FMP Final Evaluation

The overall idea of my final outcome was a brief look into a campaign based art movement exploring the flaws and controversies surrounding big brands and corporations. The idea of this was to display a transparency into the ethical and immoral conventions large corporations use by showing various issues and controversies in typographic redesigns of the chosen brand’s logos. These pieces consisted of logos/logotype of well known brands constructed out of words/phrases about unethical or immoral things the company is known to have committed or still do commit.

This differs quite heavily in visual concept to what I originally planned out in my Project Proposal but keeps the same philosophy in the campaign. From my proposal, I looked into creating re-imagined advertisements that used a suggestive method to portray immorality in well known brands. The change between this and my final outcome is that my final pieces show a stronger visual that holds the same aesthetic style which gives the overall campaign a stronger visual element. 

Through the use of my sketchbook, I recorded my work as I did it, using it for annotated research, initial sketches or digital tests, which was a process I found useful for coming up with and developing ideas. This also helped by enabling me to look back and see my progress and also helped me to visually develop my ideas in an efficient fashion by giving a visual platform of design experimentation.

I also would use my blog to reflect on the contents of my sketchbook weekly to help plan out where I could take my work and further my progress. It gave me a good platform to reflectively record my process of design and evaluate each step which heavily assisted in helping me reach the final outcome of this project.

Along with my blog, I also utilised my FMP Action Plan to keep time management efficiently and evaluated my work progress on my blog in terms of the schedule of my Action Plan. Not only did this plan help me keep on track with what went in the sketchbook, but also assisted in allowing me time to evaluate and reflect on my work and solve problems to keep up with the timeframe.

My action plan outlined the basis of each week’s workload, concentrating on a different focus each week. In week 1 and 2, I had scheduled to complete particular pieces of research on each day, which ranged from scheduled gallery visits to primary research, such as the survey I completed based on prior secondary research to attempt to focus my theory down from looking at prior, similar campaigns.

During the Mid Point Review, some of the plans for the second half of the FMP (week 4, 5, 6 and 7) I added in some targets including focussed research based around my change in visual idea which consisted primarily of artist research. Apart from this change, the only added targets for me to complete was the change in outcomes which consisted mostly of time management in terms of dates of completion. This also included added experimentation on both the visual design and the format in which I planned to exhibit my work.

For my final major project, I found myself constantly researching more and more ideologies connecting to my campaign, which started to overcomplicate my design ideas. The initial idea I had for my final outcome was of a collection of reimagined advertisements, and through the course of idea development and initial designs, I found this to be a rather large task to handle.

The change in direction released a refreshing burst of inspiration which had been dragged out of me by the excessive amount of research. From this point, I had a clear sense of the direction I wanted to take my project, using the same theory and campaign idea, by altering what I had originally set out to accomplish.

This also meant I was able to stronger reconnect with my comfortable skill set in typography and use that as the basis for experimentation, which meant I was able to perform a lot better under the specification I had set myself. The final outcome was mostly type based, and therefore gave me space to fill up with development of the idea and experimentation within the use of typography.

Despite having a strong idea of my concept from the outright, for the first two weeks, due to the excess in research, I found it difficult to visualise an outcome to this project. Through weekly group tutorials and booked one-on-ones with various tutors, I was given a good amount of ideas to play with. One idea I had received in an early group tutorial was made after I displayed my research to the group where it was said that I should take properties from each ideology and theory I had researched and make a new one instead of trying to bundle them all together. Not only did this simplify proceeding with this project, but also produced the idea of a campaign-type movement. On another occasion, after reporting back on the campaign idea to various tutors, I gathered ideas from each one to experiment with how I can contextualize my campaign as I had little context to go on apart from theoretical ideas, which I managed to overcome by visiting galleries and looking at artists I had not known of from the advice given by tutors.

If it wasn’t for the group tutorials and one-on-ones I had through the length of this project, I would have found it relatively hard to manage my time well. Saying this, there was the occasional falling behind which I believe could have been avoided if I had begun my design process earlier than I had and scheduled just one week of research instead of two. If this were the case, I feel I would have learnt that even if I did not have a solid idea of what to put down on paper at first, if I had experimented with sketching anything it would have broken me out of the research stage sooner.

