Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Final context books

Here are my final context books. I'm really happy with them, unfortunately I left the actual production of these books a little late in the day.It means rather than trialing a load of different paper stocks to see which one would work the best, I'm goign to have to pick some stocks from the library. Not ideal but all my fault. I want two different colours of stocks: 1 that is a little lighter for the designers and type is art books so photographs stand out against them much better, and one thats a bit darker, to make the type manuals seem a little bit more industrial.










Belly band to hold them altogether:



So, how did this project go? pretty well and I found it very valuable as an asset in me growing as a designer. Both i terms of having the contact studios (even though a lot didn't get back in touch) in terms of getting to know and understand typefaces I've regularly worked with a lot better, and in terms of understanding type as a skill and a beautiful art form.

Weaknesses: I put this together a bit late in the day so it wasn't managed as well as it could have been I guess, but that's just the way it is sometimes.

Monday, May 30, 2011

Attempt at screen-printing zine, what to do next

OK, so I attempted to screen print my zine but it was rubbish! the black was more consistent, but I don't even like that and the type came out illegible, unfortunately someone took it upon themselves to bin/remove the stuff before I had time to photograph it, so I guess now what I'm going to have to do is stick with what I've got and photoshop them. Propose that the stock is similar, but not the same (inkjet friendly instead) and not actually mass produce this zine, think about doing that over summer if I get time.

Anyway, here are photos I took of all of the physical products photoshopped, they look ok and these are what I'll use for my boards. I wish I could get more consistent colour quality. I need to work with a photographer to shoot my stuff in the future!

First issue:



















Future issues





proposed spreads






Saturday, May 28, 2011

Boards, order

I have photographed all my work for this project, I just need to decide what needs to go on the boards:

board 1- concept audience, tone of voice (logo as splash)

board 2- logo, branding and typefaces

board 2- stationery

board 4- t-shirt designs

board 5- t-shirt packaging

board 6 - website

board 7 - advertising stratergy

Web identity



Here are some proposals for the web identity, firstly a splash page with designs using the brand guidelines, white on black, black on white and white on pinhole photograph. I think that ultimately the pinhole photograph ties the concept together with the stationery more than the other two. This is followed by a few quick developments of how a website might look. Web design really isn't my thing and so I just tried to give an inclination of what it might look like tot he client, but there is room to tweak and change when this goes to a web developer over the summer. BUt it gives an idea of both how a page with a banner advertisement and then the catalogue might be laid out.

Friday, May 27, 2011

Advertising techniques

OK, so I needed to think of a realistic way to approach advertising of the company to pitch to Daisy. Basically, there isn't enough money to take out web banners, obviously... nor magazine adverts as yet. The best stratergy therefore is to approach the physical advertising virally, whilst using social medias such as facebook to promote the brand digitally.

The advantage of facebook is that you can meta-tag it, which means that facebook will recommend it to people with similar interests as those meta tags, meaning that I can reach my target audience quickly and efficiently:




Whilst the viral physical advertising is hopefully a way of making people feel inclusive in something secret, like a cult, etc. Anyway here are a few quick designs for posters, which are to be fly-posted around, they're supposed to be ambiguous and interesting and provoke a reaction of curiosity, the date on them is a date myself and Daisy have set to try and get things up and running, providing us with the summer to get to where we need to be with it:



Thursday, May 26, 2011

Brand guidelines tweaks

I decided to remove the pinhole photograph cover, it looks at odds with the stark black and white of the rest of it and then I altered some layouts. I decided that calling it brand guidelines was a little dull, so I renamed it (oc)Cult Aesthetics, in keeping with what the brand is trying to do.





At this point I think it's important to also sya that I was going to print this off, but it's unrealistic to get a brand this small to print a load of copies of these to give to potential designers they're working with, instead a digital file is perhaps the better option.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Design context book research.

I have to be honest, I did a lot of research for the 10 serif and sans serif typefaces on the internet without really recording what I was doing. This was a pretty stupid thing to do. I wasn't thinking, but it's very late in the day now and I can't dedicate time to tracking down every website I used. I will say that most of the information was found by googling the typeface and looking for profiles on it, and then also discussions and interviews on the typefaces. Where I've used quotes in the book, I have credited the source as I was going a long. I know this isn't ideal and its poor documentation but frankly this fmp is starting to grind me down and I just need to get on with it whilst having as little as possible limiting me.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Context book development

Here are some pdfs of the way the layout is developing. I managed to set quite a rigid structure earlier so it was quite easy to stick to it, mostly it was changing the way images were laid out and ensuring that the typography was type. Having quotes was a useful device and I'm grateful to all of the designers that I asked who contributed answers:



I used this template for the 10 excellent type designers book, so it was another case of pushing images around the page, so I haven't documented that, which is stupid really.

