OUGD503 - Brief 01 - Monotype - Conceptual Research

It didn't take me long to start thinking conceptually about this brief. I picked this brief because I saw it as a great creative challenge, a real opportunity to push my copy writing skills as well as pure typographic ones. 

The cause I am promoting is a very positive one, all about encouraging the abandonment of labelling, stereotypes and all of the negative connotations they have. I feel very strongly about this topic, because I think everyone should have the write to choose how they want to define themselves rather than allowing society to do it for them. Labels are damaging to peoples confidence, ego and self development and I believe that they should never be used to describe someone's life, personality of decisions. Labelling someone as something is damaging and can be a painful experience for the person involved. It can be equated to the same pain as pinning a badge to someone's body rather than on their clothes. This comparison forms the conceptual basis of my research for this campaign. 

I decided to conduct my initial visual investigation into pin badges from the 1970's and 1980's. I was already aware of their unique typographic qualities and made the connection between the messages they carry and their relevance to this brief. I am only allowed to use typography to communicate my messages for this brief, and what better way to do that than to use a mixture of fonts inspired by 70's and 80's typographic wonders. I also looked closely at the colours used and the composition of the type.

I established early on when decoding the brief that I wanted to utilise a mixture of typefaces for this brief to keep it fresh, experimental and visually diverse. Typefaces in the 70s and 80s were full of expression and individual qualities that I seem to feel are lacking in contemporary typefaces. In addition, a lot of typography around in those days were drawn or painted by hand. Lettering is something I am not overly confident with at the moment. It would have been interesting for me to experiment with lettering for this brief, but I haven't got round to doing it. I am going to do extensive research to find 70s inspired fonts online to use throughout my campaign.