OUGD503Project Report

Andy Foster

Lego YCN brief1-23-45-67-89-1011-1213-1415-1617-1819-2021-2223-24

Fedrigoni YCN brief

Hellfire competition

Threadless Monster competition

LSRFM Core Show Rebrand

Mini - Branding

Secret 7” ‘Rider of the Wheel’

Secret 7” ‘The Beast’

Christian Beck Logo

Birds vs. Planes gig

Mates Exhibition

Nest Cover competition

Module Evaluation 25-26

Introduction

Summary

Evaluation

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Lego YCN brief

LEGO has great sentimental value to parents; many kids have boxes of bricks that have been passed down to them from their parents and their grandparents and most parents remember playing with LEGO when they were a child.In a poll carried out by Bounty.com Lego is the “heritage” toy most likely to be passed on to future generations.Two-thirds of adults said they wanted to pass on their childhood toys to their own offspring and 42% said their children owned at least one toy that was originally theirs.

“When a particular product/brand combination so dominates the market that its brand name becomes the generic term for the item.”Not all bricks are LEGO bricks but not all consumers realise this. Due to our phenomenal success in the toy market.

You must create a campaign for the LEGO Brand that distinguishes LEGO from all the other construction toys in the toy market by highlighting the benefits and points of difference of LEGO rather than the detriments of our competitors.

‘The bricks that still click’ is a campaign to reaffirm Lego as the no.1 construction toy while reminding parents of the fun to be had with Lego. The campaign targets parents using strong symbols to remind them of their own experience with Lego. This will encourage them to hand down their own lego to their children or purchase it to give their child the very best building experience.

For the campaign I have created: paper bags, posters, window displays, T-shirts and name badges all of which are used to remind people that Lego is the original construction toy and if you want your children to have the best building experience you should choose Lego.

I now know how important it is to try and push a range of products for a client to pick from. Working on the YCN Lego brief allowed me to push a range of products that went right across the board from a website to window displays. Although I tried to push the deliverables for the campaign I created, I was also careful not to fall into the trap of just sticking the logo on to dif-ferent products like I have in the past. Instead, I try to make sure I am creating products that are appropriate to the given brief.

Introduction

Summary

Evaluation

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Fedrigoni YCN brief

Me and Seb have created a range of products which will showcase Fedrigoni’s wide range of high-end stock, while again showing how versatile the papers are that they offer. We have done this by generating an innovative approach to this brief by linking right back to Fedrigoni’s Italian origins with arguably Italy’s most famous food, the pizza.

The hand crafted paper pizza will be delivered to the target audience in the form of direct delivery. This ensures that the target market is directly involved with Fedrigoni and the product. The use of this technique will kill the misconception that Fedrigoni is unaffordable by linking it with the pizza which is 100% affordable.

The main concept behind the publication is to engage the target audience and get them in-volved by creating their own Fedrigoni pizza “creating the taste of Italy” using the net designs that are provided within the publication.

I believe I made the right decision to collaborate with Seb for this brief. We both have a very different style which has complimented each other well in this brief. Not only have I gained knowledge on layout from Seb, the collaborative brief has also given me the chance to work with a non image based designer. The brief has made me realize that collaborating with those who are good in other areas of design is more useful than collaborating with those with similar talents to yourself as you can use those talents to your advantage and hopefully come away with a good set of work. I know that working with Seb has made my image based design look strong and I believe that he is glad to collaborate with myself as he would never usually work with images or paper craft based design.I am very happy with the final outcomes and believe that we have answered the brief in a fun, creative way. I am really looking forward to working on more collaborative briefs in the future.

Known for being Luxury paper manufacturers with alot of high end customers, it’s a challenge for us to eradicate any misconceptions of luxury paper being unaffordable, especially to printers!

Fedrigoni want to crush any misconceptions that printers may have about Italian luxury paper. The brief is to clearly communicate that we not only create high end papers but offer a diverse price range through out.Printers are known for their formal appearance for example suits. We want you to turn this on its head and create a fun tounge in cheek way to target them which is memorable and maybe even make them laugh.

You need to show printers that our paper can be “pressed, bent, cut and folded into almost any form you can imagine. Fedrigoni papers are ultra-functional and, at the same time, wonderfully expressive.”

Introduction

Summary

Evaluation

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Hellfire competition

Leeds College of Art runs an event programme – Creative Networks (CN) for those workingin the arts, cultural and creative fields, and of course you, our students. We are the biggest network of this type in the region. In the past the events have featured a wide range of artists, academics and designers including designer Jimmy Choo, artist David Shrigley, Patrick Burgoyne – Editor of Creative Review, street artist James Jessop, photographer Kevin Cummins and academic Kate Oakley.

