Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Ok, so after the formative assessment for the GDF project I decided I wanted to do a little more work on the logo as I wasn't sure it quite worked aesthetically, and also wanted to carry out a little more experimentation with, or at least consideration of, colour, and try applying the final identity to some formats, eg, Tshirts, posters, etc.

In order to refocus, I watched the 1996 film 'Brassed Off' which very much explores how 'working class' and 'culture' come together. It occurred to me that the euphonium, as such a loud, large and solid instrument, is the perfect emblem to incorporate into a logo for blokes.


I rearranged the collage element of the design, such that the electric guitar provided a unifying visual 'peak' to the design, and the euphonium and pint glass perfect receptacles for the film-reel 'scrolls' to emerge from.


In terms of consideration of colour, I set about trying to anticipate how my target audience would respond to certain colour combinations, consciously or otherwise.


I ultimately opted to keep the yellow and black colour scheme I had originally chosen, as I felt the allusions to visual symbols such as hazard tape and danger signs lent the design more of an exciting edge, which would be more likely to inspire my working class audience to get involved with 'culture' albeit on a subtle, more subconscious level.



All in all I'm satisfied with the final outcome for the GDF project and have definitely achieved one of my initial aims of improving my skills in illustrator. In hindsight though, I should maybe have devoted some time to 'market research', testing the logo design with target audience and making any changes where necessary. Not a bad start to the year though...

Book Project; passing on passions...

A little overview of the GDA project so far...

I've signed up for the ‘Pass on your Passions’ project, which involves designing a book about something you are passionate about or that interests you, in a way that will interests others, using content taken entirely from the internet.

I thought about it a little over the Christmas break and decided it would be interesting to use the project to interrogate (gay) pornography, or at least, erotica, and the politics of viewing, perhaps exploring the problematic association between pornography/erotica, and art.

My first stop was to check out the some of the works of the publisher Taschen, which includes erotica in its titles, and to gather some images which could arguably be said to tread the line between erotica and art, for example the artist Tom of Finland...


As the target audience is creatives I also decided to stop by design-oriented bookstore Magma. One thing that intrigued me was a calendar for ‘Butt’ magazine, a publication which is almost entirely compiled from readers’ own articles, pictures, etc.

I checked out their website and blog and gathered a few more images, throwing around some ideas about perhaps exploring self-published erotica, or the desire to present oneself as erotic.

A link on the Butt blog diverted me to ‘Brief magazine’, a site which features all things brief, from pictures of people in various states of undress, to snapshots of moments in time and bygone trends and fashions. Both Butt and Brief struck me as ‘indie’ in their style of erotica – with the focus on real people and their bodies and the erotic impetus behind this dynamic.


This impetus intensified in the next site I stumbled across via Brief: a flickr site for ‘Quinnford and Scout’ a gay couple who are documenting their entire relationship online, from the day-to-day mundane to the sexual and intimate. Again, it was the notion of erotica being a part of everyday life, and the real people behind the images which interested me.


I am aware that a book on erotica needs to have some sort of theoretical foundation, in order to avoid becoming a book about porn, for porn’s sake, and so I checked out ‘jstor’ an online journal site, and procured a few essays on the politics of looking, the male body and photography and more specifically gendered viewing of pornography, ie, the different ways (straight) men and women respond to pictures of nude females and nude males. One essay found that, whereas the sexualised female is familiar and commonplace, as a culture we have no cultural script to deal with the sexualised male – men avoid discussing it for fear of their heterosexuality being into question, and females are uncomfortable in the role as sexual agent as it compromises their role of passive female.

This might be a way of approaching the book, anticipating and presenting readers’ reactions to the sexualised male and then presenting them with the nude/sexualised male in such a way that will encourage them to consider their own reactions and the reasons for them.

That said, I am still keen to consider the ways in which the politics of viewing an image change if you know the subject is a real person, rather than an anonymous nude model...


The first tutorial with Steve has confirmed to me that I need to focus in as soon as possible and, again, that I need to find a way to make the book interesting, or at least intriguing to an audience of both heterosexuals and homosexuals, and both men and women.

***

So, I went away and did a little more image collection, continuing to keep some ideas about what the focus of the book will be floating around my head, but not consolidating anything just yet. I gathered more images from ‘Brief’ (which is updated frequently) and read more essays about pornography and art, hegemonic masculinity and the homoerotic and the politics of the male body.


To further my exploration into the idea of the ‘real’ nude male image vs. the ‘staged’ nude male image I looked at the websites and blogs for more independent gay magazines such as Pinups, Pisszine, Kaiserin, Kink and Spank.


