Secret 7:
This brief was fantastic for me, as I had never done anything of this nature before. I feel as if the work produced on this brief was some of my most successful to date. I am just proud of how far I pushed my ideas from start to finish. I found the whole process of the brief very helpful in my development as a creative person. The crit sessions we did on this brief were different in the sense that we all actually engaged and gave some useful and constructive feedback to one another. I feel that I did a very good level of broad and in depth research for this brief, which is something that I must continue to push and develop. I feel I produced work that is highly conceptual and representational of my creative style. The only thing that I am upset about in relation to this brief is the fact that I didn't get selected to be included in the final exhibition. I'm over it now, but it's their loss!
Leeds Library Cover Design:
I found this brief at first quite challenging, but once I began generating ideas and getting constructive feedback on these ideas, I was fine. I tried to get all of my most obvious and 'boring' ideas out of the way first as I knew that I wanted to create something original and quite conceptual in appearance. I wanted to really play off visual semiotics associated with the books' title. For this brief we had to print a two colour separation screen print. Prior to this brief, I had done a lot of screen printing in a fine art context, using much simpler methods. The screen printing facilities at Vernon Street are excellent but very industrial and it took some time for me to get used to the ways of production in the work shop. In order to do the screen print colour separation, I had to prepare the Photoshop document appropriately. To do this, I needed to create two separate layers, one for each colour separation. The first layer to be exposed on the screen was the layer with all the black fish and the type. The second layer would be the fish swimming in the opposite direction and Paul Arden’s name. This was an easy process to do as my designs are fairly minimal and simplistic. Once the screens had been exposed and prepared, it was time to actually screen print the designs ready for the exhibition. I designed the covers with white stock in mind, but in the print room I experimented a lot with various different colour stocks and different inks with various opacities for the ‘opposite’ fish. Through trying out different colours and stocks I was able to see which ones suited the design and tone of the book the best. For the final prints, I used a wonderful gold metallic ink which produced some beautiful effects.
I am really impressed with the level of detail and fine quality of my final prints. I think my colour choices and general composition of the designs is very successful and has definitely improved on the original design and updated it to suit creative audiences of 2015. I printed around 10 designs in the print studio so I would have a great range of designs to whittle down and choose from to exhibit in the show in May. I am pleased that I used bold black inks for the majority of the designs and contrasted them with beautiful metallic inks which work well in a range of light conditions. I think the final designs convey my intended message and concept successfully.
Collaborative Brief - Exhibition Branding:
For me this was the least enjoyable brief out of the three in this module. It's not that I didn't enjoy the group work, because I consider myself a great all rounder and team player. I feel that I did my best within this brief and put a lot of work in, where as others didn't. I know that sometimes I can tend to be quite dominating so for me I had to work hard to not bulldoze over others within the group. I feel that as a group we did well within the time frame of the brief and produced some interesting work, but it wasn't our best to be completely honest. I wish we had done better and it would have been nice to have won the pitch. I feel that we managed our time very effectively. We planned well and delegated different design elements equally across the group. I also think we did well in terms of concept and idea development, as we brainstormed for a long time before settling down on a idea. When it came to the pitch, I think we did very well, we were all confident in presenting and dealt well with the questions and feedback at the end. Overall, this brief went okay for me, I just wish we had produced some more conceptual and impressive work.
Speaking From Experience:
Out of the four briefs, I think I found this one the most rewarding and exciting. I think that I switched my style up in the brief and definitely upped my game in terms of idea generation and development of my design process and treatments. If I were to undertake this brief again, I probably wouldn't change much about the way I worked. I wanted to stay true to my creative style and I believe I did that, and it shows through my final outcomes. This work is definitely personal to me, and I wanted to make something that I believe the majority of freshers on this course could relate to and actually benefit from. I tried to keep the tone of voice quite informal in order to achieve this.
When it came to production, I think I did an okay job. Because I bought the stock myself, I had to crop it down from A1 to A4, and this inevitably lead to error. A few of the sheets that I had cropped were uneven, meaning when it came to binding the book with staples, some of the edges were either too large or two small, so I had to crop the edges of the booklets down
considerably. I think the final books look great and you wouldn’t instantly notice any inconsistencies.
Another thing which I would have liked to have gotten right was the bleed. Again, when designing on InDesign, I designed the layouts with full bleed images, but for some reason when it came to printing, the images came out with a small border, which isn’t really much of an issue, I am just being a perfectionist. Overall I am content with the way the final printed pieces look.
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