Saturday 14 June 2014

Copyright

Copyright is a very important and sometimes unnoticed part of design. It is a tricky issue with a lot of grey area. Especially now with the web the way it is a sharing being such a huge part of the creative community.

Copyright is in place to create the work of inventors, artists, designers, poets, writers, brands etc. It 's goal is to stop people from directly copying the work of others and claiming it to be their own. This is of course bad would lead to chaos. You could copy someone's invention and sell it for yourself to get money that should be rightfully theirs. Or downloading someone's album and re-uploading it claiming it's all you and making money/gaining notoriety. 

It is an essential pillar in the way that creative industries work. It ensures that your work is safe and that you get all the benefits and rewards you deserve from your work. However, it cannot control every use of your work as that would infringe on other (arguably more important) laws and principles. For example the principle of free speech. Something hugely important in western civilisation. Imagine quoting a film or singing a cover of a song and being sued by the creators for everything you own. The principles and rules that overcome this are called fair use. These are a series of scenarios and conditions wherein using someone else's work is acceptable and no action can be taken against them.

One of these principles mean that you are allowed to report on the work in question or create a review for example. You can show clips from a film or snippets of music from an album within a review and pass comment on the contents. You can give a summary of the plot and even reveal the whole storyline. This is allowed within the rules of copyright.

You are also allowed to create a parody of said piece. Taking the basic ideas and principles present, maybe even the script or original artwork. They make changes to make into something of your own. This is popular on the internet and also allowed within the rules of copyright.

One thing that is quite a contentious issue on the web, and in particular on YouTube, is the issue of using someone else's work but not for commercial gain. The main reason for copyright as I mentioned earlier is to stop others benefitting unfairly from other peoples creations. So if you upload a video you've created with someone else's music for the soundtrack and you put it up for monetisation and make a profit from it. It could be argued that the song had a say in that happening. This can lead to all of the audio being removed from your video or maybe even the video being taken down and restrictions being applied to the account.

You can get around this by uploading the video but revoking the monetisation options. This means there will be no adds displayed and no money made on your part. Some companies however, still take action against content creators who do that. This is unfair and not supported by copyright law. It is within the boundaries of fair use to upload someone else's work and have it not be for commercial gain on your part so long as you credit the initial creator of the work and state you do not own anything to do with it. If anything that is promotion for their work that is free however, some larger companies do not see it that way and have a rather outdated series of ideas about copyright and the Internet in general.

It is prevalent in design where brand identity is very important. Creating something unique that stands out is important and takes a lot of time, effort and resources. Copyright is there to protect any logos, slogans or jingles a brand may produce as that is tied into a product or company that would have certain values and ideals to uphold.

Copyright does however, have a time limit. It varies from country to country as to how long the copyright will last. This is a picture demonstrating those times and which countries they apply to:


After the time of publication, release or the copyright holder's death the clock starts ticking. Most countries average a time of around 70 years. This means that 70 years from the initial copyright the work will no longer be governed by copyright and will pass into the public domain. This means that it can be used freely by anyone and is not really technically owned by anyone.

There are a lot of talks constantly about the length of time and they are liable to change all the time. There are also issues with big companies owning individuals work and extending the copyright past reasonable points but they are discussions for another day.

For now I will leave you with a playlist of music that is now in the public domain and as a result completely free to enjoy and use!

Summary of the Final Second Year Project

I really enjoyed this project. It was I think the most challenging one we have had so far and I was put under a lot of stress and pressure with it but I am really happy with everything I put forward for it and I think it turned out better than I was expecting. 

Obviously the main thing that springs to mind for me is my computer troubles. That really threw about 20 spanners in the works for me but I am glad I was able to resolve the issue and power through it. If I had handed over all my responsibilities to others I think it would have been a bit of a let down for me. Like I said I am proud of everything I created for the show. I think it brought a professional edge to all the video assets and added another level of flair to the proceedings.

I enjoyed the enormity and challenge of the task itself to. Managing a show single handedly from start to finish is a huge undertaking for any group of people. The fact that a bunch of people who have done it for the first time were doing it is one thing. The fact that we are all students is something else entirely. And despite the complete lack of experience and expertise we managed to pull it off. There weren't any major disasters really and it went off without a hitch. In fact it may have gone as smoothly or even more smoothly than the years before with the faculty managing proceedings. I think that is a huge success for us and we should all be proud of that.

I feel like my inout to the show was important too. I felt as though I had a definite role to play throughout. I initially drove a lot of the creative design processes forward in terms of name generation and logo design. I was one of the only people actually suggesting ideas and critiquing them. I then also after delegating my role as head of branding stayed involved and tried to make everything as good as possible. I also was there to help with decision making and make sure everything was fair.

When things started to get heated and problems started to arise I felt as though I did well to try and quell the mood and put out fires. I stayed professional throughout and tried to control everything when people around me were loosing my heads and I am proud of myself for that.

I feel like I was one of the major players in the project and a lot of people came to me for advice and suggestions. I may not have been the front man and the main driving force but I was an integral cog and had quite a part to play. Although the video side came together late in the day I am very proud of it and felt like it was the icing on the cake for the whole of the show.

