OUIL603 PROJECT REPORT
CONTENTS Brief 1
Go Green Tote Bag Designs
Brief 2
Pink Cat Club Products
Brief 3
Monster Girls Tarot Cards (FMP)
Brief 4
YCN UCC Coffee
Brief 5
Crispin Orthotics
P.1
P.3
P.10
P.17
P.19
BRIEF 1
Go Green Tote Bag Designs Produce a set of tote-bag designs based around „The Farm Store‟, to encourage their customers to stop using plastic bags and be more eco-friendly.
The purpose of this brief was to get me into the swing of producing designs quickly and in response to a brief. I only allowed myself around a week for this project so that I didn‟t over-think each design.
Outcomes; 10 Tote bag designs.
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BRIEF 1
Go Green Tote Bag Designs
As the theme of this project was „going greenâ€&#x; and being more environmentally sustainable, I chose to focus on symbols/motifs relating to this. I kept a lot of the designs relatively simple and tried to use decorative elements to make them look attractive.
Some of the designs were more successful than others in terms of composition, but overall I really enjoyed this brief and it helped create a momentum for creating work.
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BRIEF 2
Pink Cat Club Products Initially this brief was a collaboration between Abby Glover and myself, to create a range of greeting cards. My focus throughout the project has been to develop my brush lettering skills, but I ended up exploring various applications and the outcomes were a proposed product/gift-ware range.
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BRIEF 2
Pink Cat Club Products
Sketchbook page from December 2015
Sketchbook page from February 2016
Sketchbook page from April 2016
Although I did change directions with the application of my work for this project, I was constantly practicing brush lettering in my sketchbooks. As a result of this, I feel I have improved drastically since I started back in September.
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BRIEF 2
Pink Cat Club Products
Some of the first designs Abby and I collaborated on didnâ€&#x;t actually turn out so well. I found her really easy to work with and we created a really detailed project plan that we intended to stick to. However after a peer review, we found that we were limiting each otherâ€&#x;s work by trying to force it together, so we decided to develop our projects individually.
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BRIEF 2
Pink Cat Club Products
During the Christmas break, I experimented with creating more of a range and started applying foils to some of my designs. I really enjoyed investigating this process, but I quickly got bored with my designs and
felt I could do a lot better. In retrospect, I think I should have continued to experiment with this process because it makes the lettering look a little more interesting.
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BRIEF 2
Pink Cat Club Products
With these designs, I was trying to play with a different tone of voice to my previous work. I wanted to create something slightly more humorous/fun and colourful. The most successful of these initial designs was the „Netflix and Chill?â€&#x; because it relates to popular culture and people understood it. The image on the left is an
example of a design I tried to laser cut, but ended up preferring the photograph of the cuttings placed together. Upon reflection, My biggest regret for this project is that I never fully explored a process to see its full potential.
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BRIEF 2
Pink Cat Club Products
A turning point for this project, was a decision I made create a range of products based around the idea of with Abby to create our own collective whilst working on the Pink Cat Club as I had grown bored of designing PPP, called the Pink Cat Club. This gave me the idea to greeting cards.
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BRIEF 2
Pink Cat Club Products
I found broadening the application of my work to be really motivating and I was able to create a lot of designs in a fairly short space of time. I think the biggest downfall of this project has been discipline in regards to
time management. There were numerous times when I could have wrapped this work up, but instead I allowed to keep on developing further and made it more difficult for myself.
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BRIEF 3
Monster Girls Tarot Cards (FMP)
Produce a set of tarot card designs to expand on the „Monster Girls‟ characters I created at the beginning of the year. This brief will focus on illustrations for the Major Arcana cards in a Tarot deck. The finished prints will be A3 versions of a proposed, bespoke collector‟s edition of a Monster Girls themed Tarot deck. My ambition for this project was to really explore screen print and various ways of finishing/embellishing prints.
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BRIEF 3
Monster Girls Tarot Cards (FMP)
Originally, this brief started out as a „zine a month‟ project to encourage me to continue producing work. It was also to potentially give myself a platform to explore social issues I had looked at in Context of Practice. The first (and only) zine was produced for Thought Bubble 2015 and I used it to play around with character. The reason I chose to move on from creating zines so quickly, was because of a comment in a peer review saying that my work was too refined to be in a zine and I thought I was in danger of creating work that didn‟t really have a purpose.
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BRIEF 3
Monster Girls Tarot Cards (FMP)
As a way of expanding on my Monster Girl zine, I started to research mythology from various cultures and began drawing my own interpretations of Gods & monsters. This is the point where I decided to do screen print because I was really interested in creating a set of well crafted illustrations. When it came to actually printing, I was quickly disheartened because I felt I had over complicated the layers of colour on the design and couldnâ€&#x;t figure out how to get metallic inks to print nicely.
