OUGD406 - Studio Brief 03 - Group Crit Notes

-Shaped, our city (not our city, shaped), gives bigger impact.

-Brush strokes work but don't like the thin typeface, lacks physicality, want to see shapes within it (don't use neutral font).

-Doesn't say 'print' - too clean.

Screen print typeface and scan in.

-Neubau posters, large shape and thin/smaller sections around it e.g large square for 'a'.

Mono/screen/press - different shapes.

Leeds 2013

-Get more Leeds into it - primary research around Leeds, what shapes you see, most common shapes from around the city.

-NYC shapes you think of - skyline, big apple.

-Choose iconic buildings around Leeds to make the shapes.

-Shapes from logos into wayfinding.

-Find dominant shape from around Leeds.

-Create animation of shapes.

-3 different versions of the posters, each with different shapes on (series of posters).

-'Shaped' is linked to the printing aspect.

-Screenprint of torn billboard/building textures to bring Leeds into it more.

-Bring something physical within it.

-Black and white logo and identity and coloured exhibition wayfinding? 

-LCA link not important - key themes; connection to local community showing that we're engaging and understanding of community.

-Typefaces use together for information, two typefaces one from logo type, importance of information.

-Bauhaus, shape theory/colour theory. Energetic shape = energetic colour. Link colour and shape theory.

-Identity communicate public space, print, celebratory in tone

OUGD406 - Studio Brief 03 - Colour Picking

To help with a colour scheme, we decided to look at Leeds College of Art and different colours we could take from a variety of sources.

We looked at colours from the website, the prospectus, the walls and the mosaic murals/tiles.

We decided that we liked the website colours the most so we experimented with these in a variety of different ways.








Eventually we decided to get rid of these colours as we felt this link between the university is not completely necessary and also felt that the colours were a bit too girly and did not appeal to a wide and varied audience.

OUGD406 - Studio Brief 03 - Initial Designs

After deciding upon the name 'Shaped' for the exhibition, we decided to try out a variety of different typefaces to see which suited our theme best.

We were set on using a sans-serif typeface as this had a more modern and contemporary aesthetic and had better legibility. We played around with numerous different styles, from very structured type to more rounded styles to match the 'shaped' name. We also experimented with putting shapes inside the letters but decided this was just too childish.



We also decided upon the slogan/tagline "our city", so that the full name of the exhibiton would be "Our city, shaped". We experimented with this little tagline in conjunction with the main exhibiton name, seeing how this would work with different size and style texts.

OUGD406 - Studio Brief 03 - Invite Ideas

Stickers on invite?

Enter = get sticker - mural - shape of Leeds?

GIF - moving triangles - coming together as one?

Work in chronological order - separate into different eras by colour?

Triangle filled with people name's info

OUGD406 - Studio Brief 03 - Initial Ideas

In our group we have come up with a few initial ideas for our branding.

We began by looking at the key elements - celebration, historical references and events that shaped Leeds.

We started looking at the idea of old and new and how we are young people looking at historical events. This can also work with the idea of the traditional print methods we are using, in the height of  today's digital world. Following on from this, we looked at the word 'nostalgia'.

"Nostalgia is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations".

We liked the idea of happy memories for the people of Leeds and helping them remember the great events that have happened within the city.  We then looked at the origins of the word and liked 'nostos' - the greek origin meaning 'return home'. We thought about the sentimental and personal aspect, and the idea of scrapbooks and how everyone's own experiences are different.

There was also talk about using the Yorkshire dialect within our project, although this is something that could be too cheesy if we get it wrong.

We had the idea of using the shape of Leeds on a map and how this could be played on as a logo etc. This led on to us discussing a children's toy - the shape sorter. We liked the idea of using the shapes from this and the bright colours - could be quite interesting but might be cheesy and too childlike.

Thinking of colour schemes, we thought about using LCA's colour schemes within our branding to add that connection in. We are going to look at past branding and prospectuses for the university and see if we can take anything from them. We could get in contact with the people/person who branded LCA currently and get his take on it. We have taken pictures of the mosaic outside and are taking colour swatches from that as a potential idea. We also looked at colours associated with Leeds e.g Leeds United Football Club but decided the colours were too garish and tacky.

OUGD406 - Studio Brief 02 - Final Developments

Following the feedback from the second group crit, I chose to play around with a few elements on my poster designs.

I experimented with the TV standby screen pattern - I copied this using simple cuboid shapes in the colours of my poster.





I really liked this effect and felt it was a nice subtle alternative to the idea of a television programme rather than using the Channel 4 logo.

I then experimented with layout and how to include this standby effect within my poster. I wasn't too keen on it at the top of the poster as it attracted too much attention. I played around with filling the circle in the middle with the pattern, but I thought this made the standby effect less decipherable so chose to keep it in the traditional rectangular format.




I also wanted to add an extra focus on the sheer amount of babies born. After some thought I decided it would be interesting to show this via circles - I placed 60 circles alongside each other, to represent the amount of babies born in just a single hour.

I then played around with the layout of these and chose a dynamic formation to add a less structured sense to the poster.








Above is the final poster design.