GRAPHIC DESIGN APPLICATIONS ONE WEEK PROJECT MAPPING PROJECT INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO Click on a project
ONE WEEK PROJECT Who is doing really useful graphic design locally, nationally and internationally? What is GRAPHIC DESIGN ? • It is a relationship between CLIENT (brief), DESIGNER (creativity) and AUDIENCE (message). • The aim is to solve a problem and create a new identity for the service desired.
What is USEFUL in graphic design ? • • • • •
It has a purpose/a function It fullfils our needs It communicates visually We can use it again It makes our life easier
What does REALLY mean? • • • •
Above average More than most To a larger extent An impressive amount
The graphic design industry can be splitted into 5 different fields: • • • • •
Publishing Service Design Interactive Design Art Direction Branding
Our Task: research and investigate the companies excelling in their field of graphic design
ONE WEEK PROJECT SERVICE DESIGN: National Definition • Planning and organizing people, infra- structure, communication and material components of a service. • The aim is to improve quality and in- teraction between service provider and customers.
Engine Service Design Who: team of designers, strategists, researchers and visualisers who work for clients such as Virgin Atlantic, Eurostar, The AA... What: service design and innovation consultancies for private and public sector.
Link
www.enginegroup.co.uk
“There’s a lot more to this than just being imaginative. It’s about being able to challenge the preconceptions.” Joe Ferry, Head of Design and Dervice Design, Virgin Atlantic.
ONE WEEK PROJECT BRANDING: International Definition • Representing clearly, accurately and vividly the brand identity. • Selling a trademark/property through visual awareness. • It is about selling yourself and the others = today we are brands.
Browns Design, UK, London Co-founded by Jonathan Ellery and Nick Jones North, West, East, South Who: the climate group is a UK based international coalition of governments and businesses. What: 2004, a book with a practical approach to find a solution to climate change. In and Out Who: Jonathan Ellery What: A conceptual art book, which creates a story through the riddim of shapes and colors.
Link
www.brownsdesign.com
‘ We believe in simplicity, clarity of message, and originality in delivery.’’
ONE WEEK PROJECT Art Direction: National Definition • Supervising the overall style of a project. • Stimulating the team we are working with. • Defining the style, the impact wanted.
Legible London Who: TFL and Applied which is a graphic design agency focus on making the cities more understandable. What: help people to find their way around London more easily, the aim is to have it ready by 2012.
Link
www.applied-espi.com
“The Legible London scheme aims to equip pedestrians with all the information they need to get from A to B quickly and easily.” Kulveer Ranger, the Mayor of London’s transport advisor.
ONE WEEK PROJECT Interactive: International Definition • It is a playful interaction between the audience and the technology. • It is a performance wich construct an alternative physical, architectural, urban and social meanings. • It is looking at the future.
Flong Golan Levin and Carnegie Mellon. They explore new modes of reactive expression, between creation, manipulation and performance. What: • Footfalls (2006) The stamping of our feet creates cascading avalanches. • Blebs (1997) We can attach, detach and fling the sticky cells across the canvas. • Floccular Portraits Filaments drawn by the user are buf- feted by forces derived from a hidden underlying photograph.
Link
www.flong.com
‘‘All human cultures are defined by their ability to assimilate new ideas and adapt to changing memetic environments.’’
ONE WEEK PROJECT Publishing: Local Definition • Production and dissemination of litterature or information digitally or/and manually. • Act of producing, sponsoring or distributing books to booksellers or direct to the public.
Michael Hays Chicago, USA Michael has illustrated several dozen published book jackets. His work on the Farrar Strauss & Giroux Junebug series and Year of No Rain, all for author Alice Mead, include some of Michael’s fine portraits.
Link
www.michaelhays.com
ONE WEEK PROJECT Our Conclusion • People who do useful graphic design answer to the people’s needs as well as create it. • There is useful design thanks to the communication between the client, the target audience and the designer. • People who help others to create useful design such as: CR, Wired, D&AD, Monocle, It’s Nice That. Specialist magazines and competitions help us to reflect on what is considered to be good.
MAPPING PROJECT Branding & Image Making My chosen areas are branding and image making. Logos are a form of image making, within branding.
MAPPING PROJECT What are the changes that are being made with regards to the logo when a company decides to rebrand itself and why are some more successful than others?