I believe this project could have also been a lot steadier if I also had more confidence in what I produce, and don’t aim for something final so early on in the design process. This perfectionist attitude has been helped not only with feedback from group tutorials but also the mentor position the tutors fill which has led me to become more comfortable with experimenting and displaying my work. These changes in attitude have enabled me to complete this project as successfully as I am able to and have greatly assisted in the preparation for next year where I will be doing a Graphic Design degree in Brighton. 

FMP Week 7

This week was primarily aimed at building the exhibition and focussing on evaluating progress and outcomes so far. As I already had three visuals that are nearly at the end of production, I focussed on evaluating what I had done so far. 

Through the 6 weeks of FMP so far, I had worked on my design process and how I can work to be more efficient as well as working on how I produce my ideas overall. The progress of last week, in which I managed to solidify a foundation for a brand and produce three visual outcomes under that brand, I have discovered the helpfulness of feedback and criticisms from others as well as the strength of my own resolve when one idea fails to work as well as I hoped. 

With the final deadline coming up, I also hoped to experiment with my planned exhibition more. One thing I had to complete to fully focus on this was the presentation of my brand and how this was going to be shown in line with my visuals. As the logo had been finalised I worked on how I could display this or possibly further develop this.

Through experimentation with colour, I felt that the logotype I had decided on worked best in just black and white. Although this could be seen as quite plain and boring, I felt that if it were to be any other way, it would distract from the pieces. Also, the fact that this brand is for an art movement, it is more of a signature than a brand logo and therefore the bold black and white allows it work efficiently as that on its own. As this was going to be displayed on a short mission statement, I also decided that the whole brand could be seen as black and white as it is a very straight forward and transparent philosophy that it follows.

Following this, I wanted the layout of the mission statement to be fairly straight forward and not too distracting from the main visuals and so wanted a pamphlet type layout. Due to the simplicity of this piece, it felt like there wasn't a lot of experimentation done, but the result was just as I wanted and needed it to be to fit with my planned exhibition, although the size caused an issue with some of the planned exhibition layouts I had to experiment with. 

Due to this sizing, when planning the layout of the exhibition display, I experimented with the size of the three visuals, cutting one from original size to a A4 layout. Through this, I also thought of other ways I could challenge the concept and further develop the idea. I came across the idea of printing my visuals on acetate and then layering them on top of the mission statement so it became more like a flyer that people could take. Unfortunately, upon trial with one of the visuals printing on acetate, it found that the colour did not come out well and therefore did not do the intricate side of the design too well and diminished the clarity of the messages within the logos.

Getting carried away this experimentation, whilst evaluating my progress with the schedule I had for this week, I found myself struggling for time and so set back on using the original idea of three posters and the mission statement as a part of the layout. Again, because of the size of the mission statement, I had to think carefully whether I wanted to cut one of my posters down a size, or to place the mission statement in a different place.

Through laying out each idea on the board I am using my exhibit my work, I felt that laying out the three visuals in a horizontal line worked best, as the leaflet could be pinned underneath in the way a name plaque would be set in a gallery.

This week, although it had very little set targets, ended up being quite a rush in terms of production and therefore I feel it could have gone better. I am happy with the aesthetic of the mission statement leaflet, although I felt I could have spent more time on this aspect of my final outcome but I still believe it works well for what it is and contributes to the layout of my outcome well.

FMP Week 6

When I brought the work I had been developing last week to a group tutorial at the beginning of this week, I mentioned how this workload of reimagining established advertising campaigns not only pushed me behind schedule but also proved a difficult task to keep with my theme. The theme of transparency I was going for was one that asked a lot of the imagination for both me designing it and the viewer interpretting it. Through this feedback, I showed my collection of mock-ups to a tutor to try and better my process, as well as discussing alternatives.

Through evaluating my progress and acting on feedback given, I decided to try experimenting with an alternate design to see if, not only could it be a viable option in terms of completion before the deadline, but also if it efficiently fit my own set criteria for this project's outcomes.

Going back to an earlier idea, I started to develop a more abstract route to my idea of forcing transparency on brands I will be targeting. The above idea consisted of using the shape of a big brand's logo and filling the shape with words that related to unethical or immoral flaws the targeted corporations are guilty of. Through this development, I was able to fully utilise my research into scandals that surround big name corporations and exhibit them in a clearer way. Being able to more clearly convey my message, I found it a lot easier to get a clearer grasp on how I wanted to visualise my theme.

