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We began by looking at the key elements - celebration, historical references and events that shaped Leeds.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