OUGD503// DESIGN PROCESS
PROJECT REPORT 2013//2014
CONTENTS
PROJECT LIST //
RICHARD PRATT ARTS CHRIS STAPLETON THE ARCTIC 30 THIRDTHURSDAY D&AD NATIONAL TRUST SECRET 7” EGOS AT THE DOOR WEAVE STORE KARMA CROPS BEST RECRUIT
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BRIEF 01 // LIVE BRIEF
RICHARD PRATT ARTS LOGO
At the very start of the year I was approached by a close friend from one of my old colleges currently living in South Africa. A practicing artist Richard specialises in creating exquisite oil paintings of the surrounding landscapes and animals found in South Africa. As an up-and-coming artist Richard is currently developing a personal identity and so needed a logo to represent his practice. Upon first discussing the brief Richard outlined exactly what he wanted me to produce and gave some rough ideas as to how he wanted the end product to look. As he is currently living in another country all communication regarding the project was completed via the internet, at first this was not a problem. However as the brief progressed I found certain aspects of feedback and analysis was misunderstood, consequently extending the time it took to complete the project. The logo created was based around the Fibonacci spiral due
to its relevance to the varying proportions applied within fine art. After defining a basic logo form and typeface the client was happy with the logo was developed by hand to create a soulful aesthetic significant to Richards work. One of the main problems I encountered while completing the brief was communicating via the internet, as certain ideas and visual amendments were hard to visualise without a physical manifestation of the idea. In future projects where communication is completed via the internet I will utilise screen shots and video programs like ‘Skype’ to visually communicate with clients about ideas. Finally, despite the communication issue I feel that the project was an overall success. Not only was the client very pleased with the final outcome but the brief enabled me to develop aspects of my design practice by gaining experience creating a logo and communicating online with clients.
BRIEF 02 // COMPETITION BRIEF
CHRIS STAPLETON POSTER
The Chris Stapleton poster brief was outlined as one of the five initial brief choices for the responsive module, simply asking for a poster design to capture the mood of Stapleton’s new single ‘What are you listening to?’. The competition brief was initially selected because it presented me with the chance to create an illustrative outcome, as illustration is an important foundation of my design practice the brief was relevant and appealing. As I had work from numerous other projects running alongside the responsive module I wanted to complete the brief in a relatively short timescale, and so I gave myself a week to complete & submit the final outcome. In past module evaluations time management has always been a factor that has been outlined as an area for improvement. Therefore, while completing the responsive module
I focused on reducing the time it takes to complete smaller projects similar to this one. After collecting a brief body of research into the song and artist I felt I understood the moods emoted by the single enough to start generating ideas for an outcome. As Stapleton is a relatively new solo artist he needs his identity promoting to new and existing fans. Therefore, I decided to base the vector illustration around the artist’s identity and image. The illustration was rendered in a pastel blue colour scheme that was selected capture the feelings communicated by the despondent nature of the song lyrics. Combining the artist’s portrait with colours relevant to the single allowed me to create a design that promotes both aspects, consequently surpassing the requirements set by the brief.
BRIEF 03 // COMPETITION BRIEF
THE ARCTIC 30 PROTEST PIECE
Another one of the initial five responsive briefs outlined at the start of the module was the UNreported ‘Free The Arctic 30’ competition brief. Unlike other briefs that were reviewed this one listed a strange and very open form for the outcome, simply asking for a ‘Protest piece’ to help raise awareness of the campaign. The open nature of the outcome allowed me to adapt brief to suit my practice, producing a printed, illustrative outcome. Additionally, another reason the brief was appealing is because its purpose is to raise awareness for an ethical issue, as a designer with an ethically driven practice this makes the competition relevant and appealing to my practice. After collecting a body of research and defining a final concept I started creating the illustration choosing to do so by hand, as a designer I have always found it easier and quicker to complete preliminary designs and illustrations by hand and so it is something I
put into practice regularly. Moreover, the brief presented me with the chance to develop my skills in Adobe Photoshop as I had to render my outcome to make it look like a paste-up piece of artwork. The rendering aspect of the project was an important part of the development process as it helped to give the illustration context in the environment it would hypothetically be placed in. A problem encountered while completing the brief was the loss of colour information during the displacement map process. To ensure that the illustration looked like a convincing pasteup piece of artwork I applied a displacement map to render some subtle paper creases onto its surface. However, during this process there was a loss of colour information which subsequently changed the illustrations aesthetic. In future projects a complete understanding of the Photoshop processes applied will help to surpass any similar problems.
BRIEF 04 // COMPETITION BRIEF
THIRDTHURSDAY SKATEBOARD DESIGN
The Third Thursday Boardpusher competition runs every month and asks artists and designers to create a skateboard design reflecting a specified monthly theme. The competition was selected as one of my responsive briefs because of its relevance to my personal interests, skateboarding is one of my main hobbies and has been an aspect of influence and inspiration for a long time. Moreover, the competition is also relevant to my design practice as the brief presents the opportunity to create an illustrative outcome.
through a process of creation and refinement. Once the illustration had been created and finalised I utilised my graphics tablet and Adobe Photoshop to build up layers of colour. Photoshop was utilised due to its freedom with the pentool, and the ability to add the pressure sensitive line width that allowed me to create the rough aesthetic desired. One important adaptation vital to the success of the illustration was changing the line colour from black, to a dark brown colour that was much more cohesive with the rest of the colour pallet.
