The Brief & Background
Traditionally, every year students from the BA Graphic Design course are pitched a brief at the start of the year that encompasses a range of promotion for every Creative Networks event (our own Leeds College of Art external engagement programme that brings in guest speakers for lectures) throughout the acedemic year, including posters, a visual theme, vinyl signage, wayfinding, flyers etc. The initital briefing stated we should get into teams of three, and prepare a digital submission (PDF pitch) that explained our concept and gave some examples of our visual and aesthetic implementation. The team I was involved in won the pitch, so the contents of this project instantly went from being a considered one-off concept pitch, to a full year-round task that headed a number of sub-briefs all revolving around the next guest speaker.
Speakers we designed and promoted materials for throughout the year:
- Andrew Graham Dixon
(BBC Arts Broadcaster)
- Giles Deacon
(Fashion Designer)
- Jonathan Barnbrook
(Graphic Designer)
- Will Alsop OBE
(Architecht & Artist)
Concept
A piece of mosaic art is made up of many small shapes as seen above, just as the global art community is made up from each individual who contributes work towards it. People from fashion, photography, graphic design, animation and more, all contribute to the arts community. The Wooden mosaic frame is a way in which we can present some of the great guest speakers we have talk for Creative Networks and show how they are all part of the same picture. The wooden mosiac frame is exceptionally relevant of the college as a whole, we wanted the shape itself to be cut from the same angles as the logo for the College. This is the concept that won the pitch, and it was the one we used for two of the events. The requirements changed some what for other events, what with multiple guest speakers (see Creative Networks Part 2). Again, Creative Networks was an ever evolving brief with different requirements at each stage dependant on the speaker, and their creative field.
For the pitching stage of the brief, we were asked to illustrate our concept and refer to Daft Punk as the guest speakers hypothetically.
Research
The research undertaken primarily revolved around processes we would utilise to excecute our visual implementation. Such as lasercutting, vinyl printing, frame making and woodwork techniques, as well as preparing an event space. We also heavily researched the guest speaker presenting at the event, as well as a good background knowledge, it was able to give us insight into kind of work they got involved with, and in the case of Jonathan Barnbrook was exceptionally helpful. Other than materials and processes research, we didn’t feel it was neccessary as a group to look at trends within Graphic Design. The reason we won the brief was because our concept was strong and we articluted and illustrated it well, there was no need to dress it up with aesthetic styles that could be otherwise described as ‘trendy’; we therefore stuck with what we knew and followed our instinct.
Development
The development of each version of the brief depended on the individual project and the artwork we prepared for each specific event:
Andrew Graham Dixon - Developed a wooden frame in woodwork, to display a photograph of Andrew. This would then be later removed from the display board and put up in the cafeteria alongside other guest speakers frames. We lasercut typography and logos to support this and display on the feature will within the event space. A range of posters were also made for the night which hosted digital versions of our artwork as well as details for the night.
Giles Deacon - Exact same process of wooden frame and photograph of Giles was used; we also created a range of posters before the event in collaboration with fashion illustration students.
Jonathan Barnbrook - We took a different approach completely to the brief for Jonathan’s event. We produced all of the usual promotion collateral i.e. pre-event posters, vinyl for our feature wall, way-finding floor vinyl arrows etc. but we also decided, what with Barnbrook being the most appropriate creative for a graphics student to see that we’d do a little more. Again we took inspiration from the way he worked, the types of work he did (Typography for example), and the reasons and causes he made the work. He’s certainly an activist for social and political change, and we capitalised on that massively. I came up with the idea of taking a source that was relevant at the time, and creating a typeface built around that in order to subtly draw attention to it. To explain further, the scandal involving the panama papers tax avoidance was all over the news at the time. I developed the idea of taking the logo of the company involved (Mossack Fonseca) and subverting glyphs from it to build a whole typeface. We then applied this typography to a range of visuals that we created for the night including extra posters, beer mats, and welcome boards for the event. It was even applied and developed for the arrows we used as vinyl way-finding.
Artwork & Evaluation
I’ll now demonstrate a taste of the artwork the three of us generated and produced for each of these events, and annotate them over acetate to further my analysis. Whilst I’m only recording Creative Networks as two separate briefs, it was essentially five individual projects, each with there own requirements. I’m thankful my team won the pitch and were able to produce work for such a successful LCA scheme; the networking benefits have been exceptionally rewarding, I’ve met a host of important creative professionals that have seen a taste of the work I’ve produced. However I will say, that this brief has been a lot larger than what we anticipated as a team, and because of that spent a large portion of our academic year producing artwork for an on-going brief. The benefits have certainly outweighed the draw-backs though, the fact I now have Andrew Graham Dixon, Giles Deacon, Jonathan Barnbrook, Will Alsop and Leeds College of Art on my client list speaks for itself.
