Josh Douglas
Brief & Concept
A Very Alternative Christmas
Lyrics So this is Xmas And what have you done Another year over And a new one just begun And so this is Xmas I hope you have fun The near and the dear one The old and the young A very Merry Xmas And a happy New Year Let's hope it's a good one Without any fear And so this is Xmas For weak and for strong For rich and the poor ones The world is so wrong And so happy Xmas For black and for white For yellow and red ones Let's stop all the fight A very Merry Xmas And a happy New Year Let's hope it's a good one Without any fear And so this is Xmas And what have we done Another year over A new one just begun And so happy Xmas We hope you have fun The near and the dear one The old and the young A very Merry Xmas And a happy New Year Let's hope it's a good one Without any fear War is over, if you want it War is over now Happy Xmas
Brief For this brief the class was given the choice of various famous Christmas songs and films. We each had to choose one and design an A6 Xmas postcard in either red or green. The postcards intend to be Riso printed and sold online for charity so with this in mind we had to stick to one colour. I decided to choose the Christmas hit song “Happy Xmas� by John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
Concept "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" was the culmination of more than two years of peace activism undertaken by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The message behind it is basically to stop the wars. Its promoting world peace whilst also celebrating Christmas. The song is a bit of a mockery of the world and how wrong and awful it has become, full of terror, conflict and famine. The songs message is clear and powerful and I wanted to try and represent this within my Christmas postcard.
Josh Douglas
Development
A Very Alternative Christmas
Idea 1 I thought I could take this brief 2 different ways. The first Idea I came up with references Lennon's key message behind the song, but approaches it in a humorous manor with a variation of the drop beats not bombs slogan. I experimented with different slogans to see which had the strongest impact. I thought that drop brussels not bombs worked well. I used a yin and yang / brussel to signify the message of peace.
Idea 2 I decided that the first idea was a bit too abstract so I had to design something which had a clearer link with song. I decided to use what I think are the strongest lyrics in the song. I illustrated a snow flake bomb which connects war and Christmas, the 2 themes within the song. I think the combination of the lyrics and snowflake have a strong impact and have a much more solid link than the other design.
Development
Josh Douglas
Type The typeface used for the design is Franklin Gothic Extra Condensed which is the same one used in Lennons War is Over campaign. I decided to use this in order to hopefully spark a memory for those who remember the campaign from the typeface.
Glasses In an attempt to reference the great man behind the song, I decided to try incorporate hid iconic glasses within the type but found that it ruined the composition of the type and would be far too small to have an impact.
Snow Flake Bomb To create the snowflake bomb image I had to experiment quite a bit in order to get the shape of it just right. The design is clever and has a strong visual impact which highlights the key themes within the song.
A Very Alternative Christmas
Josh Douglas
Final Design
A Very Alternative Christmas
Outcome I decided to invert the colour for the final design, as the bold green background has a much greater impact and also gives it that Xmas vibe, leaving the snowflake to be white and snowy. The Xmas post card’s have now been printed and are now available online as seen in the image above.
Summary This was a fun quick brief to get me back into the swing of things. It was helpful to work with such a short time scale as It forced me to get on with it and churn out ideas. The strict limitations of the brief meant that my time could be allot more focused allowing me to developed various ideas. Overall I am happy with how this brief has turned out, the final prints look awesome and it is nice to have work for sale online.