End of Year Show
targetCreative audience. Direction: Branding
Duration: 1 Month SEAN CONNOLLY
Brief Description I collaborated with Jamie Pudsey to create the branding for the end of year show. Simply put, our concept is; “To expose the work at Leeds College of Art temporarily.� As creative practitioners, we spend most of our time crafting beautiful things (visually and conceptually) and our finest creations will be put on display in our final show for such a short amount of time. The outcome of the brief works as a visual metaphor to represent the effort we put into crafting, only for it to be exposed for a blip in time (melting away). Using a common advertising technique called the scarcity principle, gives our target audience a sense that the show is unmissable. Our Target Audience Our target audience were the public, people at our univeristy, people walking past our university. So we constantly had to think about how they would see our work and what would make them want to come to the show. It had to be big, bold so that it was seen from a distance.
Research/Inspiration Our concepts primary focus was directed at the end of year show being temporary, which led us to find these photos of ice melting. Obviously ice in room temperature will melt away and this is how we wanted to portray our typography.
Development We decided on a specific word to create out of ice. We found words that ran synonymous with ‘exposed’. We figured that exposed was an adequate word as it represented that we, as students, would all ‘expose’ our work for the last time.
Looking back now, the word exposed was the wrong choice because it confuses our initial concept. We went ahead with creating the ice letters for the word exposed as seen on the next page.
Development
At first glance, we were satisfied with how the ice letters came out and thought that it was a great piece of work. We submitted it and we did not get picked. We went to ask for some feedback from Peter and Paul and they explained how the word ‘exposed’ in addition to the blue ink really confused the concept. This taught Jamie and I a very important lesson in design, do not get too close to your design work and let others critique it before submission. A way to get around this, is to show your work to someone who doesn’t study graphic design and if they get it straight away, then it has worked. We decided to re-do this brief with a clearer concept. This was a crucial turning point within our brief as we went down a new path.
Development Round Two
The second time around we decided to take a step back from the brief and really apply our concept to some typography that would make sense. We came up with the phrase “Here today, “Gone Tomorrow” a common phrase we thought people would get instantly. The “Here today” would be frozen and the “Gone Tomorrow” would be half melted. This was a major turning point within our brief because we were finally getting to a stage where the concept made sense within the typography.
Evaluation This board will discuss the various problems we encountered and how we overcame them and learned from them.
1st Attempt Getting too close to the brief. Our concept was crystal clear when we began: “To expose the work at Leeds College of Art temporarily.” As we started experimenting with ice and text, we produced a word that was too strong for what we were trying to portray. “Exposed” is generally used when someone or something has been uncovered to reveal the shocking truth; this is not what we wanted to go for. We managed to convince ourselves that this was a good idea and went down the path of producing it. Obviously the concept didn’t make sense and we didn’t end up winning the pitch. We received our feedback and started to understand that we went wrong in the concept development stage. Ask for another designers opinion of your concept, as this can help you see it from a different angle and you will understand where to improve. After this submission, we went back to designing and came up with a much stronger and effective piece of work that actually made sense.
2nd Attempt