Tag Archives: Design brief

Exercise: Chance Housing Association

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Exercise: Chance Housing Association (Graphic Design One: pg. 119)

The Chance Housing Association has been set up to try and help first time buyers get onto the housing ladder and they want a brand image for their stationery. It is important to them that the Association is seen as being different from the other local housing associations – more modern, more helpful, and definitely welcome to young people wanting to buy a home.

They want to use their logo on their letterhead and office stationery and it will also be used somewhere on the sheets that hold the property details. It also needs to be reproducible in the local newspaper and professional trade magazines.

mindmap for a housing association logo

Chance Housing mindmap

I started the process by mind mapping and doing some research. Research into first time buyers brought up a number of characteristics:

  • 65% of first time buyers come from the top 40% of earners (2015/16)
  • First time buyers tend to be older as a result of the rising costs of housing
  • There are a range of schemes on offer to help first time buyers:
    • Shared ownership: Household income of less than £80k
    • Help to buy: starter homes (under 40s), get a minimum discount off market price
    • Rentplus: rent to buy

The brief for Chance Housing Association (CHA) suggests their client range is likely to fall within the Help to Buy age range. Younger buyers who are probably struggling to get on the housing ladder.

The mind mapping threw up two areas that I wanted to think about – the physical structure of buildings and the emotional aspects of buying your first home. A time of excitement but also of anxiety, marking a milestone. This reflects CHA’s brief about wanting to be seen as supportive and helpful.

I also researched the logos and brand identities of other housing associations and organisations involved in social housing, and several characteristics emerged:

  • Many use acronyms, usually where they do their name in full is also included
  • Some are just text but most include a symbol
  • Most are sanserif
  • The most common symbols seems to be a house or roof structure
  • The predominant colours are blue and green
  • Some include three or more colours, particularly if they are concerned with diversity

The colour schemes are interesting; I think the dominance of blues and greens is about projecting an image of safety, security and trustworthiness.

To be different the CHA logo perhaps needed to include:

  • Bright and warm toned colours
  • Not to include a building structure
  • Serif typeface
  • Be within a bounding box or frame of some sort

I did a lot of sketching, playing with type layout and exploring different symbols. Some of which conform to the sector characteristics and some that are less conventional. There were a couple beginning to emerge for a shortlist, I particularly liked the idea of some the symbols being the shape of arrows and houses, symbolising moving up as well as pointing to CHA.

I wasn’t sure I quite had what I wanted and went back to the mind map, from which I picked up the notion of architecture and structure. I then did some sketches developing the letters into what could be blueprints or floor plans.

That led me on to thinking about square typefaces and I found several that I thought could work that I downloaded from Dafont.

I then moved on to developing some of the sketches in Illustrator. I was really pleased with the ‘Cubic’ typeface (Logo set 1) but felt that ‘Squared Display’ probably looked too much like a nightclub logo. It was interesting to note at this point how much more comfortable I am now with scrolling through lots of typefaces and seeing them as a source for inspiration as much as images and layouts.

Logo set 2 is based on my own designs using the idea of a floor plan. I was pleased with how they developed and that the idea could be worked up. I think they look quite contemporary and are different to other logos in the sector but in the end I wasn’t sure how legible they would be.

Logo set 3 played on the house/arrow idea using strokes and fill and different colourways. Although they are very clean I am not sure these are distinctive enough and perhaps don’t have quite the right tone.

Logo set 4 were just experiments with different decorative typefaces, again playing on the notion of architecture and buildings.

I decided that Logo set 1 was the approach I would develop into the stationery and publicity materials. I was a bit concerned about the yellow and it was problematic when I photocopied the stationery so I added a grey stroke which seems to work fine. I like the way the ‘h’ of CHA echoes a house and they resemble a honeycomb, the hive as a home. I also think it is distinctive against the other housing association logos I looked at.

Chance Housing Association Stationery

 

CHA and other housing association logos

As I developed the stationery it really highlighted the issues that you need to address, the nature of the information to be included, legibility and readability, setting the tone and so on. I knew using yellow might be an issue so I photocopied the results at different points. This led to adapting the logo (without the box) so that it still works when printed or photocopied in black and white.

