End Of Module Evaluation

All in all, i think this was a nice way to wrap up the year, i found both briefs engaging and enjoyable and its been a long time since ive been able to say that. The analogue side of studio brief one and the taking ownership of studio brief 2 are what made me enjoy them so much i think. other than that i dont think i have much to say, there's nothing about the way that the module was delivered or set out that i would change and im quite happy with how i worked. I managed to complete the aims i set out for myself and i created a body of work that im proud of. Due to my struggle to concentrate, time management is always an issue for me but i feel like i worked well within the module and lessened my own work load by getting things completed sooner rather than later.

Product, Range and Distribution - Evaluation

I really really enjoyed doing this brief as i got lost in hours and hours of information about a really current issue and found myself being more educated on a number of different topics, this has allowed me to be more present in the conversation of politics with my friends and through design. With my final resolutions i think i effectively communicated my two aims although it took a long time to get there. As set out initially i need to work on cutting down my work to the key information that is needed rather than falling deeper and deeper down in to the research hole i so often found myself in. I really like the outcome of this brief too, it is something i can see myself looking at and reading if i was looking at them and it is something i actually hope to upload to social media and use for its intended purpose.

as always, with more time i would loved the opportunity to do more and produce the incredibly in depth publication  i initially wanted to make so that i could talk all about polls, bias in the media pros and cons of FPTP voting system and all about tactical voting and all the other things i found myself learning about. I also really wanted to utilise my skills in after effects to make a video to promote fact checking but i just didn't have time by the time i had thought about doing it. As an after thought im hoping these posters make people feel encouraged to vote and not like their being told to do something like the kind of vibe you'd get with a dont do drugs ad.

All in all im extremely pleased with the outcome

Product, Range and Distribution - Production

I ended up with two posters, one reminding people to register and one reminding people to vote. I made to high impact posters with very simple graphical elements. I wanted a huge emphasis on the date of registration closing and the general election, i put this down the side of the page as big as i could make it and i made it coloured to contrast against the striped grey background. The reason i chose a striped background as the lines are high impact and subtly lead the eye to the date at the side of the page with out distracting from the main message. I used a large sans serif font in order to increase legibility and make its accessible to as many people as possible as well as just being legible from afar.

when deciding on colours i initially chose red and blue but then i realised that corresponds to two political parties, taking that into consideration that then ruled out using red blue green orange and yellow as i wanted to remain non biased. I settled on a bright pink as it is quite a youthful colour and thats the audience im hoping to appeal to and also its is an attention seeking colour and it will hopefully draw your eye to the poster.

From this i then developed my information posters. The design was largely the same except i added icons in order to increase the accessibilty of the poster. This breaks up the information on the page but it also gives an image to tie the information too, hopefully making the information more memorable. I kept the icons simple for all the above reasons. Simple, quick and effective communication.

Product, Range and Distribution - Idea Development

When it came to making, i started to make a list of what i wanted to make and it was getting very long very quickly and i was getting lost in my hole of research again, half way through researching voting theory, different voting methods employed by the uk and alternatives and pros and cons of the first past the post method i decided that i really needed to narrow down my idea.

The election is time sensitive, people are running out of time to learn about tactical voting and its effect on exit polls so i decided to go back to my initial aims - get people to vote and get them to research.

As you have to register to vote i decided to add that in to the mix as an alarming amount of people i know are putting it off for no reason. I had my 3 final outcomes - register to vote, how/where to vote, and research.

I wanted the designs to be simple and high impact, a focus being on dates of the general election and the information i was providing.

I wanted to use statement that would stand out and be remembered: Dont Forget, Have your Say and Check the facts.

they were the only changes made to my initial design ideas.

Product, Range and Distribution - Critique

For this critique i had two questions:

Shall I make it digital or physical?

shall i include information that is party specific or is that too risky?

Presenting my initial ideas, my feedback was encouraging, everyone could see where i was coming from and what i was aiming to do with the project meaning that my contextual research has been successful.

The first question wasn't really answered but from the discussion i concluded that it would probably be best to focus on making it digital. The election is a time sensitive issue and so time is definitely a consideration, by the time I could get a publication properly printed there's a chance the election will be over.

In terms of adding party specific information that was a definite no. it is too risky and especially on social media it will just invite people to argue which is not the intention at all.

When talking through my ideas people seemed to resonate with the whole idea of fact checking so that is something i would definitely like to emphasise.

Product, Range and Distribution - Idea Generation/More research

My initial idea is to create a booklet on how to fact check and lots of other information regarding voting such as how to vote, where to research, what news papers support what parties, what is tactical voting and how does it work, how does the vote work in the Uk

This lead me to more research about the voting system in the UK, i needed to be familiar with this myself before writing about it. 

My two main aims were to encourage people to vote and to encourage people to research before voting.

I wanted to create a voting guide

target audience would be students and young people who are eligible to vote. This is because we are the most influential group of voters.

The reason i want to create a voting guide as it is something that is very current, relevant and something i feel is really important.

Resolution i hope to be a digital and or physical publication.

Some topics i want to focus on are; Newspapers as a source of information

Websites as a source of information

Fact checking

Voting.

Design considerations;

Simple, legible not fussy. I want it to be accessible to everyone and i dont want complicated design to obstruct how effectively the information is communicated.

Simple shapes and simple design, again i want this to be accessible to all kinds of people including those with dyslexia. I looked up how to make the type dyslexia friendly and so far its only been shown that its easier to read sans serif typefaces so i will take this into consideration.

I want to use bright colours in order to avoid it looking to formal or corporate.

Tone of voice: I want it to be formal in the sense that i will endeavour to make all the information correct, accurate, up to date and non biased but informal in the sense that i want it to be an easy read and not full of complicated political jargon.

Distribution: the reason i want it to be digitial as it will allow it to be easily distributed through social media. As the idea is to combat the incorrect nonsense on social media, it will be in the perfect place to remind people to check the truth. Also as i want to encourage people to vote, social media is the easiest way to pass it on quickly and get it viewed by lots of people.

Product, Range and Distribution - Refined Research

When i started this project, there was no general election, this is really lucky i guess because it gives me a specific area to focus on and will allow me to hone in my research.

Only 72% of people voted in the general election, which means 12,949,258 people didnt vote. This is an incredible amount of people and more than enough to swing the majority either way.

Whether people vote is effected by stupid things such as the weather, laziness or simply not knowing whats going on.

Left wing, right wing and centrist meanings and news papers aligned with each one. Centrist newspapers are probably the best source of information when it comes to politics as they arent aligned either way, they tend to be concerned with policies from either party which will inflict large social change.

It's amazing how much wrong information is perpetuated by the media, it is important if not vital to call politicians on their shit and do your own research. There are great independent websites that are dedicated to delivering non partisan, factual information wherever possible such as FullFact.com.

Immigration is perhaps the subject that is most misconstrued in the media. It seems that the general public have no idea how people enter the country, how their benefits are distributed and how many immigrants we actually have.

Usign fullfact.com and a report conducted by london school of economics it was shown that only 5% of the uk population are immigrants.

in the 12 months before September 2016268,000 citizens came from the EU and 103,000 emigrated meaning net migration is 165,000 (which is tiny)

The report also showed that of those immigrants who are of working age, 80% of them are employed, compared to 75% of uk natives

They are also better educated, 62% of eu immigrants had a degree, compared to 24% of the comparable percentage of uk natives. EU immigrants earn more in taxes than they receive in benefits and this only served to benefit the uk as it relieves the FISCAL burden on uk nationals and their taxes go to funding the public sector. They are also less likely to live in social housing, and less likely to receive state benefits.

The amount of child benefits immigrants receive is often over estimated by up to 200%.

So many claims were made about EU influence of uk law and legislation but upon researching that it turns out that no one really knows how much influence the EU has into uk law and legislation, its too difficult to figure out as law and legislation is so complicated.

All of this allowed my to narrow down my research again and finally settle on the topic of my practical work;

People are checking the truth, and people aren't voting.

I want to make something that encourages people to vote and people to fact check.

Product, Range and Distribution - Study Task 2 - Appropriation and Subversion

This study task was to create a collage poster.

What i got from the session was that everything is up to interpretation and manipulation. We should always question who what why and when when it comes to art because the industry is such where plagiarism, alternate interpretation and manipulation is rife. This is particularly relevant to my subject choice as it to just reinforces the idea that you need to check you facts and your sources to make sure you're consuming correct information.

This task was quite useful as it introduced me to one method of working within my topic choice and it gave me more context and more information regarding manipulation and misinformation.

Product, Range and Distribution - Study Task 1 - Presentation/Research

My research for this brief started with the presentation task.

"identify an issue and gather a body of research on this topic. The issue can be anything you wish but you should consider this carefully so that it provides enough opportunity for research and critical awareness in the areas of politics, ethics, society and/or technology."

I decided for this brief to tackle the sensitive subject of politics. I decided on Brexit as my starting point for this as it was very relevant and recent and most people have at least a basic knowledge of what was going on.

Very quick in to my research i realised that there are so many conflicting opinions and facts, I found it difficult to find reliable sources of information as it was all so biased based on what side they had taken. This ultimately lead me to the Topic of my presentation.

I decided to tackle this whole issue by taking the opportunity to clear up some misconceptions about Brexit and at the same time illustrate the problems surrounding bias and straight up lying when it comes to politics.

I looked at news papers to get the main topics of my presentation as i wanted to focus on the most common misconceptions.

I then looked at a site called FullFact which is an independent fact checking website, meaning that all information is accurate and most importantly non biased. They have no over arching goal other than to produce the facts and truth about claims regarding a wide range of issues.

With the topic of politics i found myself in a deep deep hole of information and anger and this lead to my presentation being almost 15 minutes long rather than 5. It took a lot to edit it down as i felt that there was so much to be said and i ended up having 7 pages of notes., but i think that will give me another aim for this brief;

- work on selecting the most relevant research and content.

As my audience were young people i wanted the presentation to be quite light hearted so that I didn't lose their attention. Throughout my research i was able to find some quite funny things regarding EU law and legislation which allowed me to make the presentation humorous.

Product, Range and Distribution - The Brief

This brief is in two parts -



Part 1: Based on the introductory sessions develop a practical, visual and contextual investigation of a specific subject (an issue). You should aim to develop research from a range of primary and secondary sources in order to fully explore the opportunities for informed creative development. Your research and development of this part of the brief should be documented on your Studio Practice blog and will be presented as part of your interim concept pitch.



Part 2: Devise and develop a body of practical work that both distils your knowledge of an identified issue and demonstrates your ability to tap into the market potential for socially, politically and ethically-driven design. This output should still work within the broader creative and professional contexts of graphic design but could be based around ideas of awareness or protest.

Looking at this brief carefully i have set out some personal aims for this brief:

- Spend time gathering in depth research

- Accurately represent that research through my practical response.

Leeds Public Spaces - Evaluation

I quite enjoyed this brief as it gave me the chance to look into the history of the city i live in. Despite living here i haven't always lived here which means there is still a lot that i dont know about Leeds and this was a really nice chance to get to know it a bit more. I always enjoy the tradition print briefs as it gives me an excuse to get away from the computer and away from the studio and exercise and develop my analogue skills. Every time i do screen printing, i learn something new and i get a little bit better which i find extremely beneficial for my practice and love the opportunity to screen print.

I'm sad that i rushed the actual printing process as i ended up misprinting. The good thing about this is i think i'm the only one who will know, but its still a little bit disappointing after all the hard working planning and preparing to print. The good thing is that it doesn't effect the overall print at all, its just a personal disappointment.

If i were to do anything differently, like always, i would like more time to execute the whole thing, I may have eventually been able to find a way to get all my initial imagery to work together and i probably wouldn't have printed the face the wrong way around.

Leeds Public Spaces - Final Outcomes

I did a three colour screen print, in red white and blue to represent the colours of the UK. Using the white allowed my to implement the feedback i had received. I printed the most busy pattern in a thick white so that you were able to see it at a standard distance from the print but it didn't overpower the whole design. I had gotten the dates mixed up for the submission and rushed my print a little bit, i ended up printing the face back to front. I think i'm the only one who knows that its the wrong way wrong so it doesn't effect the end result at all.

Leeds Public Spaces- Feedback

Despite simplifying my design i was still struggling with placement, i talked to Simon about my design to get some feedback and i was worried that the pattern of the crystalline structure was too busy for the print but i felt like it was a vital part of the design. He suggested that i still use the pattern but play around with the colour and opacity in order to reduce how much of a visual impact it had and allow it to flow with the rest of the design. This really helped me resolve a big issue surrounding my design and i was able to progress to the final outcome.

Leeds Public Spaces - Production

I isolated different parts of the images and used a light box to try and arrange them. I was finding it incredibly difficult to bring all these elements together in a cohesive way. Individually the images are really nice but i think they're so busy that they're just clashing with each other.

I tried lots and lots of iterations of my design, moving and placing things together in different ways but i just couldn't get it to work. I realised that i was going to have to remove some elements in order to get it to work.

Despite it being one of my Favorite parts i decided to remove the design by Victor Pasmore as i cant find any direct evidence that his designs were featured in the exhibition that happened in Leeds. I decided to take away the images of the town hall and museum, although the blitz is war related and rebuilding these was part of post war recovery, it wasn't directly linked to the festival of Britain. This simplified my design right down and there were only a few elements on the page making it really nice, open and free.

