K at r i n a S c o t t Production and Consumption
This double page spread shows my mood board I created to help inspire me with the first brief, creative writing.
A helpful workshop was taken by Pat Francis. At that time I had reached a block on ideas and where else to research, but she gave me inspiration and I learnt a lot from it.
C r e at i v e w r i t i n g
The first part of the brief was to research the role that writing has in the visual, oral, sound and moving world we live in. I used a variety of research methods such as, visiting galleries, using the Internet and reading books. By looking at a variety of research and asking questions I found a range of ways writing is used.
The images are examples of some of my research I found.
Shown left is a print screen of the slide shows I used for my presentation with my five chosen people.
The selection
I chose a set of five diverse examples of how writing is used by graphic designer’s and artists. These were found by using a range of sources. I put these in to a power point presentation and presented it to the rest of the year group. It was interesting to see what other people had found out and seeing their response to my findings. It was remarkable that hardly anyone had chosen the same people. This shows how we all think individually and how much research resources are out there. I also kept a bibliography of where and whom I researched. I made this into a visual diagram, so it clearly showed my steps to how I got my chosen five.
This is my bibliography and process of how I chose my final five examples of how writing is used and where I found my research.
These are my mood boards that I created to help give me inspiration for this brief on utopia and dystopia.
U t o p i a a n d dy s t o p i a
My group was utopians. We had to design as a group an idealistic utopia society. I believe it is harder to create a utopia society than a dystopia society, as can anything actually be perfect? With dystopia it can focus on war and destruction, whereas utopia has to be the ideal community. However I took the challenge on and wanted to make a society that could represent utopia as best as I could. This meant it had to be a slightly fictional place. Working as a group and using research the group collectively had, we came up with an idea. The Honey Bee Society. The society is built on the fact Einstein said about the honey bees, and if they were to go instinct the world would only last 2 years. Therefore honey bees are an integral part to the world.
Shown right is my initial sketches and ideas. Below is my group working hard to create posters and ideas for the presentation.
Honey Bee welcome sign
This is the plan of our city. The images at the bottom represent the feeling you get inside the Honey Bee society.
A photograph of the studio while everyone is making their societies.
Honey Bee flag.
We wanted a symbol for our society. We drew an idea of what we wanted (shown left). Next to the drawn version is the finished symbol that we created on the computer.
Our Honey Bee slogan.
This is my research into others manifesto’s and what I looked at to inspire me for my manifesto.
Manifesto
A few people from the group made an individual manifesto. I created my manifesto in the style of Sam Winston. He makes his words create imagery as well. Therefore I made up the words for my manifesto and displayed them in a shape of a honey pot and a bee, symbolising the honey bees. I produced this to be communicated as a poster. I chose a poster, because this can be used in many ways. It can be pinned up on walls and bill boards or photographed for reproduction. It can also be scanned in and put on the computer, this can then be put on the internet to reach a world wide audience.
My manifesto
Above shows are t-shirt designs modelled.
C o mmu n i c at i o n
I wanted to find many ways that communication could be used to get our manifesto out in to the world. Me and Sophia made t-shirts. I made mine my using image maker. ‘ t r y, t r y, ag a i n ’
I thought it would be an easy process and cheap. It was a cheaper way, however not as simple as I thought. I used the Image maker that you can print out on an inject printer and iron on. The first attempt came out well, but when ironing on to fix it, as it states, just pulled bits off. My second attempt came out faded. I did not give up and I did what the saying says “if at first you don’t succeed try, try again”, and on the third production it worked perfectly. I also had an idea of having a hot ‘bee’ balloon to fly the message around. This would communicate the manifesto from the sky, and present it in a way suited to the honey bee society.
I made this image using Photoshop to visualise what my Bee balloon and banner would look like.
This photograph is of all our ideas displayed together.
pa c k a g i n g a n d b r a n d i n g f o r t h e c o m pa n y I n n o c e n t
I was excited to have the challenge to do a brief that could be real life. We were in the same group as the Utopia brief. I think we worked well as a team and managed with the difficulties you get when working with others rather than individually. Initially we all worked together to gather research and ideas and then mid way through the week we still was a group, but split into two sub groups. This then allowed us to generated lots of different ideas for rebranding the company rather than just one idea. That meant at the end of the week with the presentation we had a wide selection. If this had of been real life a client would want to see a variety of options. Then us as designer’s can develop more to the design they like. The first thing I done was researched in to Innocent as a brand, to see what their products look like now and what could be adapted and changed with out completely changing the identity. I got a broad visual knowledge by creating a mood board (shown right).
my re branding ideas
Brian and Bev gave some advise with this brief, which I took on board. A few examples were to consider all sides of the packaging, back is just as important, needs to be a strong brand name and logo, and to use persuasive writing to help sell the product. I sketched some ideas and wrote down lots of possible names I could use. I then chose the strongest and designed them on the computer to get a real sense of what they would look like.