Final Crit yesterday

OK so we had our final crit, here are a few photographs of the work I presented and the forms of feedback I got back.
Things I couldn't present: Brand guidelines book, on blog, Fashion yearbook (full colour proof was with Paul at this time) and the black and white spreads didn't do it justice so I referred them to blog.

Feedback I got was generally very positive, the only problems really, were sorting out the blog coherency in regards to the design context brief and making sure that certain things that have occurred are recored properly (I have some gaps of information that I haven't put up yet.) These are things i'm aware of, and I'm going to break OUGD303 DC into two tags; ougd303dc and ougd303dc BOOK, this will separate general research from when I'm starting to bring it all together and put it into my book.

Other then that, I feel confident that I'm moving towards the end of all of my briefs and it's just a case of getting everything printed and photographed ready for putting on boards. As well as getting the context book ready so I can begin printing on a few different paper stocks by the end of the week/beginning of next week.

















Applying t-shirt designs

Although I don't have time to screen print the all of the t-shirt designs I did for Les Morts, here are soem mock-ups that show exactly what I had in mind when designing them:

I basically took a poto of one of Daisy's blank t-shirts and applied the designs. I knew that they were all always going to be huge panel pieces, I think thats part of the brand identity, is to have t-shirt designs that are large, rather than ones that are sort of chest pieces only really.








These two are extremely quick mock ups that I made from existing bits and pieces. I think that the upside-down cross is a really strong and iconic image so it's definitely worht manipulating, whilst the made with black magic is somewhat of a tag line thanks to the inside labels and tags on the garments, so I thought I could get some mileage out of that one.







Monday, May 23, 2011

Finalising the content of my context publications

OK I need to finalise exactly what is going into my book from the research that I've been doing, so lets do this book by book:

Book 1, 05 reasons that type is an art form

(was going to be 10, but after 5 I found myself repeating)

Introduction (description of why I'm doing this book)

Definition of art

Reason 01, Type is part of fine art, Barbara Kruger example

Reason 02, Typefaces are creative output (highlight with examples of typefaces who have particular quirks to letterforms, garamond, baskerville, futura)

Reason 03 Typefaces can say alot, basically how a typeface communicates more than just the letters it portrays, connotations etc. and how they are manipulated expertly

Reason 04 What's acceptable evolves, how conventions and boundaries change and are pushed like fine art a lot. (Simon Garfield quote)

Reason 05 Type designers use such skill; highlight all of the skills and technicalities involved in creating a typeface.

Conclusion.


Book 2 10 sans serif works of art

With each one use quotes and what learned to identify why each typeface is unique and important

01 futura
02 gill
03 univers
04 franklin gothic
05 optima
06 avant garde
07 helvetica
08 gotham
09 VAG rounded (first rounded typeface)
10 Johnston


Book 03, 10 excellent type designers

01 Sagmeister (hand done type, important use interview materials)
02Catalog
03 Chevy Chase
04 RAW (use interview materials)
05 Build
06 Consult
07 One Nine Four (use interview stuffs)
08 Aurele Sack (Use interview stuff)
09 Construct
10 Music (use interview stuff)

Book 04, 10 serifs

01 Georgia
02 Baskerville
03 Garamond
04 Rockwell
05 Bodoni
06 Palatino
07 Caslon
08 Minion
09 Cambria
10 Goudy Old Style

And there I have a nice set of arguments, designers and important historical typefaces!

brand guidelines development

I had to think hard about what my brand guidelines needed to include before I began. It needs: logo and its applications, secondary logo and it's applications, type choices, page formats, colour scheme, additional colours, web presence stuff.

Below are a few examples of good brand guideline books that I've taken inspiration form. I wanted something as clean that uses a similar contrast in black and white in order to make the guidelines successful.

http://www.barbican.org.uk/media/upload/about%20barbican/0Barbican-Brand-Guidelines-May07.pdf



Below are screenshots that I took of the guidelines as I was going along. I used a 12 column grid, that gave me a bit of versatility as a pose 2 a 6 column grid, but it wasn't quite as tight as a 16 column grid because the placing of text is going to be very consistent throughout. I took inspiration form the stationery that I'd already designed to get me stared on writing them and I asked for input from Daisy throughout as to the rules and colour scheming.

The problem with doing this a few days after i've actually done the designing is that I can't remember what I was doing so I won't go into detail with all of these shots, but hopefully it will document some development and how some of the pages work within the grid.