Contextual Portfolio Feedback

In this seminar, i showed Tracy the start of my contextual portfolio presentation and received helpful feedback. I need to make my title more specific as it isn't clear exactly what i'm researching so i decided to change my title to 'Banksy and The Street Art Movement; His Influences and Impact' as i want to look specifically at who has influenced Banksy and how his designs impact politics and society. I was also given a few questions to think about; is Banksy just a big brand these days? has he become everything he was against? for example, he used to be very anti-society and now his own work is selling for millions.

Typesetting and Presentation - Posters

In this workshop we were given the task to put the typography skills we learnt in the previous session in to practice by designing a series of posters. We were given a brief for 4 different poster designs, i managed to start 2 during the session and decided to edit and finish them all at home afterwards.
The first two had quite a strict brief therefore we were only able to use type, no images and only the colours red, black and white. Although this was a bit frustrating at first it was a good idea as it forced us to use the skills we had learnt in the previous week which was helpful. The final two briefs were a bit more open and allowed us to be a bit more creative.

The brief for the first one was to create a poster for an acoustic night, a weekly open mic event with a laid back, relaxed feel. It was important to show that not just one sort of music is played here so for my concept I chose to use the font Wisdom Script Al as it's very curvy which represents music notes and then I cropped the phrase 'acoustic club' by adding lines through it as we were shown in the previous session. My idea was to make it look like a sheet of music, so the lines representing a music stave with notes on.

For the second one, our task was to create a poster for a craft beer event in Huddersfield. I decided to go for this style and the font Bernard MT Condense as i thought it was typical of traditional craft beer branding.
I used 3 different font sizes and colour tints to emphasise the most important aspects of the event.


















For the third poster i decided to look at Michael Beirut, when talking to Aidan about my designs he suggested i looked at his talks and Aaron Draplin's talks on Vimeo which i have linked below for reference.

2010/01 Michael Bierut from CreativeMornings on Vimeo.

I chose to do my poster on Michael Bierut because I think he is a very influential Graphic Designer and his work is current and contemporary. He has been very successful so i wanted to research him to understand more about his approach to design. When researching Michael Beirut i found my favourite pieces of his which i tried to incorporate aspects of in my poster. I also found that his favourite font was Bodoni 72 so i used that within my work. 

Poster Layout Ideas

I have done some rough sketches to show how i want my final layouts to be for my posters. 

Artist Research

Agnes Cecile; Watercolour paint artist. 

I like the idea of an explosion of colour pouring out and i want to try and explore this in my own work and recreate something similar digitally. 

                

Tom Haugomat; Illustrator

I like the style of illustration he uses in his work and although very opposite to Agnes Cecile, i like his use of minimal colour. I want to try and incorporate both ideas in to my own work by using minimal colour in my initial designs and then adding an explosion of colour to represent the chaos of being addicted.

Business Lecture 4 - Buyer Behaviour

Buyer Behaviour Process

• need recognition
• search
• pre-purchase evaluation
• purchase
• consumption
• post-purchase evaluation 

The last step is what the consumer felt about their experience as a whole, whether it was good or bad this step is the most important as this is what determines whether the consumer will want to buy the product again.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

We then looked at wealth and the 80:20 rule also called Pareto

this means that 80% of people only own 20% of the wealth 

and 20% of people own 80% of the wealth 

this can be demonstrated by this diagram of who owns who in big companies.

We also looked at the deciding factors when a consumer buys a product. These are;

• memory
• aesthetics
• emotion
• genetics
• logic
• range of choice
• attitude to risk
• nature of problem
• legal issues
• religion
• others views
• financial issues

so when designing products we must think about the buyer's deciding factors of purchasing. 

Geometry Animation

In this motion graphics workshop we had to create a short 10 second clip on aftereffects using geometric shapes created on illustrator, we were shown an example piece for inspiration.


Spherikal from Ion on Vimeo.

I did some of my own further research on vimeo and found an interesting short clip in black and white based on the geometric shape of a sphere;

Koba Ident from Koba on Vimeo.


I liked the idea of using mainly circular shapes in my work and i wanted to keep the colour scheme simple and stick to just 3 colours so i chose to use black, white and pink. The workshop was really helpful and i learnt a lot of new techniques such as morphing, however i didn't have enough time during the session to complete my animation. After learning the different techniques i went home and added new material to my clip to improve it. I have uploaded the work i did during the workshop and then my final version which i edited at home;

Geometry Experiment from Jennie Chinn on Vimeo.
 
Exploring Geometry from Jennie Chinn on Vimeo.

Cybernetic Self Inspiration

In this lecture we looked at different examples to give us inspiration for our studio projects;

• Kissel Kramer's rebranding of the Hans Brinker Budget Hotel and Anthony Burrows print outs; their unique branding method changed the reasons why people stopped staying at the hotel in to the reasons why people want to stay there.

