DESIGN PROCESS - RESPONSIVE - BRIEF THREE

COMPETITION INFORMATION

Before I started collecting research or generating ideas in response to the brief I decided to go to the official competition webpage to review the brief and the submission details. Unlike a lot of other briefs that I have reviewed the 'UnReported' one was very well written and goes through important information in great detail. 

• Brief asks participants to create a protest to raise awareness of 'The Arctic 30' campaign.
• Peaceful protest can bring about change...creativity is nessecary to engage with different audiences - this statement relevant to my personal beliefs and gives the brief more meaning and importance. 
• Outcome can take on a variety of forms from sculpture to animation.
• Protests must be able to be viewed online.
• A 'Viral Bonus' is awarded to the first competition entry that 'goes viral'  - starts gaining popularity/attention online. 
• 'Going Viral' is defined by reaching more than 5000 views within the seven day period and rewards and efforts for the promotion and dissemination of the protest.

Submissions will be judged by a panel on the following;

• Originality - outcome aims to push the boundaries of how multimedia and creative arts can be applied to spread messages.
• Content - Outcome engages issues relevant to the campaign.
• Accessibility - The protest is accessible to an international audience.  

Limitations;

• Submissions must not be inflammatory or discriminatory.
• All submissions will be assessed prior to publishing any work that is seen to be inflammatory or discriminatory will not be published. 
• Authors take full responsibility for copyrighting, referencing and obtaining necessary permissions. 

Submission criteria;

• Submissions may be individual or collaborative.
• Authors must submit only one entry.
• Works do not need to be newly created but authors should ensure the meet all criteria.
• Registration can take place any time before the competition deadline. 

• Authors can nickname themselves to protect their identities.
• After registering submit completed protests to protest@unreported.com.
• Files must be submitted as either MOV (max 1 min length) and JPEG (200MB max).
• The file name should be 'File name: FreeTheArcticThirty_yournickname.jpeg/.mov
• Include a brief synopsis (150 words max) of the submission.
• Submissions can be made in any language but a translation must be provided in English. 

RE-WRITING THE BRIEF 

After reading through and assessing the competition information available on the 'unReported' website I decided to re-write the brief to ensure that I approach it from an individual perspective and create an original outcome. 

THE BRIEF;

Create a form of protest to capture the attention of the general public and raise awareness of the current situation involving the Greenpeace 'Arctic Thirty'.

CONCEPT;

Create a printed form of protest that can be distributed globally to help raise public awareness of the 'Arctic Thirty' campaign.

BACKGROUND;

The 'Arctic Thirty' are a collection of environmental activists aboard the Greenpeace ship 'The Arctic Sunrise'. While taking part in a peaceful protest at Gazprom's oil rig the thirty activists were arrested at gun point by Russian special forces and imprisoned in Russia. In light of the incident Greenpeace have launched a campaign to raise public awareness of the arctic thirty situation in hope that international public interest will help to ensure their release. 

TARGET AUDIENCE;

The target audience needs to be as wide as possible as the success of the outcome relies on its ability to raise public awareness of the Greenpeace campaign. 

TONE OF VOICE;

Formal & Informative 

CONSIDERATIONS;

• How will the outcome capture the audiences attention?
• How will the outcome visually represent the campaign?
• How will the outcome evoke a reaction from members of the audience? 
• Where will the protest be displayed?
• Will the protest be legal?

MANDATORY REQUIREMENTS;

• 150 word synopsis. 
• Printed protest piece submitted online.
• Project design boards (module submission).

DELIVERABLES;

• Printed protest piece. 

RESEARCH 

Once I had re-written the brief I was in a position to start collecting a body of research to help me create an informed and relevant outcome in response to the brief. The link below navigates to my research blog post on my design context blog.

General research - Research Link

Reference images - Research Link

IDEAS GENERATION

After completing my research I felt like I understood the campaign and what the judges will be looking for in a successful submission. Therefore, I started the process of generating a range ideas through the use of spider diagrams which are displayed below.

