7/11 Crit boards & feedback

Tutorial with Andy

The tutorial with Andy was extremely helpful. I think I was lacking direction but just talking through my briefs helped give them clarity. The majority of the work I took was for the Warrington Museum brief as I hope to have this done prior to reading week.

Museum

Throughout this week, I have been working on an identity for the musem which would subsequently be applied to a range of promotional materials (below). The inspiration behind it came from Greek architecture, particularly stone pillars. Although the brand mark was liked, Andy suggested that I could develop the quick image I drew to highlight this reference as it tied in nicely with the fact I wanted to target the museum primarily towards children through educational initiatives — a hand drawn, childlike aesthetic.

He said to treat the branding project like a story / journey and get into the mindset of a visitor to the museum and how they would react to any materials I create. There should be some sort of unified concept to tie the branding and any promotional materials together. I could do a simple mark and leave it as it is but to adapt and extend the project into a fully comprehensive brand, I should really investigate how a visitor interacts with it. Andy suggested treating it like a discovery as this is ultimately what a museum is about — this in turn makes it more engaging, especially for children.

It was an eye opening insight and something I will definitely work on. Looking back at the mark, it does seem fairly clinical and maybe not so engaging with a younger audience — I suppose this could change with the way I adapt the mark through different means but I will definitely look at developing the identity.


National Rail

- Look at customer touch points in terms of way finding and signage
- Create a focused list of deliverables as a potential list is extensive
- Again, treat it like a story / journey

Film magazine (Reel)

- Liked initial logo concepts (currently very basic so these will develop)
- Start sourcing collaborators for content
- Find articles online and contact the writer, see if they don't mind being featured
- Look at film remakes / origins for more content

Form & Writing

- Could work more on the name, is it too literal? Possibly look at changing the second of the pair of words as Form and writing doesn't really roll off the tongue — maybe Form & Function?
- Explore how the research / investigation / Form aspect of the project interacts and works with the application / fonts / Writing aspect
- Fontsmith 10 year anniversary specimen publications

Notes

As all of my briefs are branding projects, Andy gave me a link to Blanka — an online archive and collection of original and limited edition design, posters and publications. One of the things they sell are brand guidelines for companies such as First Direction, for example which provide a great insight into the story behind a brand. He also said to look at Pentagram and other major branding studios and have a look at the marks they produce and the background behind it.

Revised SOI & Rationale

New time plan

Using a basis of 10 weeks (including this one), I have devised a new basic time plan from the feedback I received in the group tutorial. The collaborative projects will span the full 9-10 weeks whereas the others will take up less of my time. The museum rebrand, for example, will possibly only take 2 weeks as the content is already in place.

1) National Rail — 10 weeks

1 - Concept generation & contextual research
2 - Ongoing research, branding concepts
3 - More refined brand identity


2) Form & Writing — 9 weeks

1 - Concept development
2 - Refined logo & blog up to date
3 - Initial research into concept
4 - Design and concept development of font
5 - Translating the designs into a keyable font and start thinking of prints & specimen
6 - Design and produce a type specimen
7 - Initial research into a new concept
8 - Designs, initial sketches, finalise font design
9 - Make it into a keyable typeface and design specimen & prints
?10 - Time for printing


3) Film magazine — 4 weeks post reading week

0 - Sourcing collaborators for content within the magazine
1 - Brand identity, film research, contextual research
2 - Refined identity, start exploring layout ideas and look at cover illustrations
3 - Refined layout, ongoing research and investigation
4 - Preparing for print
?5 - Print production


4) Museum rebrand — 2 weeks prior to reading week (15th - 29th)

0 - Collating research, initial ideas
1 - Concept development, idea generation, investigation into type & colour
2 - Refined identity to be applied to a range of promotional materials
?3 - Printing

Brief 2 - National Rail rethink

This brief is another collaborative project with Luke, looking at proposing a rethink for the National Rail. After sourcing potential ideas for this collaborative brief, we came across a proposal for an overhaul of American road signs (DC) which has been making its rounds across design blogs. As this was getting a lot of attention, we thought it might prove beneficial to try and get ourselves noticed through a similar approach.

Luke came to me with the idea of a brand rethink of the National Rail due to incoherence throughout their brand application. There was an article recently, that one passenger had to buy 12 train tickets for one journey and more recently, National Rail have now proposed new smart cards that will soon replace paper train tickets. The London underground, for example, has a well thought out brand mark and with the addition of an oyster card which commuters can use whenever, they have created a simple and efficient method of communication. This brief will allow us to explore brand design, signage & way finding and potentially type design.