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Exercise: Birthday List

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Birthday planner for the month of january

Exercise: Birthday List (Graphic Design One, pg113)

Make a birthday list poster to keep on your wall. It is likely to be there for a while so it needs to look good. Start by collecting all the birthdays of your friends and family. You’ll need their name and birth date, to decide whether or not you buy them presents or just send a card, text message or email.

I’m not sure I entirely got the point of this exercise. I think this is partly because I tend not to use these sorts of things, so I had trouble getting past the ‘I’d just use an app’ thought! I started with a few sketches and looking online at other examples. The online research suggests this is seen as predominantly a female or young children market so the designs very much reflect this. Lots of bright colours, cupcakes, dinosaurs and stickers.

After making a few sketches, primarily to think about layout, I decided I would work on a perpetual version that could be downloaded as a PDF. It would have a hole in one corner to put a loop through for hanging, and each one can then be recycled after use. I wouldn’t put the month on but leave a space for the user to fill it in themselves.

I also decided I would use a pastel type palette, with an informal feel for everyday use. In terms of the information to include I decided on:

  • Date
  • Name
  • Card
  • Phone call
  • Present
  • Text
  • Make a cake

I created a landscape grid and added balloons and bunting.

Birthday planner for the month of january

Birthday list design

In terms of the need to contain certain information I think the design works well and it could easily go on a pinboard, fridge door or hang from a kitchen hook. The design is probably not the most inspiring in the world because of my feelings about the task and the nature of the output. I was definitely more engaged with the infographic, which is useful learning in terms of how I might deal with a design task that doesn’t excite me in future.

Rework

My tutor was right when he suggested this had gone clip art in design, and that was because I didn’t care about it and couldn’t find a way in to the exercise. Having talked it through I revisited it with more of an app approach in mind. I could envisage a series of screens, taking you from the months to the individual birthdays. It would be flexible enough to allow you to add your own categories, but I have included the most obvious. I am much happier with this approach and could imagine it being useful. Moreso than a poster or wall chart!

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Exercise: Abstract Cities

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Four abstract arches to use for a city guide cover for Madrid

Create a series of ten abstract designs in which you balance blocks of subordinate, dominant and accent colours. These designs are going to be used as covers for ten cities. As part of the process explore your DTP packages further by creating the artwork in different software packages.

I think it’s fair to say that compared to previous exercises I have made a complete meal of this one! I made a fatal mistake at the beginning, which was to do the maths –  ten designs at four to five different iterations, that’s at least forty images! Oh, my that’s a lot of ideas and uploading. I think at this point I became a bit overwhelmed by the task and wasn’t sure how best to approach it. This triggered quite a lot of procrastination and longingly reading and re-reading the next exercise about Photomontage.

I collected the odd image and started thinking about how I was going to approach the exercise but the inspiration was slow in coming. Some of the cities I knew so had some initial connections and my own perception of colours and shapes. I did some wider research online to collect images of the different cities. This then prompted some initial sketches to start the process of thinking about composition, having decided I’d work on composition first and then work with colour.  I was reasonably happy with some of the ideas but not wildly excited by them.

Six thumbnail monochrome sketches for travel guides

Panorama based sketches

Unusually for me I also then looked at other student’s work for this exercise. I wouldn’t ordinarily do this as I have found in the past it can be a bit intimidating when I see the quality of other peoples work. I am also mindful that sometimes you can take on subliminal ideas that may then appear unintentionally in your own work raising concerns about originality. With those caveats in mind and being as stuck as I was I thought it might help. It was certainly useful in seeing how others had approached the exercise, and especially helpful in looking at how others had assembled their palettes and the use of Adobe Color. I also noticed some motifs and images were used by a number of students and that these were very similar to the images I had found.

The next step was some quick research on other travel guides. The ones that stood out for me were the Louise Vuitton and the Luxe guides. It was particularly the Luxe guides that caught my eye, I really liked the idea of taking a small detail to represent the bigger concept. My first sketches, and other student work seemed to be more panoramic in nature and I wanted to focus in more.

