To start off with this brief we made a spider diagram to brainstorm what we could follow on this brief. We had a few good ideas and decided to go our separate ways over the weekend and each come up with our own design ideas and then meet up again on the Monday to discuss whether we wanted to follow with a particular direction or work independently.
When I got home I began drawing up a design development sheet. An idea I had was to create a mail-shot like our previous brief but develop the idea to not only information inside, but ways of communicating through more creative mediums.
The first thing I came up with was a name for the organisation of the packs "Drive Safely" - simple, effective and straight to the point so people know the message before even opening it.
I wanted it to be formal as it was directed at such a wide range audience of drivers and I also wanted it to look clean and professional. I began sketching and found myself with quite a script-based type, I really liked it but was worried about legibility from far away. I didn't mind too much because it was such a close up product and it would be in an appropriate point size for readability.
My next idea was to create a selection of thought provoking media to remind drivers to be responsible. Every-day objects in a car can be replaced to remind drivers to complete certain actions.
Media I thought about was air-fresheners, bumper stickers, key rings, grip pads and window stickers.
Ones I liked and decided to develop into designs were the air-freshener, bumper sticker and key ring. I wanted the most visible to be the most generalised, so kept the traditional tree-shaped air freshener and displayed the main script logo within it. This would be to remind drivers to "Drive Safely" and not irresponsibly.
The bumper sticker idea consisted of it simply displaying the words "Aren't you a bit close there?" to remind drivers behind to keep a safer distance and not drive to close in case of an accident.
And finally the key-ring idea was to display the words "Check your mirrors" - this being a vital thing to do before setting off but most people forgetting to is the perfect opportunity of placement as you can't start the car without putting your keys into the ignition.
When we met up again on Monday to discuss our ideas it came together really well. The ideas everyone came up with and planned all had the potential to link together and create a consistent body of work.
In our discussion, we all spoke about what work we had done over the weekend and the ideas we had come up with. Jane spoke about how she came up with the idea to make a calendar for inside a car to help be organised but also as a way of presenting interesting but daunting facts to make people aware of the dangers of driving irresponsibly. Charlie told us about an advertising campaign idea she developed which consisted of a creative way of manipulating road signs, it was really interesting and such a good idea. Jordan told us about an idea me and him had discussed previously about creating a publication - A guide to simple driving which hit quite a humorous side of the situation. Finally I mentioned my idea and then we discussed how we could tie them all together because they all fitted in with my idea of a mail-shot.
All our ideas bombarded the brief and we addressed the problem with a solution which felt like it covered it perfectly. We made lists to direct us including the questions on the brief:
Who needs to know?
What/why do they need to know?
How will you tell them?
Are you EXPLAINING, INFORMING, INSTRUCTING, or EDUCATING the audience?
What will the audience respond to, where will they look?
How will they need to interact with it?
How will you know it's working?
What is the tone of voice?
Next we all got together and began trying to think of a name. This was to make sure we definitely had the best one already instead of just going with the one I thought of in my work. After about 20 minutes of ideas, we went through them all and came to the conclusion that the original still worked best so we kept with it.
Finally, before we went our separate ways to get on with our work we created a list to help us manage our time and know what each of us are doing. We split our list up into three sections. Research, Design idea, and Development. On Monday night we would all research into our designated areas of work, Tuesday we would begin work on our design idea and then on Wednesday after our lecture we would meet up in the studio, discuss what we have done, have a group crit to highlight areas that need improvement or development and express thoughts. Finally on Wednesday afternoon/evening, we would work our best to finish development to make our specified work its highest quality for print on Thursday, ready for the deadline on the Friday.
Jane's responsibility was the calendar idea she produced over the weekend.
Charlie's responsibility was the advertising campaign she thought of.
Jordan's responsibility was the packaging and presentation of the mail-shot.
Danielle's responsibility was the formality, direction and function of the questionnaire.
My responsibility was to direct the branding of the whole project to make sure everything was continuous and worked as a set.
My responsibility of branding suited me very well because of my original idea of the mail-shot development. My main jobs were to focus on the type used, logo design, to work with Jordan on stock and also to help everyone keep on the right track of using the appropriate type and composition to fit as a set.
To begin my research, I went on a search online for logos and identities of organisations that have aimed to do the same thing. This was both to provide influence and also what not to do.
Sadly, all of the logos that I discovered were in my opinion quite terrible. This was for a variety of visual strength reasons but at least they communicated the message. I wanted my logo to both communicate the message, the meaning, the feeling and also be visually appealing to the wide target audience.
I decided to make some sketches of ideas I could come up with and go on from there. Overall I had five ideas which I got down onto paper as rough pencil sketches annotated with reasons and meanings in marker.
I became a bit less original with this idea, I carried on the use of italics to communicate movement in the type and then reversing it with the second word "safely" i framed this logo with a box but I yet again wasn't really happy with it.
