OUGD505 - Studio Brief 02 - Design Boards

OUGD505 - Studio Brief 01 - Design Boards

OUGD505 - Module Evaluation

The module OUGD505 was one that I really enjoyed and one that I learnt the most from. This module was basically preparing yourself for level 6. The briefs were more self-directed. Studio brief 01 gave us the freedom to create our own banknotes that could relate to anything that we research. Studio brief 02 on the other hand, was much more informative and more about researching. This module has taught me a lot more about how and what I need to research when looking into something new. Personally, this brief I did a lot more research than I would in any other module as I had to research and link everything together so that it wasn’t made without a purpose. As I progress into level 6 I believe my body of work is getting larger and I am enjoying coming into university and studying.

What I enjoyed most about this brief is that everything was very self-directed. Studio brief 01 I decided to create banknotes for gender equality but targeting women who live in countries that do not agree with women equality. This led me to research into countries that do not support women equality such as United Arab Emirates. I also found out that the UAE is an Islamic country therefore, I decided to visit the British Museum and go into the Islamic world to get further research. I then used the patterns I found in the museum to influence my own designs. I also managed to research henna and make that the feminine touch to my banknotes. To conclude, I think studio brief 01 was very enjoyable and I found screen printing a lot more relaxing than last time.

            Studio Brief 02 on the other hand, was very research heavy. Fishing is something that I am very passionate about and when working in a group exercise I wanted to learn and campaign more overfishing. This way I would be more ambitious to learn a new topic of interest and put it towards my research and development. I also wanted to give myself a challenge. I wanted to take something that is not globally recognised and then campaign for it to see how far I could potentially take it. Overfishing was something that I very much enjoyed researching and learning from. I also liked that I put my own twist on the campaign by making it more expressive and monochrome to try to reach out to a further target audience as well as making people want to stop and think about my posters and designs. The theme of the campaign was to keep it as simple as possible and to make it interactive and expressive within my designs.

I think I learnt a lot about researching and using that research to influence your designs. In previous modules, I didn’t think as much as I did for these briefs. All my designs were linked to my research and I even learnt a new technique of laser cutting. For one of my posters in studio brief 02, I was advised to use the laser cutting machine to save time and to make it more precise. In the future, I hope to use more printing methods like I have in these two briefs. I have used both screen printing and laser cutting to experiment more with my work and to not stay so much digital within my own work.

To conclude, I was very satisfied with my final outcomes and how they came out for both studio brief 01 and 02. Although I think my outcomes are normally quite strong I feel as it I have done a lot more research than I have in the past and I have actually enjoyed researching this time. As level 5 comes to an end, I believe I am ready to progress into the third year as I have learnt a lot throughout the year especially researching, experimenting, developing and making sure my final outcomes are linked with my research. I am very satisfied with my final outcomes for these two briefs and believe they have matched the brief that I have set them myself. I hope to continue getting better and stronger as I progress into the final year.

OUGD505 - Studio Brief 02 - Printing considerations

Final booklet publication: 
The paper that I bought for my final booklet publication was an A1 Colourplan of 135gsm with the colour choice being 'cool blue'.
Reasoning: I decided to use a very subtle 'cool blue' colour that wasn't too vibrant and matched my expressive campaign. The cool blue colour was to match the idea of the booklet being about waters and fish to which we can relate to as the colour of the sea which is blue. However, I didn't want a vibrant blue as it would take away from the simplicity of the publication which focuses on illustrations and information to inform you where you can help. 

Final set of three posters: 
Throughout all 3 posters the paper used was matt 235 gsm. I also used acetate paper to support one of the posters. 
I decided to use white matt paper as it was the right thickness for a campaign poster. I used see-through acetate paper because it was transparent and therefore created the image of fish being caught by the net. I had illustrations of fish on my booklet and wanted to create a vision of those fish being caught out by a net. This would illustrate ways that the fish are caught (line) as well as showing how many of those fish are actually caught. 

Using laser cutting for one of the posters:
For one of the poster I decided to laser cut the fish so that they would give the impression of the fish being hung by a fish hook. I decided to laser cut the illustrations of fish to save myself time instead of cutting each fish individually and making a human error. After being taught how to use the laser cutting machine it would make my campaign posters more efficient as more of the posters could be created at a shorter time therefore placing them around Leeds to encourage students and adults to campaign towards overfishing. 

Thoughts for improvement:
In the future I would adapt my overfishing logo so that the logo could also look like it was hanging my fish hooks which would relate back to overfishing and making the logo more interactive. As I sent my designs to the laser cutting machine I noticed that all 3 of my posters created could be cut at a large scale and put around Leeds and other cities to bring awareness to the campaign. 