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BRIEF 3
Monster Girls Tarot Cards (FMP)
Throughout this project I have found peer feedback really important to the development of my work. The decision to move on from myths and legends to looking at tarot cards was based on feedback in a peer review. At this point I was concerned about the purpose of my project, other than to explore the production process, so the suggestion to research tarot cards was well received. In retrospect, I think I wasted a lot of time over-thinking my drawings and I put myself almost a week behind schedule because I decided to re-draw a couple of my designs just before I was due to start printing again.
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BRIEF 3
Monster Girls Tarot Cards (FMP)
One of the things I really enjoyed about this project was experimenting with creating different editions of my prints. One of my proudest moments was when I successfully printed metallic ink onto black stock. My only regret is not attempting this earlier, because I didn‟t have enough time to print the whole set like this. As a result of my hard work, I came away with at least 8 variations of my prints, but not all of them were the full set. I‟m quite disappointed that I didn‟t get a chance to test out foils too – I didn‟t really consider that the resource would be so busy and that I would be so short on time.
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BRIEF 3
Monster Girls Tarot Cards (FMP)
In addition to experimenting with various editions, I spend quite a lot of time on the presentation of my final prints. I was really pleased with my prints, so I wanted them to be presented in something equally crafted – so I decided to screen print onto an A3 archival box (which keeps them safe and ties everything together!). As I developed a knack for giving myself lots of things to do with very little time, I decided to hand embellish the final set of prints with gold ink. I wanted there to be spot colour that really stood out but if I were to do this again, I would use foil however. To do this on all six prints, it took me almost five hours, which I could have probably spent better on something else.
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BRIEF 3
Monster Girls Tarot Cards (FMP)
Although this project has had lots of ups-and-downs, I have really enjoyed experimenting with screen print. If I had more time, or if I were to do it again, I would have spent more time in the print room much earlier on. Towards the end, I can see that I was being very ambitious and perhaps I bit off more than I could chew – hopefully this hasn‟t affected the quality of the work I did manage to finish. Even though I have had to draw it to a close for submission, this is a project I‟d like to continue working on. Perhaps one day I will make my exhibition proposal and limited edition card decks a real thing!
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BRIEF 4
YCN UCC Coffee To “Visually re-think and revitalise” the UCC Grand Café brand. As this was a very open brief, I decided to focus on packaging designs and an additional product range. I selected this brief because I wanted to improve on my design skills for my portfolio and practice designing for an audience outside of my comfort zone.
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BRIEF 4
YCN UCC Coffee
As this was a competition brief, I made sure the turnaround was fairly quick. I spent most of the time creating textures and testing out different formats for the coffee packaging. Throughout the project, I knew that I wanted to communicate the sustainable/environmentally conscious aspect of the
brand, whilst still making it look like a high quality coffee. I ended up keeping the designs relatively simple but I think theyâ€&#x;re quite effective and Iâ€&#x;m pleased with how they translated into an additional product range.
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BRIEF 5
Crispin Orthotics Patterns This project began as a wallpaper design brief and has since developed onto other applications. Initially my target audience was children or parents buying wallpaper for their small children. The live brief by Crispin Orthotics was a really interesting opportunity as it was for a different application and audience. The task was to design a surface pattern for an adult orthosese, which could lead to a cash prize and potentially, further commissions from the organisation.
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BRIEF 5
Crispin Orthotics Patterns
For the first part of the project, I focused on creating repeat patterns aimed towards children. The application for these patterns began as wallpapers, but I started to investigate other applications such as
duvet covers, throw pillows and stationary. Once I had produced a few designs however, I started to get bored of the process and felt the body of work was somehow lacking a purpose.
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BRIEF 5
Crispin Orthotics Patterns
The project got really exciting for me when the Crispin Orthotics brief came into it. As I was designing a pattern for an adult audience, I went with my instinct and chose not to use colour – as I personally would want something relatively neutral if I had to wear an
orthoses every day. The design I submitted to Crispin Orthotics got into the top three out of around 80 submissions, which was really encouraging – especially as I have produced much higher quality designs since.
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BRIEF 5
Crispin Orthotics Patterns
As I enjoyed creating the design I submitted for the Orthics competition so much, I decided to explore circular geometric patterns further and develop a small range. If I did happen to win the Crispin Orthotics competition, then I planned on presenting the whole range to them. For my own development, I decided to look at other applications for these designs.
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BRIEF 5
Crispin Orthotics Patterns
Quite a last-minute addition to this project was my stationary proposal. I really wanted to create a range of stationary at some point this year and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. It also gave me a chance to use these designs for a different purpose and audience.
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BRIEF 5
Crispin Orthotics Patterns
This year I think I have become pretty good at developing a range of products from a few designs and it has helped me identify what sort of an illustrator I am. If I had more time, I would have liked to experiment with actually producing some of this range because I think adding foil could make the designs more interesting. I have had a lot of fun on every project I have tackled in this module and Iâ€&#x;m confident that I have some good work for my portfolio. I also feel more confident in who I might approach with my portfolio and what kind of work I want to be producing.
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