Although the event itself is based in the lecture theatre at the college there is also an emphasis on the cafe area for all guests. Alongside the proposed stalls, exhibitions we are hoping to cre-ate a unique and innovative environment for the evening and as part of this we would like to have our own branded beer for the bar.

Design a CN beer label to appear on the Leeds Brewery supplied beer for our upcoming 2013 events. Leeds Brewery has agreed to print front beer labels for our events. The branding and appearance of these labels will complement the CN events.

Because I was in between large briefs and module deadlines at the time I used this brief to have abit of fun amidst the hard work. I decided that I would name my beer Holy Grail to demonstrate that it is a superior beer and also because it rhymes with pale ale. My submission is lighthearted and fun design with the aim of creating a catchy name that will be easy to remember with a fun inventive design Holy Grail ... The Holy grail of Pale Ale.

I had trouble sending this work off once I had completed it. Because I had put off uploading the work until the deadline day it meant that there was a lot of stress to try and get it sent off. In the future I will upload as soon as submissions are being accepted. This way there will be no last minute stress and any problems uploading can be fixed.

Introduction

Summary

Evaluation

Threadless designs are created by and chosen by an online community. Each week, about 1,000 designs are submitted online and are put to a public vote. After seven days the staff reviews the top-scoring designs. Based on the average score and community feedback, about 10 designs are selected each week, printed on clothing and other products, and sold worldwide through the online store and at their retail store in Chicago.

The Brief:

Who doesn’t like Monsters and the chaos they wreck on humanity? Forget Godzilla, King Ghidorah or that huge creepy thing from Cloverfield. Your challenge is to design an original monster (No, not Charlize Theron kinda stuff). Create a monster from your own imagination. Make it scary, make it lovable, make it funny. It’s your choice. It’s your Monster.

Because this brief was so open it allowed me to come up with any ridiculous idea that I want-ed. I liked how I could just have some fun with this brief and started sketching lots of differentmonsters.

After narrowing my sketches down I decided to go with the ‘bubblegum’ monster drawing that I had created. I then re-created my monster in illustrator and used a limited 3 colour palette which would make the T-shirt more easy to print.

Threadless allows you to submit two slides per submission so I created one with the design and a mock up t-shirt and the other with a close up of the illustration. The illustration is now up for vote online. The favourite designs and the winner will get there T-shirt printed and sold online.

I enjoyed creating the illustration work for this project and entering the competition. Like the secret 7” competition this brief went to public vote. These types of competitions can be frustrat-ing as they turn out to be more of a popularity contest rather than the best designs winning and I much prefer briefs were a panel of judges choose the winning designs.

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Threadless Monster competition

Introduction

Summary

Evaluation

LSRFM is the largest and only student station in Leeds broadcasting live 24/7 from Leeds University Union.Knowing that not all students like the same thing and LSRFM are proud to be the only radiostation in Leeds with an eclectic schedule to cover everybody’s tastes. LSRFM is the Sound of Students in Leeds.

Me and Martin have a Sunday night show on Leeds student radio. For the radio show I pro-duced a logo that could be used to promote the show and also make into stickers to give away as prizes. Impressed with our logo, we were given the brief to brand the 6 core shows on Leeds student radio. These shows were :Indie and Alternative, Hip hop - soul and funk, Leeds Live and local, Dance & Electronica, Rock and Pun and Cadenza

Because we were working corroboratively we wanted to make sure that we designed the logos so that worked as a set. We did this by making all design decisions as a pair and also working within a diamond shape. We both agreed that the imagery used should come out of the logo boundaries. Because me and Martin have a similar style of work it meant that when we had finished designing the 3 logos each we had chosen to do, there was little we had to change to make them work together.

This was a completely different collaboration to the Fedrigoni collaborating with Seb because we both sat down with each other and designed 3 logos each to specific guidelines we had decided upon. Because we closed down the brief quickly and decided upon our guidelines it meant that the brief was a quick one to complete. I enjoyed this collaboration and it showed me how different collaborations can work. I think in future collaborations I will try and close down the brief as much as possible and make sure that we both know exactly what we aim to do be-fore starting anything.

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LSRFM Core Show Rebrand

Introduction

Summary

Evaluation

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Mini - Branding

This brief made me realise how it is very important to compromise your designs when working with a client. This does not mean you can not try and convince them that an alternative way might be better suited to their needs, but they are paying the bill so you must go with what the client wants.

Because communication was so important I wanted to make sure that the legibility of the price lists was the most important feature. To do this I used alternate colours so it is easy to differenti-ate between the separate prices. I also added a dotted line in between to make it even more easy to read.My client was happy with the price list I had produced but I wanted this price list to stand out from others which would potentially gain her customers. To do this I created a pattern using the comb and scissors I used on the front of the price list and printed the pattern full bleed onto the back of the price lists.

Mini Davidson is a local hairdresser who approached me to produce an updated version of her price lists. She asked for the price lists to be simple and easy to understand as she caters for a wide range of ages. She also wanted the price list to have a limited colour scheme to keep printing costs to a minimum.

Introduction

Summary

Evaluation

About Secret 7 :

“Secret 7’’ combines music and art for a good cause. What we do is take seven tracks from sev-en of the best-known bands and artists around. We press each of those tracks 100 times to vinyl then get creatives from around the world to interpret artwork in their own style for of one of the 7 tracks; resulting in a one-of-a-kind sleeve for every single one. We exhibit these for a week, then on Record Store Day (April 20) you can get your hands on one, or more, for £40 apiece.

You won’t know who created the sleeve, or even which song it’s for until you have parted with your cash – the secret lies within.”

This Design was for Nick Drakes song “Rider of the Wheel’. I took the song title literally and created a simple vector image which shows a cartwheel. I decided to keep the colours to a minimum and use simple images to make it stand out. I also used drop shadows in my work for the first time. This added a sense of depth to my illustration rather than the flat illustrations I usually produce.

Unfortunately I was not successful with this design for Secret 7” but I luckily won with my other design which was for Laura Marling’s The Beast.

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Secret 7” ‘Rider of the Wheel’

Introduction

Summary

Evaluation

About Secret 7 :

“Secret 7’’ combines music and art for a good cause. What we do is take seven tracks from sev-en of the best-known bands and artists around. We press each of those tracks 100 times to vinyl then get creatives from around the world to interpret artwork in their own style for of one of the 7 tracks; resulting in a one-of-a-kind sleeve for every single one. We exhibit these for a week, then on Record Store Day (April 20) you can get your hands on one, or more, for £40 apiece.

You won’t know who created the sleeve, or even which song it’s for until you have parted with your cash – the secret lies within.”

Because I made my first design (for Nick Drake) quite simple I decided to create an illustration for Laura Marlings ‘The Beast’. I took the following lyrics from the song to help create my Illustration :

“Did you catch yourself in the mirror? It’sasightIunderstand“

I wanted to create an illustration that looked like the person looking at it would be the beast. I scanned in my illustration and created a vector image using illustrator. The hands on the sides of the frame is supposed to make you look like you are the beast catching yourself in the mirror.

Entering secret 7” has been beneficial as I am happy to have won a sleeve design for the sec-ond year in a row. The sleeve I have designed was picked by the advertising agency Mother to appear in a London gallery and sold on Record Store Day for charity. I know that both winning and entering competitions like these will give me exposure and look great in a portfolio / CV.

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Secret 7” ‘The Beast’

Introduction

Summary

Evaluation

Christian Beck is an up-and-coming country music vocalist and performer. He is the front man for The Christian Beck Band. The band plays primarily “new country” and is starting to produce and play original songs of that type. The logo will be used for promotional materials, the web site, on clothing, CD labels, advertising and in similar uses. The logo should evoke a country feeling but with some modern polish to it. Ideally the logo would be able to be used with all the words “The Christian Beck Band” or it could also be cropped to show only the words “Christian Beck” for when Christian is performing without the band.

Because they were asking for a country style logo with a ‘ modern twist’ I decided that the logo should be very simple and stripped back using geometric shapes. I also decided to design in black and white so that was easy to apply to the different promotional material they have mentioned.The brief also stated : “Ideally the logo would be able to be used with all the words “The Christian Beck Band” or it could also be cropped to show only the words “Christian Beck” for when Christian is perform-ing without the band” So I submitted a logo with both the name alone and the band name.

Unfortunately I was unsuccessful in winning this Design crowd competition. The winner in my opinion contrasted massively to the guidelines the client had asked for so I am unsure if the cli-ent knew exactly what they wanted. I am not sure if I will enter many design crowd competitions in the future as other members of the class have had bad experiences with payments etc. I did however enjoy designing the logo and look forward to designing more simple black and white logos in the future.

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Christian Beck Logo

Introduction

Summary

Evaluation

The Brickyard is Carlisle’s premier and only full time live music venue and has hosted some of the biggest names in music past and present. Formally known as The Richmond Hall, or The Richmond Memorial Hall, the venue itself is over 100 years old and has been a key figure in the Carlisle music scene. After a long absence, The Richmond Hall was renovated and it’s doors opened on new year’s eve 2002 to the new name of The Brickyard. Ideally situated between Newcastle and Glasgow, The Brickyard is a 320 capacity venue

On April 4th The Brickyard presented gig which would host 3 of the most anticipated bands in the Carlisle area. Headlining this gig was local alternative/Indie band, Birds vs. Planes.

I was very pleased to be asked to design the promotional material for the Birds Vs. Planes gig at the Brickyard. The Brickyard is a gig venue in my hometown of Carlisle and I was contacted via email to design the poster for the gig, a profile picture for the facebook page and also the cover photo for the facebook event page.Because Birds Vs Planes are the headline act I decided that my design should revolve around their name. I wanted to create a poster that used simple icons / illustrations that explain the name of the band.I used the same visual graphics to create the cover photo for the facebook page and also the profile picture. The poster was on sale during the event and a large A2 poster was also signed and given away to a lucky winner who had entered a ‘like and share’ facebook competition to draw attention to the gig.

Once the poster I produced had been given the go ahead I handed over the PDF and they did the printing out of the posters which was different to work I have done in the past as I have been required to print the work myself. The brief was very beneficial in showing me how certain clients work and also getting to see my work in context around Carlisle. It was also the first time I have been paid to complete a brief.

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Birds vs. Planes gig

Introduction

Summary

Evaluation

Mates is a new series of exhibitions showcasing local and international graphic art. Our aim is to promote meaningful art that presents a message in a voice that communicates to a wider audience devoid of class divides or status. The first show will focus on the theme of Scouts. In Scouts, valuable skills and lessons are learned that help shape those involved into more ap-preciative and open minded individuals. We want to learn, celebrate and spread these skills. In order to do this, we need more mates...

This is where the call for submission comes in; we would like you to share your work with us, get involved and become our friends! If this is something that appeals to you, please send work to the following address. The theme is open to as wide or intricate interpretation as you want.

Please make sure you provide all the required information and stick to the simple guidelines given. Unfortunately it is not possible for us to consider work that does not meet the guidelines.

I wanted to use this brief to strengthen my illustration skills and my personal illustrative style. I decided to create a quite literal illustration of a scout leader reaching the top of a mountain using a style I formed over the last year.

Knowing that inspirational illustrators such as Matthew the Horse and Jay Cover were participating in the exhibition, I really wanted to have my own work seen by the people I look up to in the illustration world. I also believe it is important to try and be part of the design community we have in Leeds as making contacts at exhibitions such as these could benefit you in the future.

This brief allowed me to showcase my work alongside some of the best graphic designers and illustrators in the Leeds area. I was proud to have work within the Mates exhibition, it allowed me to gain contacts and talk to others who had designed work for the exhibition. I will definite-ly do more work for exhibitions in the future and look forward to the next Mates exhibit.

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Mates Exhibition

Introduction

Summary

Evaluation

The student union at Leeds college of Art has its very own magazine. Entitled ‘NEST’, the maga-zine is available across both sites and showcases student work.

The ‘NEST’ brief:Design a cover in response to the words ‘Mexican’ and ‘nest’. This can be as vague or direct as you want e.g. Just using Mexican flag colours, or drawing a Llama in a birds nest. It’s up to you. The cover must also contain the title NEST III. The back cover is also included in the design. Format is A5 portrait or, with the back cover included - A4 landscape.

Because the brief was very open it allowed me to create a fun, lighthearted illustration for the front cover using a style of illustration that I personally love. I created my illustration by sketching out my drawing then reproducing it using the pen tool and geometric shapes in illustrator, much like the way I produced the illustration for the Mates exhibition. I created the typeface initially to look like a cactus plant but decided that the patterned colourful type better suited the illustration. I created this typeface for my self branding project in PPP but decided to use it for this project because of its cactus like curves.

Like the exhibition and the secret 7” sleeves, this brief has potential to get my work out in to the world and could be picked up by designers and agencies. Working on live briefs offers the chance to work alongside other designers and ,in this case, produce work that can be seen by a large audience which is great to boost your publicity as a designer.

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Nest Cover competition

Module Evaluation

Throughout this module I have learnt many new skills that will benefit me in improving my design process in the future. The module has been invaluable in teaching me how to manage my own time and working out how far I can push a brief in the given time scale. Because we were given a minimum of 5 briefs to complete, it allowed me to manage the time I had appropriately to complete the minimum number of briefs or alternatively push to enter a larger number of smaller live briefs. I decided that I would prefer to complete more smaller briefs as I enjoyed the quick turn around allowing me to spend a couple of days getting really involved with a brief before moving on to the next. This meant that I was always fully involved and excited with a brief and because of the short time it did not allow the brief to become monotonous like some other long briefs given in previous modules.

