OUGD503 RESPONSIVE
SARAH BUTLER
CONTENTS: 04-05
Roth Management
04-05
06-07
Jacked
06-07
08-09
Bob Dylan
08-09
10-11
Karma Pootra
10-11
12-13
Secret 7”
12-13
14-15
Secret 7”
14-15
16-17
D&AD The Body Shop
16-17
18-19
D&AD Monotype
18-19
20-21
Evaluation
20-21
ROTH MANAGEMENT Branding & Identity Logo Design
Roth Management is a company that supports a huge range of aspects of art. Roth Management’s objectives are to support artists and their work, art that expresses the “spirit of the modern day”, the promotion of art locally and globally, and the emphasis or art on our society. In 2013, Ryan Roth, the CEO of Roth Management was recognised as one of the top 500 cultural influencer’s in the world. I found myself very interested in designing a logo for a company that takes such pride in their clients and the work they produce. I chose this as one of my short briefs, given that all that was being asked of participants was to produce a logo. This was something that could be turned around very quickly, so I spent a few hours experimenting, and another day executing my chosen idea. One of the main things that was asked of participants of the competition, was for the logo to be timeless, a logo that will “last a lifetime”. Bearing this in mind, I wanted to ensure that the logo had an obvious association with the fine art world, so I was interested in including a
process used in producing fine art. Since this was a short brief I didn’t see much time for experimentation, so I looked into creating watercolour type images on Illustrator, using fresh and zesty colours that were, at the time, similar to some of the imagery used on the website. Since the image I had created drew a lot of attention to it, I felt it was important for me to use a bold typeface. After some experimentation with various headliner typefaces, I concluded on the use of Bebas Neue. Aside from being both a bold and elegant typeface, it manage to fill the space used for the image quite well, and when I changed the typeface to white it was given a stencil like appearance, which I felt lent itself to the objective of the logo. In spite of my plan to experiment for one day and execute for another, I found that I had finished earlier than expected and so decided to experiment with format further, and create some mock ups of the logo in use as business cards and letterheads. I used the same typeface on the business cards as on the logo, but decided to use Helvetica Neue Ultralight for the letterheads as Be-
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bas Neue lost much of it’s effectiveness when it was used alongside the logo on the letterheads. As on of the first competition briefs I did for the year, I found that this showed me how much I can get done in a very short amount of time. I could have completed this all in one day but chose to spread it out in order to give myself more of a chance to think about it. While I was happy with the finished logo, the more I thought about it the less I considered it to be as timeless as the client would have wanted. This brief may have deserved further experimentation in order to fully understand how varied my response could have been. I would have liked to create something more type based as I think that this would have been considered more ‘timeless’, so in the future when I am doing logo design I will be spending more time experimenting with type.
JACKED
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Book Cover Design
Drew Greenhalgh, the author of ‘Jacked’ wanted to choose the design for his first self-published online novel based on how well each designer could capture the ‘essence’ of the story, which follows how a businessman’s life is changed after striking a deal with a gang member. Since this was another competition brief in which only one thing is being asked of participants (the book cover) I chose this as another short brief to do. It was initially difficult to come up with ideas based on the book as all the information we were given was the synopsis. Since we were given so little information regarding the book itself, I thought it was important to use what I did know to create a sort of visual identity for the book. I looked into designers that create visual puns for film posters with similar story lines and found that this was a route that I could take in spite of the little information provided. I explored what details I could
take from the synopsis, and outlined the shape of a pen and a gun, two features that I felt explained the two different sides to the main character. I decided to also include a collar and tie to put some emphasis on him being a normal everyday business man initially, with the image of the gun provided to give him an edge. After trying to create some collage type designs with these images, I found that there wasn’t enough content to give that style of design much depth, and it did end up looking like basic images on top of each other. This is when I tried to use the images to create a mans face. I drew out a hair shape, and started to place the other images around it to give the man a face. After filling in the trigger part of the gun white I worked out that it looked a lot like an eye, while the rest of the gun could make up the nose. In terms of type, I chose to use Bebas Neue Regular for the title of the book, as when used in the
right size and placed as it is on the page, it is the most noticeable thing apart from the image, but does not demand all the attention of the viewer. I chose to present the tag line and the author’s name in Geo Sans Light as it allows the title to take precedence over it. I found that this was a brief I could have spent a lot more time on in order to fully explore the potential in the concept for the cover. However, given the limited amount of information provided, I think that I made the most that I could in the time I had. This was the first time I have had the opportunity to explore the use of visual puns in my design, and while it required a lot of thought to make it work, once I had given it that, the design falls into place very easily. This is a style I will be interested in working in the future.