At this point I decided to refine the brief and think about them in terms of guides for art lovers in each city, which meant I could focus in on a particular theme. As I did the research this also helpfully showed that many of the arts buildings in these cities are quite iconic. Finally, I had a way in and something that interested me!

Abstract Cities – stage two

Having decided on the approach I wanted to take I set out some dedicated time to work on all ten cities together. I  worked on them in batches rather than city-by-city, in part to think about consistency but also to keep the energy going.

I created what I have called a mood board for each city in which I brought together arts, architecture and public art examples.

I put all the mood boards into Adobe Colour and used that to create a basic colour palette for each, based on their bright or custom themes. In some cases these were adapted further when I worked on the design. The Colour Palettes PDF shows the initial colour schemes.

I then started a new set of sketches to work on the compositions. These were developed in Illustrator.

Abstract Cities – Stage three

Madrid

Abstract designs for Madrid travel guide

Madrid

Based on contemporary art in the city I tried to do the exterior of the Museo Nacional Centro de Art Reina Sofia but I was struggling with Illustrator and it started looking too fragmented. The second idea was based on a piece of public art but wile I like the idea it felt too derivative. I finished by using an aspect of the exterior of the Matadero, which I think captured the wider iconic arches in other parts of Madrid as well as the Spanish colours.

Managua

Four designs for Managua city guide

Managua

I had thought I would use some of the city’s public art but after more online research I found that several of them had been demolished. In the end I went with the iconic trees (although these seem to have mixed appeal in Managua itself!).

After learning how to make swirls in Ai I used Adobe sketch and transferred the result to Ai. I was struggling to make the colours work and was painstakingly using the pen tool to map areas and apply colour. In the end I used the trace function and decided to use a thick stroke to paint the curls. I was going to tidy the edges but decided I quite liked them a bit sketchy.

Marrakech

Four designs for a Marrakech city guide cover

Marrakech

Based on the exterior of the Marrakech Museum for Photography and the Visual Arts. It was one of the earliest sketches and I was happy with the composition so concentrated on the colour combinations. I used variations from the colour palette, which were evocative of the city as a whole. In the last two versions I added the drop shadows under the windowsills but I didn’t feel they really added to the design. (I have just read the Museum has closed while it seeks a new location so would have to rework this for a guide now!).

Manhattan

Four designs for a Manhattan city guide cover

Manhattan

This design uses the iconic interior of the Guggenheim museum. As with others I started with too much detail so after the two early attempts I decided to simplify it and make it more abstract. I didn’t like the all caps typeface and tried to find something that was stylish and cultured.

Malmo

Four designs for a Malmo city guide

Malmo

These compositions are based on the exterior and interior of the Moderna Museet Malmo (MMM) and the Malmo Konsthall (MK). I kept the exterior ideas very simple and abstract. The all orange example is from the interior of the MMM and plays with some of the architectural features. The MK interior is very minimal reflecting the perspective in the gallery. The typeface is modern and simple.

Manchester

Four designs for a Manchester city guide

Manchester

These designs are based on the exterior of the People’s History Museum and as with the other designs they incorporate colours from across the city. I was reasonably happy with the composition so worked on various colour palettes. The first two didn’t feel well balanced and the interaction of colours wasn’t working. I decided to use white for the background, which lifted the colours and made it more dynamic.

Mumbai

Four designs for a Mumbai city guide cover

Mumbai

Initially, I thought I would use the exterior of the Bombay Arts Society but when I started working with the shapes it wasn’t coming together. Instead I used the interior staircase design that is very distinctive. Once I had got the basic layout I worked with different palettes until the final version, which I felt was the most harmonious. Again I chose a typeface that felt in keeping with the destination.

Marseille

Four designs for a Marseille city guide cover

Marseille

This started with the night view of the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations (MuCEM)  but it looked too busy and fussy so I moved on to the aerial view and created something much simpler. The colours draw on the wider palette of the city and are not specific to the centre. I added some texture in the final version to evoke the amazing external structure of the building. I kept the typeface clear and modern.

Melbourne

Four designs for a Melbourne city guide cover

Melbourne

My initial ideas were to use the distinctive façade of the Australia Centre for Contemporary Art and while I liked these I thought perhaps they were a little too abstract. The second set of ideas take public art in Melbourne as their starting point. The colours are reasonably close to the original works but also encompass the sunshine, red earth, and blue skies.

Montreal

Four designs for a Montreal city guide cover

Montreal

This is the iconic façade of the DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art. The original building only has one red window but this has been extended to three in the final version to reflect the presence and importance of the colour red in the city. The overall palette was kept relatively muted to reflect the city’s architecture.

Final selection

Having done the original sketches and then working up the designs in Ai I selected the final ten which I felt were probably the most successful. Some are more successful than others but I think there is some sense of them working together as a series.

 

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Assignment Two: Thinking of you

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The brief:

Create a set of greetings cards for sentiments or events that are worthy of a greetings card but are not currently catered for by card manufacturers.  The cards could be linked to other calendar events, obscure Saint’s days, sporting calendars or any other happening that is worth celebrating or commiserating. You may wish to explore some of life’s other landmarks that currently don’t feature in greetings cards, like getting your first grey hairs, being released from prison or any other personal landmark someone might want to share.

Design the cover of your card and the message inside. You may wish to include an envelope. Produce at least three finished cards.

Analysing the brief:

For me the key elements of the brief are:

  • Currently not catered for
  • Worthy of a greeting card

These were the starting points for developing my ideas.

Research and development:

My research process has been documented in my learning log, I worked through a number of phases:

  • Brainstorming ideas
  • Talking to friends and family for their ideas
  • Researching greeting cards and the greeting card market
  • Narrowing down options and developing visuals

Visualising ideas

Throughout the process I kept adding to my Pinterest boards (Swipe file, GD1 Exercises, Postcard Inspiration etc.) , I also developed sketches for a number of the possible ideas before I decided on a shortlist. I developed four cards based on different themes.

Card One: Nice Growing

Seven tumbnail sketches for a greeting card for gardners based on a lettuce

Good Growing sketches

This card was prompted by the lettuces I grew in the summer; with every lettuce I picked I felt a sense of achievement. I thought this would be a nice occasion to mark for anyone who has felt similarly – it could be for other gardeners, for allotment holders or even for windowsill growers. Rather than illustrate it I decided to use a photo. I then used brushes to add some dirt and make it look like the lettuce has just been laid on the card having been pulled from the ground.

In terms of the typeface I wanted something fluid and organic looking that was in keeping with theme. I envisaged that the cards would be bought by women, gardeners and possibly parents (whose children had grown something special).

Once I had decided on the cover I thought more about the buyer and imagined they would probably be practical people, possibly with an interest in environmental sustainability and as such there needed to be something else to the card. That’s when I came up with the idea of making the card do something more and using it as a planter in its own right. Inside there are faint markings for where to fold the card to create a small, environmentally friendly seed tray.

Card Two: Ssssnake

This card started more generally as a congratulations on a new kitten/pet idea and when I did some research it seemed like there were already quite a lot of these available particularly for furry pets. What I didn’t find was anything for reptiles and as a friend have given their son a snake a while ago it made me think this might be a better direction to take.

I did some online research and looked at photos and illustrations of snakes. Early on I decided that as this was likely to be a younger recipient it should be more interesting than a plain card so I wanted to make it a pop-up. Of the set this was the card that caused the most technological challenges in terms of my skills with Illustrator in particular. I did some sketching using Adobe Draw including the colour, which I was then able to transfer as a Jpeg to my desktop. Once I transferred it to Illustrator the colours were completely off, it looked the same in Photoshop but not in Illustrator and I was completely stuck about what to do.

Because I wanted to do the whole set as vectors in illustrator and I had set up the template I decided to persevere. Using the pen tool I then recreated the snake across the front and back of the card and added colour using fill and the brush tool. It was a laborious and at times frustrating process but it has helped me learn some of the features of the programme. Using a similar approach I created the inside of the card and the popup snake which I decided to leave blank so it could be coloured in and personalised to the recipients own snake. It took a little experimenting to find the right place to put the pop-up but in the end I was happy with the effect.