I now know how important it is to try and push a range of products for a client to pick from. Working on the YCN Lego brief allowed me to push a range of products that stretched right across the board from a website to window displays. Although I tried to push the deliverables for the campaign I created, I was also careful not to fall into the trap of just sticking the logo on to different products like I have in the past. Instead, I try to make sure I am creating products that are appropriate to the given brief.

The Module has given me the chance to improve more time consuming skills such as screen printing while still allowing me to perfect existing skills such as illustration and type. Because I could manage my own time,I could allow more time for, what I believed, more impor-tant briefs. Screen printing 3 colour T-shirts is very time consuming especially when you have never screen printed T-shirts before but because of the nature of the module I was able to allow a larger amount of time to get to grips with the process. I am now confident in my ability to screen print T-shirts and will be positive enough to attempt it in a shorter time period in briefs in the future.

I have mentioned in previous module evaluations that I wanted to improve my photography skills. Luckily we had photography workshops while we were doing this module which allowed me to practice and learn how to photograph my work in the best possible way. The brief that took most advantage of these photography skills was the collaboration project where we had to photograph our range of products in a way that would help the competition judges understand exactly what we were trying to achieve with our project.

The collaboration project was beneficial in teaching me how to compromise while also learning new skills from my partner and giving me a close insight into his design process. Because of the way I had managed my time on the module I had given myself a set period of time to complete the collaboration project. Alternatively my partner was juggling other briefs at the same time and I initially found it difficult when they were spending so much time on another project instead of our own. Fortunately once they had completed that brief his full attention was on our collaboration brief and we managed to produce some of my favourite work in themodule.

The collaboration project was important in learning how to compromise. Although I believe me and my partner worked very well together on the brief, their were times when it was necessary for us both to compromise our own ideas and move forward with theirs. I know that having the skill to compromise is very important when working in collaboration and group projects, espe-cially for the future when working alongside different people on a day to day basis. Working on the collaboration project also made me realise how we can use each others strengths to our advantage. My strengths have always been producing image based material

so it was an obvious choice that I would do all of the visuals for the project and my partner would work on layout and publication. This system worked very well for us so long as we had regular daily meetings to bounce ideas off each other and make sure we were both on the same wave length.

Because I enjoyed the collaboration project so much me and Martin decided that we would work together on a brief to re brand the core shows of student radio station in Leeds. This was a completely different collaboration as we both sat down with each other and designed 3 logos each to specific guidelines we had decided upon. Because we closed down the brief quickly and decided upon our guidelines it meant that the brief was a quick one to complete. I enjoyed this collaboration and it showed me how different collaborations can work. I think in future col-laborations I will try and close down the brief as much as possible and make sure that we both know exactly what we aim to do before starting anything.

The module has also given me the opportunity to enter some live briefs. For me this meant working with real clients who wanted to use my skills to create branding material for themselves and also entering various competition briefs which has helped me to communicate with professionals and deliver work to their standards. Entering secret 7” has been beneficia as I am happy to have won a sleeve design for the second year in a row. The sleeve I have designed was picked by the advertising agency Mother to appear in a London gallery and sold on Record Store Day for charity. I have however not been unsuccessful in all of the briefs I have entered during this module. One of which is a logo brief I decided to enter on the website design crowd. Even though I have been disappointed to have been unsuccessful with some of the briefs I have entered, I believe I have a good balance and have won enough to give me the confidence to push harder to win more competition briefs. I am currently waiting to see if I have won the competition brief to design the cover of our stu-dent union magazine as well as the YCN briefs I have entered. Winning these competitions will give me exposure and look great in a portfolio and CV.

I had not done much work with clients in the past and enjoyed working with different people on different briefs. One client I particularly enjoyed working with was the Brickyard which is a gig venue in my home town of Carlisle. I was asked to produce a poster for an up and coming gig along with images to be posted on their facebook page. Once the poster I produced had been given the go ahead I handed over the PDF and they did the printing out of the posters which was different to work I have done in the past as I have been required to print the work myself. The brief was very beneficial in showing me how certain clients work and also getting to see my work in context around Carlisle. It was also the first time I have been payed to complete a brief.

This module has been my favourite module so far on the BAGD course. I have enjoyed managing my own time and seeing how far I can push a brief in a given time. The collaboration projects have been benifitial in teaching me important lessons such as compromising and communication. I have also had the chance to showcase my work in some exhibitions which will boost by publicity.

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