/ Year two / Project: Live Brief

Ian Anderson set a Live Brief that simply said, “Send me something I would want to keep forever.”

This is by far the most open brief we have received this year. I struggled to think of something I could send, then I had some inspiration to create a game using some bits of wood I had left over from a piece of IKEA furniture, which I needed to modify. I designed an instructional poster to go with a set of wooden blocks, each of which has a letter of Andersons name. The aim of the game is to stack the blocks to match the diagrams in the poster, nice and simple. The poster is an A2 Screen print.

/ Year two / Project: Competition Brief

The Brief I chose to attempt for this competition brief was one for Becks Fusions. I worked together with my flatmate Belle Stevens to come up with our concept and create it.

This is probably the project I have enjoyed working on most this term. Belle and I didn’t actually decide to work together on this brief until quite late on, I was originally working on a concept for the 3 minutes brief but after we were both struggling to come up with anything exciting we decided to team up. Our concept came from the idea that Becks initiates creativity. We drew up some ideas, firstly involving some shot glasses that would fill up and empty in time with music to act like an equaliser. We then moved onto an idea involving the passage of time and how Becks breeds’ creativity in people, this involved me sitting on a ledge for a time-lapse sequence with the Manchester cityscape in the background. I would be moving small amounts at a time to give a stop frame effect to my movements. I would have then added multiple elements to the sequence in After Effects. While we began working on this idea with time-lapse and stop frame in mind when we had another idea that we both felt fitted the brief more effectively. This idea was to have a time lapse of an urban but green area, then a group of friends would start having a BBQ all still in time lapse, until someone accidentally knocks over a bottle of Becks. What spills out of the bottle is not beer though… it is lots of bright coloured summery objects and music related items, a metaphor for creativity and what Becks Fusions is all about.

We are very pleased with how the final animation / time-lapse worked out. I feel Belle and myself made a good team as we have different skills that we both utilised to complete this brief

Becks Fusions from SapB on Vimeo.

/ Year two / Project: Team Presentation

For this project we were put into groups of six and given a list of competition briefs to choose from. The Brief we ended up choosing was one for Kleenex tissues, the aim of the brief was to make Kleenex tissues more appealing to men aged 15-29.

I enjoyed working in a group, as we were able to bounce off each other’s ideas and come up with many concepts fairly quickly. Working with the people in my group was not difficult, however I do think group work is more efficient when the people involved have chosen whom they will work with. The Final concept we decided to present was for a light-hearted set of TV adverts using the tag line “There are loads of uses for Kleenex, this isn’t one of them.” The idea being that the ad would start fairly normally and then a person would pull out a Kleenex tissue and do something totally ridiculous with it, all the while acting completely un fazed. Then the Tag line would be said at the end making sense of what went on before.

As a group I think we were all pleased with our final concept and our presentation seemed to go well. Our slides for the presentation could have been better; the edition of some colour and some closer views would have made it more appealing. I also created a short stop-frame animation for this project, involving a tissue with a mind of is own, finding is way back to the box. In hindsight, this was not really relevant to our final concept but as it had already been crated it seemed a shame not to show it.

 

/ Year two / Project: Book Covers

This Brief was to design a series of covers for at least 4 books from a list of book sets provided. We were to consider the relationship between content and audience, and begin to work in a more self-directed manner.

I found this project to be quite challenging, mainly because all of the books in the sets have very strong visual ties and it is hard to avoid these clichés, but also because I am not a huge fan of reading and many of the books are still on my “to read” list. For the concept behind my design I chose three colours for each book inspired by their narrative. I then used acrylic paints to create unique abstract paintings for each cover. From studying the other book cover designs on the market I noticed that they often use the book title as the main element. At first this seems like an obvious design choice but I think that it is not all that necessary. When books are as iconic and well known as the ones listed, I believe that people who are familiar with the books will recognize them from the quotes I have used, those who are not familiar or have pre-conceptions about that title will be intrigued and pick up the book off the shelf and find the title on the spine.

I am pleased with how my book cover deigns turned out. I think they work well as a set and I like how individuals will interoperate the abstract paintings in different ways.

/ Year two / Project: Police Campaign

For this first project back after Christmas, A live brief was set by the Greater Manchester Police to re-invent their campaign to reduce crime against students.

For this project Adam Brandon, Jack Boulton and myself decided to group together to come up with an interesting concept as we have worked well together in the past. We began by generating concepts that we thought would capture out attention, as we are part of the target audience. Our concept centred around the fact that most robbery’s are committed by opportunist criminals when students give them an easy access route to their property, e.g. an open window or a door not being locked. We decided that a moving image piece would be a better way to capture students attention as it could be distributed on and around popular video sharing and networking websites. The idea behind our motion piece was that a students belongings in their flat/home are given labels of their worth in price and sentiment, then as the student pops out briefly, (i.e. for milk) all it takes is those few minutes for all of their valuables to be gone.

I was fairly happy with our final concept and I think it would genuinely work as a campaign aimed at students. However I think the way we have presented out idea does not fully show its potential.

/ Year two / Project: Interpretation

My fourth project was about Interpretation, I was given the quote “Go to where the silence is and say something.” by Amy Goodman. Using my interpretation of the quote I was required to design one of the following; an a2 poster, a2 spread, 2 a3 spreads, a4 booklet or a5 concertina books.

I began this project by generating as many ideas as I could to capture my interpretations of the quote. I then went on to research about Amy Goodman and the context in which the quote was said. After finding out that it was in reference to the duty of journalists and the media I decided to go with one of my original interpretations as I thought it would be more fitting for this brief. The idea behind my set of beak books was to take the quote in its literal sense but show it in a subtle way. I am happy with the final result of this project and how the books are presented. I found it was an interesting exercise for me to make the presentation box for the books, as I have not done this before.

 This project gave me the opportunity to enhance my interpretive skills and develop a more subtle approach to solving design problems.

/ Year two / Project: Magazine Spreads

For my Third project I was asked to design four spreads taking inspiration from one of ten selected words. The word that I chose was “Zero”. I was also given certain limitations such as colour; only two colours and stock were allowed. Typeface was also limited; only three variants of Helvetica were to be used.

This project gave me the opportunity to work within set guidelines, which emulates the design limitations most companies will have in the industry.

When I began working on ideas for this brief I struggled to come up with many motivating and intriguing designs. After further researching the word “Zero” I came across the concept of “Zero Point Energy” which I had only heard of in computer games. I decided to challenge myself and investigate the blurred line between science fact and science fiction. In my layouts I aimed to give the reader an insight into “ZPE” and how science has influenced computer games.

During this project I was able to improve my researching abilities, practice my typography skills and get used to working within set limitations. I also learned not to set an overambitious goal for myself, trying to fully understand Zero point energy and quantum mechanics when I only have limited knowledge on the subject was probably a mistake. The amount of time spent trying to get a reasonable level of understanding meant less time for experimenting with layouts.