Fiona Fraser's Graphics

Overall I believe that many things went well during the collaboration project both of my groups had a good work ethic. However, I feel that the second collaboration worked better, due to greater communication. This included meetings and the constant group chat messages of updates on the work. The second group had a greater sense of joining together and creating one aesthetic.

I am also pleased about the final outcomes because they all read really easily due to them being clear and to the point as well as being legible. The fonts work in unison as we all adjusted the leading and kerning, finding the right balance.

We were unsure about the audience because the group and I wanted to keep our work more general. Although after some consideration I decided that I should be aimed towards people that are currently effected by education. This is still broad because it includes children and teens, parents and teachers on top on the government and their politics. The decision did not change our outcomes massively due to such a wide range of audience.

One main aspect I learnt is that good communication is key for success. We each had different opinions on each individual style and whether we went with the look or not. In the second group we did have a small conflict of what style and background choice we wanted. However, was quickly resolved through good level of communication. I soon realised that this should never of happened if we all communicated better from the beginning.

I have also developed my writing skills in a way that I have become more reflective. This has helped in my day to day lectures because I will think back to them and pick out key principles from with in that lesson to use with in my practice.

An area that didn’t go as expected was the initial ideas. I believe this is due to the fact of us not knowing each others style of work. We were and still are so different within our own style which meant that some of us had to compromise or try a brand new aesthetic that we prefer to avoid in the past. However, when it came to finalising in the last 3 or 4 days my group managed to collaborate to design great cohesive placards.

I think that next time I will continue to send more updates of my work and make sure all the group does the same so that we are on the right track together. I would also have more meetings in person at the beginning instead of just using social media just to make sure that we were all on the same page. This is one of the reasons why I believe my second group did slightly better towards the end at collaborating.

I believe that I took more control over the work ethic of the second group and when I created the Power Points make sure everyone’s work was included. My group used each others work as inspiration and we each had great concepts which all contributed to the final outcomes.

This has been the first time that I have work with other students doing my own practise as well as an other at this level. So I feel that I have thrown myself in and tried to engage with each group giving my opinions and ideas freely. Throughout this process I have been developing more of a sense of what graphic design is within the real world in comparison to illustration and other art forms.

Monday 28th January – Placard

The new placard brief was simple and to the point so my group and I wanted to keep the designs simple.

Looking back over this project we decided that we hadn’t kept to one specific style. With this new week we wanted all the work to be in the same aesthetic. This meant picking colour scheme, typefaces and style. To begin with I created a mini collection of the style of work so far. Due to the random style of our work we made the decision to add on the graphic type and contemporary work that one member work with.

We each brainstormed began to list creative slogans and phrases that we thought of – picking the best and removing the worst.

As we progressed I looked into Stanley Green’s placards and their style. The elements that I liked are the one word per line and the level of readability. In response to this the illustrators felt that this would suit their style and created placards with paint and through screen printing. https://workplaceinsight.net/stanley-green-protein-wisdom-perils-sitting/

Through using the illustrators work as inspiration us graphic designers quickly decided on the colour scheme but were very unsure about the type faces to use. Going separately and then coming together, someone suggested Oswald Bold and Titling Gothic FB. We went with these because they fit the contemporary design and many great artists are using them currently.

My designs are the 3 on the right. One idea I had was the idea that everyone is individual but we all are forced to live very similar childhood, especially when it comes to the schooling system. We are placed within a bubble that we are students so we must act in this way and must have a goal of such a thing. Another concept I had was the graduation cap and how that is made individual with each student designing and hand crafting the top with a design but overall the shape and meaning is the same.

The overall look of these posters looks unfinished and we all thought they needed an extra element to push them even further. Also I thought that this was an almost harsh graphic based design so almost wanted to personalise it and bring to life with a subtle and unique illustration or pattern.

When printing these out for the Monday presentation I realised that the graduation cap didn’t show up as much as I wanted it to. To rectify this I reprinted the designs with a less opacity placed upon the elements.

Monday 28th January – Presentations of Oxymoron Project 

The presentation could have gone better as the group didn’t fully discuss what each of us was going to say but overall the delivery went well.

One feed back we got was that the designs needed to link to more schools and education. To over come this it was suggested that we change the clothes of the guy to make him look like he has a school uniform on. Another aspect we discussed during the feedback was including other people with different heads. This would enhance the feel of the individuality and different styles of learning.

I believe that the style of graphics goes well with the theme so if I were to progress  further with this I would keep to the same style of textures.

Monday 21st January – Visual Metaphor + Oxymoron 

With an in depth and visual lecture on visual metaphors I realised that the straight forward metaphors work the best because its more understandable.

The brief was simple; pick an oxymoron and draw each word separately then bring them together in one image. We quickly chose “Creative Destruction” because it links well with the manifesto of how schools are damaging out creativity and willingness to learn new things.

I designed the eye with the axe because the axe represents the destruction of life, where as the eye can be pictured as the spark of imagination. I did this as the eye is bleeding away the creativity from the person behind. Another thought I had was the tree are so free flowing almost creative in the way they grow, all individual. Then a multi-million company come and destroy the trees – much like the government coming across children and deciding how they will live their next 18 years, almost destroying their childhood.

Over all the group felt that the oxymoron needed to be linked back to schools and education. With this decision we went with the person with a paint head as this represents any creative pupil. Then the bullet wound represents the creativity leaving their mind.

To develop our idea we wanted to keep it digital and create a GIF. Each of the illustrators created a design for the look and we all decided on frames with the placements.

I created a mock up look of the character. The design is simple with no out lines, which I thought would increase the illustrative look even though its make from vectors.

When talking to an illustration tutor she suggested that adding layers and increasing the 3D effect would make this design pop.

Through combining the textured fabric and metal it gave the design life and makes the red of the blood pop.

The final out come was a GIF so another member of the group created a glitch like animation.

Over all the comments were positive. The criticism being that all our work looks different and we needed to pull all the designs together.

Moving forward we need to create a logo or one thing that pulls the outcomes together.

I decided to recreate part of my design as some of the feedback included eligibility. You are unable to see all the illustration as well as the type.

I decided to push the illustrations to the front because they had the deeper meanings. Also the type is clear so can be legible. I reduced the leading so that the illustrations had some negative space for them to pop. I believe that the characters at the top are now more visible and over all the design is more eye catching.

When working the group decided to split up so that we could brain storm and come back together after to fine tune the work.

The first image is the illustrations. I sat with one of them and talked through concepts that could be progressed along side my graphics.

I took some of the illustrations, scanned them in created a line image. Proceeding to lay them out and add text. When talking to the group we decided to remove the faces and use more metaphorical because this meant that the viewers could think more deeply about the meaning.