Logo Development

Open publication - Free publishing - More logo

Had some problems with colour here, non the less. I chose to compile this in this way because its moving towards a journal style method of documentation. Its an E journal, documenting my decisions made whilst developing the logo for Alius records.

Seperating up my brief.

Content.

• 1x logo
• 3x record artist identities
• track information (including; vinyl RPM, producer, release number.)
• Information about the record label. (eg, roots and culture, origins, influences etc.)

Product

• 3x 12" vinyl
• 3x 7" vinyl 
• 3x CD singles
• 1x myspace page layout
• website (proposal)

Context

• Branding
• Retail
• Promotional 

There are things that stem from each of these catagories, for example, the myspace page would be a product, but the page also has products within it, that become the myspace's content. Here is a further breakdown;

Vinyl & Cd - content

• 3x identities for artists
• Colour scheme
• Logo
• Track information (and some choice information about the record label)
• The vinyl/CD itsself, and included sticker/ inlay
• Information about the size of the vinyl/ rotations per minute

Myspace/ Website proposal - Content

• Downloadable desktop backgrounds
• Tracks in the myspace player (this will include thumbnails of the single artworks.)
• Information about the label such as the labels origins, values on music, number of releases.

I have also found there to be these main parts to this project, in order to help me work sequencially;

• Logo design - The name of the label. (This feeds directly into the next point)
• Identity of the brand (e.g) colour scheme, type uniformity, scale/ format uniformity
• product design (this includes the range of products, and their distribution.)
• promotion - Business card, also the website fits within this catagory, as does the myspace, despite the fact that they are also products.

Working in this sequence will clarify all the separate parts of the project and help me see how they all knit together as a unifying whole.

My proposal, Brief & rationale

 

Rationale

I want to generate design for this project based around branding and logo design, and then apply this logo to a range of products using digital print methods and also design for digital media such as web design and digital design. I want to do this because I feel it is a weak point in my portfolio currently and it is also evident from looking at my portfolio, that it is heavily image based with no real graphic design that solves a problem substantially. (With a few exceptions).

My practise, especially since the image optional elective, has been moving towards illustrative type and hand printing methods, yet as said before, is limited in terms of digitally produced design and more specifically aimed at branding/ identity. This brief focusing on product, range and distribution will allow me to explore avenues which are better suited to brand identity and product design. This is because of what I intend to do. (See statement of intent.)  This is also because I want to challenge the fine line between what a brief wants from me and what I want to be doing as a designer. (Which currently is more geared towards branding, e.g., logo design.)

Writing our own negotiated brief.

First off the group all wrote down (generally) what we want to do and why. some of mine included:

• Design for brand identities (the oppertunity to explore the considerations and limitations within this dsicpline.)

• Work with found objects (Often pushes design into interesting and experimenal regions)

• Design and possibly produce one off vinly collectors figures (To see my work within a three dimensional context.)

Among alot more, this was done to help us to start to understand what we would like a brief to ask of us.
We then wrote down the three briefs we picked, wrote what they were asking and why, this was to help understand what a brief wanted and merging the two exercises together gives an initial glimpse into how to write a brief that will allow you to do what you want to do.

We then wrote out a list of items that fit within these catagories: Content, Product and context. In content were things like subject, research, message, information etc. In product was; Format, finish, medium, process etc and context was; branding, advertising, education, promotion etc.

These exercises were done to help us understand how to write our own, brief, that fits our wants as designers, to help us understand how this applies to a brief and what the brief wants and where we fit within this as designers. A really helpful workshop session!

Collaborative brief evaluation

Well, despite the warnings and horror stories about collaborative briefs we were being warned about, this collaboration with Ollie was definately a flying success. We got the work done to a high standard and vibed off eachothers ideas the whole way.

The collaboration was laid back but hard working with us both having a clear idea of what we were trying to achieve together. As Ollie said in his evaluation, we had set roles, but often these just meshed together because we did actually do most of this project together, with me occasionally giving Ollie hand drawn imagery to put into the software. I took a larger part of the illustration on and storyboarding in the early stages, but hopefully Ollie benefitted from that because I do feel like I can use the digicad software better than I could before, for example After effects - I feel alot more confident in using this, expecially for image sequencing (this is down to Ollie producing the main part of our project digitally, which was extremely helpful for me).

Ollie was very on top of the schedule sheets which was great because im going to be honest, its not a strong point of mine - but really should be! Me and Ollie avoided almost any stress by knowing exaclty what we should be doing, when and then putting the graft in! Im really happy with what we produced and I know Ollie is as well, and we were confident about the project. Me and Ollie also decided that we wanted to hit the brief from a fun angle because of the target audience being kids and if we werent having fun it would show and be reflected in the work.

Ollie has mentioned this but I want to have a word about it, the only negative thing about the project was that we could have done with more time - a week or so just to really make that project into something special. Overall I am really proud of the end result though. It was a total collaborative success.

YCN submission - boards and disk packaging

Here we have the final submission, as showcased by ollie, our lovely hand model.
Me and ollie were both happy with this submission and didnt want to let it go!
but, I feel like our boards convey our simple, effective message well and really help make this a whole package. In this final stage Ollie's finishing skills came in really handy! So nice one ollie boy!

Final Video - Meet soap!

Here is the final cut of the video we will be sending to YCN. I think its a really fun and (so im told) cute result, which me and ollie should be really happy with, it caters for the younger bracket of the target audience visually, but also leans towards the older bracket with the possiblities of slightly more complex creative pursuits.

The walking scene still could have been tweaked somewhat and me and ollie have both agreed on the fact that this could be really special if we had had just another day extra to further tweak and develop it.

Rough Pilot for the stop motion

This is the low budget version of our animation, its a little jerky at the moment with the music for the dance sequence starting too abruptly, also the different mehtods of transitioning the paper is just experimentation at this stage, helping us to figure out what is possible and what could be further developed.

The walking scene also needs work and will most likely be shot outside instead of in the college building, but! we were using what materials we had under this specific time frame and over all I think this video has helped us get a very clear idea of where the resolve lies.