OUGD503 - Collaborative - further research

After selecting tattoos as a culture for this brief, we sat down as a group and discussed how we were to progress this idea. After looking through our initial research, we created a mind map of some of our ideas.

As a group, we decided to focus on how tattoos often have negative connotations within the media. This is especially true when associated with criminals and gangs despite also being seen as artwork by many other people. This is something we felt needed to be addressed within our project. To gain more knowledge on this subject we specified roles for further research.

I was to look into how tattoos and graphic design have linked together in the past. This included ad campaigns such as Kenco: coffee vs. gangs looked at within my initial research. This is an important aspect of our brief as will help give ideas towards our final poster design.

Typographic tattoos
Monotype's Dan Rhatigan shows off his typographic tattoos within a video I found on It's Nice That. These unique tattoos show how expressive this art form can be, differing so much from the tattoos seen within other cultures across the world.



Lou Reed poster
In 1996 Stefan Stagmeister created a poster for Lou Reed. Although this work doesn't have tattoos within the design, it uses a similar idea with hand written text over a photograph of Reed's face. This would be a simple way to portray type onto a person's skin for our own brief.

Stagmeister's scarification poster

Scarification leaves similar marks to tattoos however is done by cutting into the flesh. Stagmeister did this within a campaign in 1999 to promote a lecture in Detroit. This poster is one of Stagmeister's most famous works because of its unusual concept and remains influential to this day.

Unicef - End Violence
Blind Pig recently created an ad similar to their own Kenco ad from 2014. Close ups of David Beckham's existing tattoos are animated showing how many children around the world bear physical or psychological scars of violence. 



Mr X
After watching Needles and Pins I looked into some of the tattoo artists featured on the documentary. One such artist was Mr X and found another smaller documentary featuring him. Along with this documentary I found an illustration that depicted him with only his tattoos. This is a style that I feel could be used as reference within our collaborative project.

Sailor Jerry

This rum company use the tattoo style across their identity. This includes illustrations of pin up girls and ships, related to rum's original popularity among sailors.