In the first diagram I focused on

Using the previous diagram as a means of inspiration I next created a map exploring some initial ideas for the project.

Main ideas;

• Greenpeace bird breaking out of cage - poster.
• Chained polar bear - paste-up artwork (street art).
• Arctic Thirty portraits - poster.

FINAL IDEA

From the selection of refined ideas generated by the spider diagrams I outlined three main ideas, from these final three I selected the concept I wanted to develop. Before selecting my choice I reviewed the ideas assessing their relevance to the brief, campaign and how effective the piece of communication could be. Assessing the applicability of the ideas allowed me to select and develop the most effective outcome. 

CHOSEN IDEA;

Link

IMPRISONED POLAR BEAR 

• Largely image based communication makes the outcome suitable for a global audience.
• The protest style outcome has relevance to the brief as the outcome will take the form of a street art style paste up piece. 
• The shocking nature of the outcome will provoke audience reaction and engage them with the campaign. 

PHOTOGRAPHY

After outlining my final idea and deciding that it will be produced it digitally I was ready to start to process of creation, this process was started by taking the photograph on which the illustration will be placed once complete. 

Within my image I wanted to capture more than just a plain brick wall to ensure that the outcome is interesting, realistic and visually engaging. I believe that photographing a scene with features typically found within a city environment will give the outcome context as to where it would be found in reality. 

DESIGN DECISIONS 

Next, before progressing with the project and creating my illustration I first had to define the relevant design decisions such as the colour scheme. As the outcome will be submitted digitally and predominantly rely on imagery to communicate its message design decisions relating to typefaces and stock need not be considered. 

COLOUR SCHEME;

The image below illustrates the colour scheme that will be digitally applied to the illustration once complete. When selecting the colours I wanted to capture an essence of the arctic to give the piece another aspect of relevance to the campaign. Therefore, I chose an assortment of colours ranging from a light grey, a selection of pale blues and deep dark navy, these are all colours that seem to dominate the arctic landscape and so hold relevance to my outcome. 

As the outcome is being designed for printed purposes I ensured that the colors were selected from a CMYK colour mode. 

INITIAL DESIGNS 

Once I had finalised my concept I was in a position to start producing some rough initial sketches to explore different compositions. As I am working to a tight timescale I have decided to only produce a selection of initial designs to ensure that I move through the project at the appropriate pace.

When creating the designs I used some polar bear images taken from my reference image research to ensure that I could quickly illustrate a selection of designs. 

Reference images - Research Link

FINAL ILLUSTRATION 

After creating a range of initial designs I selected my favorite initial design and created the final illustration. The image below displays the outcome. 

DIGITAL PRODUCTION

Once I had finalised the base illustration I scanned the image in at 300dpi and imported the document to Adobe illustrator. Once in illustrator I vectorised the illustration using the 'live trace' option ready for the coloring process. 

DISPLACEMENT MAP 

After colouring the illustration the polar bear was ready for placing onto the photograph however, before doing so I applied a displacement map to the image to replicate the faint creases commonly found on paste-up artwork. The application of the displacement map is an important aspect of the production process as it makes the outcome look more realistic and convincing. 

DISPLACEMENT MAP TWO

After applying the first displacement map to the illustration the outcome was ready for placing onto the photograph. However, after placing the image onto the photograph I realised that the outcome still didn't achieve the level of realism I was hoping to achieve. To overcome this problem I applied another displacement map to the illustration to highlight some of the walls texture.    

SHADOWS & HIGHLIGHTS

Finally, once the second Displacement Map had been applied the illustration looked much more convincing  but was still lacking the shadows and highlights needed to complete it. I finished off the digital production process by adding a faint drop shadow to slightly lift the piece from the wall while also adding a black overlay with adjusted opacity to replicate shaded areas. 

FINAL OUTCOME 

Below is an image displaying my response to the brief;

DETAIL

SYNOPSIS 

For the submission my image needs a 150 word synopsis to summarise my concept, below is the body of text that I will submit with my image when entering the competition. 

