PROJECT REPORT
DANIEL CARTER GRAPHIC DESIGN RESPONSIVE OUGD503
Secret 7 Secret 7 is a brief that comes out every year asking designers to create an album cover for 1 (or more) of the 7 chosen songs. This is a brief that I always look forward to because it is the most open brief and you decide what you want to put on the front cover. I myself also admire music and design and combining the two sounds like a good brief. I started by looking at existing album covers and researching why they are so iconic and what makes them so recognisable. I decided to look at the genre of music and see if there was a link between each design and why they were designed in that way. I noticed that a lot of the album covers are designed in a way to match the specific genre. For Example the Avenged Sevenfold album is a lot more expressive and aggressive with the use of bats and skulls. Whilst album like The XX are a lot more peaceful and smoother therefore having only an X as their album cover. After researching numerous album covers I then decided to create a mind map which helped me generate a few initial ideas. The two album covers that I decided to do were Jack Garratt – Worry and Etta James – At last. The designs that I created worked really well with the genre of music. For my Jack Garratt design I decided to create a woman who was the puzzle which showed the pieces being left apart from the woman on the jigsaw piece and putting you in the shoes of the lyrics which says you pick up the pieces. Whilst for my Etta James design I decided to create a more vibrant and subtle design. I decided to link my design back to the lyrics which mentions the word heavens. The word heaven really influenced my design which are doves within the blue skies. Doves are a symbol of peace and heaven is something that I consider peaceful. Although I feel both my designs were subtle to the lyrics I sadly wasn’t chosen for the Secret 7 competition. I am still very satisfied to have created two album covers that have developed a lot since my last 2 designs last year. In the future I hope to experiment more with the designs and not stick to digital designs as it restricts me from exploring more.
Emil and the Detectives. This is a brief that I really struggled with at first but as I gradually got out of my shell and designed 3 final covers. This brief asked us to create a full cover of the existing book Emil and the Detectives. My first instinct was to go to a local library and check out some books. When I got to the library I decided to go with an open mind and choose books that stood out to me because of the design or because of the layout and colour. As I searched around I noticed that a lot of the books that I was picking up was yellow which is also the colour that the majority of Emil and the Detective books were. Here, I decided that I had to create a book cover that would be engaging and intellectual for children. I wanted to create something that was clever and something that the children may have never seen before. I also wanted to create something that would be interesting for the children but also drawing the attention of the parents. It is important to notice that children are also consumers and that they are not stupid and won’t go for books that have glitter on them. Delighting a child is often shown with presenting them something new. This led me creating a mind map so that I would not create something that everyone would think of when thinking of Emil and the Detectives. The concept that I decided to go with was fun and games. My childhood memory is getting my cereal box and doing all the puzzles and quiz’s that were on the back of the box. Therefore I decided to create a front cover that reminded me of the game spot the difference. The circles are all together in the design whilst the only clue that is given away on the plot is that the thief had a bowler hat and this bowler hat is in between the circles. I wanted to create a product that delivered to the children and so that they would get the feel of them being the detectives whilst they are on the look out for the bowler hat. I was very satisfied with my final product. I got a lot of good feedback from the peers and was really happy with the outcome. The book cover was very easy to understand and felt like an Emil and the Detectives book. I was also satisfied that not only did I create one but three. This brief was one that I thoroughly enjoyed once I started getting ideas flowing. I really like the simplicity of the book and how the type is done in a chalk typeface. I really hope to get a brief similar to this in the foreseeable future.
Monotype This is a brief that I really struggled with at the start. Although I had a lot of ideas for this brief I soon noticed that a lot of those ideas didn’t work or were not matching the brief criteria. This brief required us to create a campaign of our own choice using only typography. The campaign that I decided to choose was The Water Project. This brief was a brief that I really wanted to undertake because typography is something that I have distanced myself from however, I really wanted my design to create a difference in the world. I really want my future designs to be influential as well as designing for a cause. I decided to choose The Water Project because we are very unaware of how badly these families need our help. I decided to look at May 1968 posters as they focus heavily towards typography and rebellion. A lot of these posters were very simplistic and easy to understand even though they were in French. The colours were very vibrant and strong and this was something that I decided to take forward. I also decided to look at existing campaigns/ posters and one that caught my eye especially was one where there are two cups and one was clean showing the water that we drink and one was dirty showing the water that third world countries drink. This was very touching and something that I decided to take forward. I really struggled with the initial ideas as this was the first time that I wasn’t using icons of any sort or imagery. I really struggled with getting ideas on a paper therefore I decided to create a few quick ideas that I had in my mind. After creating these initial ideas I then started to create my campaign for The Water Project. I decided to go with a water typeface that would maintain a short message that would make the viewer stop and think. From my research I noticed that the messages had to be short and expressive because you don’t get a lot of time to walk by one of these advertisements. After much consideration into design I created a set of 4 posters that all worked well together and were very expressive and short. I then decided to re-create their website because it was quite difficult to understand and needed to be refined. I created a mobile version and a desktop version that I was satisfied with. The two desktops also contained a bottle that would fill up as the website received a donation therefore showing how much of a difference you can make by donating. I also created accessories and places these posters onto bus stop advertisements as well bus’ themselves. I was very satisfied with my final outcomes and believe I did a good job promoting a campaign that I strongly believed in. I believe it is important to design for campaigns like The Water Project because people aren’t aware how much water they waste when they could be donating or helping out a campaign.
Collaborative brief We collectively decided to do the John Lewis window display brief. This brief required us to redesign their window display for Autumn whilst creating something ‘new’ within technology. This is a brief that we really struggled with at the start. Although we met up regularly at the start there were a lot of times where people were not in or people had trips with the university. At first we had decided a concept and then as we got further into the concept we decided to change it therefore we had to change everything we had done so far. Although a lot of our research was done as a group I thought it was important to do research of my own to get a better understanding of what I am meant to be designing. It was important to know what new features window displays are having and whether we could recreate something similar. We decided to go for a hologram window display. After much consideration I was left alone to create the first series of posters that I did find difficult because I was given the illustrators work and wanted to incorporate their work into our designs. I then decided to recreate these posters to make the posters more like inviting and welcoming posters. The old posters looked too serious and weren’t inviting enough. We then decided to create an animation that would explain how our hologram window display would work. Although I was given the duty to do this part I really struggled with After Effects and after starting the animation I decided to give the role to Billie to finish because she said she was familiar with the software before and that it would save time. I then decided to create a miniature version of John Lewis’ windows which I then got the measurements and created a little maquette so that the wood designers would have an idea of what I wanted to be created. After the window display was created the team and I decided to decorate the window display according to how we wanted the windows to look if they were to be up with John Lewis. To conclude I think we were quite slow as a group at the start because of the amount of other work that we had to do but once we got going the brief was rather enjoyable and I’m glad I got put out of my comfort zone. This is a brief that definitely took me out of my comfort zone but I am also very glad I did. This is a brief that I would have never picked myself however, after working together as a group I believe we did a good job and showed teamwork towards the end. Although there was a lot of miscommunication throughout the whole brief I have learnt a lot of new techniques such as Adobe After Effects as well as learning more about myself and how I can be a leader.