OUGD406 - Brief 02 - Interim Crit with Second Years

Today we had an interim crit for brief 2 in the studio with two second year students. They were really helpful in pushing our critiquing skills forward and got us really thinking and asking more in depth questions about our own work and the works of others. I took several ideas and concepts into the crit and definitely left with a much more definitive idea of where to develop and push my ideas further to really make them successful and answer the brief in a creative and unique way. 

I took in monochrome designs to illustrate my basic concepts. I used the crit as a good opportunity to ask for ideas and opinions on which colours would be most appropriate for the designs presented. People really liked my hand concept and said that the hands would look great screen printed in a bold colour such as red or blue to make them really stand out against the black stock. 

The design with the large arrow on it was inspired directly from a page within the book. People said this was a nice thought but a bit lazy as it is literally just copying an existing idea from within the book, so I abandoned that concept quite quickly. The second years liked how I had been illustrative and quite post-modern in my approach and design treatment. This book was written and published in 2006, but I feel that the content and layout of the  book in general has quite a post-modern tone to it so I appreciated that feedback. They also said that my choice of type was playful as they initially thought that I had opted for Helvetica. In fact I have used Arial throughout my designs, and for them this was witty as it goes opposite to the normal stereotyped sans serif that is so popular amongst the design community. 

The most popular design with the crit group was my fish concept. They all thought that this was the one that needed to be pushed and developed the most. They said that the illustrations should be digitised or appropriated from somewhere to run in theme with the content of the book. They liked the idea of making one fish a different colour to emphasise its position in the shoal and the fact that is the one swimming opposite and against the flow.