To start with, I went with the brands of Nestle and Coca-Cola and digitally created a mock-up of the first letter of each to try and get a clearer look into how this idea would end up looking. For both designs, I also used fonts that each brand uses as their primary typeface, with Gotham for Coca-Cola and Helvetica Rounded for Nestle to stick with the theme of the brand displaying a transparency of its own flaws.

As I had just drastically changed my visual outcome idea, I thought it best to get people's opinions on my previous idea and the one that I have just started developing. The response from the various people I asked from my group was that this new idea had a much more direct approach to conveying the meaning of my campaign and had a stronger aesthetic quality as well. 

With this idea in mind, I wanted to then focus on creating my campaign around this, which gave me the idea of altering the idea of a super brand that produced the old idea of reimagined advertisements by moving in a more art movement type of way. Through this, I came up with creating a brand that relied on social media to project the visuals I will be producing. 

For the name of the campaign, I tried to focus on the idea of the philosophical theories in play with this campaign as well as the idea of exhibiting the hidden secrets of big businesses. From a large list of names I thought of myself as well as some suggestions, the names I started sketching up were Brandbusters, The Anarchist Expose, Transparency and hddn actvsm. 

Again, focussing on potential user feedback, the names and also visual sketches that people liked the most were Brandbusters and hddn actvsm. Digitally developing these, I preferred the look of the bold graffiti-style aesthetic as I believed it better symbolised the subversion of corporate advertising. Through evaluation of the digital designs, I found myself fixed on hddn actvsm as it summed up the philosophy of my campaign pretty well and the aesthetic of the typography was big and bold which further added to the effect I wanted.

Finalising the brand aesthetic, started planning out the layout in which I wanted to exhibit my work, and thought a branded mission statement of the campaign could work as a nice addition to a collection of visuals designed around targeted brands. As this was my last scheduled designing week, I held the collection of visuals in higher priority and started thinking about which format I could start designing these in. Due to the idea of this mass media art movement, I thought it best for each visual to be in the same format as, alongside the brand's mission statement.

Deciding on producing three visuals, I set out to create them, all the while deciding on how I wish to display them. Through this design process, I decided on producing three posters which could be used as large billboard-type advertisements as well as sold as posters. The reason for this decision was that, after producing two of the pieces, and experimenting on the layout of each, I found that the artboard I had designed them on in Photoshop (1920 pixels x 1080 pixels) fitted the design well as it portrayed them with a bold impact.

colour experiments

layout experiments

Looking back on the progress of this week from when I am writing this, I felt I efficiently produced the designs with no rush and managed to stick to my action plan well, and have a clear idea of how I wish to exhibit my work. At the end of this week, I now also have three strong visuals that I wish to experiment with but have a fairly limited amount I wish to do with them. Out of all the weeks so far, I felt that this has been one of the most productive weeks and has set me back on schedule.

FMP Week 5

Using last week's research on various brands and the initial sketches I had, I started to focus on one particular design to experiment with how I could further develop the initial idea into something that both connects with my concept and also starts to develop on an aesthetic style from which I can produce a final outcome.

Looking at both visual examples of "culture jamming" and particular articles and statistics, I narrowed my aim down to targetting three brands for varying reasons. The first brand I focussed on was Coca-Cola and their avoidance of corporate tax as well as their use unethical production methods. As I already had the research to base designs for 5/6 brands, this week was fully aimed at producing a primary mock-up for three of them, in the mediums I chose during my mid-point review (billboard, leaflet and web advert).

Working through this, I intended to produce a initial mock-up by effectively altering an existing Coca-Cola advert or at least try to produce a mock-up that looks like it could be an official, existing advert that contains my subversive message. Creating a quick mock-up will also allow me to experiment heavily with it after because once a layout and aesthetic is finalised, I can then use experimentation to make it my own.

After producing this piece, I asked some classmates on their opinion and the general feedback I got was that it worked really well to carry my message and had a nice clean aesthetic which serves the purpose of carrying the message well but could be further developed into a more appealing visual outcome. From this, I want to take a very experimental approach to redesigning the aesthetic of this particular piece without changing too much about it and consequentially overcomplicating the piece and also to keep it looking like a realistic advertisement.

So as to not dwell too long on this particular outcome and produce overkill, I left this piece momentarily to move on to the second brand so I also wouldn't run out of time this week without achieving my proposed outcome of three visual mock-ups. 