The final word count came to 144 words.

FINAL SYNOPSES

Firstly, the outcome created in response to the brief aims to capture the public’s attention and raise awareness of the Arctic Thirty campaign. To achieve this, a printed form of protest has been created which would be produced, distributed and pasted-up onto walls in a similar fashion to a paste-up advertisement. Due to the nature of the outcomes production and dissemination the protest could be distributed to campaign representatives worldwide and displayed in a number of different countries to further extend the campaigns impact.  Additionally, to capture the public’s attention and engage them with the Greenpeace campaign the outcome features a thought provoking illustration of an imprisoned polar bear with accompanying ‘Free the Arctic Thirty’ signage. The polar bear was chosen as a representative for the campaign as it is both an ambassador of the Arctic and the Greenpeace crew. 

REGISTRATION 

Below are images documenting the registration process on the 'unREPORTED' website. Once registered I was able to submit my outcome to the email address provided by the brief.

SUBMISSION DETAILS

Before submitting my project I briefly checked over the submission details and the terms and conditions of entry to ensure that there would be no problems when submitting my response. 

SUBMISSION

After re-checking the submission details I felt confident my design complied with all the competition rules and regulations. Therefore, I placed a JPEG image of my outcome with the accompanying synopsis into an email and submitted to the competition. 

DESIGN PROCESS - RESPONSIVE - BRIEF ONE DESIGN BOARDS

DESIGN PROCESS - RESPONSIVE - BRIEF ONE

LIVE BRIEF INFORMATION

Recently, while speaking to a close friend about art, design and our progression since college I was asked to create a logo and business card design. My friend Richard (Ricky) is an artist from South Africa who specialises in working with oil paints, often depicting beautiful images of wildlife and the human form. 

The brief is very relevant to my design practice and will make a good first brief for my responsive module as the project is only small and so should be completed relatively quickly. Furthermore, logo design is something that interests me as a designer but is an area in which I haven't got much experience, and so the brief also offers me the opportunity to experiment with logo design. 

The conversation detailing his requests is displayed below;

Unlike other briefs there was no need to re-write brief or generate ideas as the outlined request is so straight forward, both the form and aesthetics of the product have already been defined by the client, meaning that the only thing left to do is the production.

Although I am blogging this project as part of my responsive brief I actually undertook it before the module started. Therefore, time management was not a big issue as I had no other on-going work and plenty of time to create my response. Despite this I aimed to complete the project as quickly as possible to ensure that the client received the work as soon as possible.

DESIGN DECISIONS 

After receiving the brief I started to think about the design decisions that need to be made before progressing with the initial design stages of the project. As I am producing a logo based around the Fibonacci spiral design decisions relating to the different typefaces I want to apply are is the only design decision that need to be considered.

TYPEFACES 

I started the project by selecting a range of typefaces from which I plan to select two to work with. As Richard has not set me any limitations with regards to the fonts used I want to send him two typefaces with opposing aesthetic characteristics. Then, when receiving feedback on the initial logos I will assess which is the most appropriate in achieving the desired aesthetic appearance.  

Below are images showing the initial typefaces ranges I made my selection from;

SCRIPT FONT SELECTION;

SANS SERIF FONT SELECTION;

CHOSEN TYPEFACES 

The first font that I selected is a typeface called 'Mission Script' which is a brush style script front with a similar aesthetic appearance to fonts used on old typographic signage. The font was chosen due to

The second font that I chose to utilise when creating logos is called collator and was selected because.... and its stark contrast to Mission Script. The font holds an imposing appearance with its tall x-height and wide letter forms..... 

DESIGN PROCESS 

INITIAL DESIGNS

After selecting a choice of typefaces I started sketching out some rough designs to explore aesthetic form and typographic placement. After creating a collection of logo designs I outlined what I believed to be the most successful ones, refining the selection to three main designs. Once the three designs had been selected I worked digitally recreating each logo while applying the typefaces previously selected.