OUGD505 - Studio Brief 02 - Final poster outcomes

Within this poster I have tried to create tabs of fish which can be pulled out. The idea behind is that it shows once the fish are pulled out you can not replace them as easily. It could also been seen that once the fish are taken off it would be used as a promotion towards the logo and the campaign. By having just a poster with the logo on it makes the viewer curious as to what overfishing is. This is where the website would be most suitable as it links with my own personal website informing viewers about the dangers of overfishing. 

For this poster I decided to create two overlays. I created the first overlay (left) with matt paper with simple illustrations of fish to show the freedom of fish. The second overlay is created using acetate paper. It is a transparent image of a net that links back with my research 'more than 85% of the world fisheries have been pushed to their biological limits and now something needs to be done before it is too late'. On the final produced poster (right) you can see how there are a few fish who have managed to escape. However, it is the image of the fish being caught by the net that makes it expressive and eye catching. I believe this poster works very well as it shows the main way that fish are being caught in the seas. I also like how the fish are trapped under the net of the acetate paper.

This is the poster that I decided to laser cut. At first I wasn't very aware of how quick laser cutting takes and how efficient it could be if I wanted to create more posters to raise awareness. The poster itself shows fish on a hook that have been cut out by the laser. Once they are cut you take out the outline of the fish and let them hang off the poster. I wanted this poster to be the most aggressive as well as the most expressive with the idea of fish being hung by fish hooks. This way the viewer sees both the fish being caught on the paper as well as off paper showing how many fish are caught in the ocean. "In the past 50 years unsustainable fishes are being pushed to the point where they can not replace them through natural reproduction."

OUGD505 - Studio Brief 02 - Final website outcome on Issue

After having some problems with the files I decided to upload my website onto Issue. 

OUGD505 - Studio Brief 02 - Website Outcome

Here is my final website design that I created for Overfishing.org. As I started researching about overfishing I noticed a website that was very poorly structured and had nothing fun about it that wanted to make me continue reading it. Therefore, I created my own design for the website that would hopefully encourage people to enter the website and learn more about overfishing.  I wanted my website to be a continuous scroll down website however, the JPG file was too big to upload to blogger. 

I wanted to create a website for my campaign because we live in a digital world where everyone is being brought up with technology. When I started researching at the start of this project I wasn't aware of what overfishing was until I started searching around various websites. This website gives you all the right information and makes you understand about overfishing and its causes. Throughout my campaign, I wanted my posters, website and publication to be interactive and expressive. I wanted people to take an interest in overfishing and take it a bit more serious. Overfishing is something that a lot of people are aware about overfishing however, choose to ignore it. I wanted this website to be informative but still sticking with the theme of the campaign; interactive and expressive.  

OUGD505 - Studio Brief 02 - Overfishing publication

The front cover of the book. 
I wanted to keep the information booklet short and informative. As I have with my poster I wanted my booklet to be interactive and easy to understand. I decided to use the logo that I created for this campaign as it was simple to understand and made you aware of what the book is about. 

The middle of the book I decided to use acetate paper mixed with paper that I bought in Fred Aldous. 

Here you see two images where I have used illustrations on the main booklet showing fish. In the other image you see how the use of acetate paper has made the booklet more interactive by showing the fish being caught by the net. On the acetate paper on the other side of the net there is more information that links with the cool blue paper. 

The back cover. A simple back cover with the website link on the bottom right. There are also numerous of other groups that support overfishing and they are mentioned in the middle of the back page. 

OUGD505 - Studio Brief 02 - Final Issue publication

OUGD505 - Studio Brief 02 - Development

Poster development 

Throughout all my posters, I wanted to create a set of 3 posters that are all interactive and eye catching. I wanted to keep it simplistic whilst being expressive. After looking at various animal cruelty posters I noticed that the posters were very aggresive however expressive. The posters in my research were creative and informative. Each poster produced a message within its creativity and thats what I wanted within my own posters. 

I wanted to make this poster different to a normal standard a3 poster that just informs you. Within this poster the fishing line connected to the fish would be cut out and left hanging towards the bottom of the fish showing them hanging by the fishhook. 

For this poster I downloaded a font from http://www.dafont.com/fishyprint.font which uses the alphabet to transform them into fish. For my original idea I wanted to create various fish that would be on the poster and have the fish trapped within the net of another poster. This would send a message across that we are overfishing as it would show how many different fish are in danger of being killed off. The last image with the words 'chaos' over the red shows how I would like to work my final poster. The net would be done with clear acetate posters showing how the fish are caught just like it is in the oceans. 

For the last poster I wanted people to be able to pull off the tab with the fish on showing the message that once you take it off you're not going to be able to put it back. I decided to put a quote in the middle of the poster to show the message that I am trying to get across. However, I think the quote overcomplicates the design and makes it hard to understand. The two posters above show how I would like my final poster to work. I will be adding more tabs towards my design to get a clearer message of how pulling one of the tabs off would affect the poster. This relates back to my research which shows how we are overfishing by 2/3 more times than we should be fishing. By pulling off the tab you are also taking off 4 out of the 6 fish which again shows how endangered fish are. 

OUGD505 - Studio Brief 02 - Logo development

For my campaign I decided to create a logo that would be informing people about overfishing. 

I started by design a net that is used to catch fish. I wanted to create something simplistic so it matches the theme of my campaign. However, I don't think it was bold enough or clear enough to show that the campaign was about overfishing. 

I then created an even more simplistic design of a fish net with a fish inside which is upside down showing that it is dead. I wanted my logo to be expressive and make an impact when you looked at it, showing that it was about overfishing. 

 I then went on to create a hook with a fish on it. The hook going through the fish shows how the outcome of fish unless we start acting on it now. 

I was then advised by my tutor to stick away from image logos and play around with type. After starting my publication I noticed that a lot of my work is very image heavy. Therefore, I decided to play around with the word overfishing and putting a net over the type to make a subtle message linking fishing and the word caught together. After speaking to various fish markets I noticed that a lot of their responses were that the fish that they buy are mainly caught on a line. Therefore I tried to use a bold typeface and put lines within to represent the word overfishing looking like it is caught. 

This is my final logo design. Throughout my campaign everything is very interactive therefore, by taking the letter F out it shows how fish are being taken out of the sea. The letter F also represents the word fish and by taking the letter F out with a hook it relates back to the sea and catching fish. I think this logo works best because it has the word 'overfishing' as well as a hook representing the actions of overfishing. As well as this, my campaign is quite expressive and interactive and I think this logo matches my campaigns identity. 

OUGD505 - Studio Brief 02 - Initial Ideas

At first this brief was quite hard to understand. However, after a few group sessions in class I started to understand more of what I wanted to create. I decided to create a few ideas on paper first before going to the computer.  

From my peer feedback I was told to look at the words hooked, netted and caught. This was the basis of my initial ideas. I started looking more closely into those words and started creating little designs that involved those three words. 

For the first design I created a globe in the shape of the world to show the significance of overfishing and how much damage we can cause the world by killing off the fish. 

For the second design I wanted to use the idea of using a fishing hook. 

For the third design i wanted the fish to be caught on hooks to try and show it in an expressive way. 

For the fourth design I thought about using a traditional film like 'Finding Nemo' and making a campaign based on 'Finding Fish' as more fish are being taken out of the sea to benefit sales. 

I then got a bit more in depth with my drawings. Coming up with outcomes and explaining how they could relate to each other. 

For the first poster I had the vision of putting fish on hooks and showing the way that we catch fish and how we overfish by 2 or 3 times more than we should. This would be shown by the amount of hooks that would be visible on the poster. 

For the second poster I've researched numerous different ways to catch fish; line caught, trawled, seine, hooked and many more. With there being various different ways to catch a fish I was going to create a poster that would have stickers that people would put on with hooks, lines and nets that would show how the fish are being caught. 

I then had an idea that I wanted to use within my COP however, adjusted it in a way that I could use it within my practical work. I saw a way that would be interactive and using fish hooks to create an impact and make a poster eye catching and imaginative. The image on the left shows a cut out of a hook that is then folded onto the other side so that it hangs towards the bottom of the paper. I thought this was an interactive way to catch someones attention by having a poster has something hanging at the bottom of the paper. 

OUGD505 - Studio Brief 02 - Fishing game research

This was a game that I found very interesting and related very much to my campaign. It is a fishing game that involves using the plastic fishing rod to catch the fish within the circle. I thought that it was interesting to find a game about catching fish. 

Overfishing happens when fish are caught more than they can naturally reproduce. This game highlights my campaign by showing a lot of fish within a circle and how they are caught out by the fishing rod. The aim of the game is to take out as many fish once their mouths are open. It was interesting to see that this is a game that is still very much used today by children and how the idea of fishing is seen at a young age as nothing serious. However, this game works very similarly to the real world where there were a lot of fish but now with a bigger demand those fish are disappearing just like the aim of the game which is to catch as many fish as possible. 

OUGD505 - Studio Brief 02 - Looking closer into fish stalls

After speaking to the gentleman at Tarbett's Fishmongers, he decided to email me his costs and catching methods of each fish that he orders in. Although I am very grateful for this information, it proves my previous research that fishmongers and fish markets are ordering a lot of fish on a daily, weekly basis and this is not helping the situation of overfishing. On the list below you can clearly see how many different types of fish he orders as well as the amount of each fish there are. There are numerous amounts of salmon, cod, haddock fish choices. Take haddock fillets for example, they are either line caught, seine or trawled and come from various different countries. 

From this document alone we can see that fish are being ordered at a very high rate. Worldwide, fishing fleets are two to three times as large as needed to take present day catches of fish and other marine species and as what our oceans can sustainably support. Therefore by fishmongers and fish markets requiring more fish the boats that provide the fish need to be able to catch more.

Here is a recent article I found on overfishing and how seafood could end by the end of 2048. It says how research shows that if we continue as we are going now fishing 2 or 3 times more than we should then this is the last century of wild sea food. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/overfishing-could-take-se/

According to an analysis of 64 large marine ecosystems, which provide 83 percent of the world's seafood catch, global fishing yields have declined by 10.6 million metric tons since that year. And if that trend is not reversed, total collapse of all world fisheries should hit around 2048. "Unless we fundamentally change the way we manage all the oceans species together, as working ecosystems, then this century is the last century of wild seafood." 

OUGD505 - Studio Brief 02 - Q&A Local fishmarkets

I decided to go to a local fish market and ask a few questions myself.

1: What sustainable fish do you sell?

2: Does anybody else ask any questions about the fish before they purchase them?
3: What are your most sold fish
4: As these fish farm raised or wild caught?

5: Do you know what specific fishing method was used to catch these fish?

6: How many order of fish do you get daily? Weekly?

7: Do more men or women buy from you?

S.Myers - Fresh and frozen. 

The gentlemen kindly agreed to take a few questions but was quite hesitant when I started asking questions. 

1: Haddock, cod, mackerel, herring. 

2: 1 in every 10,000.

3: Haddock, Salmon

4: A lot of his fish are mainly wild caught however a popular fish which is farmed is salmon.

5: Majority of his fish are line caught. 

6: He normally gets orders of fish every other day other than weekend. 

7: Woman 

Soon after I asked a few questions at S.Myers, I noticed how regularly orders of fish came through the market.  In the image above you see how the gentleman in white is bringing a delivery of fresh and frozen fish to the store. This clearly shows how little we are aware of the current situation of overfishing and the impacts it could cause in years to come. The gentleman had very little time so answered my questions quickly. 

1: Seabass, tuna, Turbot, Salmon

2: A few a week

3: Salmon, seabass, cod

4: Avoided the question

5: Wild caught

6: Avoided the question

7: Men

Tarbett's Fishmongers

I then went to Tarbett's Fishmongers, who were very easy to talk to and they were aware of the current situation of overfishing. Although they were aware of overfishing they also stated that this is a business and they rely on fish in order to earn an income. They were very flexible with answering questions and it was even difficult to write everything down.

Me asking the gentleman questions inside Tarbetts Fishmongers stall.  

1: Wild sea bass, mackerel, as many line caught fish as possible. 

2: Not as much in this store however, in his other store (outside of the Leeds) more people tend to ask about sustainable fish. 

3: Seabass and crabs

4: A lot of his fish are both line caught and farmed. His sea bass and salmon are farmed whilst his tuna is line caught. 

5: He says he can get up to 200kg a day of fish. 

6: It is about 50/50 men to women ratio, however if he had to say one it would be women. 

OUGD505 - Studio Brief 02 - Research on local fish markets

I decided to look into local fish markets and found an article where Carrie Brownstein who is a seafood expert asks local fish markets questions about fish and their sustainability.

http://kitchenconfidante.com/qa-whole-foods-market-seafood-expert-sustainable-seafood-halibut-artichokes-tomatoes-en-papillote-recipe

How do I know if a fish monger is reputable? What should I look for in a good fish market?

Your fishmonger should be able to answer basic questions such as:

• For wild-caught fish, ask:
• In what specific fishery was it caught—what ocean body
• What specific fishing method was used to the catch the fish?
• Is the fish MSC-rated? If not, is it rated by the Blue Ocean Institute or Monterey Bay Aquarium? What’s the rating? (Whole Foods Market does not sell red-rated wild seafood.)
• For farm-raised fish, ask:
• What specific farm is it from

After looking at this Q&A I have realised that a lot of people do actually ask about the sustainability of fish and how they are caught. It even goes to the extent that people bring guides to ask. 

"Just as I was interviewing the fishmongers, a customer shared that she always carries her Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Guide!]"