Because i now had so much open space, i decided to add some text, having fewer elements on the page made the design quite ambiguous and i felt like adding some text would be good in order to identify what it was about. Using the book i borrowed i was able to see some of the type used in the exhibition, because it wasn't named i had to find the typeface that most resembled it.

Leeds Public Spaces - Idea Development

When looking through the images, im finding that parts of the exhibition design are really cool and quite modern for the time and its something i really wanted to look into. I took out a book from the library on the festival of Britain to try and see if i could find any of the designers names or the people who designed the exhibition but the Festival of Britain was so large and the exhibition in Leeds was just as small part of that so it was really difficult to find the individual designers who worked on that specific exhibition.

I wanted to represent how far Britain has come since then and celebrate Britains ability ti recover so i picked out some images that i felt represent that.

the first two are buildings that were destroyed during the blitz, the town hall and the museum.

Secondly, i found an image that was on the wall of the exhibition. To me it represents the progression and talent of British artists but also the knowledge that we have;

http://leeds.festivalofbritain.woodhousemoor.com/800-2/

Through my research i found one artist, Victor Pasmore, who made really nice interesting patterns that i think visually will be really nice and work well on the print.

http://www.ayrshirearts.com/Spaces/Gallery/Images/Victor%20Pasmore.jpg

the last image is inspired by the festival pattern group. These patterns were based on crystalline structures that were discovered through x-ray imaging in Leeds.

http://leeds.festivalofbritain.woodhousemoor.com/800-2/?afg1_page_id=4#afg-1

Leeds Public Spaces - Ideas

After looking through a website online that documented the visit of The Festival of Britain to Leeds, i find that the exhibition had quite a lot of really cool visuals. It reminded me of people years ago trying to predict what people in the future were going to be wearing or what kind of inventions we were going to have. My initial idea is to look closely at the images and try pick out some elements that represent and highlight some key areas that we have progressed in. There are lots of strong visual images throughout including lots of fabric prints that are really interesting.

My initial idea is to bring together some of this imagery into one screen print. The reason i would like to do a screen print is i feel like its the most effective way of bringing images together in a traditional print method.

To begin with im going to sort through the images and find visuals that i really like.

Leeds Public Spaces - Crit 1

We had a crit really on into this project and i think this was really beneficial to me because talking about really loose ideas gave me the oppertunity to see which ones people would be interest in and help guide my direction.

At this point I have narrowed down my options to;

The festival of Britain
Love Parade
Leeds West Indian Carnival

During my crit i talked about why i had chosen each one.

The festival of britain;

This was a travelling exhibition that went across the whole of the uk after the second world war to promote post war recovery and Britain contributions to all kinds of industries. The reason i chose this is that in some way it feel quite relevant. After brexit a lot of people are feeling quite bleak and its a chance to remind people that despite everything the UK is a great country that produces amazing
things.

Love Parade:

Love parade was a large music festival that was only held in the UK when it visited Leeds in 2000's Due to the music and festival aesthetic i feel like this could be a good way to go visually.

Leeds west Indian carnival:

This the longest running west Indian carnival and its coming up to its 50th anniversary. Due to the nature of this carnival i think it would be really interesting colour and design wise and have a lot of history to draw upon.

I talked about my ideas and my crit group was very interested in the festival of Britain because it was something that no one had heard of and for the fact that it does seem quite relevant to the current events. As it was an exhibition and it was quite well documented, there would be a lot of visuals and history to draw upon and would fit the celebratory nature of the brief. I was quite glad that the crit went this way because i realised that i was leaning quite heavily to that idea anyway.

Leeds Public Spaces - Research

For this brief i started by researching events that have happened in Leeds over the years focusing in on public places I have already identified;

Leeds Trinity
Corn Exchange
Millennium Square
Call Lane
Hyde Park
Burley Park
O2 Academy
First Direct Arena
The public streets of Leeds.

The first thing i realised is that so much has happened in Leeds that i and probably many other people, didn't even know about. Because so much has happened i narrowed it down into events that interested me personally and would like to learn more about.

These events were;
Exhibitons and protests
Parades (eg Pride)
Leeds Children Day
Longest running West Indian carnival in Europe
The Blitz in Beeston
Festival Of Britain
Love Parade.

Now that I have narrowed it down I plan to think and look at each of these in slightly more detail in order to decide which one i would like to focus on.