Although I've found some interesting images, I've been struggling to find any essays or journals on this topic which would give the book the focus and depth I want, and so after the second tutorial with Steve, in which we had to settle on a title (or at least, a subject matter), I've decided that there is probably not time to sufficiently research the politics of the ‘real’ v ‘staged’ nude, and so I've opted instead to focus on the gendered reactions to the sexualised male, as I think this also has more mileage as something that will interest a wider audience.

The next step is to start populating the InDesign templates will copy and images...

MISFITS, Edition #1

Not sure if anyone caught the recent series of Misfits on E4 (worth a viewing anyway) but I meant to blog about a really original bit of marketing/communication which was used to publicise the show; Basically a street team dressed in orange jumpsuits (the programme centres around a group of youths on community service) distributed copies of what was supposedly Edition #1 of the ‘Misfits’ comic, which actually turned out to be a summarised version of the first episode of the series in comicbook form. I thought this was a really original way of reaching a particular demographic on their own terms, simultaneously publicising and previewing the show.

I♥NY: Part 2

A little while ago I blogged about the I♥NY logo as an icon of postmodern popular culture (read it here). I decided to interrogate some of these ideas further for my VCT essay, and thought I’d share some of the additional ideas this generated:

Previously I suggested one of the most obvious influences on Glaser’s red heart was the Virginia is for Lovers campaign in 1969.

While the comparisons with this campaign are obvious, I discovered the use of hearts in logos design throughout the 1970s was not without precedent, and further, that the heart in Glaser’s design is almost identical in form and scale to another NYC logo designed 5 years earlier, for the Mayor’s Office for Volunteers, NYC.


Similarly, Glaser’s decision to use the American Typewriter typeface was perhaps motivated by a desire to look “un-designed” or banal, but it is also possible he was responding to the Typewriter Art movement, which gained prominence throughout the late 1960s and explored the use of the typewriter as an artistic tool. One of the preoccupations of the Typewriter Art movement was to explore ways of representing the city, and so there may be a sense that Glaser was responding to these explorations and using the very tools of communication to capture the spirit of the metropolis he was trying to revive.


It is Glaser’s engagement with the visual surroundings of the time which is important - previously I suggested the apparent lack of the originating author in Glaser’s design aligns the aesthetic of logo with postmodernism, yet the logo is clearly influenced by a very specific time and place… As such, I♥NY is both of its time and outside of time – and it is this that speaks to postmodern society, a society in which ‘we have lost our ability to locate ourselves historically…a society [in which] we have become incapable of dealing with time’ (M. Sarup, Post-structuralism & Postmodernism).

In the course of writing my VCT essay I realised that I had initially failed to interrogate properly one of the most important aspects of the logo – the invitation for reappropriation. The logo was initially not trademarked in order to encourage New York’s residents to take ownership of it and to foster a sense of community and this may be why it is so readily adopted and bastardised – there is a sense of collective ownership of the design itself, along with an impulse to endorse it or reimagine it accordingly.


Interestingly, Glaser himself said in 1972 (3 years pre I♥NY):

Because design deals with familiar forms, much of it depends on cliché. In fact, the study of cliché as a mode of expression is fundamental to an understanding of design. Cliché’s are symbols or devices that have lost their power and magic; yet they persist because of some kind of essential truth. Clichés are fundamental sources of information, debased sources waiting to receive new energy.

In essence then, the simplicity of the form of I♥NY, together with the lack of an originating author, the sense of group ownership of the logo, and perhaps some sort of "essential truth", make reappropriation and reinterpretation almost inevitable. As a result, Glaser’s design is constantly reinvigorated and re-energised, and the sense of the logo as postmodern icon becomes intensified; for, what are the notions of simultaneity, the fracturing of a totality, parody, irony and pastiche, and the dissolution of the boundary between art and the everyday, if not postmodern precepts..?

Christmas Paper-Cuts

Ok, so this flyer caught my eye in Starbucks - I thought the use of the hand-made, paper-cut look was a really successful way of making a faceless, global corporation appear personal, local and simple. A clever move if you're a global company like Starbucks in the midst of a recession, and your customers are more likely to resent the idea of handing yet more dollars over to the man...


I was intrigued to note that John Lewis had also opted for a paper-cut look for their Christmas ad campaign, which in this case really effectively reinforced their message of giving a gift almost tailor-made for the recipient...

I guess the paper-cut illustration aesthetic is a natural choice at Christmas, as it has a playful, almost fairy-tale feel to it, and it appeals to those shoppers seeking something special and bespoke.

Both designs reminded me of the work of Rob Ryan, who creates intricate hand-cut paper illustrations and it is perhaps not surprising that Ryan was commissioned by Fortnum & Mason to design their 2008 Christmas card range...

Really loving the paper-cut look, and as I say, can see why it is a natural choice for designers looking to cut through the tacky commercialism of the Christmas period!

