4th Brief

Instead of the sign painting brief which we have temporarily postponed, instead I will undertake two branding briefs that were originally in my lost of ten potential briefs. I will write this out properly shortly...

Sign Painting brief....

After a quick discussion and a few timing issues myself and Mitchell decided to hold off the Sign Painting brief for a while. Either we could run it as a side project or begin the brief at a later stage, but at this point in time it would be problematic to start a collaboration, so I am now looking at a few of the other briefs I have written previously to see which one can replace it.

Books Still? Brief main points

Having decided to go with the Books Still? despite having some kind of good feeling about the other ISTD brief that I had taken an interest in I felt it would be good to extract the main points from it as such, so I can begin to get an idea of what they are asking for here;


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- Explore traditional and contemporary book and publication design in terms of typography, image, navigation, hierarchy, formats and binding
- Consider how design has been used to express structure and narrative
- Explore the creative possibilities offered by production processes and materials, finishing and binding
- Develop an editorial design project that considers how we read in the 21st century
- Consider current developments in terms of format
- Express a solid idea
- Perhaps move beyond book design into the broader arena of editorial design
- Express an information hierarchy


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It must include:

- Strategy
- Research/design development
- Specs/Grids
- Final outcomes
- Presentation disk

Potential ISTD briefs (4th brief)

Two potentially interesting and useful briefs that I could use to become my 4th main brief. I have decided to go with one of these as it serves as a competition brief, and it is also nice to have a brief written by someone else - as opposed to the other three which I have written myself. I wrote up a quick list of pro's and con's to help me decide which one to undertake:


'Circus'

pro's:

- Possibility of moving image work, something which I have not picked up on in a while.
- Cultural Branding work; an exciting area of the design world, usually allowing quite a significant amount of creative freedom.
- Scope for vast brief expansion; to create a range of related products and apply work to a apply work to a range

con's:

- Not too keen on subject matter; although it would be possible to re-write this brief to suit my own interests more, it would stop being a competition brief, and it is always good experience to put something out there in public to be assessed by somebody outside of the college.


'Books still?'

pro's:

- Yet more editorial design work
- Interesting subject matter; This particular topic has always caught my attention since I have developed an interest in graphic design
- Relevant to Dissertation work; research would apply to both the brief and the essay.
- Research-driven
- Heavily typographic

con's:

- Yet more editorial design work; 2 out of 3 of my other briefs are fairly content-driven and publication-orientated, so it would be good to take a different direction for a change.


Obviously I will have to make a decision very soon so I can crack on with it; I have decided to go with 'Books still?'; after reading the lists of pro's and con's I feel that this kind of thing is more likely to keep me interested for a greater length of time and also crosses over with my dissertation work. Seems like a good situation to be in.

I may try and re-write the brief myself to get a solid idea of what it is asking me to do; although the ISTD briefs tend to be fairly well written as far as competition briefs go. I reckon I will have a go at simplifying it at the least to allow me to get on with research as soon as possible.

'Proper Bait' Fishing magazine

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A content-driven investigation into publication design with a focus on print process and layout skills.

A collaboration with Eddie, aiming to develop a fresh, alternative aesthetic for a fishing magazine. This will allow us to spend a significant amount of time improving our type and layout skills, building on various workshops last year. It will also allow us to make some investigations into print processes to create a magazine with some kind of additional value, contrasting to existing fishing magzines which all retain a fairly similar, basic aesthetic style.

Products:

- Magazine samples making use of a range of print processes
- Layout designs + specifications
- Logo design + visual aesthetics
- Packaging ideas
- Potential designs for digital material (basic ideas)

Distribution:

- Local Magazine distributors
- Fishing Community Events
- Online Promotion




'Exhibit A' Magazine

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A research and content-driven investigation into publication design with a focus on photography and layout skills.

A collaboration with a friend of mine from my home town, looking into local art/graffiti scenes; currently he runs a tumblr named 'Exhibit A' which he uses as a platform for his photographs. After numerous discussions in the summer we decided it would be a good idea to push this forward into some kind of physical publication, documenting various happenings and hopefully making this available to sell at some point in the near future. This type of publication quite often comes at quite a price, so by reducing printing costs we should be able to produce an affordable, well-designed magazine.

Products:

- Proposal for a range of magazines
- Cover designs + visual aesthetics (logos etc.)
- Layout prototypes
- Investigations into affordable and sustainable print processes.

Distribution:

- Various specialised art shops (C&B, Artofficial, The Bench 504 for example)
- Related blogs and websites, social media groups etc.




Sign Painting Business

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A skills-driven investigation into the art of sign-painting with a focus on hand-drawn type and business strategies.

A collaboration with Mitchell, an idea rooted in our mutual interests in such aspects of design such as hand-drawn lettering design, sign-painting, general open-air activities, painting etc. This will allow us to explore a wide variety of different media on a range of scales, and potentially open a gateway towards being able to do some commercial sign-painting work on a part-time sort of basis. As of yet this is quite an open-ended sort of brief, acting as a starting point as such - the general direction and development of the work will be defined by the results of working together i.e. beginning to understand the potential contexts of finished pieces.

Products:

- Various large-scale design lettering/image designs
- Potential live work
- Self-branding
- Investigations into various materials and media




4th Brief - Undecided

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This brief will be decided once the ISTD/various other competition briefs have been released.

10 Briefs - rough outlines.

A brief overview of the ten briefs that will soon be written out properly;


01; 'Exhibit A' Magazines - a collaboration with a friend from outside of college (artist/photographer) documenting local and sometimes international graffiti scenes

02; 03; two branding briefs for businesses started by two other friends of mine

04; Fishing magazine - collaboration with Eddie Cooper to design a fresh aesthetic for a previously existing fishing magazine

05; Airline Branding - collaboration with James Flanagan to propose some large-scale identity work

06; Hand-drawn type - a skills brief where I will adopt a theme and create a small portfolio of hand-drawn pieces simply to improve my skills

07; Record Label proposal - a brief where I will develop an aesthetic and hopefully some kind of business plan for a potential record label

08; Old Jazz record label design - a research-driven brief of some kind

09; Sign-Painting - collaboration with Mitchell Weaver to propose a potential business plan to begin doing sign painting for various establishments

10; Personal Typeface design - to tie in with self-promotion as well as personal projects.

3RD YEAR

Starts here.