Choosing the brief 1/5
OUGD503 Studio Brief 2: Collaborative - Oasis Individual contribution Emily Lodge/Daisy Conway
The first thing Daisy and I did when choosing a brief was talk about our various strengths, weaknesses and what we wanted to get out of doing the brief. Using this we agreed on how we were going to go about responding to this brief. We had decided that Oasis generally needed a complete revamp in their overall branding and approach to promotion as they were quite deluded in their current place in the market and audience. I personally wanted to work in typography in the initial design stage and have a focus on the finishing of the work.
What I wanted to achieve in this brief is to have a completely thought out, finished response which is shown in the best, most professional way and through the use of digital mock ups and final design boards. We decided that I will work with the type and when it came to it in the later stages, I would do all the Photoshop work. We rewrote the nine messages together. We found that for a couple of the messages it was easier to write them in a question and answer style, so I suggested we make this the common factor throughout all nine so they work as a set.
We then met up a couple of days later after each having time to get our own individual take on this brief and do our initial research into Oasis. In this meeting we did a couple of brainstorms into the general idea we had of Oasis and their brand, as well as the roles and responsibilities that needed to be taken during this brief. Throughout the brief I am working in type, Photoshop and with the general time-keeping and organisation of the brief, making sure we meet all the deadlines we set ourselves and the ones for crits and YCN.
Design Development 2/5
OUGD503 Studio Brief 2: Collaborative - Oasis Individual contribution Emily Lodge/Daisy Conway
Both Daisy and I had a similar idea into how we wanted to approach this brief in terms of design. This made it very easy for us to quickly come up with a design aesthetic that we liked. Initially we did a brief bit of research together into the kind of illustrations, type, background and colour scheme that we wanted, deciding on this together. We quickly came to solutions for the type and illustrations, but decided on individual work to develop our ideas. With this decided we split off and started our individual contribution to the initial designs.
I developed the type side of the designs, working to the idea that the more important words in the messages would be in the larger typeface, and the rest in a smaller, thinner typeface. My initial idea was that it would be white type on a number of different bold coloured backgrounds, perhaps one colour for each message. I also worked on developing an idea for a watercolour background. My first attempt at this was not that successful, however Daisy had found a very effective way of creating this effect so I used it as well and experimented with it to try design something which complimented my type and would work with the illustrations too.
After a crit on the work we had produced up to that point, we moved forward with our designs together as up to this point it had been purely individual up until the last point. We combined our background designs and found that they complimented each other perfectly to give us the design we were looking for. We developed the background and decided on the colour-way we were going to use throughout the brief. I also edited the text to be more readable, and combined with the illustrations we found that we had ourselves a good set of messages presented.
Applying the design - Online media 3/5
OUGD503 Studio Brief 2: Collaborative - Oasis Individual contribution Emily Lodge/Daisy Conway
Once we had put the type and illustrations together and chosen the colours for each message we went our separate ways again, Daisy working on the printed material and getting primary research for us, while I focused on creating the web-based outcome to our campaign. This is the bulk of my individual work as this is where I work completely on my own. I found that because the designs were so flexible it was very easy to design to a responsive setup like is required for web-based solutions. This was also an opportunity for me to work on developing the
campaign branding as a whole and present this to Daisy when completed to see if she agrees and if it is something to move forward with. I thought that doing this would help us to pull the whole campaign together as a whole. I wanted to keep the overall design very similar throughout the three screen sizes, only changing slight elements to make it easier for each device. I decided on a very simple design across all three, keeping the main focus on the messages and not wanting to clutter the screens with too many other elements that are usually present.
I put the main focus on the iPhone application side to the outcome as I felt this was the most appropriate output for the campaign, and the one the customers would look at the most. I designed it on a very simple interface, with the majority of the navigation being scrolling. I found that this was an enjoyable task as it was all about taking the previously designed work and putting it together in a way which worked best and looked best for each media output. When I showed this work to Daisy she was very positive about it.
OUGD503 Studio Brief 2: Collaborative - Oasis Individual contribution Emily Lodge/Daisy Conway
After we had both completed our individual task we set about doing our next individual task, which was to show the messages in situation in-store and out-store. Daisy went down to Oasis and took some photographs for us, getting the already existing promotional materials for us to work from. After she collected these I took them and cleaned up the images before superimposing the messages onto various formats and sizes. I found that this was actually quite a big job as it meant I had to rework some messages to fit the shape and size of the chosen area to display.
Applying the design - In-store & Out-store 4/5
However I felt that this effort was ultimately rewarding as it was a much more realistic context for our messages and definitely showed them much better than without being superimposed. I also worked on creating outdoor advertisements for the campaign. For these I took the content I had written from the web-based outcome as well as the messages and displayed a few variations for us to work with in the future. I found that this was successful and are very bold compared to the kinds of designs that are currently around for retail promotion.
When I presented these to Daisy she was very positive about the outcomes I had produced, and I was happy with the outcomes she had produced as well. At this point we looked over everything we had and decided on exactly what we needed to use to present the concept for our response to the brief.
Finalisation & design boards 5/5
OUGD503 Studio Brief 2: Collaborative - Oasis Individual contribution Emily Lodge/Daisy Conway
For the design boards we had previously agreed that we would work on these together. However while Daisy was sorting out some other work I took the opportunity to get started on our design boards as I knew it would take a while for us to design something completely appropriate for the brief and show our work in the best way possible.
We discussed this as a pair and then worked on producing the boards together, taking the images that we had both produced and putting them together. We decided on a very simple layout where all the images would be large and there would be a small section for the body copy, which we wrote together. Overall we found that the boards were a hard task.
Initially I found it quite hard to decide on a format which work work with all the designs we had, as there was a variation between landscape and portrait variation. Through my experimentation of this I decided that portrait wasn’t viable.
We came up with eleven boards. This was due to the fact that there are nine messages that need to be communicated. We presented them at the final crit where feedback was given to condense them down.
I decided that the problem we were having was that we had created all the work but didn’t have any kind of underlying campaign title or cause to pull it all together and make it clear how the information should flow from one part to the next. I had previously tried to give a bit of an underlying campaign concept but we needed an overall campaign identity to pull everything together. I designed this and applied it to the designs and to the boards to pull everything together. I then reworked the boards with the idea that white space was needed to balance our designs.