• Anna Ahnborg's 'Can You Read Me'

     

• Joan Cornella's 'Selfie'

• Elliot Peter Earls

Final Outcome Inspiration

I had a look on Pinterest for some inspiration. I have already decided that a poster series would suit my project better as a final outcome and i am going to be looking at internet and social media addictions. I want to create striking graphic images that will create awareness for our addictions as i think most people don't realise how reliant we have become on the internet.

I found some images that create a metaphor between drug addictions, which we take seriously, and internet related addictions, which most people don't even consider. I think this is a good way to demonstrate it as although a heroin addiction isn't quite on the same level as an internet addiction, it seems a good way to shock people and make you think about how dependent we have become.

John Holcroft;

James Joyce;

                                               

Asaf Hanuka; 

Business Lecture 3 - Markets

qualitative - cheap, easy, holistic view, but it is subjective

Market Segmentation

-breaking the market down

-putting things where your audience will see them

-has to be measurable, accessible, substantial and meaningful

-define product offering clearly

We discussed how every design we do has to have reasoning behind it and that we need to be able to answer any questions about why we did something in a particular way; 'because your market want to see it this way.'

Market Reports

-Mintel

-GMDB

-Keynote Reports

-FAME (aimed at accountants)

-make sure to look at turnover and not just profit 

-Newspapers ProQuest

-Company websites (must list turnover etc.)

Brad insight - magazine

Banksy

The title of my investigation will be Banksy and The Street Art Movement. As i am mainly interested in Banksy's controversial pieces i think i want to investigate the reasons behind his work and his motivations for creating such pieces. I have come up with a few different research questions which i'd like to answer and i will refine my question later when i have done more research.

Why does Banksy create controversial pieces and what are his motivations?
How has Banksy's work changed since he started and who are his main influences?
How has Banksy's art influenced other street artists?

Why does Banksy create controversial pieces and how has he influenced others 


main influences;
- Princess Diana
- Kathe Kollwitz



Research Resources;
http://www.rsvlts.com/2015/08/18/banksys-controversial-works/
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/arts-culture/the-story-behind-banksy-4310304/

Self-Publishing - The Zine

In today's workshop we were asked to make our own Zine's. A zine is a low-budget self-published small print run which is also an expression of DIY culture. We were given a few different examples and i particularly liked this one;

Barry McGee - DFW Year In Review

I did some of my own research to look further in to designs and found some interesting work from Patrick Fry, a graphic designer who has done a series of zines.

I had a go myself and found this task quite enjoyable, we had to do one page representing each word; minimize, like, share, update, off, dream, live, emoticon.

Cybernetic Self - Further Research

I found these designs by Bailey Garrett, they are a poster series created for the awareness of gaming addiction. These have inspired me for my final outcome and have made me consider doing a poster series rather than a short magazine. 

http://bgarrettdesign.com/Gamer-s-Addiction-Manuals

Internet Culture

In today's lecture we looked further in to internet culture. Whoever you are gets reflected in your online posts therefore internet culture can be good and bad. The internet has made everything more accessible to the world and given us a different way of living to the past.
Relating this to our studio brief, we should look at ourselves on the internet but also consider other people. We looked at different designers, Mary Ponomareva and Douglas Coupland, whose work relates to the brief 'cybernetic self'. I particularly liked Douglas Coupland's 'I Miss My Pre-Internet Brain'

Cybernetics - from the greek word meaning the art of steering, they are systems that have goals
Self Portraits - reaction, interaction

Research; facts and figures

I did some background research to find out how common gaming addictions really are, however when researching this, i found that internet addiction is a much more common thing. Therefore, although the idea of extreme gaming addictions would be really interesting, i think looking at internet and social media addictions would be more relevant as nowadays almost everyone can say they are addicted to some sort of technology. 

average internet user can get online using 3 different devices

10% can get online using over 5 devices

62% of people need the internet to function in everyday life

(whereas) 10-15% of gamers show signs of addiction

sources;

http://www.bitrebels.com/technology/online-activity-report-2013-infographic/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+bitrebels+(Bit+Rebels)

http://www.video-game-addiction.org

Business Lecture 2

In todays lecture we looked further in to the business and marketing side of graphics. I learnt how important it is to understand what is happening around us in the news, especially in different markets. Being able to assess the situation you are in and ask questions before beginning a design is crucial. Although unintentional, quite often the client you are working with may not give you all the information you need, therefore to help you do the best work and meet the clients need you will need to ask questions. However, it's important to remember that the client does not know everything that is why they are employing your expertise.

Boston Consulting Group Matrix BCG
cash cows - milk them for all their worth

PEST analysis

• Political
• Economic
• Social
• Technological

Before beginning a design you need to check your product will work for each of these different aspects, if one of these things doesn't work the product cannot exist in the market. You should consider the future aswell as every product has a life cycle, will it still work in 5 or 10 years time?

SWOT analysis

• Strengths        (internal)
• Weaknesses    (internal)
• Opportunities (external)
• Threats           (external)

Most of the time you can only deal with the external side.

Remember to involve everyone, resolve problems quickly and ensure effective communication.