BOB DYLAN Commemorative Vinyl Cover
Creative Allies and Sony Legacy Recordings started up an “Artist of the Month” feature on the Creative Allies website in which they ask fans to create commemorative artwork to be used as a limited edition vinyl cover for the Artist of the Month.
to Dylan.
A chose this brief on the basis that it would be a one day brief as I didn’t feel it was something that required a lot of background research, since I’m already a fan of Dylan’s music. I also thought that since I was only to spend a short amount of time on it, I had the scope to have a bit of fun with it and maybe try some things that I don’t usually do.
As an alternative, I used pots of blue, green and yellow ink and splattered them onto a page, which I then scanned in. I altered the intensity of the colours slightly but used this as an overlay on the outline of Dylan.
I knew that I wanted to create something quite intricate quite quickly and thought the best way to do this was to combine a few different elements of both digital and hand-rendered design. I found two fairly recognisable images of Dylan, and outlined them in a continuous line style drawing. By using this approach I was able to incorporate an outline of Dylan’s Signature, which bares a similar aesthetic to the drawing. In doing this I thought it would make the image seem more authentic and personal
After scanning in and outlining the drawing digitally, I tried to create digitalised ‘ink’ splashes around the page, but found that I couldn’t quite get them to look realistic enough.
I chose to still include the digital versions of the ink splashes as it bulked up the image but wasn’t made the main focus of it. I chose to make this a one day brief as I thought it would challenge me a bit more than giving myself the time to spread it out. However, there are a few things I would have done differently had I decided to make it a longer brief, for example I would have liked to spend longer making the composition of the inks work better with the linear aspect of the image, as it does appear quite randomly placed on the page (although that was my initial intention).
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KAMAPOOTRA
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Campaign Poster Design
At the beginning of the year I was approached by some Creative Advertising students who had been asked by their tutors to expand on an idea they had for a Norovirus awareness campaign, and executing it in and around the college, with the idea of taking it further into pubs and bars around Leeds. The concept they had was to push the importance of washing your hands properly in a manner that students would respond to, and so the idea they came up with was to develop the ‘Kamapootra’, which involved a selection of positions to use when washing your hands, with names and images that resembled the Kamasutra. The students I was working with had previously mocked up what sort of layout they wanted, including photographs of the hand positions they wanted to use. So I started by outlining the photographs of the hands, as they had told me they wanted a more animated representation of the positions.
After brainstorming some ideas as to how to make the poster resemble the Kamasutra, we decided to experiment with incorporating a Henna style design on to the hands and around the boarder, in order to make it appear as authentic as possible. I did this by outlining some existing Henna designs and altering them to fit the hands. The other students seemed to have a very clear idea of what typefaces they wanted to use, as they wanted to add to the authenticity of the poster by keeping it fairly script based. They chose to use Lucinda Handwriting Italic for the body copy, and after looking into some other typefaces that John sent us to think about, landed on Arab Dances Medium Italic for the header. We wanted the colours to somewhat resemble those used for the Kamasutra, so chose to use similar shades for the skin tones, darker brown outlines for the Henna and a neutral background colour that complimented all of these.
After sending the finished poster back to the tutors, they found some problems with it that none of us had picked up on. The use of the Henna seemed to make light of the religious connotations it has, as Henna is put onto the skin of a bride before marriage. Similarly, they were concerned that the colours used could have some racist suggestions when used in conjunction with the word ‘Kamapootra’. While none of us had realised this, it was obvious that we were going to need to make some big changes. This feedback came at a time that was very busy in terms of work for both myself and people on the Creative Advertising course, so we have suspended working on this poster until we can give it our full attention.