SKETCHES 

Below are some images of my initial sketches, as the client had already outlined what he wanted producing there was not much room for experimentation.

FINAL LOGOS

After designing a range of quick thumbnail designs I selected my favorite and started developing them at a larger size. Below are some images of the final logo designs that will be developed digitally.

DIGITAL 

Below are a selection of images displaying digital renderings of the three final logos. The logos were produced quickly as rough guides for Ricky to review and criticise, if he likes any of the three then I will spend time developing the logo to a suitable standard.

REFINEMENT PROCESS

After designing a small range of digital logo variations I was ready to show Ricky the progression made so far. As he is currently living in South Africa any conversations regarding the project were held online.

From the digital selection of logos displayed above I selected two of the strongest designs to send to Ricky. I believe that sending only sending a few variations is important as if you send the client a large selection of logos there can be so much choice and the client can find it hard to select a logo they really like. 

The conversation below documents the process of receiving criticism on the two designs;

FEEDBACK

• Text diagonal.
•  Up market, formal design.

Example sent;

• Make the 'R' clearer.

Below is the refined version that was sent to Ricky after receiving feedback on my initial designs. 

I also experimented with adding a textured gradient to the logo at the request of the client.

As the project progressed one thing became clear, communicating via the internet about specific visual aspects of a design is hard work as its not always easy to understand what the client wants. I believe that because of this the form of communication the refinement process engaged in was drawn out much longer than it needed to be. 

FEEDBACK

• Logo version two - preferred. 
• Move the 'ichard; over to the right slightly.
• Straighten out the leg of the 'R'.
• Texture applied to font

After reviewing the rough designs sent by Ricky I refined the design and resorted to completely redesigning it by hand. The process of hand rendering the logo was time consuming but gave me the freedom to produce a design that represented the desired logos form much more accurately than previous digital versions. 

Below is an image displaying the scanned in version of the refined hand-drawn logo.

I scanned the hand rendered logo in at 300dpi and used the 'Live Trace' tool in Adobe Illustrator to create vectors of the design. Once the design was vectorised I overlaid the textured gradient featured on previous designs. 

Below is the client feedback received on the new, hand-rendered logo versions. 

FEEDBACK

• Render the 'R' in a similar font to the rest of the type.
• Less hand drawn - more solid.

To save time i used a light box to trace the basic grid and shape of the spiral 'R', the rest of the type was removed from the prior design ready for adding to the refined version. Additionally, I also ensured that the lines of the design were much stronger and darker than the last so that when the 'Live Trace' is applied it doesn't create a rough sketchy outcome. 

FEEDBACK

• The lighting on the new curved 'R' is wrong.

To save time I used the light box again to trace the basic design and then refined the texture appropriately. Furthermore, the addition of an arrow indicating the light direction helped me when creating the improved version.

With the addition of the refined 'R' and a slightly increased line weight the logos aesthetics were vastly improved making the outcome appear much more engaging and professional. 

FEEDBACK

• Round the spiral (top of the R) a bit more.

After much feedback and many refinements the logo was finally perfected to an acceptable standard and ready for submission.  

FINAL LOGO

After much feedback and many amendments the logo was finished to a standard the client was really happy with, an image of the final logo can be seen below. 

CHROME VERSION

As part of the live brief Ricky also requested that I create a chrome version of the logo for a print run of acetate stickers he hopes to get produced as part of his identity. To create the chrome version of the logo I uploaded the Illustrator file to Photoshop and applied using the bevel and emboss tool.

SUBMISSION

When submitting the logo to Ricky I put him together a file containing both RGB screen and CMYK print versions of the logo. During our conversations he mentioned that he plans to use the logo on both printed and screen based outcomes, and so varying file types were essential. 

I was unsure as to what software the client would have on his computer and so in the pack I ensured that both Illustrator files, PDF's and JPEG. images were all included so he would definitely be able to access the files. Additionally, when sending the files to Ricky I wrote out a quick and simple explanation describing the differences between RGB & CMYK file types and how they should be applied.