This design was modern and very different with the black and white background. It is in a carton. I used the colour palette of the flavour of the soup. To improve my carton design, after I made the outline of the packaging finer.
I n ITIAL DE S IG n S
Once looking at competitive soup packaging (shown left), I designed packaging that I thought would suit the brand Innocent. After meeting up as a group regularly and having a meeting with Bev, we decided on which designs to push more and get to a professional standard for the presentation on Friday.
This idea was inspired by traditional looking soup packaging, with the simple design and use of only a couple of colours.
Final Designs As a group we produced a diverse range of final designs, which I am proud of. The presentation went really well and everyone in the group made a contribution to the presentation. Our feed back was positive and due to having an array of ideas everyone liked something. In my sub group we created 3 different styles of packaging, under to brand names soup and sinless. I designed all of the backs of the packaging. We took careful consideration into the colours used. The colours of the logo and the writing are all the same and the colours reflect the flavour of the product. The final designs are shown on this page.
P r o d u c t i o n a n d c o n sum p t i o n o f making a book
I found this brief quite tough, as it was over a few weeks combined with doing other tasks. I had to manage my time carefully, making time to do the book, rather than just leaving it to the last minute as I had weeks to do it. The group tutorials helped keep me organised and plan what was needed for that week . I approached this brief first by researching different styles of making a book, sizes, appearance and texture. This helped me think about ideas.
Reconstructing a book
Before making a book we got a chance to experiment with existing books and to reconstruct them. I bought my books from the charity shop, as they were cheap and brought in a variety of materials, such as sewing equipment, scissors, glue and a lighter. These were used to try out lots of different things. I experimented with size, from big to really little, shape, from triangular to square, folding and burning of pages. Photographs of my reconstructed books are shown on this page. From doing this exploration I wanted to develop more looking at size and the visual appearance of a book. I particularly liked the small books I created. This shows all my reconstructed books together to give a sense of scale.
Initial ideas and explorations from my sketchbook
M y IDEAs a n d f e e d b ac k
I explored lots of thoughts and ideas by writing things down and sketching in my sketch book. (These are shown over this double spread). After having meetings to present my work to the group and tutors at various stages, it helped me develop what was good and see others point of view. I felt very privileged to have Vaughan Oliver attend a crit and give his opinion. He found my small book concept very interesting and advised I thought more about the content, as there is so many avenues to take it.
Final design
With my final design I considered my feed back from my peers and tutors and I made improvements. I kept the idea of having a packaged box to keep the three small books in. Inside the two smallest books, one has the worlds smallest things, including the smallest book and the second has the worlds biggest things, including the biggest book in the world. Inside the slightly bigger book has a range of artists, designers and photographers that are influential to me. I felt this could be beneficial to the consumer, as they can see what influences me and could take pieces of work or people from it.
This photograph show s the book launch, which took place in the refectory.
These are the three books inside my hand crafted box and are sold as a whole package. The hand shows the scale of the box and how small the books are.
Example of the pages inside the little books.
O r g a n i s i n g i n f o r m at i o n
The first part of the brief was to find collections. I did this in a group. We decided on collecting paper. We collected posters and postcards. These were all free from what we found around university and Epsom town centre. We also had a collection of train tickets that were found and belonged to us. The other collection we got was sweets, it was a random collection, but it went down well back at university with everyone.
Below shows me categorizing my collections and suggesting ways I can show the data using information graphics.
This is examples of David Mccandles work.
RE S EARCH
After watching David Mccandles talk on information graphics it made the subject more interesting to me. The way he talked about manipulating the data to show different things and it can allow intangible data, such as fear, to be represented visually. He would ask questions of the data, play around with it and create patterns hidden in data. I had never thought of information graphics in a fascinating way before. His information on the money spent on war made me have a different opinion when put in a different context, such as the amount the country has and percentage that is spent on war. I knew I wanted to show two information graphics that changes your perspective when showing the data in a different way, so I then needed to research what ways there are of displaying data. I chose a bar graph style, as it is easy to read and the data can be clearly visible from just a quick glance.
Other examples of information graphics for inspiration.
My hand in
Shown on this double page is my information graphics that I created with my chosen collection, languages. My feed back was positive and I received a B+ and a Bfrom the tutors. My positives were I had clear, formative graphs, visible data, great imagery used, changing the perception with my other graph and having a glossay of terms. To improve it, was suggested to change the layout of the spread.
Im p r o v e d l ayo u t
To improve the layout I made the text smaller and arranged it better. This made the graphs a focus point and I made them slightly bigger as well.
