OUGD505 Product Range Distribution - Appropriation and Subversion

For this task, we're asked to see how the designer can re-use someone else's work. Danny presented us a series of original work and the re-appropriation made by other artists. Here some examples:

Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhol

Re-appropriated by: 

Richard Petitbone

Bansky

David Lachapelle

Elaine Strutevant

But Warhol took this photo to do his work:

I think that the appropriation of someone's design is a part of the evolution of this artwork. In many field, we can find many reproductions (in music, photography, paint…). So it seems natural to me that a graphic designer can do other things from different works like re-appropriation of typefaces, photos, designs… The most important thing is to put your personality on it, it depends of what you want to communicate to people. So it's really important to consider how to equilibrate our own work from what we take to conceive it, to interrogate ourselves about copyrights, what is the originality of our design.

Then we've had a little introduction to fanzine. They are famous especially during the underground/punk culture of the late 70s-80s. Their production was very hand-made as it was created by people who had no skills and no money to produce a real publication. But amazingly new codes were established: use pictures of newspapers, hand-writing titles, etc. One of the most known was 'Sniffin' Glue'.

Then we're proposed to make our own , using a few means such newspapers, glue, paper and scissors. I've decided to make a fanzine about skateboarding life in Leeds. I imagined what kind of articles could be presented on. I've found skateboarders and city photos and I use only hand-writng for titles.

I've made a black and white version:

It was a really enriching experience, I saw that sometimes a few can be efficient for designing rather than using computer means.

OUGD505 - Design Thinking Task

☞ For this task, Dany wanted us to think about how to think in design process. Here some slide extracted from the Powerpoint:

The most important thing to retain is : why we have design this thing rather than another one? What is necessary for accomplish my idea? What can I do/learn to reach the perfect concept? For who is destined? The creation process need be to considered and it's as essential as the final realization of my idea. This task refers to the first brief, My Design Process, and it was a good occasion to compare mine from this presented. Then we divided into groups to think about insects (yummy):

The purpose was to find aspects of these bugs that could convince the English to add them to their diet. With my group, we discussed how they can be a good source of proteins, it's healthy, eco-friendly. We asked some questions too: how to cook them? how to present them? their names? (and others I don't really remember). So he've got the idea to make with insects protein bars, energy drinks for athletic men and women essentially commerced in gyms and specialized stores.

The other groups had also good ideas. I liked the one which involved a concept of street food for festivals. This task allowed to me to taste for the first time bugs, a thing a wanted to test for a couple of years (I've already seen TV reports on that) and this could help me for my project for my food campaign.

OUGD503 Responsive Brief 01 Individual Practice - Poster for Chaumont Competition Brief

I've decided to register the International Competition of the 26th International Poster and Graphic Design Festival of Chaumont. It was quite a big deal because this festival is famous and this competition involves students but professional designers and artists as well.

Deadline: 9th February 2015

Here the settlement:

So the purpose is to show our understanding of posters in the last decade. What's interesting is that we can choose what we want to do. It can be poster for a commercial use or for organisations, etc.



















Firstly, I was looking for what kind of poster are presented for this festival to see the level:

Examples from 2013 Edition : there's a lot of different designs. Some are really 'organised' with geometric forms and others are more experimental, using collages technique and illustration.

Designing a poster for an exhibition was my principal idea. At first, I wanted to create a fictional exhibition around the gardens especially the labyrinth ones. The interests of this one is to retrace the history of these gardens and how they inspires culture (in films by example). So I tried to design this:

Then I totally changed my mind when I see that the labyrinth looks like a brain. So I kept this thought and I established a new concept. In France there is a centre that named 'Cité des sciences et de l'industrie' and it's the biggest science museum in Europe. The exhibition I imagined can be potentially one of their exhibitions. This examples of their own posters:

The tone is quite funny and playful with forms and metaphors. It had to attract the eye of the audience which is composed of adults but also children, as exhibitions are mainly interactive for everybody. So the labyrinth is a good possibility to show that the brain is like this and there are actually 'paths' into it. Here is my final design and the evolution of it:

To conclude I'm happy with my final idea. With this brief, I see how it difficult to organize space on page and with the different advices I had from my classmates and teacher, I could improve my skills concerning colors, typeface, information hierarchy.

OUGD505 Brief 01 Product Range Distribution - Specific research

I'm still doing research about how to communicate a society problem whatever it is but I've refined it towards food. It's a subject that affects us everyday. We actually don't know what we are really eating sometimes. In a recent research, I was confronted to a 'bad buzz' from McDonald's. They revealed their french fries recipe: they contains about 19 chemical elements which can be found in shampoos and detergents (but the principal ingredient is still potato…). Even on ready meal, the most thing we find is too much sugar, too much salt, etc. So consumers don't have all informations about the food they buy. For specific diets, it's important to know what's inside product. For example, vegetarians can unconsciously eat proteins from animals in yoghurts or ready meals even they are 'vegan friendly'.

There are some organisations who fight against food additives like Action on additives. They concentrate their effort towards kids because it can provoke consequences in their health and growth as they are young persons.

I think it's a good idea to have and informative campaign which involves also kids, programs in school and special 'no additive' meals in their canteen. I want also to inform the grown-up people and made them realize that food can be a danger. In fact, additives can bring diseases like obesity but also heart attack, kidney diseases, cancers, etc.