Card Three: Nice Ink

In America nearly one in four people have a tattoo, in the UK it is nearly one in five. They appear to have become more popular with younger people with one in three of 18 to 44 yr olds in the US having a tattoo (YouGov 2015). As an artform tattooing has also evolved involving more subtle and ‘watercolour’ type effects. As someone who got a Tattoo in her 30s I thought this was something to celebrate and while there are some cards available these seem to be mainly aimed at the Tattoo artist rather than the Tattoo recipient.

I wanted to create something that had a contemporary feel and was probably aimed at women. I therefore thought it needed to have a front cover with a more delicate Tattoo style.

I decided to add an internal border that had a reference to more traditional Celtic style Tattooing, also recognising that people tend to have more than one Tattoo. People tend to get Tattoos that are meaningful to them so I wanted the card to celebrate and acknowledge a new Tattoo.

The initial drawings were done with Adobe draw on my iPad, which I then transferred and developed in Illustrator. This took much longer than anticipated because I had to learn how differently the brushes behaved from those in Photoshop. After some consultation with my family members I decided to go with the two scrolls rather than a single central scroll.

It got a little busier as an image than I had intended, I was thinking along the lines of the rose Tattoo I found through my research (Tattoo mood board 2), but it seemed to need the balance of the additional Lilies and leaves   It definitely felt like something that I could keep adding to forever so I had to get to a point where I felt it worked well enough and to be disciplined enough to leave it alone at that point.

Card Four: When in doubt…

Six thumbnail sketches on the theme of baking

Bake Sketches

I was in two minds about whether to include this card as it was the simplest of the set and uses a stock photograph rather than one of my own.  I have a number of friends who work in the food industry and there is obviously a lot of food content on social media and TV so I thought a cooking/baking card might be fun. Something lighthearted, perhaps in the vein of the ‘Keep calm…’ themes. I did some early sketches, which I was reasonably happy with but then when I was looking online I came across this image, which immediately caught my attention.

I have used it in part because it posed an interesting debate for me in terms of being a photographer and being a designer. As a photographer I was uncomfortable about using someone else’s image, but as a designer I was looking for something that communicated a message. After all the brief doesn’t say ‘using only images created by you design a greeting card.’

It seemed to me it was too good an image not to use and it conveyed the idea of baking being fun; something you might do when things are getting tough; something to do with friends or your family. I experimented with using text inside and out and feedback suggested that having text on the front worked better. It was also an interesting experience in that sometimes simple solutions work as well as complicated ones as the section on Occam’s Razor in the course materials suggests.

 

 

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Assignment Two Development

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I started thinking about assignment two ahead of time in late August; I thought it would be a good idea to give myself time for things to percolate. I also started talking to friends and families about what they thought were gaps in the greeting card market. This made me think about some of our recent life events and what sort of cards might have been appropriate. This led to a long list and I started doing some thumbnail sketches of the different themes:

  • Your first harvest (I had not long pulled up my first lettuce of the season)
  • Summer solstice
  • Your first kitten
  • Congratulations on eating your greens
  • Well done for getting active
  • Not checking your e-mails all weekend!
  • Baking your first cake
  • Your new pushbike
  • Finishing that report
  • Congratulations on your new pet snake
  • Congratulations on your first tattoo

Over the weeks that followed I gradually narrowed the list – partly by those that interested me and partly by those that were genuinely gaps in the market. Summer solstice and kittens seem to be well catered for and there are lots of generic ‘well done’ type cards.

The ones that immediately attracted me were:

  • Harvest
  • Greens
  • Baking
  • Snake
  • Tattoo

I started collecting and pinning different ideas, thinking about relevant markets and making some more thumbnail sketches.

 

Exercise: Book cover design

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Exercise (p.40 OCA Graphic Design): Your brief is to design a stunning and contemporary cover for one of the 20th Century’s most acclaimed authors, HG Wells. When you have a range of ideas and have notes in your learning log, make some rough drawings or sketches to show your ideas.