SECRET 7” The song choice that interested me most in this years Secret 7” selection was Elbow’s ‘Grounds For Divorce’. I have been a fan of their music for a few years and so was most excited by the idea of designing a vinyl sleeve for this song. I did some research into their previous album artwork and found that much of it was very similar, using shapes and styles of drawing that became a sort of motif when looking at their entire discography. Here I felt that I was given two options, to either maintain a similar approach and use these motifs, or to go in a completely different direction with it. I decided to start from scratch and design something completely different to their other covers. I started by creating some continuous line drawings from stills of the music video for ‘Grounds For Divorce’ but found that none of them were that visually interesting when they were just outlines. I moved on to look at the lyrics for the song. One idea that comes up frequently is that of using a compass to direct yourself. I decided that I could use this reference to create something symbolic, using
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Vinyl Cover Design
perhaps one or two elements of a compass and making that the main focus of the cover. I found a design that I felt was intricate enough to be interesting for the viewer but not so much so that they wouldn’t be able to work out what it was. After I outlined it, I created some variations of the shape. I cut into it to create a totally different shape for one of the covers, and for another incorporated some lines of varied weights that gave the image a little more depth. In spite of trying out these alternatives to the original image, I found that the simplicity of that one made it slightly more engaging than the others. In my opinion there seems to be something a bit more curious about it when it is kept that way. I was happy with the result of the two days I spent on it, but feel that I maybe could have managed my time a bit better, spending more time experimenting, as that would have allowed me to come up with much more varied designs, giving me a wider range of options to chose from.
SECRET 7” Vinyl Cover Design
1
I chose to do a second Secret 7” as a one day brief, and decided to do the cover for Jake Bugg’s ‘Strange Creatures’. I approached this differently than the first one I did for Elbow as I was not as familiar with Jake Bugg’s music, and was very unfamiliar with this particular song, having only heard it a couple of times before.
It was more difficult to do research into Bugg’s previous album artwork as he only had one previous album, the cover of which featured a photo of himself. Having not had a previous interest in this genre of music I did see myself being presented with much more of a challenge than the previous briefs which I had a great interest in. However, I thought that in the future I am not always going to have the choice to work on what I want, and so should ensure that I am prepared to work on anything. I found after doing some research into the artist himself that one of his main identifiers is the use of acoustic guitar in his songs, so I decided that this was a feature that i could capitalise on for the design. I outlined an image of a guitar, ex-
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aggerating the strings being broken and spiraling in different directions, which then allowed for me to create a collage type image with varied shades of the same colours. I created two colour variations of the image, but decided to use the one with the dark green tones as I found that this version had a more rugged and boyish element to it, something that I thought that Jake Bugg had too. After having completed it I concluded that I would have been happier with the outcome if I had given myself more time to work on it. By making it a one day brief, I limited the amount of research I could do and so I ended up thinking that the design I had could have been improved and made more interesting. In spite of this, I have tried to incorporate a selection of one day briefs that allow for me to see how much I can create in such a short amount of time. The main problem I have faced with these shorter briefs is a lack of initial research and development, and so from doing these I have managed to identify where my weaknesses are.
THE BODY SHOP D&AD Poster Design
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The Body Shop are looking to create a “new visual language” that effectively communicates their “pioneering spirit within the beauty industry”. Via D&AD, The Body Shop chose a selection of their products for the designs of four posters to be based on, as well as a campaign poster.
I chose this brief as my main more substantial brief as I felt there was a lot that I could do with it, and it was something that I was interested in spending a lot of time on. From doing the earlier briefs I had worked out what parts of the overall process I needed to spend more time on. With this in mind I spent a lot of time looking at The Body Shop’s previous ad campaigns and product posters. I found that a lot of them used more photographic based imagery than hand-rendered or digital design. I felt as though this gave me more scope to do something digital, as the brief did emphasise the “new visual language” they wanted, implying they wanted a change. I tried to spend more time experimenting as well as researching for this brief, and initially came up with a selection of stencil like pat-
terns to look into using practically and digitally manipulating. However, I found that they didn’t create much diversity in the images I created and so tried out some other options.
