Communication is a Virus

I really enjoyed this brief, I normally approach collabaritive work because I've been known to be quite a control freak in the past - but I think I managed to put that aside.
I was working with Ed, who was very motivated and driven, yet very laid back at the same time. It was good working with him for this reason as sometimes I get really stressed over work but because Ed is always so level-headed and pretty happy-go-lucky (no offence Ed, thats a compliment!) it really made me wonder why I get so worked up in the first place.

Anyway... we chose 'get people to try something new' as it was very open, we thought this was a good choice as any of the other categories would fit under it - so why choose any of the others and limit yourself?

I think we had a really good oppurtunity to do something fun and enjoy ourselves and I think we naturally went in the direction of choosing something that we both enjoyed and had in common, music.
Our first idea was to try and get people to try new types of music, but why? We needed a reason, so we researched into music corporations and how they scam the artists on their labels, so we went along the lines of promoting independent music in Leeds specifically because we could actually promote it then.
Ed did some great context research and went out to a couple of places, taking photos of potential places we could promote our music. This would target our audience of people involved in the 'indipendent music scene' who would pick up a demo CD containing tracks from indipendent artists and then pass it on to, or make a copy (due to the tracks having no copyright) for their friends who listen to mainstream music.

I e-mailed loads of indie bands asking if we could feature their music on our disc and got loads of positive replies.

After swapping briefs with Ollie, Liam and Emma they refined our brief to only electro music. This posed a bit of a problem as all of the replies I had received up till then were from indie bands... so I spent another couple of hours e-mailing electro groups in Leeds. Fun times!
They did give us a really cool name though, 'Hidden Tracks' which is edgy and also sums up the purpose of our work.

We both then worked ont he designs, I came up with these:

And Ed made a couple of variations along the lines of this:

We both preferred the look of Ed's - it had that really gritty cheaply-made design that most guerilla-style CD packaging had.

We worked on a few designs and here are the illustrator files that we used for our presentation boards to display how it works. (The colour is diffirent because when its printed on brown stock it darkens)

Front of CD

Back of CD

As you can tell there is in inlay, when you pull it out the side of the sleeve the track names are revelead through a hole cut out the back of it.

We needed a few images of it operating in context, so we went to the shops we had identified as potential distributors of the CD and asked them if we could take a few photos of the CD at points in the shop where similar material is displayed... most of them said yes.

Ed had gotten to know the manager of White Label Clothing and he said he would be willing to distribute our CD if it were an actual product - so if we wanted to, we could actually have a real crack at this and see if it would work!

One more thing, we also created a Myspace page to serve as a community where people can discuss independent electro music in Leeds and listen to tracks that would be featured on the disc (we got permission from the artists before uploading the tracks): heres the link:

http://www.myspace.com/hiddentracksleeds

Hidden Tracks

I was experimenting in Illustrator, trying to create a good image for the CD that Ed and I are producing for our partner work and I created this completely by accident.
After creating the cover and thinking how well the lines go with each other (I should be using this for the 'what is a line brief'!) and how they disguise the words 'hidden tracks' I decided to experiment more with lines for the back of the CD and created a really crazy optical illusion.

The first is a screenshot direct from illustrator (I do a lot of digital work and I don't think I post enough images of the process) and the second is cropped image showing just the cover and back in diffirent colours.

Finished Website

I think I've resolved the website as much as I can, heres the link for the final resolution:

http://timetriptothailand.tk/

I wanted the website to be in a standalone pop-up window with no browser toolbars, however it all seemed very complicated so I've settled for just using a center html tag to center the website.

Its almost finished...

I've found a way to upload the website, unforunate about the ad at the bottom of the page but I'm sure I can get around that somehow. This is what it looks like at the moment:

http://www.freewebs.com/wakethesilence/New25.html

I still need to

• Proof read, there are lots of spelling mistakes and text mis-alignments
• Change the colour of the provences when they highlight to match the overall red/blue colour scheme of the Thai flag.
• If I have time before submission date, include information about how to time your trip to include public holidays and festivals.

Any feedback would be appreciated!

