What if...

The Brief:

What if... a group of Graphic Design students get together, and decide to solve a problem?

Based on your common interests, research and knowledge, you must establish a "problem" that effects some sector of the general public in Leeds.

You must develop logical, original and adventurous research lines of enquiry in order to justify the relevance of the "problem" which should inform a range of solutions.

The solution (s) must be resolved, designed and presented in the public domain and recorded appropriately.

THIS IS EFFECTIVELY A LIVE BRIEF SO PLEASE BE CONSIDERATE, RESPECTFUL AND LEGAL IN YOUR ACTIVITIES.

Deliverables:

Compelling fact based evidence should be presented to prove that the problem you are addressing is a genuine problem.

A photographic record of the solution to the problem as presented in the public domain.



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From my initial research on Leeds, i condensed the information down to create our problem.

I looked at my 20 photos of Leeds and gave them a word to overall describe them. Diverse.

From this one word i picked 6 words from my 20 words about Leeds to link with the chosen word for the photos. Cultural, creative, lively, inspiring, energetic and vibrant.

I then took an opinion from my collected opinions of Leeds, that linked with the above. 'There is always something to do in the city and its all accessable, the culture is brilliant and its a pleasure to live in such a vibrant city'.

I then chose a fact. The city is diverse and multi cultural, home to more than 75 different nationalities.

And then a statistic. 717,000 residents live in the metropolitan district, the second largest of any in England.

Someone from the group then analyised our research in the same way, and from this we came up with a statement about Leeds. Leeds is multicultural.


We were then put into groups/catagories based on the subject of our statement...and the fun begins...


What if rationale:

Group members:

Kirsty
Niall
Chris L
Alex S
Sophie W

The problem:

How do we convince/persuade people to come/live in Leeds?

The evidence:

Research gathered, primary source material, photographs, facts, opinions, words and statistics.

We intend to...

We intend to gather market research, compose a questionnaires and interact with the public to define what it is that makes Leeds so desirable. This will involve approaching businesses and pedestrians.

The only way in which we can produce a final outcome/solution (s), is to extensively research into why people like Leeds, we will directly approach people for primary source material. Ways in which we could deliver our solution are broad, such as a website/page, mailshot, t-shirts, posters, flyers, a video. We need to try and persuade people to come to Leeds.


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I created an online questionnaire to find out about what current students thought about Leeds.

The questions were:

I sent a link to the questionnaire to everyone in college, i received 97 responses in total, which gave me a more solid and accurate result than only asking 20 people.

The results above showed that business and entertainment were being considered a less important aspect of Leeds than say, shopping, nightlife and education.

From these results and previous research we found that the student population in Leeds was very high, which gave us an incentive to focus on students as our target audience. We then needed to look at the results from the questionnaire to determine what the problem was in order to resolve it.

Although business had the lowest percentage of 'votes' we didn't want to focus on this as we felt that students wouldn't really be that interested in business whilst still studying at university. So we decided to focus on entertainment.

Entertainment is quite a broad term so we split it down into groups:

shopping
pubs
clubs
music
theatre
film

The problem now:

We need to find a way to persuade and attract potential students to study in Leeds by showing them what sort of entertainment is available for them whilst they study. As of course theres no work without play!

we have made a blog with information on about the entertainment in Leeds, there is a page for each group of entertainment and these will contain:

reviews
links to websites
pictures

I started to design a logo for our blog and promotional material, we came up with several tag lines and slogans and did have a few disagreements. Here are some of our ideas and why they did/didn't work:

- Share moments, share Leeds: Five star entertainment

This tagline worked well but i think it was more appropriate for a more mature audience. It sounded a bit romantic and quite traditional, not really something catchy for our younger audience.

The logos that i created for this worked well and incorporated the Yorkshire Rose and the colours of Leeds united football club. The circle was used in some of the designs because it bought it all together and also kept it simple.

- Leeds: full of life, full of entertainment

This tag line sounded a bit cheesy and although we are focusing mainly on the entertainment side of Leeds, i think it would be good to have a tagline that was a bit broader in what it was trying to say.

- Where the hell is Leeds?

There was a bit of disagreement with this particular tag line. We were going to use it as it seemed to be more targeted for the student audience but after thinking about it and the way in which people might interpret it i didn't think it was appropriate. Because of the use of the word 'hell' people might think we could be saying it in the context of 'oh where the hell is Leeds, it must be crap'. Which is obviously not the road we're going down.

The one we chose:

'When in Rome, do as the Romans do'

We got the idea from this statement which means when you go to a foreign place 'do as the locals do', this fitted nicely with what we are trying to promote.

'When in Leeds, do as the Loiners do'

This is our version about Leeds, natives of Leeds are called Loiners. So the people of Leeds or current students know the best places to go in Leeds for entertainment. Our blog/promo material is showing the best places to go. Basically we are trying to say when you come to Leeds go to the best places where all kinds of students go, theres something for everyone.

www.wheninleeds.blogspot.com

Colour...

The Seven Contrasts

Johanne Itten created the seven contrasts of colour, it was a way of defining and identifying strategies for colour combinations.

