, gothy colours with crystals, runes, magic etc.
Creating mockups for this was a challenge as the pattern was a flat image and the item is not as flat and simple as a book cover would be to mockup. Also it was hard to find a good stock picture of orthoses to use. Nevertheless I decided to give it a go and despite the fact that these are not the greatest examples of mockups it does still give an idea of what the pattern would look like on a 3D item. Also it was good practice for future mockups of items, which will come in handy.
Collaborative D&AD: Design Bridge – Break New Ground In Beauty Branding The brief was to create gender inclusive branding for beauty products of your choice. For the collaborative brief I wanted to do the Design Bridge: Break New Ground In Beauty Branding brief, as gender identity, LGBT issues etc is something I’m passionate about so a project about gender inclusive beauty branding is right up my street. Also I thought the brief may be too much to take on for an individual brief, personally. I was really lucky as I got along with my group and we didn’t have any disagreements or major problems, everything ran quite smoothly.
I was really lucky as I got along with my group and we didn’t have any disagreements or major problems, everything ran quite smoothly. My group consisted of two Illustrators (me and Ellie Chappell) and two Graphic designers (Tom Hodkin and Rowan Carter). We met up regularly to exchange ideas, and review each others work/ input we also had an ongoing facebook chat to keep in contact about everything going on. From this project I learned a lot about using illustrator to create patterns, making mockups and packaging design. I keep worrying that I didn’t pull my weight enough with this project, as I did a lot of the initial drawing work and sketches but I’m still learning with digital media so could only give feedback later on in the project, where other people’s skills were more usable. I tried to give as much input as I could to make this project as successful as possible though.
Because the deliverables for this brief were presentation boards for the branding and not designs we had to think about a few different components for the brand. A concept behind everything, patterns for label designs, boxes, bags, advertising etc. Which was useful and applicable for future projects, as in lots of projects there’s scope for merchandise that is not just one final design but something that can be applied to other things. I am incredibly happy with and proud of what we’ve done, it’s definitely one of the best group work experiences I’ve had. Everyone was really co-operative, I feel like everyone’s input and ideas went into the final designs.
OUIL503 Module Evaluation. In this module I have been able to take on a range of briefs and I found it as a good opportunity to do things that I have not done before, such as pattern and book covers. It was an interesting module as it's more self led, you choose what brief's you want to do and there's less direction from tutors/ feedback from peers. I quite liked this aspect as it allowed me to ask for feedback or help when I felt like I needed it rather than trying to scrape together something to get feedback on. I chose the D&AD shutterstock brief as my substantial brief, as it was really open and although it had a basis there was a lot of freedom with what I could do with it. It was also fun to learn about the different story archetypes as I didn't know anything about them before doing this project. While I am happy with what I made I feel as if I could have chosen something more ambitious for my substantial brief as the deliverables were just three images rather than a design that could be applied to something. There's something more fulfilling about creating something that I can then apply to a mockup and see as an actual product rather than just a stand-alone image. However all my smaller briefs - Secret 7, A Clockwork Orange and the Crispin Orthotics brief were all like this so it was kind of a relief to just make images for my substantial brief, as I could develop my practice and techniques more. I feel more confident with lino, and would like to continue experimenting with mixed media and different printing methods. Some of the briefs I chose to do had strict set dimensions which isn't a new concept to me but it was still challenging to work to. Particularly with A Clockwork Orange as I kept accidentally forgetting that the crop marks would indeed, be cropped so the main design had to fit within a smaller region than the file I was working in. This was still one of the more enjoyable briefs I did. Collaborative was really useful in expanding communication and teamwork skills. It was very enjoyable too being able to collaborate with people from different disciplines. I worked with two people from Graphic Design and another Illustrator. I really enjoyed collaborative as we could all still work in our individual ways but also bring something into the group. I felt like I didn't pull my weight as much as I should have as I am not as skilled with digital work, but after this I will definitely try to get more proficient so I can contribute more to any future collaborative work. That being said I did offer a lot of ideas, traditional drawings / pattern ideas and feedback to the group and the final outcomes for this project were definitely some of the best work I've contributed to this module. Â
Presentation boards are a totally new concept to me and I feel like I'm still not very confident with putting them together, especially for a format larger than A3 as it would be difficult and expensive to see what this would look like on paper. I struggled with what is appropriate to put on the boards and what isn't, the amount of words etc. as obviously it has to explain the process but not to a point where it would take 300 years to flick through the boards. This is something I'm realising I struggle with on my blog as well, picking out what's important and needs to be shown and what can be left out, I think I've overloaded my blog with unnecessary details and need to see where to narrow it down. I think this module was really useful as the brief's are live competitions and I wasn't trying to tick boxes for a grade while creating these pieces, it was more about fulfilling the brief to the best of my ability in a certain amount of time. It may have been useful to take on some faster briefs to get more experience completing things quicker, as I have a tendency to dordle. I think in a way I sabotaged myself by choosing briefs that weren't released until January as I had to take more on at once when if I had done some smaller briefs in November I could have had more time on them, and more time to focus on something else in January. One of the most important things I've learned from responsive is making mockups. I had not had much/any experience making digital mockups before this module, but I've had to just learn. I've found making them great for getting an idea of how your image will look on a product, which can help to find things that need to be tweaked or perhaps even show a prospective client how your work can be applied to something. I will admit I am not the best at making mockups, especially for things that are more three dimensional but with more practice I should be able to make more successful ones - this skill will come in handy for OUIL505.