Map Glyhps

I've drawn a small image to go with each city/town on the interactive maps on my website that represents one of the main attractions in the area. I think its a lot more interesting and communicates more than just having a solid object has a glyph.


Heres how they look on the website at the moment. In practice, whenever you 'hover' your mouse over one of the towns/cities, a circle underneath highlights it and information about the area appears at the top right and bottom right of the page. I might be changing the colour scheme to make it a bit more vibrant and fit in with the colourful Thai culture.

Interactive Thai Weather Map

This is what inspired me to do an interactive Flash website for my 'How to...' Project.

You can view it here.

What I like about it is that its quick and easy to get the information you need straight away without having to sort through loads and loads of badly laid-out html pages.


I don't think the visual aspect of it is particularly appealing, it looks very tacky and commercial but in terms of layout its very good. Its not that difficult to do either, I could do something just as technical if I had the time.

How to: Time Your Trip to Thailand

I'm trying to soak up as much as I can about Thailand and I'm looking outside the specifics of 'time'. I think that having a broader understanding will help my overall concept development.

Heres a very cheesy, commercialised video on tourism in Thailand... but its a pretty good summary of the things I've been looking at:

Recognition Day - Final Design

The design I chose for my final was type only. After comparing the designs and evaluating crit feedback I decided that simple is better and that type-only best communicates the idea.

I went through quite a few versions, including variations of message (i.e. apology as apposed to foregivness), variations of aesthetics including font-face, colours, kerning, line spacing etc.

The following image shows a few of these versions with the last image being the final:

You can see from the images above that I was originally was going for a very serious, negative tone but thought that people would be more drawn and influenced by a more positive message.

I was inspired by these Bupa adverts:

Bupa Advert
Uploaded by hamster1992

Bupa Advert
Uploaded by hamster1992

When watching the adverts I do feel very calm which is probably attributed mostly to the soundtrack and vox but I think the colours that were used play a very important role. They have used a very pastelly colour pallete, which is quite soothing as the colours don't contrast as much with each other as they would if they were very saturated, I used this method when choosing the colour scheme for my design.

Recognition Day - Shortlist

For this design I wanted to have an equal balance of type and image, but I wanted to keep it simple. I think its pretty self-explanitory:


I created two versions, one which was a more adult, 'expensive' looking gift, whereas the other was more a kids party gift and I used CMY(and white) for it. I think having the text go across the cross that the ribbon forms makes it quite a strong design.

Recognition Day - Shortlist

This was my favourite idea on paper, it looked very promising.

The basic idea was to have a piece of paper ripped in two representing a grudge between two people. A plaster joins them back together representing that they have apologised and forgiven each other and everythings now fine and dandy.

That was the original idea, very plain and simple but I added a lot to it... in hindsight this might have been a mistake as I might have overcomplicated it. The first ammendment I made was to add the word 'sorry' over the plaster as I thought this would clarify the message, rather than forcing the viewer to figure out the metaphor themselves.

This was the result:I added colour to the plaster purely for aesthetic reasons.

I then decided to take clarifying the message a step further by using an actual image of two friends and using photoshop, make it look like the photo has been ripped and joined together, again with a plaster.

The first image was part of the development stage when creating the rip (which proved to be a lot more difficult than I thought!), I really liked the simplicity of it, and I think could also make a strong contender on its own.
The photograph I used for the rest of the images was a digital photo and I wanted it to look like a print, so I added a film grain effect to it, and crumpled up an old photo and scanned in the white underside of it, and overlayed the shadows that the scanner picked up.
I was playing with the idea of making it look like it was put in a scrap-book, to show that it has value but I thought that having the photo fill the entire frame was a lot stronger.

Heres some of the development work:
Above is the scan of the plaster I used and below that is experimentation with typography that was overlaid on top of the plaster. I wanted it to be hand-written as it has a more personal feel.

The left and middle image contains the photo that I used to create the tear effect. I put a coloured piece of paper behind it to make it easy to delete using the magic wand tool. It was really difficult to delete the rest of the image using the ereaser tool to just leave the tear remaning thus I used a marker to darken the area around the tear so that again, I could use the magic wand tool (its magic!).
The last image is the photo that I crumpled up and overlaid on top of the photo to make it look authentic.