OUGD405 - Research Collect, Communicate: Product

Brief:

Through a process of collection and categorisation of content specific to your own research theme, you are required to focus on information graphics. How can you translate facts, figures and statistics into clear and understandable visuals?

Using your research theme, explore information graphics through one of the following outcomes:

PRODUCT AND PUBLICATION
PRODUCT AND PACKAGING
PRODUCT AND DISTRIBUTION

Your resolution should reflect your own practical and conceptual interests (derived from your given research theme) within the field of contemporary graphic design.

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After my research ending up in quite a dark place, I decided I still wanted to follow this through as it was becoming very interesting. I had a good think about the sort of things I could do as it was a rather difficult area to think of products of illuminati, or satanism/antichrists but my friend Danielle inspired me.

She comes from Manchester and mentioned this 'Hell' based night club in the centre where they host themed nights revolving around Satan and other scary stuff! A very alternative disco!

I decided to research into this place and found out it is the most iconic alternative club in the country, however their design work wasn't the best. I found some examples on their Facebook page:

My opinions on the design work for this night club is that it is all rather awful considering they own the alternative scene in Manchester. The idea I had was to completely re-brand them, design a logo, posters, flyers, drink menus, and promotional material in general.
Before I cracked on with the planning for it all, I decided it would be a good idea to get in contact with them and ask them permission to continue with my idea and so I sent them this e-mail:

"Hello there,

My name is Alex Dyson and I am a Graphic Design degree student at Leeds College of Art. I decided to come and look you up as a friend of mine on my course mentioned you as you would be quite relevant to a brief I have been given at university.

My brief is this:

"Through a process of collection and categorisation of content specific to your own research theme, you are required to focus on information graphics. How can you translate facts, figures and statistics into clear and understandable visuals?

Using your research theme, explore information graphics through one of the following outcomes:

PRODUCT AND PUBLICATION
PRODUCT AND PACKAGING
PRODUCT AND DISTRIBUTION

Your resolution should reflect your own practical and conceptual interests (derived from your given research theme) within the field of contemporary graphic design."

In regards to my research theme of evil stuff was wondering if you'd give me permission to rebrand your club? Just for my project where I would re-design your logo, alcohol menus, flyers, posters and stuff like that. I thought I'd send you an e-mail to make sure you were happy with me doing this for my coursework or not.

If not, please let me know. And if so, thank you very much and would you be able to message me back with the drinks that you sell and your admission prices, special offers and the generic stuff you'd expect to see in your nightclub? It would help a lot for the content of the design work as well as research.

I really hope to hear from you soon, it'd be a great experience to do this and treat it as a live brief.

Kind Regards,

Alex Dyson."

In the meantime, I decided to start planning anyway. I drew out a mind-map to help me focus on my ideas and directions with the brief.

We brought our thoughts and plans back to a power-crit on the Friday and I was given this sheet to fill out. I was told that my ideas were not creative enough so I got into thought whilst writing my rationale.

I sat down in the studio and started sketching out my so far ideas in terms of what came to me at the time - I enjoyed designing the posters and giving them some content but the challenge was the logo. So I got to work on my ideas for that.

[insert photo of design sheet]

Distressing the logo gave it that old and worn feel that suited the branding perfectly, I will now be using this throughout my brief to keep everything working as a set.

I then went into production for my first poster "Wish you were here!" - below I have documented all the steps I went through to achieve my finished product.

To begin with, I wanted to sketch my idea out as I hadn't done much proper drawing for a while and I thought hand-rendered planning would be the best way to get some done.

I was really happy with how the outline turned out and so I took a direct photo to trace on illustrator after. But after I got this far, I wanted to see it through to the end by hand first so began colouring.

I was really happy with the finished piece but decided I needed to get the digital processing out of the way so I could work on more ideas for my poster series.

Slowly but surely I used the pen tool to trace the whole drawn image until it was finished. This was also distressed to given a worn look.

My next idea was a piece of work revolving around pizza. The reason for this was because I was thinking about the brief so much, I ended up dreaming about going to the club. Some reason they were serving pizza (even though it's a nightclub) and the pizza was cut up as a satanic star. When I woke up I noted it down and put it into production as soon as I got home, this time straight from illustrator because I was starting to get worried about time.

I was also really happy with how this idea came to life after it was finished.

My last poster out of the sequence will be typography based. I came up with the catchphrase whilst trying to think of humorous ideas of heaven and hell. And aiming at the target audience I was, I had to perceive Hell as the better place to be. Considering they would be there with people they like, the company there would be a good place to start. Then arose the quote "Heaven for the good life. But hell for the company."

In the design process, I decided the "but" in the quote had to go because I wasn't happy with the balance of the work with it.

When it came to digitalisation in illustrator, I decided I wanted the type to be metallic gold and silver screen printed as this would be a really nice effect of the final piece.

Yet again I was very happy with my finished poster and carried on with the brief.