Why do companies rebrand? • • • •
Competitor pressures Plummeting sales revenue Outdated market strategy To remain financially viable
Advantages of rebranding • Effective brand transformations • The repositioning, revitalising and redesign of existing brand assets to meet business goals.
Disadvantages of rebranding • • • •
Can backfire Waste money Lose customer interest Not be as good
If it ain’t broke don’t fix it
MAPPING PROJECT History of Logos Shell KFC McDonald’s They have kept a consistent theme throughout each generation of logo, gradually making the shapes more basic and in some cases omitting the text. The number of colours used has also decreased and they have taken away alot of the shading making the images more striking. In the KFC logo they have taken away the blue and used fewer more neutral tones which compliment the red.
MAPPING PROJECT History of Logos Starbucks Coca-Cola Pepsi These examples of logo redesign have become very minimal as time has gone on. Both Starbucks and Pepsi have dropped their company name from their logos making them very basic circular shapes. Coca-Cola has continued to use it’s classic font but changed the area surrounding it eventually ending up at a clean word only logo. It has not been overworked.
MAPPING PROJECT What’s disappeared? Citroen NBC Google Chrome Vodafone There is a distinct pattern emerging in the evolution of many of todays logos. Shapes and colours largely remain the same however the latest trend in logo design seems to removing any existing bevel or 3D effect, making the new logo completely 2D. In some ways this makes the logo look crisper but can also give them an oversimplified feel.
MAPPING PROJECT What’s disappeared? Warner Brothers Oreo Cadbury Visa The same applies for these logos and throughout my research there have been plenty more examples.
MAPPING PROJECT Unrecognisable? BT Mastercard BP As part of my research I wanted to find out if people were able to correctly identify the companies that these logos belong to. These logos have had very drastic makeovers as oppose to just being tweaked slightly. It could have negative effects if consumers no longer familiar with the company logo. The percentages shown represent the accuracy rate.
67%
11%
79%
MAPPING PROJECT When rebranding goes wrong Gap AOL In these two cases the logo redesign caused major backlash which had a negative effect on the companies. Gap faced such an outcry that they decided to revert back to their previous design. The problem with Gap’s new logo was the fact they had taken a classic design and changed it into something that looks amateur and boring. AOL look like they employed an infant to design their new logo, it looks messy and irrelevant.
MAPPING PROJECT Why do some logos just not have what it takes to stand out? This is a question I put across to people in a survey I took. The answers I recieved varied between those who came from a design background and those who didn’t. These five suggestions are what majority of the opinions pointed towards. The responses were mainly based around the aesthetics of the logo. There are obviously cases where a disaster would not occur if one of the rules were broken.
MAPPING PROJECT Final Outcome I have developed these suggestions into a diagram and placed it within a context where people can view it.
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO Hato Press is a speciality printing and publishing house based in London. They specialise in both screen-printing and Risograph / Riso printing processes.
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO βιβλιογραφια† We are going to use your personal library as our starting point to design a publication. As learners, you are usually provided with a reading list. This time, we would like you to define your own list of influences and to reflect on yourself as a designer. What resources inform your individual practice? What does this say about you as a designer? If you could leave your peers with a single legacy of knowledge, what would it be? This content will become the material to produce, design and publish your own publication, leaving a legacy of knowledge. The brief will conclude with a book launch in the college’s gallery, where each of you will be presenting your limited run of publications in a DIY set-up.
Structure The brief will be broken up into four stages. From thereon you will work as: • Editor • Designer • Finisher • Publisher Throughout the brief you will be working within small groups, which will be assigned after our first session.
Links: Ken Kirton Sophie Demay
† The word bibliographia (βιβλιογραφία) was originally used by greek writers to mean the copying of books by hand. Please consider this word in its broad sense.
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO Brief 1: Show & Tell Please select 5 items: either a book(s), a film(s), a character(s), a text(s), a song(s) etc. The items you choose should be the things that inspire you as a designer and that you find influential to your practice. Here are some suggestions of what you could select, feel free to use some of them but you should create your own list and order. The book you are reading now An object made by someone who isn’t a designer/ artist A book from the college’s library Your most referenced item Your favorite movie Something you’ve stolen One of your first influences A book that you chose for its cover A second hand book Your favourite spread in a book Something you’ve never read/watched
Format Your presentation will be projected. Each slide lasts for 30sec, in total each of you have less than 3min to talk about the selected objects. First, think of your presentation as a performance. What is the story and relevance behind your items? What ties them together and in which order? Is there a narrative throughout?