My next idea was even worse. This one consisted of a steering wheel shape with "drive safely" presented within it. There wasn't much creativity and I wouldn't want it to represent what we were working with.
After staring at my planning sheet pretty blankly for a length of time, I found myself looking at the first logo idea I had. The first logo design then influenced me to re-create it but a bit differently to make it more professional, I wondered if it would work. I followed the same function with the word "drive" but with the word "safely" I shaped the letters as if it was a car crashing into the first word. I really liked this idea and decided I would definitely try developing it further.
I wanted to aim for five design ideas all together to hopefully have 2 good ones out of the 5. Luckily the last idea I came up with was a success in my opinion. This logo consisted of a car seat made of the type "DRIVE" and the seatbelt signifying safety but also presenting the word "safely" making it quite subtle as a word, but very clear as a representation.
The two design ideas I decided to take further in the end were the last two. I felt that these were the strongest out of my selection and would represent the organisation as well as identify it well.
My next task was to research into appropriate typefaces for us to use within our work. I needed type for the logo which would probably match a header font, as well as body copy to keep everything as a series.
After having a long browse, I came up with a selection of header fonts to try out which I felt would suit our needs of a logo and impact.
airplane:
Franchise:
Liberator:
I will be experimenting with all of these to make sure I make the right design decisions and evidence it thoroughly. Next was to research what type to use for body copy of our work.
Charlie mentioned a particular font called 'Transport' which is used on the majority of most road signs, this will help us connect the advertisement to the mail-shots and also keep it all relevant to the subject.
After finding it I couldn't agree more, unless I found out later on it didn't work, we had just found our body copy font. However during my research to download it, it came apparent to me that the font cost an absolute bomb, and therefore my research went a bit further to find a replacement or something extremely similar.
I couldn't find absolutely anything for ages until finally doing the simplest of things and typing 'transport' into dafont.com - and there it was, 'Raoul TRANSPORT Britannique'. Created by a French designer, 'Raoul TRANSPORT Britannique' - 2011 recreates the glyphs used on british road-signs for the use of the public.
Now I have a selection of typefaces to work with it was time to start on the development of my logo: To start it, I began by using illustrator to draw out the type in the shape of the car crashing. This was the fundamental section of the logo which wouldn't need changing unlike the type so i had it as a priority.
The next thing I did was fill it in to give it a bit more depth and visibility. I also flattened the side of the 's' to make it look as if it had physically crashed.
I wanted to add a little more detail into it to make it absolutely clear what was going on. So what I came up with was to illustrate some shards of debris coming off the collision.
Minor adjustments were made to the illustration to develop the legibility of the symbol and then my first experimentation with type began. To begin with, I chose 'Bebas neue'.
'Liberator'
And finally - 'Ranger'
After getting together with the group I got a lot of feedback for the design and they were all very happy with it. We discussed the use of each type and everyone were happy with the selected body copy type as it is relevant, it looked clean and its readability was good at long distances. Although when it came to deciding on the type used in the logo, we decided to use 'FRANCHISE' as our favourites were that and 'BEBAS NEUE' but I'd already used that in my previous brief so I said it'd be nice to have a bit more variation of a header font.
My next objective now I'd completed the design was to experiment with colour and the whole scheme of the identity including packaging and posters. I wanted it to fit in with Charlie's poster design idea and keep to black, white and blue.
To make sure drive was a focal point which lead onto the shaped word "safely" i kept that black, changing 'safely' to the motorway blue to give it more of a decorative feel.
After hearing what my group thought of it, they came up with the critique that I changed the tires black to make it easier for people to distinguish the word and communicate better. I tried it and it made such a difference, was very happy with it and decided it had all the aspects of a successful logo.
The next things to do were to create a bumper sticker and air freshener design.
For the bumper sticker I carried on my use of type through it displaying the main header I originally thought of and then laying a quote beneath it for a bit more body, finished with the logo in the bottom corner. This would be sent as a free gift to people who took part of a survey we will conduct online as an incentive to draw people in. This would increase the number of people who would take part and make our feedback more evident.
My next task was to design an air-freshener to hold in the mail-shot. The basic sketch idea was of a generalised tree-shaped air freshener and I wanted to hold onto that, it just makes it feel more genuine when it follows a trend, The design was going to have a base colour of blue so it'd fit with the rest of the piece but I couldn't fit black into the design without ruining the aesthetics. Instead I just kept it blue and white.
In her free time, Danielle set up a Facebook page for the organisation to become more known as well as a gateway to the survey, we added the appropriate imagery and I made a display photo which people would click to show close up!
Overall, this project came out really good. I thoroughly enjoyed working with my group and we produced a good body of work to present to the class.
After our presentation we got together and did a group self assessment, this is what i wrote:
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