Ice at the Palace

Just a quick note about the identity for the Hampton Court Palace ice rink which I stumbled across online - loving the raw, letterpressed aesthetic applied to the type, which for me hints at an almost bespoke, quality experience. The random assortment of mismatching typefaces on the other hand, reveals a sense of informality, fun and celebration...Definitely a look I can see the middleclass housewives going for...

GDF Project: Taking Culture to the Blokes

So, unfortunately I wasn’t too successful at blogging about the GDF project as I went along (something I intend to rectify this term..!), and as my development pdf for the formative assessment is quite a comprehensive summary of my process (you can see it here), what follows is an abridged summary of how my project developed from brief to formative assessment…Even so, it's still pretty detailed, so apologies!

Brief:
Client: Charity
Message: “Appreciate Culture”
Target Audience: 30-50 year old Working Class Men

1. Initial Research & Ideas
Examined ways blokes are communicated to:


Tabloids:

• The headlines are short, punchy and often utilise puns or wordplay.
• Common topics - sport, war and women.
• Headlines are sharp sensationalist statements and use a solid, heavy typographic style.

Initial ideas:
A series of posters which juxtapose text or image from ‘high culture’ with text or image from ‘low culture.

2. Research into Charities and Culture
Explored how to reconcile client (‘charity’) and message (‘appreciate culture’), so researched charities:

• Core characteristic of charities is public benefit.
• ‘Cultural charities’ focus on promotion of various forms of art, the preservation of traditions, or the appreciation of local or national history.

Possible clients:

• St Brides
• Arts Council England
• Working Class Movement Library

Concept challenge - take art & culture out of the elitist institutions, perhaps in the form of a beer festival/pub crawl for culture…

3. Finalising & Formalising the Brief
As the core characteristic of charities is public benefit, the Arts Council are organising an arts festival to promote culture to an under-engaged demographic:

Final Brief:
“Arts Council England are organising a beer & CULTURE festival aimed at 30-50 year old working class men. They need an identity which not only engages this target audience and communi¬cates with them on their own
terms, but which also captures this sense of ‘culture’ which lies at core of the festival.”

4. Observing Blokes: Initial Research & Ideas

Research: Went to greasy spoon and observed:

• The ways in which working class men interact
• Blokes had clear distrust of theory/academia
• Groups and categories of blokes, eg, uniforms; Site workers – Hi-vis jackets, Indoor labourers - polo shirts, Painters & decorators – paint spattered
  

Perhaps these groups could inform possible backgrounds for the logo, eg, a hi-vis fluorescent yellow, a paint-spattered brown, a black bootprint, etc.


Looked at initial applications of identity, eg on beer mats, posters, etc -need a logo that would be clear and effective on both large and small scales...

5. Working Class Logos: Beer, Football & Heraldry
Examined logos my target audience come into contact with on a daily basis, including football badges and beer logos.


Common motifs/themes:

• Heritage and tradition
• Heraldry
• Colours: blue, red, yellow, black, white.
• Working class roots
• Lion important icon of working class culture, eg, Three Lions, Carling, Royal Crest, etc.

6. Dissecting the Anatomy of Heraldry

Traced the various constituent parts of the logos and scrutinized the popular emblems used in the logos, for example, crowns, castles, birds, trees and of course, lions.


7. Idea Generation & concept development
Made a series of collages from the constituent parts of logos which bought together the sense of heritage & tradition with the arts & culture.


Explored how the forms and shapes could interact.

First steps in digitising the concept were to create vectors of components, but realised logo had lost roughness and handmade quality - anything too glossy and refined would not engage the target audience.


Tried vectorising some of the tracings – brought back roughness.

8. Concept Development: Typefaces
Looked at three types of typeface:

• Blackletter style typefaces – heritage and tradition, but fussy
• Simpler, cleaner fonts – legible but dull
• Solid heavy typefaces – emulate tabloid headlines

Final typeface decisions:

• Rosewood (FILL) for the main festival title - creates overall impression of heritage and tradition. Quite a solid, heavy typeface, consistent with the loud, solid tabloid headlines.
• Little Caesar for the ‘mottos’ - does not compete for attention with main title.
• Lithos Pro for the ‘inscriptions’ - clean, classic look.

9. Concept Development: The Rough with the Smooth

• Realised the design would need to be a balance between hand-drawn roughness, and clean lines and shapes - reintroduced the regular concentric roundel almost as a washing line that all the other rough and raw elements could hang off.

• Tried to capture the anarchic energy at play in the collages – returned to original paper collages and decided digital version needed to be more symmetrical

• Wanted to reference football more obviously - added stripes and quadrant layout to the central shield

• Needed to create a simpler version of the logo that would read well when scaled down

10. The Palette of Football
To consider the identity’s palette, examined the colours and patterns of football shirts.


Most common colours used black, blue, red, yellow and white.

