OUGD406 | Studio Brief 03 - Initial Experiments and Continued Planning

After a day of discussing ideas and sketching, we decided to go away and design individually and bring our ideas in the next day for a critique and to decide if any of our ideas were worth developing. From my research, I was most inspired by these double sided GF Smith papers, that has the corner folded to display the colour on the opposite side. We had already come up with the idea of folded the corners of paper as we felt that this could represent the turning of a book page or ripping the old cover off to reveal the new cover.

GF smith papers

My designs began fairly weak as I tried to use the photos from the library to inspire me. I took shapes from the patterns in the library and tried to arrange these effectively, expeirmenting with the opacity of the vectors on illustrator. I also tried to replicate the reference cards we found in a draw in the library which were grey with faint red lines on which I felt looked similar to a grid. We had previously thought of the name 'judge a book by its cover' but as we found out other groups were using a similar concept, I trialed some different names such as re-fresh but I felt that these were still fairly unoriginal.

I then began to use the inspiration from GF smith to produce some designs. I began by creating some folded paper designs using a similar grey front with a colourful back. I felt that the grey colour represented the old cover well. However, the designs overall were boring and did not look appealing as an exhibition. As a group, we had been torn over what font was most appropriate, serif fonts truly represent books as this is typically used for the body copy within. However, a sans-serif font would represent the modernisation of the covers and the class as a whole. I began by using typefaces such as Futura and Andale Mono for a more funky look which I felt would represent our class and the book covers more appropriately. 

I tried to brighten up the covers with a light pink as I felt this worked well with the other colours I had experimented with. I brought shapes from the library into this which looked similar to the Leeds College of Art logo in order to bring the two together. I was pleased with these designs as I felt that they looked quite funky, however I did not feel the pink represented the exhibition well. I experimented with a dark blue to off set the colours more which was more successful. Although the designs were visually appealing to me, I felt that we needed a stronger concept. 

Below are the designs Rowan created. I was inspired by her book illustrations as I felt these were really skilful, crisp and looked good when arranged into a pattern. A pattern could be used a lot throughout the exhibition branding. I was also a fan of how she considered the use of photography for the exhibition as well as the yellow colours she used, which personally appeal to me.

After analysing all of the designs we had created, we felt that Tom had come up with a strong idea of using a squeegee to represent how the work is screen printed. We then borrowed a squeegee from the print room and photographed it. We then all began creating our own designs based around this, as if the page was being printed by the squeegee. After a few hours of developing this idea, we later found out that the second years were not screen printing their work, so unfortunately we had to scrap this. Although we were still able to take similar design treatments from the squeegee designs into our next ideas. The same day, Pete had come up with the name Nice Jacket which as a group we felt was the most creative and original name - not similar to any other group. We decided to take this name forward, although looking back, we did not thoroughly consider this as a concept when creating our squeegee designs. The meaning of the posters overall could have been unclear. 

As we went back to the drawing board, we began to think of Nice Jacket as a concept and how we could visually communicate its meaning, and the content of the exhibition. I suggested that we considered ways of putting books into clothing situations or vice versa and suggested that we could put a book in a wardrobe or on a coat hanger. After some further idea generation, we all went away and created some more designs. From the squeegee designs I felt that the pale grey, black and red colour scheme had been most successful and stood out the most. It also reminded me of the old red books we saw down one of the corridors within the library. So I decided to create some new designs using this colour scheme.  

I thought of using a speech bubble as it is typically something you would say to someone. I tried to place this on a book to bring the two together however, the meaning was not clear. 

I then trailed my coat hanger idea and I was pleasantly surprised despite having doubts about the idea. I went for a simple, cartoon like look and this seemed to work. I combined this with the folded paper idea we had previously experimented with. It did not take long to create an experimental branding in this style. The group decided that the visual communication of the coat hanger and book was most successful, so again we all went away and created our designs. I felt that it was important that we all designed our own versions as it was likely that someone would approach it from a different angle and come up with a new idea. It was also important for every group member to input something into the design. 

For Rowan's coat hanger designs, she used her previous illustrations which I felt worked really well. She also though to clip the book the other way to show the cover - my design had been the opposite way which could have been confusing. I also liked her idea to use strips of colour for the information on the posters, this would succesfully break down the poster to guide the eye around the page. 

Jess approached from a different angle using photographs and manipulating these on photoshop. She explored a wider range of colours which I felt was important to help us select the most ideal colour. My personal favourite was the green book. She was also more quirky with her design, placing the text vertically - coordinating with the cover! 

I really liked Petes approach as he decided to try something different, placing the illustration on to paper and creating his own version of the coat hanger which I felt worked well. He also used yellow and blue circles with a low opacity over this - I really liked the effect of this and was pleased to see a different idea. 

Tom explored using serif typefaces which was important for the design. This gained mixed reviews and I felt that the serif was successful but did not look as appealing. I liked his idea to place information on to the page turn and the overall minimalism of his design is great. I also like the use of a double border as the border of the page is easily forgotten about. 

With all our designs, we were unsure which way to turn. So we decided that we should see what our interim critique would suggest. We decided it was best to include our squeegee designs within this to see if there was anything that we could draw from that into our new designs. All that was left was to wait and see which way the crit would send us.