I decided to go back to the idea that I had used for the Bob Dylan brief and develop that further. I liked th vibrancy of the colours used but knew that I should have spent more time perfecting the actual composition of the inks. I decided a good option was to use both ink and watercolour paints to create something that was a bit less messy and all over the place than the previous ones I had done. After I had a selection I was happy with, I picked out a selection that I felt corresponded with the colours used to package the products, allowing for there to be a level of consistency with the promotion and the packaging. I zoomed in on sections that I felt best exhibited the colours and used those sections as the background. The typeface I chose was Helvetica Neue Ultralight, as the imagery is intended as the main focus of the poster. I decided against us-
ing photos of the products themselves in the posters as I felt that it may cheapen the composition of the posters as they were. I felt that each of the finished posters could have quite a big impact on the viewer, mostly down to the colour and composition of the background imagery. I carried the same concept on for the campaign poster and website, using more varied colour options for these. I used all the same information that was on the website before, but tried to make it less busy and overwhelming. As oppose to much of the other briefs I had done, I felt that I had explored a wider range of options with this brief and that therefore allowed me to create something that I was much happier with. If I had chosen to spend more time on this I would have liked to experiment a bit further with the typeface used, perhaps creating one of my own to use. In spite of this, I do think that Helvetica Neue worked in this case, and that the campaign poster and web proposal also managed to work with the imagery, and allowed for the whole campaign to remain consistent.
MONOTYPE D&AD Typographic Design International Network of Street Papers (INSP) is an organisation that works on supporting and developing street paper projects in 40 countries and 24 languages. However, the next step for them is to move into the digital age, encouraging more social interaction between their venders and customers. INSP want to use type to tell stories and set the tone, not just for the paper but for those who sel it and those who support it. This brief was the highest contender for a collaborative practce, for which I chose to work with Leo Sims. We found that we share much of the same design interests, and also don’t have a problem with telling the other when we disagree with them. We live in a close proximity to each other, and since we have a similar schedule and work ethic, it was very easy for us to meet. We found that we both had an interest in furthering our experience and understanding of typography, so of the selection of D&AD and YCN briefs we looked at, Monotype was the one that drew us in the most. We were required to chose on of the INSP street papers, and chose to focus on Flack Cambridge, as
we both thought this would be an option that not many people would chose. On top of this, it is a much more text based paper than The Big Issue editions, and we thought this could give us a lot more to work with. The brief specified that they wanted a “new typographic system”, but was otherwise quite vague. After figuring out where our strengths lie, we decided to evenly spread much of the load. We concluded that we wanted to redesign a selection of the spreads, using new typefaces and layouts. We decided to each create a new typeface, one for the headers and one for subheads, We also chose a selection of double page spreads for each of us to recreate. I chose to base my typeface on Helvetica Neue Ultralight as a simple and light typeface would stop features of it altering how my typeface would turn out. I initially created a slightly more complicated typeface than my final one, and after a crit was told that it was a bit too ‘Art Deco’ to work in conjunction with Leo’s typeface.
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After this I removed a lot of the more intricate elements to it, and kept the basis, shown in the image provided. I chose to name it Duotone Neue, as it is almost an even weighting of both black and white, and I kept the ‘Neue’ to show it’s ties to Helvetica. The spreads were more difficult to design than I expected. We were taking a lot of the same elements from the original paper, for example the ‘Spot the Difference’ page, which we made a ‘typographic’ edition of. We used the typeface I had created for the main headers, and used Leo’s for all subheads. We chose to use Century Gothic for the bodycopy as it worked well with our typefaces. I found upon finishing this brief that I expected it to be easier than it was, and while Leo was a good partner to work with, it was sometimes difficult to ensure we were on the same page. When collaborating in the future I will be sure to spend a lot of time making joint decisions about the smaller details of the brief so that when we go and do our separate parts, each person has a very clear idea of what both they and their collaborative partners will be doing.
Can you spot them all?
