East Asia Brief

'East Asia' is a personal research led brief of mine, I have always admired the traditions of the east asian culture, not only this but a lot of Japanese art and designs are beautiful and so visually pleasing to me. The culture of Asia encompasses such a wide variety of diverse customs and traditions which include aspects like art, music, architecture, music, religion and so on.

East Asia include the countries of China, japan, North Korea, South Korea and Mongolia. For thousands of years it was China that largely influenced East Asia and it was the leading civilisation in that region. 

For this brief I will be looking lightly touching the surface of different aspects to do with East Asia whilst ending up with a 1 to 3 piece / set of designs in a format such as poster design. I want to leave this brief very open and something that could lead me anywhere. 

One aspect I think is important to look at when carrying out personal brief is who the audience is. I will be aiming this outcome at young adults, looking at 18-30 year olds who may have a passion for prints, much like myself. 

As it is a personal brief I can make this brief as sustainable as possible, meaning I will be looking into the different type of sustainable inks and paper that can be used for my brief.

PEEL Brief

A Fine Art student from Brooke's University has asked me to do some designing for her end of year show. She is in her third year, I met her on my foundation year and we have kept in contact. 

The first thing she has asked me to do is to create the posters for the exhibition as she wants it to look good and professional as the audience is not just students it is the general public. She also said she might need some assistance creating the net for their exhibition, which is the 2D paper shape of a cube.

In order to start designing the posters I asked my client, Imogen to give me all the information needed in order to take this brief further. She did not give me too much information which doesn't aid to my brief as I need to gather as much information I can in order to create a good design. 

'PEEL' is the name of their exhibition, however when I asked the meaning behind it she said there was none and the year just decided that. I gathered the relevant information including the audience, the text and images that need to be on the poster. 

As Imogen already sent me a logo that someone in her class created, I asked if I were allowed to adapt it slightly as I believe I could have made it better however as it was not her who created it she said to keep the logo as it was. I also noticed that the logo is already in use on their social media sites. 

Their social media done by the people in their class

The piece that is wanted on the poster

The logo that was created by the client

LookBook Experimentation

Initially I started with the same font that I used when designing the front cover, to see if I could keep the designs similar and run throughout. Looking at the layout be simplistic and simple to start, ranging the image size and the text size whilst baring in mind the position of the text :

I then decided to use the different fonts that I had researched in order to make the designs look more playful and add the sense of youthfulness that she asked for at the start of the brief. 

I tried playing around with the size and placement of the numbering and the images :

Experimenting further, keeping the type all the same size :

To take these further I am going to gain feedback from a crit and use the idea of adding colour to them like a lot of my research. 

Type Research

When designing the inside of the look-book I looked into other fonts for numbering the images as I thought the initial design with the type in that font looked a little too harsh and needed to be a bit more playful like KENZO is with their work and designing. 

In order to gain a more playful stance I decided to look into different fonts I could use, to do so I looked back at some of my research. I thought one type of font I need to look into would be a handwritten one, as they are soft and can be funky and hip which is the vibe that Freya wants for the look-book. Below are some of the options that I found that I could use. The bottom type is the font I used for the front cover. 


The two below are

Front Cover Final Discussion

I then had a discussion with Freya after my crit with my peers to see where her head was at. I took these images to Freya and asked what her thoughts were about it.

Below are the new options I did for the cover from my earlier crit with my peers. Looking at refining the small details to see how I could improve my cover. I mainly played around with colour rather than layout:



She had some small ideas which I turned into outcomes to see which were. She thought the drop shadow could be the same as on the model :

Then we decided together that we would go back to just the normal black DAZED logo as simplicity does portray a lot of effectiveness, and looked more like the DAZED normal magazine, which was something that she was keen to keep with. I then got it down to two options with small details included that should be included like the barcode and edition :

Then I chose the following image to be the final front cover:

Evaluation

Throughout the whole collaborative brief there was a good sense of communication, all parties worked well together to create an outcome that was successful.

The focus was to create a concertina layout booklet to represent the form of Cuba and the client’s ideas discussed in her extended essay.

Members of the collaboration contributed their part with excellent quality leaving us with an outcome of the highest standard. However, one set-back of the brief was working to the deadlines, the client took longer than expected with the editing to the photos thus leaving little time for the design and binding processes.

The time frame of two months was met comfortably despite the set-back, having enough time for experimentation with the layout design and to have regular meetings between all parties to discuss the development of the different parts of the booklet.

An aspect that I would have liked to develop further was the layout, however this was a feature that was capped by the client. She wanted a very minimal and subtle design that reflects the concepts discussed throughout her essay.

Due to the client’s decisions the push for sustainable materials throughout this brief was not met as best as possible. Recycled paper options were suggested; however, the client was set on the idea of using ‘normal’ paper. Because the booklet was being primarily made for the client, her decision was final which was disheartening. One step to saving paper was making fewer booklets that was initially asked.

Something that could be experimented with was the outcome being more representative of the context, rather than the minimal designs that were asked by the client.