11. Experimenting with Colour
Tried applying football colours to logo:

Settled on black and yellow colour scheme: draws on the yellow of the hi-vis jackets, and safety notices on building sites.

12. Final Festival Identity for Formative Assessment


13. Ideas and Tasks to Take Forward

• Relatively happy with logo, but still not quite perfect in terms of engaging with audience - needs further development
  
• Explore more fully different types of yellow
• Create mock-ups of applications of logo, eg, beer mats, tea mugs, etc.
• Include more colour and typography development work in pdf
• Explore and include other permutations of logo
• Populate pdf with captions

So there you go! All in all, I was really pleased with what I submitted for the formative deadline - I haven't studied design formally since GCSE (9 years ago..!) so was a little apprehensive about how I'd fare in my first assessed project for a while, but I found the course well structured and the tutors really supportive, which definitely helped...! My feedback from the formative assessment was really positive, but obviously I still have a few things I want to develop before the summative assessment in a few weeks...A good start though!

Looking forward to what Term 2 has in store!

Vintage Logos

As an antidote to my recent glut of verbose blog posts, I thought I'd just share a couple of logos I stumbled across with whilst scanning a 1975 edition of American Trademark Designs by way of research for my VCT essay:

(Action Associates, 1970)

(Little Majesty Infant Clothes, 1966)

Nothing too insightful to say here, other than how much I love the roundness and simplicity of form of both logos. Cute!

Vive Collage!

Right, confessions and apologies - I fell off the blogging wagon a little throughout Decemeber. Unfortunately the GDF project got the better of me, so I decided to use the Christmas break to collate all the material from my outstanding blogposts and have a big old New Year blog update...and as I haven’t blogged about the collage experience since I began sourcing images, here’s a bit of mammoth overview of the whole process for me…(Apologies!)

As I mentioned in my last post on collage (Jaime Collage!) I began by sourcing all my images before I even started sticking, with the intention of having a few mammoth sticking sessions to get all 100 out the way.

I quickly realized it was going to take slightly longer than I originally thought to get all 100 done, especially as, by collage 25 was struggling to produce collages that were in any way intriguing or interesting (I know part of the point of the collage task was to create them as quick as possible without thinking, but turns out the perfectionist in me wasn’t ready to give up control just yet!). I realized the collages that had succeeded in my initial batch had been the ones which juxtaposed text and image in some way, and so there followed another cutting session, sourcing a load of interesting fragments of text to include…

Up until halfway I didn’t get too hung up on the themes, although I did have them buzzing around my head. After the fiftieth collage though I felt like I needed to refocus the themes so did a little free association with the words and some simple googling just to clarify the terms as I went about my collaging…

I then used these as a guide so I knew how many of each collage I had left to do, sticking finished collages on the wall as and when I finished them.


When the GDF project began I realised I was going to have to discipline myself to make time to finish my collages and so set myself a target of 5 a (week)day for two weeks. Despite a couple of lapses, this proved a really useful method of getting all the collages done gradually, but on time.

I found the final exhibition of the collages really interesting in terms of the ways everyone’s individual styles and interests manifested themselves in their collections final pieces and how a relatively simple brief had yielded such a range of images.

Some of the collage collections which caught my eye included:

Gabriella’s collection had a surprising elegance which I was not expecting from the collages. I loved the tensions at play between the chaotic, subversive essence of collage as a medium, and the sophistication of the collection.

In contrast, some of the abstract geometric forms had a really great electric energy and urgency which seemed to perfectly capture and embrace the dynamism of the medium.

This anarchic dynamic was also evident for me in the collections below, which all have a really effective unsettling, in-your-face, almost apocalyptic effect when viewed as a whole, possibly due to the sheer amount of imagery stuffed into each one...


Overall, I was happy with my collection of collages, although ultimately I’m not sure I fully embraced or made use of the vitality of collage as a medium and wonder whether my source images I used were too small in scale to create the sort of impact evident in the collections above.

Also, because I chose to work relatively freely early on, not taking much stock of the themes until halfway through, the 100 collages lacked the extreme visual contrasts achieved by others. Were I to repeat the task, I think I would have experimented more with abstract forms, use larger scale images and perhaps work more closely to the ten themes to create a more varied, visually interesting set.

One of the reasons I found the task so interesting was because each collection inadvertently revealed certain themes and preoccupations, which perhaps exposed some aspects of the subconscious of each of us...! When I viewed my collages as a whole, I realised I had repeatedly revisited the ideas of:

• (Cynicism towards) Religion and faith

• Sex and desire

• The absurd and surreal
All in all, a really interesting, engaging and challenging task which definitely got me thinking and working in a more creative and open way. Below are another couple of collages which speak to me in some way and which (along with the pieces above) I'll consider developing for the task in the coming term:

Vive Collage!