The monthly theme of the competition entered was ‘First Love’, a term which was open to interpretation. After creating a series of mind-maps exploring possible concepts I decided to focus on fictional stories and their illustrious characters that greatly inspired me as a child. Focusing on the hookah pipe smoking caterpillar from ‘Alice in Wonderland’ the base illustration was created by hand
While completing the brief I encountered no major problems. However, after reviewing the submission I think that the design could have been improved by adding some typography within the smoke at the top of the outcome. The type would be relevant to the theme of the illustration and help to balance the overpowering aesthetic of the smoke.
BRIEF 05 // COMPETITION BRIEF
D&AD 2014 NATIONAL TRUST
The main project focus of my responsive module lies with the response created for the 2014 D&AD yellow pencil awards. The National Trust project was selected as my focus brief for a number of reasons, the first being the ethical tendencies of the company the response is created for. As an ethically driven designer it is important to select the least corporate brief, and so, as the trust is an ethical organisation with a focus on reconnecting people with nature it appeared to be the best choice. The brief was initially started with a completely different approach to the one featured by the final outcome. My initial response outlined parents and children as the target audience; however I decided to change the projects direction after becoming disengaged with the brief and the direction in which it was heading. A new project direction was outlined by rewriting the re-written brief and focusing the target audience on teenagers and young adults living in Britain. Once I had redefined the projects direction I developed a campaign idea relevant to the newly defined audience. The focus of the campaign lies within inspiring the audience
to embrace their audacious nature, adventure in the country side and connect with nature. To capture the attention of audience members a series of typographic posters were created, each poster featured an inspirational quote to evoke the audience members to interact with the campaign. The typography featured on each design was rendered by hand to give the outcomes a natural feel reminiscent of the campaigns nature based focus. Supporting the poster based advertisements I also proposed creating a campaign information pack that would be distributed to the audience from National Trust pop-up shops. As part of the campaign I also created a proposal for some typographic based store front branding. Finally, to ensure the campaign also had an online influence I created graphics for social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. No major problems were encountered while completing the brief, however an area of improvement lies within the development of a strong, informed concept in the early stages of the project. Creating a relevant and informed concept will help prevent project progression being made with ideas that lack creative scope.
BRIEF 06 // COMPETITION BRIEF
SECRET 7” VINYL SLEEVE
The secret 7” design competition is an annually held event that allows creatives to create a design for a special, oneoff vinyl sleeve. Participants have a selection of musicians and bands to choose from, all of which usually span a variety of music genres and ages. A selection of winners are selected for each musician with the sleeves being printed and displayed in an exhibition in London. The Secret 7” design competition is appealing to me as a designer for multiple reasons, the first being the success I had when entering the competition last year. Not only was my design selected as part of the exhibition, but it was also featured in the Guardian newspaper and on the Design Week website. The successful entry last year definitely influenced my choice when looking for briefs to complete as part of the responsive module as I was hopeful to repeat the previous year’s success. Another reason the brief was selected is because of its relevance to my design practice, the competition present participants with the opportunity to create a response
in any style they choose, this creates room for further experimentation and will help to develop my illustration based skill set. I chose to create a design for Elbow’s song ‘Grounds for Divorce’ which I perceived to be about using alcohol as a way to escape from problems. To communicate this aspect of the song I chose to create an illustration depicting a firsthand view of a typical pub scene in dark, gloomy colours. Contrasting the dull nature of the image is the brightly coloured pint glass representing the themes portrayed by the song. During the process of creating my response I encountered no major problems and managed to complete the brief within a days’ time. Unfortunately, this years entry was not selected as one of the winners which taught me that you cannot always consistently repeat success. An aspect of the outcome that I would improve lies with how the pint was coloured, instead of rendering it with free flowing colours I would illustrate the colour in horizontal layers.
BRIEF 07 // LIVE BRIEF
EGOS AT THE DOOR GEOMETRIC PATTERN
A live brief was added to the responsive collection when a friend named Ed from a band called ‘Egos At The Door’ approached me asking for help with a small screen based task. The band has pages on various music based host websites that allow people to visit their page and listen to their music, one of which also users to make small changes to the basic aesthetic of the site. The brief set simply asked for a refined page aesthetic, specifically referring to the background and banner which were rendered in simple block colours. Replacing this the client asked for a subtle yet interesting geometric pattern. After collecting a body of secondary research into Islamic geometry I used illustrator to trace over one of the complex patterns selected from one of the books. Initially, I wanted to create my own original pattern for the brief, but after learning about the complex process of creation and reviewing
my workload it appeared like an improbable idea. No problems were encountered while initially creating the pattern, however when it came to sizing the image correctly to fit the screen width many arose. Due to the nature of the Bandcamp website if an image is too small it is tiled to fit the screen. The tiling was not initially a problem as the pattern could tessellate however, upon uploading the pattern to the site I noticed small gaps were left between tiles, affecting the overall aesthetic quality of the piece. Despite sizing the image to 1024 x 768 pixels at 72dpi the background still appeared small and was tiled. To overcome this problem the background had to be resized and tested on the site until it found the correct page dimensions, the final image was huge. Despite this the project was an overall success and benefited my practice as it allowed me to experiment with screen based media.
BRIEF 08 // LIVE BRIEF
WEAVE STORE SCREEN PRINT
A friend from my home town of Blackburn recently opened up a small store selling screen prints, art supplies and street wear. While discussing the business venture he asked me to submit a screen printed design for the shops opening night on the 6th of March. Despite my hectic workload the live brief was selected as an addition to my responsive module. Not it only is the brief relevant to my print driven design practice but it is also ethical and allows me to support a small up-an-coming business . The brief was very open and no specific theme was set which gave me a lot of creative freedom when it came to defining a concept for the outcome. After recently watching a documentary about Japanese whaling ships I became inspired to create a print based around the theme of the majestic whale. The concept for the print is based around contrasting the beauty of nature with the harshness of our modern industrial world. To achieve this the print
features an illustration of a dull commercial fishing harbour rendered in a lifeless pallet of greys. Visually contrasting the monotonous nature of the harbour is the explosive, multi-coloured spray from the whale which is emerging in the foreground of the print. The base illustration of whale and harbour was illustrated by hand and screen printed onto an A3 sheet of paper, later the multicolured spray from the whale was added using acrylic paint and a brush. The only major problem arose while completing the printing process which was unusual as I have extensive experience with the complete screen printing process. Despite this, when selecting the three screens for each layer of the print I managed to clean and expose three A4 screens rather than three A3. Although the designs fit onto the screens there was only a small boarder to the edge of the frame, this unfortunately affects how successfully you can pull the squeegee over the design consequently affecting the quality of the print.
BRIEF 09 // LIVE BRIEF
KARMA CROPS LOGO
After posting some of my recent projects on Facebook I was approached by a friend who wanted a logo for a hypothetical cannabis dispensary company. The live brief simply asked for a logo based outcome featuring typography reading the company name ‘KarmaCrops’, with an accompanying icon relevant to the nature of the business. I decided to engage with the project as it presented me with the chance to add another live brief to my responsive module and gain further experience in logo design, an aspect of my practice which has been previously outlined as an area for improvement.
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The brief was very open with regards to the form and aesthetic of the outcome as the client only specified that he wanted it to balance both type and image. Therefore, I digitally developed a range of simple logo designs focusing on the recognisable form of a cannabis leaf. To ensure the aesthetic was consistent and relevant with the cannabis based theme a colour scheme consisting of
No problems were encountered while completing the brief, however an area for improvement lies with the dissemination of work. While putting the logo pack together I had to write-up a detailed guide as to how the logos should be applied, in future projects I want to include brand guidelines as part of the outcome so that the clients have a document that can be referred to when using the logos.
Before sending the initial logo variations to the client I went through the collection and selected a assortment of my favourite designs, this decision was made to ensure the client was not overwhelmed with choice when reviewing the variations. After reviewing the initial logo selection the client made a hasty choice outlined a design that he wanted as the final logo. Once the individual design had been selected a file containing both print and screen based logo variations was created and disseminated to the client.
BRIEF 10 // LIVE BRIEF
BEST RECRUIT LOGO
The last and final brief of the responsive module came in the form of another live brief, set by a friend who is currently focusing on setting up his own recruitment firm. As the business is still in the early stages of development only a logo design is initially needed. However, as the business grows there could be further opportunities to become involved with the company branding and identity. Project research was collected in the form of sit down talks with the client where he explained the nature of the business and discussed some basic ideas. After our first discussion I felt I understood exactly what the client was asking for and so developed a range of refined modern logos. The concept created to reflect the nature of the business was based around the aspect of finding the right person for the job, this was visually communicated through simple graphics depicting jigsaw pieces and dot assortments. During the first talk it was outlined that the client wanted to apply an inviting pastel colour scheme
to the logo, therefore I also defined a basic colour scheme that can be applied to any future outcomes. Once I had created and refined the logo selection I arranged to have another sit down meeting with the client to present the current outcomes. The on-going client talks are very beneficial to my design practice as they help me gain experience with interacting first hand with clients and discussing design related ideas with people who have no knowledge of design. The client outlined a logo selection that he wanted to apply to the business card but also asked if he could utilise some of the simple typographic variations for the website he getting developed. The brief is currently still ongoing as the client has asked me to design some aspects of the website as well as the logo. Furthermore, as the business grows and starts to turn over a profit I want to propose the design of a cohesive branding and identity project.