Studio Brief 02 - Collaborative Practice OUGD503 - Responsive

Collaborative brief

These are slides showcasing work & interests that I have which are type and editorial based, these slides also contain briefs that I'm interested in collaborating with. 

Discussion 

Discussing with a member of peer in my group we decided we wanted to collaborate together the reason for this was because we had similar interests but also felt we could learn some individual skills of each other, we also managed to get in touch with an illustrator who has an interest in typography so we thought we could incorporate illustration into this task.  Each one of us has a completely different brief we wanted to work on as we all had completely different skills so we decided to choose a brief in which we could all put are individual skills into. The brief that we choose is  UK Greetings, which is card company looking for designs for cars, gift bags,wrapping paper etc. The reason for choosing this brief is because we felt it would be the most flexible brief from the choice and would make it simpler to incorporate are individual skills. 

Monotype/UK greetings

Products: Tote bags, cards, wrapping paper, gift bags, gift box

Identify

The brand UK Greetings

Why did you choose this task?

How does the task suit you?

What skill sets will you need?

Ideas

Genre – Birthday

Topic – Gender neutral

Collaborating this project with another graphic designer we sat down to discuss possible ideas for this brief. We decided that we needed to evaluate cards/paper/bags etc that are already out there so we gain knowledge of what was missing from the market. From carrying out this research we soon realised cards were very much either for a male or for a female we couldn’t find products that had neutral/unisex designs. We also noticed that a lot of the products looked a lot like they were for women and girls because of the use of typography, imagery & choice of colour.  We then looking into products aimed at men, which similar to women’s products we found, we thought that the designs were quite childish or designs were aged, we believe that illustrative design has to be cleverly used when it comes to these kind of products because products can look like their aimed at the wrong audience. 

Colour scheme ideas

Deliberating what colour scheme wasn’t too difficult for us as we wanted a neutral colour to balance out for a gender neutral feel to the products we will create. The immediate colours we thought of were; Black, white, silver & gold. The reason for silver and gold I just to add something that’s not so flat on screen and on card, and the use of the colours silver and gold can come in handy with practical methods such as foiling & screen-printing and will add texture to the products.

Researching gender neutral colour schemes

Typography Based

UK greetings cards look: Illustrative, colourful, either girly, manly, older generation, immature

7 key aspects to collaboration

1.     Motivation – need to feel that they gain something from the collaboration.

2.     Communication – project needs to communicate clearly.

3.     Diversity – work with people who are in to different ideas of design.

4.     Successful- everyone has to have a sense of ownership from what you’ve done, make it clear on your blog what you did in the collaborative group.

5.     Support – collaborative needs to work on the trust of others in the group.

6.     Problem solving- need to be able to solve problems together in your group.

7.     Plan - your time management so you have enough time in all areas of the collaborative brief

Create a collaborative contract

Task

Define what your motivation is for taking under this collaboration?

Because I want to gain my knowledge of understanding using different practical methods to create outcomes rather than creating work using a digital flat screen. I feel this brief will stretch myself to experiment with practical methods such as screen printing, mono printing, lino printing, letterpress, I would also like to combine illustration and typography and widen my knowledge of type.

How are you going to communicate amongst your group? Why would they be the best methods?

·      Using social media – Facebook, Email, Instagram

·      Personal – phone number

·      In person – discussing ideas and problems in person in a group

What skills sets does each individual have in your group, and what areas of interest’s do you have the a similar and what areas of interest do you want to learn?

Katie Ayers – strengths

Geometric illustration/illustration

·      Editorial design

·      Screen printing

·      Book binding

·      Adobe packages

Learn – Interested in typography but not amazing at It wants to learn different ways of using type.

Eve O’Neil – Strengths

·      Typography

·      Editorial design

·      Screen printing

·      Digital/ adobe

Learn – I want to learn different practical methods as  my work is very limited to purely digital design and flat screen design, always having an interest on practically working with traditional methods and process and not been knowing how to approach these practical methods because of my lack of knowledge from this has effected the uniqueness of past work and there for collaborating with someone who has a wide knowledge of other practical facilities will help me build knowledge and make work more interesting.

What do you want to learn from this process?

I want to expand my knowledge in practical design and learn how to use traditional methods to create work, I want to learn how to be more experimental with design to be able to create work which looks unique and stands out. Illustration is a weakness of my own which I’m intrigued to gain more knowledge of, using it with type and editorial can make a piece of work look more interesting. I also want to learn how to communicate and work in a group to a professional standard to help myself for future jobs.