PROJECT REPORT JANICE LEUNG
LOOPDELOOP I’ve always been interested in animation, but it was more of a hobby than something I wanted to pursue professionally. Loopdeloop was a great brief to tackle as an amateur animator; the topic is extremely broad and open for interpretation, the only requirement was that the animation or GIF had to loop. Past submissions also showed that they were open to moving images of varying styles, which meant they were going to judge more on the plot than on the aesthetics of the animation. Loopdeloop changes their topics bimonthly; their topic back then was ‘LOL’. Avoiding illustrating generic images that include a person laughing, I decided to go with the idea of interpreting ‘LOL’ as ‘Lots Of Lemons’ instead. Since the animation had to loop, I made sure the plot was simple enough so it would still make sense when it looped. TARGET AUDIENCE: De Loop Team, animators & illustrators SUBMITTED DELIVERABLES: A looped animation
The deadline for this was five days after I decided to do this brief, so I had to work extremely efficiently. This was both good and bad; the pressure didn’t allow me to constantly hesitate and backtrack on my ideas, but it also made me rush and complete something that I felt like I could’ve done better. During the production of the animation, I didn’t take the background into consideration, which made the animation look a little plain. However, given that I animated each lemon frame by frame and the deadline, I’m still pretty satisfied with the outcome.
SECRET 7” : CLEAREST BLUE I was initially unsure about this brief as I was never really interested in vinyls and assumed that the songs on the brief were going to be really old for some reason. However, once the tracks were released I changed my mind about the brief. Digital painting has always been one of my favourite ways to create images, and since I haven’t been able to do that recently I decided to digitally paint my designs. I personally thought it was really difficult to translate something audial visually; the fact that I wasn’t allowed to put the song’s title or artist name made it even harder. Similar to Loopdeloop, Secret7 didn’t put specific stylistic requirements which made the brief open to interpretation. In addition, looking at past designs made me realize that the cover may not have to relate to the song at all; it just has to be your own visual interpretation of it. With that in mind, I proceeded to develop a final design. This brief took me longer than expected to complete due to some difficulties about composition that I encountered during the process. I was satisfied with the first design, but it felt like it was only an interpretation of the lyrics and not the melody of the song. Out of frustration, I scribbled on the image, leading to the development of the second design, which focused more on the beat and melody of the song. TARGET AUDIENCE: Vinyl collectors, fans of music SUBMITTED DELIVERABLES: 2 vinyl covers
Though this was a small brief, I found drawing these two designs the most difficult; I struggled a lot with composition, and it took me a total of 3 weeks to draw the face that I was happy with, but I felt like I really improved my digital painting skills after completing it.
SECRET 7” : THE LESS I KNOW THE BETTER
I wasn’t originally planning to do another album cover after finishing the two designs for Clearest Blue, but this idea came to me as I was listening to the other songs out of boredom. Since Tame Impala’s song was very different to Clearest Blue, I wanted the style of the image to be different too. I tried my best to stray away from the aesthetic I usually go for when I paint digitally by keeping it clean and simple, yet bold. I managed to complete this design within a night; it was really satisfying to be able to come up with an idea and be able put it on paper without constantly backtracking, which is something I do very often. TARGET AUDIENCE: Vinyl collectors, fans of music SUBMITTED DELIVERABLES: 1 vinyl cover
PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE DESIGN AWARD: ADULT FICTION COVER I found this brief very challenging mainly because I had a hard time understanding the text itself. Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange was very interesting to read, but the set of slang he devised, ‘nadsat’ was really difficult to understand. The winning entries in the past all varied in style, some were clean cut and more graphic orientated while others were more illustration based. I noticed no consistent pattern other than the fact that each cover looked different from the others. I initially wanted my cover design to be clean and simple; I also wanted to experiment with typography, which led to the development of the first cover. I attempted to embody the violent nature of the novel as well as the tormenting Alex underwent in the experiment while he was in jail. The image on the front cover was inspired by fundus photographs; the cracked glass within it symbolized the barbaric acts he committed but also had to watch during the experiment. In addition, it also portrays how the experiment broke him, like shattering a sheet of glass. For the text, I rotated some of the letters to make it resemble gears within a clock.
