End of Year Exhibition Branding

Brief

Collaborating with Jess Kat and Monica, come up with exhibition branding for the final year show.

Visual Research I liked

Ideas:

• Jigsaw / puzzle- all different pieces (images/ shapes/ colour) for each course
• Petri dish with half tone textures in each, representative of each course
• Hanging planets representative of diff courses
• Space theme "have you got space for us?" / play on song lyric send us to outer space...
• "One small step..." on adverts / "...One giant leap" Inside exhibition

We went down the 'space route; believing in our tag line 'One small step' as this suggests we are all influential as a new generation of designers. We discussed using imagery of spheres as they could be representative of each course, all connected in some way like planets in the solar system.

Visual Research

Halftone Experiments:

We then went off and experimented with some poster ideas individually:

These were my own initial designs which were a lot more experimental, using digital collage techniques and the surface of the moon, as well as gradient lines, the image of the "one small step" represented with the actual boot imprint on the surface. I like the two on the end of each row best, the top especially hints at a technological revolution as well with the inverted text colours.

These being my favourites:

With this one I used a lot of fashionable design techniques that seem to circulating amongst designers at the moment. I see this trend through graphic and clothing design, the use of neon, particularly green. This also makes sense with our galactic theme and really pops against the black. I also used a crumpled paper texture which is popular in design trends, this also works as it brings together new techniques with a retro feel, as if this is a discarded flyer found in the street on the future, I wanted to give this sense of futuristic work highlighting the fact we are the designers/ artists of the future.

The colour gradient/ thermal references binds together art and science, suggestive there is a science behind art, each brushstroke and concept is calculated.

Similarly the use of neon and inverted colours are a trend, I drew inspiration from the RABARBA exhibition poster, with this graphic almost psychedelic image with it's inverted colours.

Feedback

When showing the group they gave me feedback highlighting it looks too much like a science poster, with all the technical imagery it definitely does focus too heavily on space, less about this as a loose concept. Going round we all really liked Monica's design and decided to go with this as a starting point, it texturally references the moon's surface in a much less obvious way than using photography.

They did like my use of neon and initially we did experiment especially with green, it's particularly trendy throughout design and clothing at the moment which seems fitting for young designers to utilise this.

Playing on the "small step" and fact we're all connected we experimented with some tight kerning but found it illegible and messy, distracting from the calculated concept of things working separately but well together.

As we continued to play around with this shape we found it too complex and difficult to manipulate. It wasn't a clean design, more of a rough image trace that had multiple loose ends etc. We started thinking a more refined simplified version of what we have would be more visually striking, important for visual identity.

We experimented with overlaying the vector we then chose which was taken from a gradient map, which could also be representative of heights we can climb to, how we all support each other and we can only reach the top if he have each other, suggesting each course makes up the map which enables us to reach heights. Accentuating this concept we toyed with the idea of having extending stems, representative of all the different paths we may individually go down, post university. 

We tried using Klein Blue as we studied this in first year, a basis into our understanding of colour theory, something that is universally important in all creative fields.

Trying out more subtle contrasting colours worked really nicely, not so garish and hard on the eyes, also moving further from the 'space aesthetic' so it's more focused on the concept. We all agreed the font Rakesly for the header text was nice and clean, popping with the white yet not distracting too much from the visual.

With this variant we felt it was missing something, we needed another element that would tie the text and imagery together, an extension metaphorically also of the concept, a direction in which students move forwards after they graduate. We also found it a little too dark and the subtext wasn't quite right.

This is the a5 flyer 

We then thought about elongating the text in order to show this metaphorical progression, physically. 

Feedback 

-really clean

-simple but effective design

-like the subtext font, visually ties in with the space theme

-subtle use of colour makes text stand out as well as the logo 

-could somehow link up lettering around exhibition space 

Final Designs & Mock ups 

I made the iPhone mock up with a simple design fluid with all the rest, this time using the number as the extending character, with the text aligned with the numeric. I mocked it up on the @laugraphicdes instagram account.