OUGD402 Studio Brief 1 | OUGD403 Studio Brief 3 Evaluation

Studio Brief 3 was purely research based to prepare us for Studio Brief 4. This brief taught me many things about research and investigation into a certain topic, such as where to start looking. The brief told us we had to choose a story from the papers that were published on  25th October 2014, then look into that story as much as possible to get a strong understanding of what went on and from different points of view. 

From there we could look at other papers whether they were regional, national, international, we just had to find similarities and differences on how it was reported and discuss why we thought this might be. For this brief it was a requirement to start at newspapers but for future briefs where research is needed I will definitely start or at least look at the press as the many papers give many different view points, which is exactly what were need to look for. 

I then chose to move to the internet and more specifically; Twitter. This proved  to be helpful as there were so many results for ‘Russell Brand 9/11’ which gave me a lot to work with, The only bad thing about this is that there were lots of annoying links such as ‘8 more reasons you should hate Russell Brand’. If I were to do a similar research brief again I wouldn’t put my focus onto Twitter. Although it was helpful in a  lot ways, it took a lot of time scrolling through the tweets to find a genuine opinion on the mater at hand rather than just saying why Brand is such a fool. 

This brief has shown me that there are many ways of getting information and many ways of getting other people’s opinions. I now realise how important research is in a brief in relation to the visual side.

OUGD402 Studio Brief 1 | OUGD403 Studio Brief 2 Evaluation

Overall I think this brief turned out well. I believe I kept to the restrictions and submitted the deliverables accordingly. 

I think this brief went well because almost all of the research and development was done in Studio Brief 1. All I had to research for this brief was grids for layout and type and that proved very useful to me.  This allowed me to understand how to apply a grid to my letterform and how it would help re-produce it. Although I did this at the end I didn’t actually use my grid as I found it more complicated than just doing it  manually and following my own rule. My rule was moving one of the two letterforms over a certain amount. Th actual measurements varied depending what size I was working with but I got around this by starting on the same size canvas and scaling it up depending on where I needed it, making sure I kept scaling effects enabled. 

If I were to re-do this brief there would only be a few minor things that I would change. One of these being that I would establish my rule earlier on, rather than designing them all on one size canvas, saving it, then forgetting how I did it. In the future I will definitely learn from this. 

Another being  I wouldn’t leave it so late to print off my final piece. Printing earlier would allow me to review it and alter anything I didn’t like once it was printed onto stock. 

OUGD402 Studio Brief 1 | OUGD403 Studio Brief 1 Evaluation

Evaluation

I am happy with how my final designs have turned out despite a few difficulties along the way. I'm also rather pleased as when I first received ‘violence’ as my word I was unsure on how to approach it and how I would be able to communicate it through type. I think the key element that worked well with my letterforms were the sharp points and edges judging by by feedback from the two crits and from just discussing work within the studio. This was pleasing to hear because this was my preferred route to take for Studio Brief 2. There were a few parts of the outcome I’m not as happy with such as the brush strokes letterform due to the fact it looks a bit cheap and almost a gimmick font. Other ideas I explored that didn't work so well were the obvious options such as making the letters out of weapons, or blood dripping off the glyphs, but I scrapped these ideas straight away as I made a clear choice not to make my typeface so cheap and obvious at the start. I faced a few challenges during this brief such as trying to create enough content that would be suitable to supply sufficient feedback. At times I would be stuck for an idea for a long period of time before realising what could be done next, I got round this problem by constantly tweaking Futura and other designs to see what could be created. I will do this for future briefs too as it sparks ideas, but I think more sketching would have been helpful. During this brief I wish I had done my hand-rendered work. I avoided this because I wanted the letterforms to be very precise and exact, and if I were to draw it it wouldn't come out perfect. Now, I realise this doesn't matter for interim crits and general idea generating.

OUGD402 Studio Brief 1 | Mondo

I'm a big fan of Mondo and everything they produce from posters to the books. One thing that I know they do extremely well is their exhibition openings where they display new artwork from a range of artists all based on a specific film, genre, director or studio. Examples of this is 'Nothing's Impossible' - their Disney exhibition, 75 Years of Batman and a horror based one they've done recently. At these events it's a chance to purchase limited edition posters, meet the artist and get the products signed and socialise with like-minded people.

"We create limited edition screen printed posters for our favorite classic and contemporary films, television shows and comics, along with vinyl movie soundtracks, VHS re-issues, toys, and apparel. In addition to our online shop, we have a permanent gallery space in Austin, TX featuring a mix of original artwork and limited edition screen prints."

My favourite aspect of their work are the film posters they produce, but they make so much more; such as a recent piece of work which is a vinyl record for the OST of Shaun of the Dead.