Concept / development We were set a day-long workshop brief by Dr. Me to pair up and design our own flags that could represent something about ourselves. After exploring some initial concepts, we decided to take a different approach to the brief and our chosen theme was to make a flag which directly demonstrated the process of our collaboration in making the flag ie. to conduct the day workshop as if we were trying to develop as many individual ideas for what a flag could be to us and combining these to create an outcome that presents these. We come up with the idea of combining our faces and using that as the center of the from which our thoughts and ideas could be displayed. I drew up an initial format for this (right), where Seb’s thoughts would be neat and tidy, while mine would be more busy and loose.
Martin O’Dea (collab with Seb Needler)
Dr Me Flag
OUGD603
While I was able to match the faces up fairly well, after experimenting with the joined faces we both realised that this was probably not the best direction for the brief and instead focused in on creating a flag which was essentially a large design sheet which would demonstrate the concept more clearly. We worked separately to fill an A3 page with ideas that we could think of to answer the brief. We had agreed that we wanted to make the contrast between our two design sheets as clear as possible. So while Seb worked on his minimalist sheet, I brainstormed as many ideas as it took to fill the entire page, using diagrams and sketches to show my thinking (left). I was pleased with the effect as it contained loads of different approaches that could be taken with the brief, across a range of different topics. I liked the idea that somebody in the exhibition space could look closely at the flag and notice a tiny detail that has been blown up to the 1m format.
Martin O’Dea (collab with Seb Needler)
Apprentice Challenge
OUGD603
Final Flag In the end, we decided to return to the cleaner aesthtic of using one half of the flag for each of our contibutions. This made the concept clearer, as Seb’s side used neat, gridded type with very minimal use of diagrams. This offset the design sheet that I had made, which used as much of the page as possible, diagrams wherever possible and showed links connecting the ideas back to their origins. This balance, while an exaggeration of how we would normally work, did create a strong effect on the flag and made it very different to the other entries into the exhibition. We were able to have the flag printed onto material using the fabric digital print resource. This was a new area for me andnot a technique I had ever considered using before. I was definitely pleased with the outcome and would use this technique again in the future.
Martin O’Dea (collab with Seb Needler)
Apprentice Challenge
OUGD603