Fundus photograph
The feedback I received for the first design was pretty negative due to the fact that it didn’t have any elements of illustration in it. The design also looked very similar to an existing cover hence making this idea unsuccessful.
PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE DESIGN AWARD: ADULT FICTION COVER
At this stage I was still a little lost with this brief as I was unsure about how to capture a book’s essence in a single image. I decided to include symbolic objects in my second design: milk plus, a drink Alex buys at the bar he frequents, and the knife he carried around. The dissected pawn in the middle represented how Alex was dismembered by the government. The typography however remained unchanged as I thought successfully expresses the novel. The third design is slightly more abstract as I wanted to try and express the conflict societal oppression and free will. Alex had his freedom taken away from the government, but was given it back when he was captured by the government’s political opponent . The pawn casting a shadow of a king chess piece expresses how Alex’s freedom is only an illusion that became reality when the government approved of it. I used a rather muted colour palette for both these designs to create a contrast between the imagery and violence of the text, but I don’t think it was very successful as I felt like the simplicity of the colour and composition of the images dampens the novel.
PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE DESIGN AWARD: ADULT FICTION COVER
After abandoning the previous designs, I tried to come up with a new approach to the brief. Though the fourth design is a little generic, I felt like the typography and composition of the image gave it a little uniqueness. I tried really hard in my previous designs to avoid clichés but I realized that people do judge books by their covers when they’re in bookstores. The black, white, and orange colour scheme I used makes the cover stand out but isn’t too abstract for it to be misleading. The handwritten typography works really well with the composition of the image and I personally am pleased with this design. However, I don’t think it captures the pure violence that Burgess expresses within the novel.
PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE DESIGN AWARD: ADULT FICTION COVER Keeping the colour scheme, I aimed to create a cover which embodies the violence of the novel, which led to the development of the final design. Trying to avoid clichés I decided to draw a broken bust to depict several things mentioned within the novel; the violence, the shattering of Alex’s sanity and free will, and his love of classical music, though the last aspect might be hard to recognize if it wasn’t pointed out. I decided to use the handwritten type I used in the previous design as it matches with the style of the bust since all the shards were hand drawn as well. Since it’s all done digitally, the handwritten type also gives the cover a sense of rawness which adds to the violent nature of the novel. TARGET AUDIENCE: Adults, Young adults, students SUBMITTED DELIVERABLES: 1 book cover design (front, spine & back)
Overall I felt like the outcome for this brief was positive, even though it took me longer than expected to complete.
COLLABORATIVE BREIF: D&AD JOHN LEWIS
TARGET AUDIENCE: People of all ages living in London SUBMITTED DELIVERABLES: 8 presentation slides depicting a concept design for a John Lewis display.
The most challenging aspect of this brief wasn’t the brief itself but the collaboration. Perhaps it was a communication problem, but we got a little too ambitious during the start of the brief and did not manage our time well enough for us to reach the potential we had to complete this brief. Our idea was to divide the display up into three sections to tell a chronological story about spending a day with one’s family. Each section of the display contains John Lewis’ range of products, electric, fashion, and home. Instead of photoshopping product pictures we decided to illustrate them instead so we could utilize our skills as illustrators. To make sure the judges knew we were featuring John Lewis products in our images we put the respective products on presentation boards.
COLLABORATIVE BREIF: D&AD JOHN LEWIS We also made a 1:4 ratio physical mockup of the display; we printed out the illustrations and hung them up with a slogan we devised that was printed out on vinyl. This part of the brief was extremely rushed as we only completed everything on the day of the deadline, so we weren’t able to get a proper picture of the mockup taken in the photography studio.
A 3D papercut version of one of the displays were made to offer John Lewis an alternative way to display their products which was to photograph them, mount them on card and create a landscape using layers of card.
The presentation boards displayed which products we featured in our illustrations to show the judges we we took their products into consideration when creating each design.