Intervention
By using an action or process I had to use intervention in my work. I researched other people who used intervention in their work and then photographed my own images. In the production of my photographs I used props, such as my dog and objects, that were the intervention. I then showed them to friends and family to see if I got a response, from what would be the consumer. They really liked them, especially the ones with the dog.
These are my intervention images, using destruction and covering.
W o r k su b m i t t e d
Once Sophia and me had taken our photographs up London, I took them home and manipulated them on Photoshop. Using two separate photographs, I would cut an image of us out and place it in another image to create the surreal photograph. When taking our picture we thought carefully what positions we would need to be in and what our background image would be. Using issuu.com we put our images into document so it could be seen as a book of photographs. We entitled the piece Elevation Intervention. Instead of using objects that are elevated, like our inspiration piece had, we decided to use ourselves. We then uploaded our intervention images on to the tumblr web site, so everyone could see them and offer comments and criticism. The link is http:/ucagraphicdesign.tumblr.com/page/2 Shown on the right are the photographs that were in the book we put on tumblr.
Once the class met up at the Barbican, everyone swapped an intervention image they had produced. This is what me and Sophia received, which was used to inspire us with our photographs
The photographs show some of the pieces created in the two week project. I think there was a lot of great work produced in a little time frame and the studios looked bright and colourful.
Make me think
The two week project was a chance to work differently. It was great that the timetable was flexible, because sometimes you don’t feel creative and it was nice to work when I wanted to. What inspired me to do work was seeing other peoples work and then it made me want to do something. I got to talk to others that I would not normally talk to. It created more of a freeness. I do find working at home easier sometimes, as everything I need is around me. In this circumstance being there was more beneficial, as you can gain feedback as you go and work with other’s around you. I enjoyed the talk from Hyperkit. He was very interesting, talking about the way he works, his influences and seeing his studio’s work. I would of liked to go to more, but that week I had my essay hand in, portfolio work to do and my work for this project. If this was to happen next year I feel it should be earlier on in the year, so year 1 and 2 can get to know each other and deadlines wont have to be in. The peaks in activity were at the 24 hour stay, rag factory and thursday before hand in. I think this was because of the time issues there was just bursts of activity, rather than continuous.
This is me and Sophia’s final piece. We also uploaded a digital version through making a pdf book on issuu. com and posted it on the ‘make you think’ blog.
E va l uat i o n Production and Consumption I feel semester two has gone really quick. I have enjoyed the range of briefs. It has stretched my abilities, as I have learnt new skills and working to deadlines. I personally liked the brief on creative writing and finding out a range of artists and designers. This will help me with more knowledge on others work. Another brief I really liked was the Innocent one week task of branding and designing packaging for the company. It felt like a real live brief and got me used to working under pressure for a quick deadline and as a group. I think through out this semester my tutors have been really approachable if I need help and have had a tutorial to help with Indesign. I think it is great we get a chance to feed back to the tutors and they always ask for our opinions. I believe with this year I have been made a more persistent person, as before if something went wrong I would give up, but now I want to keep doing it until I finally do succeed. My time management has improved this semester, as I learnt from semester one how to cope better with multiple task to do. At some stages it is harder than others, like when there is a brief to do, essay to write and portfolio to do, but with priorities and allowing time for each thing I managed to do it, with relatively little stress. From doing many presentations through out the course, with the beginning of the semester doing a power point presentation, to the Utopia brief and innocent task having to speak about what the group was up to, I have gained a lot of confidence. When I was at sixth form I dreaded presentations and after this year and even more so after this semester I no longer fear speaking in front of others and now like presenting to show others what I am doing and to receive
feedback from my audience, students and the tutors. In this semester I have explored many aspects of production and consumption. In the brief, to make a society for Utopia and then getting my manifesto out to the world , I had to consider how a consumer would receive it and produce a manifesto. I then produced ideas for branding and packaging Innocent, with the concern of how the consumer of Innocent would think and also the owner of Innocent. When making a book, I thought about what would appeal to the audience of a book fair and considered costs, content and production of the book. With the intervention brief I engaged with the complexities of production and consumption in a contemporary communication practise and produced a book of photographs digitally, which can be seen on a web site for a modern consumer. Finally with ‘make me think’ task it was all about participation and I produced questions that could be seen visually on a wall and digitally on the blog, so there was two ways a consumer could see my work. In the future I will always think about the production and consumption, as it is an integral part of Graphic Design. I have experimented and used different processes and skills, such as photography, photo manipulation, book making, packaging design, and presenting. With every brief I have pushed myself to develop the task further and always make sure I do as much as I can in the time given. This allows me to get the most out of the course, develop my skills and see what I am capable of. On reflection I can see how far I have progressed in this year and have learnt new skills to take in to year two. I want to continue progressing and learning new things and I am looking forward to what will come next year.