The next brand I looked at was American Apparel which I had chosen to focus on for it's use of explicit sexual objectification of its models which exploits the human psyche in what many believe is an immoral way. The use of provocative poses and scantily clad models appropiates the "sex sells" culture of advertising in a way that enforces a negative impact into body image by pressurising the public into falling for their "sex sells" trap by using this immoral shock factor. Their use of solely skinny models wearing very little clothes has been slated before, many labelling the brand as sexist and misogynistic. 

From a quick Google search of the term "American Apparel" this use of sexual objectification is very clear with the horde of barely clothed females in provocative poses that is used to catch the eye of any viewer. Due to my project being aimed at creating a transparent look into the unethical/immoral underbelly of large corporations, I want to force the semi-nude, provocative method of American Apparel to even more of an extreme. For a clothes company, the idea that most models are actually half naked seemed like the property to focus on. My main idea for this mock-up was to see what difference, if any, it would make if the clothes were not on the model at all.

I started this by planning out and executing a nude shoot with a friend of mine with the aim to replace the models in American Apparel adverts with her, who would not be wearing any clothes, American Apparel or not, at all.

Looking at the way that many clothing/fashion editorials, not just American Apparel, I also went the length to airbrush out any "imperfections" on the model and to manipulate the image to enhance particular parts of the body that affects the "sex sells" element of these advertisements.

From this I then went about planning how I would lay this out, as this particular outcome was to be a pamphlet format so would have to look visually good as one but also serve its function well. Just to test this layout, I used an actual existing American Apparel advert as a template to simply replace the picture on them with my own. This was just to test the combination of my photography and the aesthetic of American Apparel branding but also to get a rough idea on how I could develop my own more personalised pamphlet to portray my theme.

In hindsight, the layout of the model next to the clothes wasn't only aesthetically jarring but also seemed too obvious. Although my idea was to create a transparent look at the flaws of each corporation, the over obviousness of what I was doing here connected too much to the original idea of American Apparel's advertising. To successfully force my message across using a nude model, it needs to be done in different ways. 

This is where I started brainstorming alternative ways for me to attack this brand's flaws and ended up using the rest of this week focussing on experimentation on this particular brand. Although this meant I was to fall behind schedule, I believed I could justify this with some of the ideas I got from experimenting with this brand. 

One of those particular ideas was to censor the model, but over something like their face rather than any "sexually" explicit parts. This idea came from an idea to actually remove the model and use a outline of a model instead which is also something I wanted to explore. With the idea of censorship though came an idea that I would develop next week where, using the censorship bars, I would write over them the specific thing wrong with the corporation its targetting. So over American Apparel's nude model's face it would read "sex sells", and perhaps over the Coke Zero can, I add tape with the word "tax" on it.

Although this weeks work has meant I am behind on schedule, it has allowed me to work out a clearer schedule for next week due to knowing what I want my outcomes to be, and have a clearer idea of where they will head for the final FMP show.

FMP Week 4

Due to the mismanagement of time spent on the MARS collaboration project, this week was a massive catch-up week to get back on schedule. It combined tasks from both week 3 which I had not completed and tasks from week 4 which relied on the completion of week 3's outcomes.

Initially, I wanted to take the topic I had focussed on and find an already established label for the medium my focus fits in to well, and therefore looked into the 90s trend known as "culture jamming". Culture Jamming was a tactic used by anti-consumerist socialist activists which consisted of disrupting or subverting media culture by hijacking or parodying mass media in its own medium. The thing that led me to look into culture jamming was the anti-corporate/consumerist magazine Adbusters where avant-garde artists would transform corporate advertisements with subversive messages.

The look into the history of culture jamming and looking at how it has changed over the years into a more multimedia platform as technology has evolved has helped me look at how I can plan my campaign of advertisements and the creation of my master brand by looking at how past examples of culture jamming have reached an audience.

Through this research I also looked at particular artists involved in the culture jamming movement as well as the Adbusters group and found the work of Ron English. Gaining a visual insight into the aesthetics of someone whose work mainly focuses on satirising corporations I compared this to the work on Alan Fletcher, an artist in the 50s known as the Godfather of British graphic design, who revolutionised the aesthetic of corporate advertising. The difference between Ron English's and Alan Fletcher's work helped me to work out how I can produce my own unique form of "subvertisements". Alan Fletcher used a clean, professional yet vibrant and eye-catching aesthetic for the use of corporations to attract an audience whereas Ron English preferred the use of shock illustrations which forced the message very forcefully. Despite this, Ron English's subversion of various cereal box designs gave me the idea to take the official advertisements of unethical corporations and alter them to project my own message rather than adding to them.