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO Brief 1: Show & Tell These along with the images on the previous page were included in my presentation. The Exhibiton shop at Selfridges: Each time I have been I have spent hours looking at the books and other products that they have on sale. The film ‘Drive’: This was the most recent film I had seen at the time and I had thoroughly enjoyed it. The cinematography was spectacular and it had a great soundtrack. My nail varnish collection: It is the first thing people notice when they walk into my room and it always takes a while to decide which colour to use. PostSecret: An online collection of secrets that people have sent in on postcards. It’s updated every Sunday and I check it regularly. I think it’s a brilliant idea and such an interesting concept. Book Collection: My collection of books with cloth bound covers brightens up my shelf. The patterns are so intricate and the material has so many textures. They are very tactile.
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO Brief 2: Start Your Collection
Laura + Maddie + Paula
Each group will have a tutorial with us (around 10min) + one more at the end, if you have any questions. outside this time, you will work within your groups.
Colours, Grids, Textures
Instructions For Thursday You will need to meet up with your group and work together to define a common theme you want to work on. Find a common ground. What are the similarities and links within your content and interests? We grouped you according to things you do, things you are interested in or you wish to persue. We have suggested some areas of focus in our email, but you decide your topic. Ask yourselves what you want to research, discover and create about? And what do you have to share with your audience? Keep this simple. It will be easier to add things to it alongside the project.
Things To Bring Bring in all the things that are valuable for your theme and that could be in your book/magazine/ fanzine. Before arriving go to the library and borrow as many items as possible to feed your topic. Bring your books, examples, pictures and films from home also. This will be the foundation of your content from which you will use to start building your bibliographia/ publication.
Do you want to start your collection of experiments. Could be around print processes, textures, monoprints, swatches etc.
Our group struggled to find a common theme between us to begin with but then after a lot of brainstorming and going back to the drawing board we came up with some ideas which we could each apply our interests to.
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO Texture: Bruno Munari A one-of-a-kind xerograph is the result of an image or object that is moved while the photocopy machine is in motion so that a new-impossible-to-replicate--image is produced. The resultant image is, then, not a copy of the original image or object but an original in its own right. This rigorous process of exploiting the photocopier’s potential was developed by the quixotic Italian artist and designer Bruno Munari in the series Quaderni di Design (1977). Every phase of the copy-making process, from reading limits to toner concentration has been systematically tested (to exacting 1970s standards) by Munari. The result is a witty series of samples that exhaustively detail every imaginable potential of the machine, some of which are quite unexpected.
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO Colour: Daniel Eatock Eatock is interested in connections between image and language, titles, punch lines, miscommunication, subversions, open systems, contributions from others, seriality, collections, discovery and inventing. He employs reductive logic, and strives for objective and rational solutions to form concluded works. I am especially interested in his use of colour in his works and the methids he uses to achieve his outcomes.
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO Grid: Piet Mondrian Piet Mondrian is recognized as the purest and most methodical of the early abstractionists. He radically simplified the elements of his artwork in an effort to reflect what he believed to be the order underlying the visible world. In his ground breaking paintings of the 1920s, Mondrian strictly limited his color palette to black, white, and the three primary colors: red, yellow, and blue. His work was very structured featuring stong grids and rectangle formations. His iconic abstract works remain influential in design and familiar in popular culture.
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO Holly Wales One of our intitial ideas was to use colour grid and texture to show the narrative of a famous film, for example, Titanic. We wanted to take something known worldwide and make it more abstract and therefore less familiar. Having research it we found that Holly Wales had already produced these illustrations after watching the TV series Twin Peaks in order to explore ideas about how narrative affects the way images are presented separately, rather than as whole complete scenes. We thought this would be an interesting challenge however struggled to find what message we were trying to put across.
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO Board Games Another idea came to us when brainstorming what came into our minds when we thought of grids. Many board games consist of squares and patterns as well as colour so we could see a lot of potential in terms of what where we could go with this idea.
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO Smooth Surfaces Magnified Focussing on texture we wanted to zoom in to apparent smooth surfaces to see what they actually looked like. We found it fascinating to think that no surface is ever smooth and that there is texture present absolutely everywhere. The problems we faced were being able to zoom in enough on objects to see the different textures and also how we were going to replicate that texture, which materials were we going to use?
