OUGD503 STUDIO BRIEF ONE - INITIAL SKETCHES & EXPERIMENTATION

To carry out this brief, the initial idea was to use the northern slang to appear like a friend to the reader, asking kindly, have you got your stuff? To just kickstart your brain to remind you that this is something you should be thinking about, instead of demanding you to watch your stuff, or presuming that the public has no idea about theft or safety and coming across very condescending.

* INSERT INITIAL SKETCHES PHOTOGRAPH*

This was an experimentation with different typefaces. A bold, striking typeface is what was aiming for, to have impact on the viewer and to appear striking and serious, rather than vague. The top and bottom typefaces perhaps appear a bit too rounded and therefore friendly looking, whereas the middle typeface is more elongated and therefore looks more serious and may suggest caution without necessarily saying anything that would inflict it.

These typefaces are all very similar to the ones above, only with slight differences, such as the bevels on the terminals of the top typeface, and the weighting is slightly less on the bottom typeface. However the top two typefaces are still a bit too rounded, however the top one being heavier weighted but too too extensively has potential, especially with the interest on the terminals.

Going for a more hand rendered approach, to make it look more personal with this typeface, however it doesn't look serious enough, as this is a serious topic and some seriousness should be applied. Colours were also experimented with, to experiment with the popular colours for 2015. This was also to inspire possible colours as the usual red and black which are most commonly used to suggest danger could appear a bit aggressive and are overused, so something a bit different that still had impact would be appropriate.

A repeat pattern was created using prefect circles in a teal colour, to represent eyes looking at you without actually producing eyes, as this could be a bit intimidating and using eyes is a common image used for the topic of this poster.

Adding the text onto this pattern creates a poster design, however to fit two words on each line the point size has to be relatively small, making it sit high up on the poster, taking up not very much space and therefore not being prominent enough to attract attention and to make people look at it.

Increasing the text to a larger point size so only one word fits on each line makes the text have a lot more impact, especially with making the word "stuff" larger than the rest to add emphasis and to highlight this as the more important part of the poster. At the moment the spot pattern looks just like that, a spot pattern, more emphasis needs to be placed on the fact theat they represent eyes, as this link is not clear at all.

Here the circle pattern has been removed of the gradient and more eye details have been added to the circles, to create a subtle and minimal eye appearance, one which just looks like a pattern from afar until you look closely. The beige colour has been chosen for neutrality and to experiment with something other than teal as well. 

A shade of purple was used for the text instead of black here, to create a less severe appearance however still remaining the bold dark colour. A peer commented that with the spot pattern being beige it reminded them like boobs, especially with the added detail in the centre of the circles. 

Experimentations were carried out with the teal shade, as this added an intrigue of colour however didn't have any connotations of anything. Tints of each colour were created for ease of reproduction commercially, as this is how it will be printed, to use as few colours as possible to make the production cheaper. This proved difficult as although the initial colour may be bright and aesthetically appealing, as the tints get less percentages, the colours get more grey and uninteresting, and look a bit murky as well.

These tints were used to create an eye pattern, which you can more clearly see here, acting as a kind of gradient without actually using a gradient. It was really difficult to apply the tints to the different parts of the eye, as sometimes it didn't register the tints as swatches and everything got a bit mixed up, and especially with the colours being so similar in colour, it was hard to know which swatch should be used where, and if the wrong swatch was being used, which would result in irregularity. The teal colour works much better than the beige, as it looks much brighter and appealing, making the public want to look at it more.

This pattern was then applied to the poster along with the text, in a much larger scale than previously, so the eye details can be seen much more clearly, but unless you really look at them you still wouldn't immediately know they were eyes just by glancing at it. 

The text was moved higher up on the poster and another line of eyes were applied, making more emphasis of the pattern than the text, as this seems to be the more eye catching aspect oft he poster rather than the text, which is wrong really, as the text should grab the attention, as you get more out of the text than the image.

Going away from the theme of digitalised ideas that are very vectorised, a more scripted style type was experimented with, this time hand rendered, giving it a more personal appearance. However this looks really aesthetically appealing, it is hard to read and isn't really appropriate for the content of the poster, although does come from a completely different angle.

Experimenting with these initial digital designs has give a solid grounding of what works and what doesn't, and which direction to go in. The idea of the poster acting as a friend works really effectively, as it doesn't sound condescending, and adds a bit of humour into the poster. However for this friendly approach to be effective, the aesthetic should be much more bold and powerful, to counteract this approach, so the public still notice it. The eye pattern is an effective idea in theory, however in practice it hasn't worked as well as it could have done, and perhaps should be experimented with in a bolder way, perhaps placing less emphasis on the pattern, but use individual eyes instead, however not appearing too creepy. The hand rendered script like type doesn't work either, as it looks far too elegant and doesn't have enough aggression to it, and it not being that legible doesn't help either.
The next stage will be to develop bolder, more impactful ideas that will attract the public rather than blend into it's surroundings, and work more on the typeface choice, using one that has more impact as well, as this is something the previous designs have severely lacked in.