Going back to my original planning of this brief, an idea I had was to create t-shirts, here I mocked them up to see how they looked and then researched my print method to find out if I could both do it and afford it.

Because of the size of the print, it would have to be sublime printed, and due to the restriction of my funds and the fact i'd only need one. i couldn't afford to have it done, so this remained a draft idea but can be seen below.

For the drinks menu, I wanted it to fit the theme of the establishment and specialise in some evil sounding cocktails. For this I researched Halloween drinks ideas and chose the following from my discoveries:

 The Witch’s Brew
Ingredients:
2 oz Yellow Chartreuse
1 1/2 oz Blue Curacao
1/2 oz Brandy
1/4 tsp cloves
1 dash nutmeg
1 dash allspice
Instructions: Mix Yellow Chartreuse, Blue Curacao, Brandy and the rest in a shaker. Shake well and serve in a chilled glass. Alcoholic Cocktail, served in a Highball glass.

Death in the Afternoon
Ingredients:
1/2 oz Baileys Irish Cream
1 oz Kahlua
1/2 oz Crème de Cacao
1 oz Chocolate Syrup
2 oz milk
4 oz Ice Cream
whipped cream to garnish
chocolate flakes to garnish
Special Equipment: Blender
Instructions: Blend all ingredients. Garnish with whipped cream and sprinkle chocolate flakes on the top. Alcoholic Blended and Frozen, served in a Margarita glass.

 Gates of Hell
Ingredients:
1 1/2 oz Cuervo Tequila
2 tsp lime juice
2 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp Cherry Brandy
Special Equipment: Shaker
Instructions: Mix tequila, lemon and lime juice in a shaker over ice. Shake well. Strain into a cocktail glass with crushed ice. Pour cherry brandy over top. Alcoholic Cocktail, served in a Cocktail glass.

The Undertaker
Ingredients:
1 part Jagermeister
1 part Cointreau (or Triple Sec)
1 part Bacardi Rum
Instructions: Pour liqueurs layer after layer in a shot glass. Alcoholic Shot, served in a Shot glass.

Black Magic Cocktail
Ingredients:
1 1/2 oz Vodka
3/4 oz Kahlua
1 dash lemon juice
lemon twist
Instructions: Mix all ingredients in a shaking glass with ice and stir gently. Strain over ice into a highball glass. Garnish with a lemon twist. Alcoholic Cocktail, served in a Highball glass.

Vampire Juice
Ingredients:
1 oz Coconut Rum
1 oz Blue Curacao
1 oz Bacardi Rum
8 oz orange juice
Instructions: Mix Rums and Blue Curacao in shaker over ice. Fill up with orange juice, shake well and strain into a glass. Alcoholic Shot, served in an Old-fashioned glass. 

After choosing my horrific cocktails I got to work on the actual menu. I bordered it up like a horror movie poster from the mid 1900s and set out my type as planned.

The logo sat comfortably under the main arch and i brought down a black line to divide the menu in two for more of a composition and guide for my drinks.

I got to work on the drink illustration and decided to leave it as a template for all of the drinks, this would help give an accurate representation of the quantities of ingredients used in each beverage as an info graphic. I divided up the drink contents into the right percentages and used different colours to represent each ingredient, they were then labelled with a Bodoni typeface in either black or white depending on the colour of the ingredient.

I listed each drink with the corresponding name and gave a little paragraph about each one underneath. The two halves were then headed with a price on each side, the stronger - the more expensive.

This finished piece was my favourite outcome of this brief, I was excited to incorporate info graphics for consumers into a drinks menu and I successfully presented it whilst keeping to my distressed horror theme.

Now all of the designs were finished, I printed them and looked over them again. They didn't really go together at all so I started to rethink the colours I used.

The one that stood out most was the typography poster so I played with the colours on that first. I loved the use of red in my work because it communicated the "hellish" theme I was representing, so I tried using red in the type instead by using the same colour codes used in my menu.

The last thing to play with was the drop shadow behind it which gave it more depth. I tried black and white and printed them both out. After comparing the two I went for the white one as it went better with my Hell poster more and gave a good contrast of hue.

Because of the grey background of the typography poster, I decided to follow that all the way through the designs, I also matched the red onto the Hell poster which worked a lot nicer than the original.

With all of the posters sharing the same grey background they worked a lot better as a set which I aimed to succeed in.

My last worry was that the menu wouldn't work well with grey borders instead of black ones. Instead of it ruining the composition I built, it actually looked a lot nicer in a subtle worn out kind of way as if it had eroded even more.

Here we have the final image of each print and also the final design of the drinks menu too.

The last stage of my design process for the brief is print. I booked a time slot in the digital print resources on the day of the brief so that was all ready for me. All I needed to prepare was the stock I wanted to use.

I went to the library to have a look at the different stocks I could buy from there and decided on some white aged paper as it had a nice amount of grain on it but not so much to destroy the print process, this will be perfect for the menu and logo print out.

The posters however I decided to do on pure white card to keep that screen printed feel to it.