By Bedford Bob
15
EVALUATION Module Evaluation Of all of our modules this year, Responsive has been the one that I have learnt the most from. I’ve immensely enjoyed interacting with the design world as more of a professional graphic designer than a student, and I have felt myself striving to reach a higher standard because of this. There are a number of things that I have learnt about my own working habits while doing some of the live briefs, one big one being that I have realised how much I can get done in a short amount of time. Some of the one or two day briefs that I have done within this module would have taken me a week two years ago. On top of this, I have learnt things about my design process that I could only have learnt from working in such a timely manner. It has come to my attention that I need to spend more time researching and experimenting, as in many of the brief I have done, I was so eager to get started on the actual designing, that I neglected the initial stages of the brief. Had I been more aware of this habit when I started these briefs I think I could have produced some better work. I have realised that in neglecting the research and experimentation stage, I really limited how far I could have taken some of my
ideas had I expanded on them a bit more. Being able to chose our own briefs has been somewhat of a luxury, but there were times when I found myself choosing briefs that I was less interested in, because I felt that I needed that challenge. I am aware that being able to chose what work we do is not a luxury I will have in industry, so found it best to chose some I liked, and some I didn’t. In spite of this, some of the work I have produced in this module is the first that I have felt comfortable putting in a portfolio to show a potential employer, namely the D&AD Body Shop shop brief. This was the brief that I became very aware of my working habits and made a very concious effort to change, and I feel as though this body of work has been a testament to how much I needed to change this. While I think that the briefs I chose were varied, I am disappointed that I didn’t end up choosing something that was more focused on packaging and promotion. This is an area that I feel I have great interest but sometimes a limited capability in, and I think I would have benfited greatly from taking the time to experiment with some packaging ideas. However, in realising
this it has spurred me to try some more packaging and promotional design in other modules. In spite of neglecting packaging, I think there are other areas which did force me to push myself out of my comfort zone, namely the Monotype and Kamapootra briefs. These were both collaborative, which I did find challenging, but Kamapootra was the first brief that I felt as though I was working for someone else. This may have mainly been down to the clear idea that the students I was working with had in their mind of what they wanted it to look like. In some ways this made it easy as it wasn’t up to me to make any more difficult decisions, but it was mostly quite difficult to try to create something that lived up to the ideals of the advertisers. However, while the tutors are asking us to do a redesign of the poster, I am happy to return to it in spite of some of the harder parts. The students I was working with were and still are some of my closest friends, and if anything that helped us, as we were able to tell each other when we thought the other may have been wrong. The Monotype brief was one of the most beneficial, as it seemed to clarify what I had been improving on throughout the mod-
ule - my knowledge and understanding of typography. While I have always been interested in type, I have found in the past that I haven’t thought my type decisions through enough, and in some cases it’s let me down. I have found myself making a conscious effort to think through and justify my reasons for choosing typefaces, and to also try and experiment with them. On top of this I have been looking more into blogs and websites that are typebased to find inspiration or new downloadable fonts. Something of huge importance that I feel this module has helped me to develop are my presentation skills. Since the submission for a lot of the briefs I did was online and digital, I realised the weighting that lies on how I presented my work through design boards. It became apparant to me how vital it was for these board to have a really high impact on the viewer, and Inoticed that when it didn’t, I started to find faults with the designs themselves. In this sense displaying my work on design boards allowed me to improve it further. The use of these design boards also pointed out to me that my designs should be speaking more than my words, and so this allowed me to decrease the amount of text I was accompa-
nying the images with, finding that in most cases it wasn’t necessary. I tried to ensure I had a mix of shorter, quicker briefs and some longer ones, however, while I found the short briefs beneficial, I did find that I much preferred the work I produced on the longer ones. This may be down to the fact that much of my shorter ones came at the beginning of the year before I had established the areas in which I needed to improve to extend the potential of my designs. While I am happier with the work I produced on the longer briefs, the short ones were extremely beneficial for other reasons. One of the biggest learning curves for me was working with Leo on the Monotype brief. He was a great partner, and when I became quite unwell in the middle of our brief he really took up the slack. I have previously not enjoyed doing group work very much because I find it is always difficult to take everyones say into account, so it does often end up being only one persons idea thats executed. However, working with just Leo meant that we were really able to make our ideas work together as we took the time to listen to each other. The best part of this to me was
being able to get constant feedback on the work I was doing, and I felt that neither of us were afraid to be critical of the others work. Given the opportunity to do this module again, I would have liked to do one or two extra longer briefs as I really enjoyed spending time on the ones I did. I would have liked to have been more consistent with the work, as I started and finished in the same way but felt that my drive in this module lulled a bit just after Christmas. As a whole the module has really pointed out where my strengths and weaknesses lie. I have found strengths in some areas of branding and publishing, and have noticed weaknesses in my design process. The realisation of this has been the most useful thing I will take away from this module. While there are some aspects I would have changed in my approach to this module, it has been the biggest learning curve since starting the course and has changed how I will be working from now on.