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO A Game of Chess We finally decided to go with the board game idea as that is where we saw most potential and felt most challenged by. We didn’t want to narrate just any game of chess. It had to be something different to give a reader a reason to pick up the book. We chose the first of a six-game match between Garry Kasparov, the world champion at the time and Deep Blue, the computer developed by IBM exclusively to defeat the champion. It was considered something like 2010: A Space Odyssey, Terminator and Blade Runner in a chess game. People saw the match as a sort of science fiction struggle between man and machine. It was in 1996, when computers were still making their way into everyday lives. But could it truly be seen as a defeat since man created the machine? We also discovered a certain move called ‘The Knight’s Tour’ which showed the piece’s journey around the chessboard . We wanted to create similar patterns with our interpretations of the moves.
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO Experiments
Having collected each of the moves from the game we set about exploring the different ways in which we could show what was happening on the board.
Last move by deep blue and kasparov withdrawing from the match
First move: filled the squares occupied by the pawns
Positive and negative space on a programming code
Dynamics of the various pieces in the first 5 moves
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO
The first 5 moves drawn using a marker
Negative space
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO
The friction/tension created on the board by moving the pieces
Amplified
Tension/friction on the board using two colours
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO
Accumilated moves from both players
Squares taken up by each othe opponents players
Shading showing which squares are occupied with each opponent and squares that are empty
Negative space showing where the players are in white
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO Developments It was tricky to see how each of the experiments would play out if we were to do the whole game so we produced some sequences using simple arrows and lines.
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO Prototype Using the concept that when a players drags a piece across the board friction is created we digitalised the moves in the game. We used different types of line to represent the different chess pieces and different colours and arcs to show Kasparov and Deep Blue. In this prototype we put each new move on top of the previous one so we could biuld up the layers of pattern. However by the end of the game there were to many lines to understand what was going on. We decided that many changes need to be made to make the book more easy to understand.
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO Showing the pieces/grid We needed to find a way to show the different pieces so that each move can be easily distinguished from one another. We also needed to decide whether to include a grid system or not.
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO Textured Pieces For the chess pieces we used the patterned blocks and fit them into boxes then changed the corners to make it easier to distinguish between them.
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO Creating the document As a group we chose to portray the game digitally as using hand drawn methods would be too time consuming especially if we were to produce more than one or two books. This was a fast paced project and it was getting difficult to keep in part due to the fact we kept on changing our mnds on different decisions.
When placing the moves in to InDesign we faded out the previous moves so that gradually the reader is unable to see them. There are only five moves showing on each page preventing the pages from getting too bustling.
The two players, Kasparov and Deep Blue are differentiated by their colour. Kasparov is red and Deep Blue is quite fittingly blue.
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO Making the book The paper we used to create the book was Munken 120gsm. It was an 80 page 13x13cm book. We chose that size to keep costs down as we were doing a run of 12. We perfect bound it as we had to staple the pages together and this would allow us to cover the staples and apply our covers. The covers were Pergamenta 300gsm and its low level opacity meant that our first page could be seen perfectly behind our individual covers.
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO Binding Binding the books was a new experience for all of us and a very enjoyable one as well. Using the different machinery has made me more confident for the future for when it is next required to produce a book. It was a slow step by step process and required patience so when everything was completed we were relieved that the final outcome had turned out as we’d planned.
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO Final Outcome Our final books each had an individual cover so that when all together they form a set of chess pieces for each opponent. We decided to name our book ‘A Charming Combination’. This was after one of the page in the book that just by chance happened to stand out as a beautiful composition.
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO
INDUSTRY SET PROJECT: HATO Link: LCC Website
Book Launch For our exhibition it was decided by the whole Hato Press group that it would have a pop up book fair feel to it. This meant we had to source natural looking materials to shelve our books on. We came across some wooden palettes and also found some kitchen tiles which we managed to arrange into a chessboard pattern. Having nailed two palettes together we used wood to make shelves for our books to sit on. I think our launch was a success with everybody’s books created a huge amount of interest. This project has been a real learning curve for me. Having to work to fast approaching deadlines and within certain limitations has been extremely challenging but equally as rewarding. Being pushed to limits has given me a different approach to briefs which I hope to utilise in future projects.