                         Alan Fletcher

                       Ron English

I then started to work on some initial sketches to try and get ahead of week 4 and to have some visual mock-ups as a final outcome to this week. I focussed on the subversion of the existing logos of various brands that I know use unethical procedures whether in production, distribution or advertising. This was then able to allow me to go into the Mid-Point Review with some substance to really start experimenting bringing a unique style to my aim.

Through my midpoint review, I got some good feedback to work on, including the idea to outline a message for my overall campaign and an aim to each particular piece, from which I got the idea to look into my master brand idea more as an addition to each piece I design and having the aim of each piece to be specific to the brand I am targetting.

I therefore focussed the last few days of week 4 on expanding exploration of scandals associated to specific brands and to take this into experimentation of idea of subversion. It also helped me to narrow down the target for my final outcome to designing 3 pieces: a billboard; a web design; a leaflet to use as "subvertisements" and then a leaflet outlining my master brands campaign, designed to its particular brand specification.

'MARS' Collaboration Project

During the first week back after Easter Break, we were given the chance to take part in a collaboration project with students from the Lens Based Media course. The brief for this project was quite ambiguos and led us to question the possible outcomes for this project. We had to decide on a group of four, keeping it balanced between Graphics students and LBM students but due to issues with numbers, my group was left with only one LBM student and three Graphics students.

My group consisted of Nagi, an illustrator from Graphics; Amy, a designer from Graphics; Lauren, a photographer from LBM and myself. Due to all knowing each other already, we were able to assign particular jobs to each of us due to our skillsets and set out pretty quickly on developing an idea. We had decided to merge all our ideas for FMP due to their similar connection to mental health and psychology and how these are effected by external factors.

Due to this also being a week mainly used for our FMP, we did not manage our time for this project very well and lost 2 days on just organising research we could put forward to our group and were left to the last day to create a visual outcome and presentation. 

Although it was a new experience collaboration with students from another course, which I believe is a good idea in terms of work due to the opportunity to expand into other mediums I may not be comfortable with but due to the issues with numbers meaning we had only one LBM students, there was not much difference to how we worked and it ended with a mainly Graphic-type outcome. There was also an issue with work ethic from half the group and it ended up meaning we had a very rushed outcome that I was not particularily happy with.

FMP Week 3

Further narrowing down my topic focus was the main objective for this weeks work schedule, and to do so I used my current range of secondary research into branding (i.e. Alan Fletcher), and expanded into looking into the effects of advertising, as this was the main area of exploration in this project. To do so, I separated my research into political theories and art movements to look into corporate advertising and the opposition it faces in social media.

I looked into the use of exploitation of the human mind that many brands use purely for profit from the viewpoint of the theories (such as anarchism, Marxism and Situationism) I had already studied so that I could connect theory to method. Contextualising like this helped to see the effects of ideologies and philosophies in play in society today and how people react to this.

I discovered a website called "Adbusters" which follow and anarchic and situationist approach to satirising modern media and corporate branding through its use of exploitation and manipulation. Through this, I was able to further delve into the Situationist art movement and came across some useful artists to look in to for their radical belief and theories and also their method of satirising corporation by displaying their unethical methods in a very "in-your-face" way.

I then carried out some primary research in the form of a survey which aimed to use the information I had gathered from looking into psychological studies in advertising to gather some raw data to be used to compare and contrast with the artist research I had from more radical art movements and to then connect to designers who work within corporation for profit.

Designing this survey, I attempted to keep the questions quite open so as to gather some real first hand experiences to work from. I also then decided to use the survey as an advertisement in itself, by sharing it on my Facebook profile in the hopes that this could also affect the answers to the survey by showing who (in terms of age, gender, occupation, etc.) actually clicked on the survey in the first place.

Using the results to this survey, I connected the effects described by the people who had filled out this survey to the studies I had looked at that described the effect of advertising and how corporations exploit mentality, often in unethical ways, to gain popularity and profit.

This week went well in terms of keeping to schedule and I was even able to do additional research which was scheduled to be done next week which can now be freed up to add to the design development process.