Part 2 Mind Mapping Connections

Part 2 - Exercise 1 Working to a brief

Brief 1

What am I being asked to do?
Packaging - does this mean just the box or the brand with display ideas and merchandising or advertising links. If I'm only being asked to do the packaging there will be a need for display ideas from someone.

How will the client judge a successful outcome?
Young women will see it as a product that reflects the lifestyle that they aspire to

Keywords
Healthy natural goodness
Filling and appetising
Simple and quick to prepare

Questions
Are there any restrictions on colour or design? Does it need to link in or stand out from any other products?
How is it  prepared?
Are there any different flavours or varieties, fruit, chocolate etc.


Brief 2

What am I being asked to do?
Link things that are different and similar in an exciting and innovative way. Create something novel that they can use maybe for promotion or advertising.

How will the client judge a successful outcome?
Something that excites and surprises them

Keywords
Journey
Contrasts
Connections

Questions
Are there any restrictions on format, media or size?

Brief 3

What am I being asked to do?
 Persuade 13 to 16 year olds to avoid drinking alcohol

How will the client judge a successful outcome?
A reduction in the amount of alcohol consumed by underage drinkers. A reduction in the number of admissions to hospital or police interventions as a result of drunk teenagers

Keywords
Alcohol
Vulnerable
Decisions
Safety

Questions

How do you propose to  deliver the finished campaign to the target audience? Is it for a specific area of the country or nationwide?

Conclusion
I am interested in the second brief though I'm not sure how it would be used commercially,- maybe for an advert?
I like the openness of it and the potential for novel creativity. It would be great to see some of the entries for the original competition.
It would potentially require a lot of research, and success would hinge on the ability to link diverse concepts and make them seem both different and connected. I tend to stick to obvious ideas and this demands a different approach and to go off topic in order to be really innovative so I think this would be a really interesting challenge.

Assignment 1 Part 2

I chose 5 phrases which say something about me:

1. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all
2. I don't know where I'm going to but I do know where I've been
3. There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about
4. If you can't make it better laugh at it
5. It will be alright in the end, if it's not alright it's not the end

From my selected colours the pink and blue were the 2 that combined best to give a clear but lively postcard. I want the cards to work together as a set so I have stuck with this colour combination for them all. I want them to contain words and images because illustrations are important to me and making pictures is what I like to do. The typefaces for the images are all different as I have tried to select a font which works with the text.

Postcard 1

I tried a number of typefaces (above is Arabic Typesetting) and settled on Batik regular which has a nice broken slightly faded feel to it as though it has been on an adventure.
For the illustration I experimented with simple prints using stamps made of cardboard and carrot

The carrot gave the best print which I made into single images of a boot and a paw

These I walked across my postcard

Postcard 2

I hovered over Bookman Old Style but in the end chose Poor Richard and inverted the colours

The signpost was a quick sketch at first

 I did some research on the typefaces used in roadsigns. I don't have access to Transport Heavy but messed around with another similar font (sorry I didn't make a note of which)

 

Then added the sign

 

Which I modified a bit on the postcard

 

Postcard 3

I tried a variety of typefaces

Initially I went with Goudy Stout

but I decided it was a bit difficult to read so I chose Curlz MT which has a quirky, slightly nutty feel about it which suited the tone I wanted to set.

I doodled some illustration ideas

and chose the figure reading

I'm not quite sure that the figure works now I see her on screen....

 

 

 

Postcard 4

I tried Viner Hand ITC but settled on Vivaldi. It's quite a jolly quote so I inverted back to blue on pink

 

I did a lot of internet research of laughing figures and  some sketches then found a photo of my cat yawning which could be interpreted as laughter...?

 I tried pencil and coloured pencil. The scan had a red/green hue which I have tried to correct

Coloured just looked odd to me so I stuck with grey/white which is consistent with postcard 3

 

 

Postcard 5

Some ideas....

In the end I chose Harrington as my lettering which had an olde worlde feel of early black and white films.

I looked in books thinking that I would scan an endplate and mess around with that but none of my books end with "The End" not even children's books which was something of a surprise so I decided to follow the old movie theme and put some brackets around The End

It's a very close run thing but I think I prefer this one

Summary

Looking back through the assignment  I wonder if it gives the image that I am a philosophical deep thinker which I'm not, but then I'm not someone who likes to talk about myself so I felt odd trying to find what to do.

Having got this far I'm not sure about the colour combinations or the quality of the illustrations though I think they're clearly a set of postcards. Maybe I'm trying to be too clever with the typefaces too.

I have tried to document my development process but I have left out some images and ideas as it would make the post rather long and unreadable. A previous criticism was that I didn't try and explore enough ideas before committing to a design. I do hope this is a better attempt, the intention was there!

Once I got started I enjoyed the assignment because it pushed me to look for ways to display on screen the ideas I had in my head.

What do you think?

Assignment 1 preparation

Who am I?

Hmm... well... how long have you got? books have been written by people trying to answer that  (for themselves, not me I hasten to add!) I've only got a few postcards so need to focus. I am many things, a mosaic. Maybe central to everything I am an observer?

"her voice thinks she's a spy" (Bette Davis Eyes, Kim Carne 1981)

 

What are my interests in Graphic Design?

Letters and logos, words and phrases, making an impact, how people try and control how I see things and what I think.

 

What are my wider cultural influences?

I'm a Veterinary Nurse working in a university so my day job is science not design but I'm curious. I don't watch TV very often and it can seem quite stylised and artificial to me. I read the paper, listen to the radio and use the internet. I see billboard adverts in bus stops for films I never see. I have family at university who bring back new ideas and I work with people many years younger than me so I sometimes feel more at home with them than people of my own age (which you can guess from the song quote!)

To get started I listed things that mattered to me (with doodles when ideas popped into my mind)

Then did a mind map

Tried some more ideas

 

I looked at other students work, including

http://brianocarroll.wordpress.com/category/graphic-design-1-core-concepts/part-one-getting-started/assignment-1-introducing-yourself/

 

http://learninglogjb.blogspot.co.uk/search?updated-max=2013-05-14T02:35:00-07:00&max-results=7
who had quite different approaches to the same problem

 

Some doodling in my sketchbook....

 

I have been collecting quotes since I was at school and I think that using selected examples of other peoples words in my postcards may be the way to introduce myself.
I want a theme that goes through all the postcards such as a consistent colour scheme so I picked simple colours I can relate to from my graphics package.

I wanted deep strong colours such as you would find in stained glass or rich exotic textiles. I'm not a very colourful person so maybe this is aspirational and is a hint from my subconscious of what I want to gain from this course?

Hello World I'm back

I've neglected this Blog over the past year. I guess I'm not that motivated to bore you with the details of my life. That and I've been busy moving house and things. I draw every day but scan very rarely. The longer you don't post anything the harder it is to get started again. Is this picture worthy of restarting things? Should I go through my sketchbooks and scan everything interesting or shall I just do another drawing and scan it another day.

So what has brought me back? I've enrolled on the OCA Graphic Design course. It has been nice to have a break but now I'm looking forward to being challenged again. Please have a look (when I get posting again) and let me know what you think.

Here are some samples of things I've been up to that I did get round to scanning

 I was lucky enough to go to the Buildings Research Establishment near Watford which was fascinating

I did a lot of tidying up after my kids - spot the hidden beer can :-)

I drew a lot of pictures of my animals and other peoples animals which I love to do.