I could sense a little hesitation when I first read through the brief, this sounds like ‘proper’ graphic design! Rather than worry about whether I could come up with an appropriate design I thought about the research process. I started with an overarching mindmap drawing out some keywords, identifying research needs, thinking about different angles on the brief and drawing out some of the decision process. This process helped me think about which books I might design the book cover for, secondary online research showed that the most common titles for this sort of exercise seem to be ‘War of the Worlds,’ ‘The Invisible Man,’ ‘The Time Machine,’ and the ‘Island of Dr.Moreau.’

When I looked at HG Wells’ bibliography I came across a number of short stories that I hadn’t read before and decided this was the direction I wanted to take, that way I could perhaps develop something more distinctive. The short stories are full of rich symbolism with a glorious sense of the Gothic; several of them reminded me of Grand Guignol plays. I then decided on the three short stories I wanted to work with and did a further mindmap drawing out keywords for each of the titles. As I did this I had a sense I was starting to visualise how the design might develop, I could see some layouts in my mind’s eye.

In parallel I looked at lots of other examples for inspiration and tried to analyse the designs in terms of what I felt worked and what I might have done differently. I am now deep into playing with typefaces and thinking about which designs I might develop.

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Part Two: Problem solving. Exercise – Working to a brief

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An open file with highlighted text

Working to a brief (pp34-35)

These are extracts from briefs set as part of a student competition. Read and analyse each brief.

 

 

Ask yourself:

  • What are you being asked to do?
  • How will the client judge a successful outcome to the brief?
  • What are the keywords?

Log any other questions you would wish to ask the client.

Brief 1

The brief is to design product packaging to appeal to a particular market segment.

The client will judge success by sales of ‘Chilled Creamy Oats’ to young women.

The keywords/phrases I identified are:

  • Packaging
  • Product name
  • Young women
  • Truly delicious snack
  • Juggling jobs & priorities
  • Love treats
  • Hate feeling hungry
  • Natural goodness
  • Bland and unappealing

In terms of additional information I would like to know if the client has sold to this target market before, what their other packaging was like (did they want something to match or very different from previous packaging), if they had views on size and shape, what compliance information was needed if any (nutritional information etc.), logo and company information, and what lifestyle data they have for the demographic they are targeting.

Brief 2

Design a metaphorical journey on the theme of connectedness. Define the market and how it will be targeted.

The client will judge success on an imaginative and surprising response to the brief and it’s clarity in communicating ‘connectedness’ to the viewer.

Keywords/phrases:

  • Long rail journey
  • Dramatic contrasts
  • Changing landscape
  • Interconnections
  • Embark & disembark
  • Dynamic is ever changing
  • Metaphorical journey
  • Theme of connections
  • Take us on a journey (list of connections)
  • Imagination
  • Quality of research
  • Connectedness

Other information I would like would be what the client has done before in this area, whether the design is part of a series, the brand identity of the client, existing colour palettes and media. I would probably want to test whether the brief is really as open as it seems.

Brief 3

Awareness raising and attitude change towards the risks of underage drinking.

Success would be based on young people’s awareness of the effects of drinking and making safe choices about drink.

Keywords/phrases:

  • Awareness
  • Risks
  • Underage drinking
  • Cultural change
  • Attitude towards alcohol
  • Best place to grow up
  • Children and young people happy & healthy
  • Core proposition
  • Parents to talk to their children
  • Avoid
  • Vulnerable situations
  • Think
  • Effects of drinking
  • Creative
  • Ideas
  • Why let drink decide?
  • Aged 13 – 16

I would ask the client what other awareness raising campaigns they have run, how connected they are with the target audiences (parents & young people), what mandatory information is needed (logo etc.), data they have on children/young people and alcohol, colour palette, and the range of media they already use.

In terms of the brief I would be most likely to tackle it would probably be the ‘connectedness’ brief. I like how open it is and can already picture in my mind the sort of approach I might take. I think I would be least likely to attempt the packaging probably because it feels furthest from my experience, but also because I imagine it is the one with the most constraints.

I think the connectedness brief would give more scope for experimentation, playfulness and new ideas. I think it would stretch me because I would have to determine my own parameters and it could take me into a variety of formats. It would also require some creative research, which is very appealing and has the potential for me learn something new in undertaking the brief.