OUGD406 - Studio Brief 3 - Interim Crit

OUGD406 - Studio Brief 3: Interim Crit

Below is the powerpoint presentation that we used to discuss our ideas to Simon during the first interim crit for Studio Brief 3.

We started off with the concept of making our group logo circular to link with the overall concept we had agreed on. We felt the most effective version of the logo was the first, after experimenting with different spacings and circle sizes. We also tried to create the idea of reading glasses as the logo, by rotating the number 8 onto its side and placing lines coming off.

We visited the exhibition space in the Leeds Central Library for primary research and took photographs so that we knew what we were working with, and could refer to them when producing work.

We were all intrigued by the circles on the ceiling of the adjacent exhibition space and therefore wanted to use it as the concept for our designs as it was informed. We matched the blue and the grey colours, as well as used the white from the circles on the ceiling, however we also added black to our colour swatches since it's ideal and formal - predominantly for body text, as well as another lighter shade of blue that we all agreed complimented other colours. This was so that we could make it more our own but also to allow for more diversity throughout our designs.

For the posters we initially tried out just sticking within using circles for the basis of it, in alternate versions to represent the different coloured circles that were on the ceiling itself. Originally the block of circles were in the shape of a square, however we changed it to a rectangle as it resembled the shape of an average book and was therefore more relevant. We decided would be ideal to produce quite a number of these around Leeds in order to promote the event.

We collectively decided it might be best to try create a few variations of posters that featured a more predominant presence of the hashtag, specifically so because it was going to be used within the title of the exhibition itself. Out of the 3 I definitely feel the first works the most effectively.

We wanted to create a banner for the event that featured a slightly different design with the circles which in context, would be advertised outside of the library with the intention to draw people in who are passing by and may not have heard about the exhibition. The idea was to make this a lot more eye-catching and interesting to look at in order to catch peoples attention whilst walking past.

In the beginning we wanted to originally cut the invitations out in the shape of a circle, however we were not pleased with the way that the information appeared in the shape of a circle - it felt too limiting. We therefore decided to keep it in the shape of a typical invitation, so we played around with using circles as a decorative element on the invitation itself, as well as hashtags. In the case of the two shown above, I definitely felt the more subtle one worked as a more pleasing one to look at, but wasn't as noticeable as the first. We also decided to use the adjacent space as the imagery for the opening night invitations at first, because we felt it showed where our inspiration had stemmed from.

For the bookmark we decided we wanted something that could be taken away as a little souvenir from the event, which was relevant as the exhibition is based on books. We then thought that would be a cool idea if the bookmark opened up into a mini leaflet to provide basic information about the event. For the actual interim crit we weren't able to create it but we were able to clearly discuss and get across the intentions we actually had for the basis of it.

We thought it would be obvious that a programme or leaflet in this case should be created outlining further information about Leeds College of Art, the Graphic Design course i.e. who we are and what we do, as well as the process of screen printing. The original design for this I wasn't particularly pleased with, but because of how quickly the first crit was after we began the brief, we just had to take along what we had for it.

The idea of creating a flip book became apparent to us when we noticed a projector in the adjacent space of Leeds Art Gallery. We thought we may just be able to have a constant loop of the images which showed the process to the visitors of the exhibition whilst they walked around and viewed the re-designs.

Whilst undergoing our primary research, we found badges in the Leeds College of Art Student Union, which we thought would be a nice idea as another little souvenir from the exhibition.

For the name tag we came up with what we felt was a quite smart way of determining how each persons name tag would be created was to assign letters from a-z to different colours, and dependent upon the persons initials, two colours would be selected from the second photo. The two coloured circles would then be overlapped giving the appearance shown in the third image. 

Linking back to the involvement of social media in our branding for the exhibition; '#coverupleeds', we decided to create 2 different social media accounts, one for Facebook and one for twitter. That way people who were planning to visit the exhibition, or wanted to post their opinion of it etc, could use the hashtag of the actual event on the specific social media, and see what other people had said about it. Social media is a massive part of peoples everyday life so we thought it was important to consider the ways in which people may communicate regarding the event.

Afterwards we then received the following feedback about our overall presentation/initial ideas: