The magic of hindsight...

Our new brief "Speaking from experience" targets the new first years, due to start in September. It is our mission to pass on the knowledge we have learnt this year, identifying any problems we had, empathising with their position, help them out, entertain them or - if we're feeling particularly cruel - scare them. 

After a fair few hours spent reflecting on the year we've had so far, discussing low and high points we each settled on 5 problems. My 5 problems/pieces of advice were;

NEVER choose Gender Studies as an elective

How to cope without sleep/Guide to staying awake

The art of Multi-tasking

When looking for Blu Tack go low

Short cut to short cuts

Discussing this in groups of 5 I decided to go for the "Blu Tack" issue. Mainly because it's pretty specific and a genuine problem. The majority of the briefs I have handled so far this year have been extremely broad (due to my own fault) and I think I've caused myself more problems than necessary. By choosing something like this I can challenge myself and try and work in a different way than I have all year. So anyway my statement of intent goes a little like this;

What Problem?

When pinning up work Blu Tack is hard to come by.

What to do about it:

Make the new students aware of this problem, suggest a solution for it.

How?

Still haven't really decided on this. But possible ideas so far include:

Providing some sort of place where Blu Tack can be kept

Inform students where people usually hide their Blu Tack, through the method of mapping, or stickers on location

Produce something which helps explain why Blu Tack becomes dispersed, possibly using animation, storyboarding, film or photography

I'm still not too sure what I actually want to achieve with this brief, as to whether I want to entertain, inform, persuade the new first years, or whether to try and resolve the problem for them. 

I think once I have decided on this I can really start to think about how to solve this problem, at the moment there are too many possible ways of looking at the problem.

Type and Grid - Newspaper

Here is my attempt at working out the grids for one of the local papers. It took me quite a long time to work out what kind of system they were using and I got pretty stressed out. When I'd finished though I felt that slight sense of *I know something you don't know* that Lorenzo had promised. I've began to mark out on tracing paper some of the content of the page, including information about point size and leading. I've only really gone into detail on the sections that are a bit different to the rest of the page, to try and work out what they've done. Type and grid is pretty interesting so far, although I wish the sessions were longer. As soon as I start to get into it the session is pretty much over. It's nice to have something to concentrate on for that time, it sort of takes my mind off everything else that is going on.

Type and Grid - Vickie Simpson

We've been paired up with fellow designers. Our brief is to produce a 3 double page spread which is to appear in an appropriate publication, with the content focussing on our partner. My partner is none other than Vickie Simpson. Our first task towards this project was to have a Q&A session and find stuff out that we didn't already know about our partners. Following this we had to write 500 words about them. And also choose some imagery.
So this post is dedicated to Vickie Simpson. Maybe you will learn something about her you didn't already know.

482 words about Vickie Simpson

Vickie describes her own work as an “eclectic mix of media experimentation and illustration” and proudly states that she likes to “cut and stick things”. Anyone familiar with her work will be aware of her love for collage and that soft spot she has for anything second hand. Using collage means that Vickie can brainstorm her ideas as they are generated in a visually engaging away, which in turn inspires her and develops said ideas further. The “hands on” approach is something that she personally values very highly and prefers this method of image making to using just type or being software focussed. By routing through charity shops, car boot sales and old bookshops she has managed to find all sorts inspiration for her favoured way of working – and continues to do so. While in her room she is surrounded by these intriguing objects. Tins, lunch boxes, brass monkeys, sweet dispensers, a tea caddy and the list goes on. Her most treasured find from her hunts is a sewing machine, although, unsurprisingly, it is missing bits. Considering these factors it is no surprise that when asked what her favourite piece of work she had produced her music box topped the list. For anyone who doesn’t know what this was read on. For those of you who do, feel free to carry on reading anyway (no pressure). Designed to look like a stack of old books – actually structured by using bits of old covers and spines of books – the music box held inside it a collection of information about charity shops in Stockport and 100 items that Vickie herself purchased from these shops. Not only does this demonstrate to people the possibilities these kind of places hold, but it also reflects Vickie’s personality and interests quite aptly. It is a combination of second hand items, books, illustrations and music – a quite accurate summary of this young graphic designer. Although there is a strong sense of second hand items, and the re-use of imagery/type (in the form of collage), it is delivered in quite a contemporary way. Whether this is due to certain images used within work or specific messages, there is a definite modern way of thinking behind the work. It is probably this mixture that makes her work stand out from others and why it gains such a wide and varying range of interest. Vickie is clearly confident in the way she works and demonstrates a strong set of skills. As well as using found images from books and magazines, she likes to use fabric, pens and watercolours and has been known to produce some very gripping visuals from this media. When she’s not busy treasure hunting, or drawing birds, she can occasionally be seen riding her bicycle. Possibly to an art gallery, perhaps round York (one of her favourite and recommended places), or maybe even to the next car boot sale.

Some pictures

So help (us)...

Group collaboration time.
Our group = Ollie, Liam and myself.
The task was to choose a problem from the list of briefs and propose to a group of clients our solution, using concept boards.
We chose the brief *Get people to tell the truth*
Researching into it, we found that there had been studies where pent up guilt/stress could badly effect peoples immune system.
Our original solution was to send out balloons which directed people towards an outlet where they could *confess* their secrets to. Following our first crit though we decided to amend the problems that cropped up. We wanted to use balloons because 1) it was symbolic of a virus (which was part of the brief) and more importantly 2) it helped keep the service anonymous - as we wouldn't have control over the audience. This lack of control however, proved to be the idea's biggest downfall. As we couldn't count on the balloons reaching people who would want to use the service.
*****Images of first boards to come soon*****
After a lengthy brainstorm session on a sunday night, while also battling against several other factors (mainly essays/electives/visual language), inspiration finally hit us.
Our new suggested solution was to produce a package - resembling a product - which provided people with a kit where they could write down their confessions and release it (attached to a balloon). Again, we were keen on using the balloon because it fully supported the idea of anonyminity which was the main strength of this concept.
*****New board images also coming soon*****
SO, we presented this new idea to our new clients. We were then faced with the "surprise" of having to swap the briefs with our partners. The next hour or 3 was dedicated to re-vamping/changing/improving/discarding parts of the other groups idea to form an idea we thought was actually possible. This proved a lot easier to pull apart someone elses idea, and see where the problems were etc. Mainly because we weren't attached to the project and had no real vested interest in it. By the end of the 3 hours I was genuinely hoping to take on their brief, I thought that it would be really interesting to take on someone elses work. But no luck. We had to swap back. In the end I'm glad we did because I think as a group we pulled together really well to get things done. On occasions it was difficult having 3 people because there wasn't always something for all of us to do, but then other aspects of the work would never have been possible with only 2 people in the amount of time we had.
Our end solution was a pack which promoted the day; National Confession Day - The Big Release. The aim was to give out these packs to people so they could write down their secrets etc and then meet up in their local release site, so that everyone could let go of their secrets all together.
I was really impressed with the packs we ended up producing, they look a lot more professional than any of my previous work. Possibly because of the amount of work/time we all put into it. I think we all genuinely cared about this project throughout, rather than losing enthusiasm. We all wanted this to succeed, probably because everyone seemed to doubt it to begin with.
The concept boards came together well, and I think by the end of the week we were a lot more comfortable presenting the idea because we had a strong sense of what it meant. The feedback we got from our *clients* was very positive, so well done us.

The final concept boards should sum up most things:









*Click to enlarge*