The contrast of saturation: The contrast is formed by the juxtaposition of light and dark values and their relative saturation.

The contrast of light and dark: The contrast is formed by the juxtaposition of light and dark values. This could be monochromatic composition.

The contrast of extension: Also known as the contrast of proportion, the contrast is formed by assigning proportional field sizes in relation to the visual weight of the colour.

The contrast of compliments: The contrast is formed by the juxtaposition of colour wheel or perceptual  opposites.

Simultaneous contrast: The contrast is formed when the boundaries between colours perceptually vibrate. Some interesting illusions are accomplished with this contrast.

The contrast of hue: The contrast is formed by the juxtapositions of different hues, the greater the distance between hues on a colour wheel, the greater the contrast.

The contrast of warm and cool: The contrast is formed by the juxtaposition of hues considered 'warm' or 'cool'.

(Above research found on Worqx website: Ittens 7 contrasts...)

End of Module OUGD101 Self-Evaluation...

Kirsty Hardingham

www.K-hardingham1013.blogspot.com

1.       What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?

I have learned a lot during this module, i think the main thing is that the generating of ideas are endless and there is so many ideas and solutions you can generate from one brief. I found this out during the design a typeface brief, i had so many ideas and didn’t know which one to draw up as a whole alphabet and glyphs, i asked a tutor what they thought and they said i should draw them all up. Once i had drawn up about 7 versions i just kept designing. I really enjoyed this brief and pushed myself to the limit and since then i have been doing the same thing in present briefs. I have also learnt how to use illustrator, at start i hated it because i got frustrated but now i do a lot of work on it.

2.       What approaches to/ methods of research have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?

With my design context blog i have gathered pieces of design that i find inspiring, which helps when i need some ideas. Im not really sure how i research to be honest, i just do it. With the research week brief of researching a headline i gathered information about tattoos and the history of them which helped me gain an understanding of what tattoos were used for and how they were recognised, this impacted my design and i developed my ideas from there.

3.       What strengths can you identify in your work and how/ will you capitalise on these?

I have now got to the point where i will experiment constantly with ideas, good or bad ideas is still an idea and ive learnt to take criticism as a learning curve.

4.       What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these more fully?

I think that i could improve my digital skills, because throughout this module i have had the chance to develop work digitally but didn’t always do it because i wasn’t confident enough so i may have lost a few good or maybe bad digitised versions of ideas. I try hard to use illustrator but often get frustrated so i guess that is something i can work on.

5.       Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?

-          The first thing is to push my digital skills to the next level to ensure i can experiment fully with a wider range of media.

-          Generate more ideas in a brief to have a wider choice in what to develop onto the final processes of a final solution as i felt with some briefs i didn’t push myself enough with my ideas and when you realise its the deadline for the brief and there was other things you could of done it makes you feel like you could have done better when actually its too late now.

-          Learn how to manage my time properly and effectively, i am quite good at this but some days i get lazy and just go home and do nothing when really i could have thought up several more ideas in college that could of made a big difference to a brief.

-          I wish that i had asked people constantly for advice on my work as it does really help, especially with people who aren’t afraid to tell you what they think. I know we have regular crits which are really useful but constant feedback is an essential part of a developing brief.

-          I wish i was able to speak more clearly about my ideas as i felt sometimes during crits i didn’t explain my ideas enough which meant people didn’t understand where i was coming from and i sometimes received unhelpful feedback.

6.       How would you grade yourself on the following areas:

5= excellent

4= very good

3= good

2= average

1= poor

Attendance= 4

Punctuality= 5

Motivation= 4

Commitment= 4

Quantity of work produced= 3

Quality of work produced= 3

Contribution to the group= 3

Illustrator Brief...

For the illustrator brief i chose to visually experiment with the letter 'B', i chose to do a capital B to set myself a challenge as i do feel its maybe harder to experiment with in a wide variety of ways. It also linked in with my flattened B from a previous brief. I needed to produce 26 variations of my chosen letter. Below are variations of my letter, produced in Illustrator. I have experimented with the bowls of the letter, the stroke weight, height and elongation, disfigurement of the outline, pattern and anything else that i could find to transform my letter.

I particularly liked the aesthetic qualities of playing around with the distort and transform tool, there were so many variations you could create, some subtle and others completely changed the formality of the letter.

We were allowed to use one colour (not including black or white) in this brief, i decided to use red as it stands out but i only coloured my original outline to emphasise that this is what i started with and i ended up with a wide variation of B.

Below is my final 26, they were to be presented on A2 landscape consisting of two rows of 13. Together they all work well and do show a variety of visual variations. I have chosen to use the samples that i distorted with the distort and transform tool. I like the curvaceous shapes and the similar continuity between each letter form. Keeping one letter form red looks really good too, it just adds that tiny bit of colour that i think brings it all together.

I do particularly like working with black and white as it keeps it simple and crisp, i mainly wanted to look at shape and keep it simple, i did experiment with different brushes and patterns but they were too fussy and it took you away from the smooth shape of the B.

Examples of others typographic experimentations: