OUGD503 - Collaborative - Evaluation and presentation slides

This year’s collaborative group within the responsive module was different to other collaborative projects undertaken whilst on this course. Our team consisted of four graphic designers, each with different skill sets to produce an outcome for the Monotype brief. This was a vague brief which gave us the opportunity to explore our ideas through a number of different outcomes. This also meant we enjoyed the brief more as had more control over the results. We found that we worked together well, bouncing suggestions off each other at team meetings and building a strong concept that worked well for the brief.

Our team’s interest in this sub-culture certainly helped us to develop final outcomes that were to the best of our ability, appropriate for the brief and well informed by conceptual research. It has inspired us to look further in the topic and get a good understanding of the culture behind tattoos and different people’s opinion on them.

I feel we were able to split our roles fairly so each of us had an equal amount of work. Although this included the main work load within the project, this came all the way down to who did what research and who helped complete the presentation slide for submitting to the competition. Each member was able to work to our strengths with Jen and I working on photography and art direction, I also was able to focus on the poster design, looking into type and image extensively.

In future collaborative projects I hope to work in a group similar to what I have done within this brief. Our time keeping, communication and positivity to work is something I hope to do again. Although I feel our group was successful, I would have like to experienced working with a student from another course at College. This could have pushed communication problems further and could have produced some interesting final results.

OUGD503 - Collaborative - Extra Touch point

The brief required one extra touch point which we had a number of ideas for. At first we decided that we wanted our audience to interact with our campaign so thought of ways we could do this. Solutions included a large scale 3D typographic sculpture and a large piece of paper where participants can draw their own tattoos and write down their experience and opinion of tattoos. After meeting together about this touch point, we decided to add merchandise to our design outcomes.

OUGD503 - Collaborative - developed posters

I had three main ideas for poster design. These were chosen with the members of my collaborative group. We focussed on choosing designs that were eye catching and distinctive and considered how the photos we had taken would work within the design. I brought my designs onto illustrator where I could experiment with type, layout, colour and image. This can be seen below.

OUGD503 - Collaborative - poster ideas

One part I played within the design process was to produce the accompanying posters for our campaign. My informative research on poster design influenced my work greatly. I started the process by sketching out a number of ideas that I felt would be appropriate for the brief. These first ideas came about first by talking to the members of my group to understand how we wanted our message go be portrayed. We wanted the campaign to be eye catching and suitable for a wide target audience. With this in mind I set about designing a number of different concepts.

OUGD503 - collaborative - putting tattoos on the skin

One other role I had within this brief was to design the tattoos for the creative persona portrayed by Tommi. These images would be based off monotype fonts to relate better to the brief and would be created for the photos featured within the photoshoot blog post. This was also inspired by the monotype tattoos featured within a video in my previous research. I looked at typographical tattoos first to help influence my own work. 

These were followed by sketches and typesetting experiments using quotes and meaningful phrases that I felt related to the brief.

I began to bring these typesetting sketches onto the photos I had taken of Tommi. Using my skills on photoshop I was able to produce images that represented a creative using typographic tattoos. My responses can be seen below:

I also helped a number of people within my group with editing photos and their own tattoo mockups so that all would work well together on the final posters and video. Working together in this way has helped to link all work within the project together well.

OUGD503 - Collaborative - Photoshoot

Booking the photoshoot in advance meant that we were able to work towards a deadline for our tattoo illustrations as we wanted to be able to start designing posters after this. We worked with a number of models that could fit the profiles of different professionals. The photos we produced from this shoot were highly influenced by the research done beforehand. As I will be producing the tattoos for the 'creative' these are the photos below I will use.

Tommi
b&w

colour

OUGD503 - Collaborative - poster research

As the design of the poster and graphics used within the campaign was another aspect of the project I would be part of, I decided to look into the different things incorporated in this part of the design process.

My research started progressively, with me first looking at poster design that I liked and may be appropriate for the brief.

Posters

Type and image

Printworks

Typography
I felt like the type would need to standout and attract my specific audience. Because of the importance of the slogan within our campaign, I felt it must be legible across various media. These were factors I considered whilst looking at type examples.

The Photographers Gallery

The use of type and image works well on The Photographers' Gallery's posters. The type is bold and easy to read meaning all information is likely to be picked up by the target audience.















First Things First Manifesto

The typography and layout used within this design is simple yet effective. The typeface used is bold and eye catching however this is partly down to the white space surrounding it.

Further Research