This module brings together students and staff from across the department’s programme disciplines. It provides me with the opportunity to develop my understanding of the nature of professional practice in a visual arts and design context.
This module will address a diverse range of subjects, which highlight the professional and ethical issues associated with cultural industry careers and practitioner pathways.
The module agenda is also pursued through students working collaboratively in designated working-groups, to coordinate the development of the final year exhibition across the Department of Art & Design. These theoretical and practical activities are guided and supported by teaching staff from across the Department disciplines.
I had to choose to either work on the design, fundraising and marketing of the degree show. I instantly wanted to be involved in the design aspect, I feel its a great opportunity to get my name relating to the entire concept. We were then required to get into groups and create the brand for the upcoming 3rd year degree show. Luckily I was partnered up with Reece, Tom and Daisy who I am already friendly with and I know they all have really high a skill set. Initially I felt pretty rusty in coming up with some good ideas as were not long back from the summer break. The guys came up with some solid concepts where we wanted to really highlight the personality in peoples work, they came up with relating signatures, fingerprint and names. We decided to work on fingerprint concepts.
We will all work on designs and ideas over the next 2/3 weeks and present the concept.
It was great to be able to mix working on the degree show and my live brief as we were able to design it.
Here is a slideshow of our concept for our third year exhibition.
After presenting our concept across the art departments there was a voting system in place to whose concept will be taking forward to use in the exhibition. Our concept won to our delight, giving us an immense opportunity to showcase our ideas in the exhibition to a variety of visitors. This will also be a great opportunity for me work on a live project which is also required during this module. After Christmas our group will get together and discuss how to take the project further. I'm glad I got rid of my rustiness by now.
After winning the vote last week we will now start to design the brand identity; Logo designs, colour palettes, illustrations, tagline, name. We will discuss everyones designs in the next week or so for our meeting with first Bernadine as a team working on the project.
My logo concepts for the brand.
My Poster Concepts for the exhibition. I focused mainly on manipulating fingerprints and patterns.
We met up and decided as group who's designs to use for the logo etc.We went this Daisy's logo concept which we felt really matched the feel we were going for. She is a brilliant illustrator so we want to play to everyones strengths as a group. We decided to name the show 'Impressions' with the tag line: Make Your Mark. We want to highlight the importance in your identity within your work and linked that by using fingerprints.
Logo
Brand Guidelines
The brand guidelines we are going to present to Bernadine which was put together by Tom Katryniak as he is strong working within typography and editorial. Myself and Reece designed poster concepts, stickers and the colour palette.
Our meeting with bernadine went really well today, she was happy with the entire concept gave us the go ahead to start working on the invitations and advertisment etc. We decided to sit down as a group straight after speaking with Bernadine to discuss moving forward. As I am very interested and fairly strong in motion graphics I put myself forward to create an animated invitation for the show alongside creating a poster to advertise, whilst the guys worked on crafting physical invitations and the same with posters.
To keep the theme consistent Tom created a poster template to work off, we also decided that if we create a poster each entirely in our own styles (sticking to the template) it would run alongside the concept 'making our mark'. Me and Tom discussed the storyboard I will create the animation using, I wanted to have a contemporary and serious feel to it whilst highlighting the main elements. We have given ourselves 2 weeks to complete these tasks. I best get a move on making this animation!
Again we met up with Bernadine, this time with my animation and the guys had their concepts for the physical invitations. She was happy to go ahead with the animation to my delight, as it will now be used as the digital invitation, advertisement and also will be played on the screens throughout the exhibition.
Impressions Animation (Advertisment & Invitation)
I have uploaded the video onto Vimeo to help it reach a wider audience.
Physical Invitation
Posters
Designers left to right; Reece Robson, Daisy Howard, Tom Katryniak and Liam Jewell (myself).
These particular posters are showcased within Tom (technicians) print room, which is frequently occupied by students daily. Today a couple of us discussed with the marketing team on where to place the rest of the posters. We placed a few more around the campus and the marketing team have taken an extra 5 copies of each design to place in and around Chester's city centre, hopefully bringing in more visitors.
Only a couple of weeks from the exhibition now!! Really excited to this all come together on the night. I feel we have worked really well and gelled as a team throughout this project, having the chance to work alongside talented students with of a member of staff is brilliant practice for when I go into the industry.