OUGD503: Responsive Project Report
Studio Brief 1: Individual Practice
Penguin Design Awards - Caitlin Moran “How to be a Woman” I was really excited about the Penguin Random House book cover competition because it meant that I could explore the illustrative side of my practice rather than the design side. Having looked at the 3 options I was only considering two of them; Caitlin Moran’s ‘How to be a Woman’ and Erik Kastner’s ‘Emil and the Detectives’. I felt that a children’s book would be the easy choice as there is a definite audience to aim at. Where as Moran’s book was a little more complicated than that and was a bit of a challenge to appeal at women but not specifically for women or in a stereotypical way. My final piece places Moran in the position of Venus in the famous Botticelli painting ‘The Birth of Venus’ in a slightly quirkier manor. I am really happy with the outcome of this piece and think that it fits the brief perfectly – combining traditional book design with humour. This brief is the one that I am most confident about getting short listed. It definitely has made me more confident of my illustrative capabilities and makes me want to do more illustrative designs within my practice in the future.
Eurojust - Logo Design Competition I chose to do the Eurojust brief as my first brief because I thought that it would be a quick and easy turn around. Also the prizes of thousands of euros initially attracted me for first, second and third place. I produced the logo by starting with rough sketches in my sketchbook and then transferring these into illustrator to create the logo in a vector format. The end result that I submitted is shown above. I have mixed feelings about this submission because while I feel like it answers the brief I don’t think that it is a completely effective logo. I can see flaws in the design like how the scales aren’t centred and that the European stars are just an afterthought placed behind the logo.
Secret 7” - Max Richter “Dream 3” For this brief I again wanted to explore my more illustrative side so I decided to do Secret 7" as a day long brief. Also briefs like Secret 7" allow me to do more experimental work that I can really explore and not worry about being so precious with the designs. I chose Max Richter’s song "Dream 3" as I felt that it was the most powerful song for me, in terms of the fact that there are no lyrics just simple melodies. My final design, while quite minimal, I feel portrays a message that could be read in many different ways. I tried to portray the mixture of emotions that can come from dreams – confusion, delight or fear. Unfortunately once again this wasn’t chosen to feature in this years Secret 7" exhibition, but it has motivated me to try again next year.
Goat Collective - Disposable Society The global environmental situation and people’s attitude towards it is something that really bothers me and I feel passionate about it so the disposable society exhibition spoke to me. One of thing that I am passionate about is to not waste. In this society we waste so much food when it is perfectly edible just because it is out of its ‘sell by date’ so I wanted to create something as a reaction to this. Within the creation process of this piece I learnt a lot about new and different print methods and experimented with new techniques that I would not have thought about before. I was really pleased with the outcome of this brief and thought that the final result was really successful and visually pleasing. Due to the nature of this brief I didn’t really take any professional photos of my outcome. However I wasn’t picked to go into the exhibition which was disappointing, it is a bit of a knock on my confidence but I will take the skills that I have learnt within this short brief into other similar print projects or perhaps for my own personal print practice.
D&AD - WWF - Membership as Community Initially I was drawn to this brief because I myself am a supporter of WWF and believe in their cause. Also the fact that the brief was quite open to interpretation intrigued me and I thought that it would be a good challenge to see what I could come up with. Starting the brief my aims were to create a concept that solved WWF’s active community issues as well as creating some supporting design materials. Through out the process of this brief I have learned so many new things, not only to do with design but also how to present and write about my work professionally. I found a new confidence in writing about my work in order to sell it to the judges which had a knock on effect onto all of my other briefs. Also having really enjoyed creating every part of this brief I learnt that it is important to enjoy what you are doing as if you don’t it can come across in your end result as the love isn’t shown through. Perhaps this is obvious in my Eurojust submission. Additionally I not only learnt about writing but also how important presentation is. To have high quality imagery
Studio Brief 2: Collaborative Practice
YCN - Marine Stewardship Council This brief stood out to me from the others because of the ethos of the brand. I’m passionate about the environment and sustaining it for future generations, and while I don’t eat fish I would like more people to eat it from sustainable sources. Also I aimed to meet people from other courses doing this brief so to have something like a video or animation as the final outcome opened up the way for me to work with animators. Our end result was a lot better than I could have ever anticipated. Working within a team really motivates me to do more work than I would usually do on my own. I enjoyed exploring my illustrative practice again for this brief and I feel I have improved my vectorising skills as a result. As always when collaborating you learn a lot about compromising to please the crowd. So I have definitely improved my communication skills within the brief as at times I felt like I was producing work for clients. Also I now have contacts within college in case I would like to collaborate again, which I think I would like to do. I would definitely consider designing with my peers again, but perhaps for a more design heavy brief.
OUGD503: Evaluation
Overall this module has been my favourite so far this year because of the fact that I could choose which briefs I wanted to do and when. It has made me a lot more independent in seeking feedback as well as organising my own time. This makes me feel more confident for 3rd year because all of the briefs will be self initiated in this manner. Also I have learnt so much about the importance of presentation for future clients. I feel a lot more confident as a designer for being able to produce successful presentation boards as well as writing them in an appropriate manner. Because I have enjoyed most of the briefs within this module I feel like I have spent more time on it than I would a normal brief. I challenged myself with extra tasks for my small briefs and even though nothing came of it I have learnt from them. But I feel like my time management could have been improved, some briefs like the WWF brief and the Penguin Design Award brief I spent far too much time on when I should have been working on other things. But because of this I think that these two briefs were where I created my best work for this year. I still managed to complete all of my briefs with time to spare before their respective submission dates so it wasn’t too detrimental to my practice. In Collaborative Practice I really enjoyed working and meeting people on other courses. It made me have an insight into each of their design processes and I have learnt new things because of this. Additionally I am more intrigued by animation now, perhaps I will try this next year within one of my briefs. One thing that I regret not doing within this brief was to not explore my printing practice more. I only traditionally printed one brief, but I would have liked to do more. Also in hindsight I would have liked to do some packaging designs as I haven’t really approached packaging design this year after doing so much of it last year. I have looked on at others doing the packaging briefs in envy so I think this may be something that I take forward to 3rd year.
Hattie Windley | hw257270