Once again. This project was enjoyable and I learnt a lot of lessons from it. I feel as though I have grown as a designer and as a person and am tentatively looking forward to next years show to give it another shot but this time with a years experience and last years show under my belt.

Floor Projection

One idea that came later in the process of designing and thinking about assets to project was a looping video that would project onto the floor. I thought this would be a great idea as it adds a little flair and interest just as you walk through the door that would attract attention and engagement from everyone immediately. However, I was aware that it could easily be annoying and tedious if it looped very quickly and was bombarded with movement. So with that in mind I set about creating an interesting, engaging yet subtle piece to project onto the floor in front of the main entrance and this is what I came up with:


I think it turned out really well. The black background means that no light will be projected there essentially making the black space transparent. this makes it so that only the elements in colour will show up on the floor. 

I wanted to go with a simple, handmade sort of style with it. This style has been present with all the video assets I have created. They all have a tactile, physical aesthetic and tone what with the sounds of paper and rustling that is tied into each of them. With that in mind I wanted to make it look as though all the text was written on and then rubbed out. Either that or physically placed into the scene. This goes along with all the stings used in this piece as well. They all appear in an organic manor and disappear in that way too. There are no fades or impossible effects. They are all physical and tactile.

With that in mind I wrote the text out using my chosen font and then used a stroke effect to make it appear as though it had been written on. I used the pen tool to tract out a quick path that would cover the whole sentence. I then made it only have a black stroke wide enough to cover the pixels that made up the word. And then went into the shape options at the top of the screen and added a "Trim Paths" effect. This added a start and end property to the stroke that could be manipulated with keyframes. I then simply had to animate the start keyframe from 0% to 100% and that would create the effect of the line moving along its own path until it reached the end where it took up no pixels. This would be slowly revealing the word in an organic manor and create the illusion of it being written on by hand.

This same technique was used to create the erasing effect. A much thicker stroke was drawn on with the pen tool in a zig-zagged line. This was then animated in the same way except this time I animated the stroke on instead of off. This meant that as the stroke came into being it slowly wiped the text off the screen. It is a simple effect that didn't take much time to set up yet really added a lot of depth and realism to the motion and a lot of life to the text. When motion blur and subtle amount of fast blur were added as well it really finished it all off and made it look really nice.

Once again I am really happy with how this came out. Two minutes I think is a perfect amount of time. It isn't so short as to become annoying and tedious yet also isn't too long so that some visitors miss the points of interest. It is engaging enough throughout without becoming annoying which is a fine balance but one that I think I managed to strike well.

Finished Showreel

I have now finished the showreel for the Dots Per Inch show. It was challenging because of the somewhat off kilter and hard to read bead and tempo that the song had. I found it more difficult than say a rock or dub step song where there is a predictable, consistent beat to edit to. The mood of the music was also quite vague and difficult to match however, I think that I managed it and I am pleased with the results so without further ado, this is the finished showreel:


As you can see when compared to the original draft I uploaded a few posts ago, it is a lot tighter and fits in more with the song. I have also taken out duplicate students pieces and added in more variety. No ones work is shown more than once and a wider variety of students are present in the reel.

I am really happy with how it all came together. I think that stings and titles work really eel to bookend the piece and they work really eel with the chosen song. They are somewhat understated and unique. I also like the change in pace and intensity when the drums kick in. The reel really kicks up a gear and starts to gain momentum. I like my edit of the music track itself too. There is a cut in the track on one of the drum beats that shortens it drastically and skips out a few bars. It is undetectable yet does a lot of make the piece flow better. I think it was an important move. There are also a lot of subtle timing changes by adding freeze frames and subtly speeding pieces up. These two are undetectable and add a lot of weight and professionalism to the piece as a whole I think.

Overall, once again I am very happy with the final product. I saw it as quite a challenge as all the work was extremely varied in length, quality and tone yet I think I managed to combine them all together quite well in a sleek little introduction that ties into the core themes and ideas of the show and represents everyone involved fairly.

Showreel Pack

As I mentioned in an earlier post I am not the one in charge of creating the full showreel containing everyone's full pieces of work. That task was given to Rob; a teacher at the college. For consistencies sake we thought it important to develop a theme and identity that would be present across all media created for the show. I would be creating the showreel's 30 second intro and another piece to project onto the floor.

To create a sense of cohesion throughout all the projected media I set about creating a pack that would contain all the show's branding identity. I picked out a font family to use, a logo that Jess created and a I also created a set of lower thirds animations. They were based off the stings I posted about earlier. I placed all of these assets within a folder that contained an After Effects composition. That way when I uploaded that folder to Dropbox and set it to Rob it would all link up and the AE composition could be opened at his end and function the same way as when I last saved it. This is the folder I sent to him:


And this is the contents of the folder:


This folder contained everything needed to manipulate the assets and animations I created for the lower third sequences. I created various compositions at different levels that could each be edited to create different lower thirds. All the animations were already done and ready to go. All that Rob would have to do it add the names of each of the students and render out the sequence. The font and sound assets were all positioned in the correct file paths from the AE file so all he'd have to do was open it and hopefully everything will be linked and functional. 

After sending it to him he said there weren't any major issues and everything worked fine. The lower thirds were quick and easy to edit and everything worked as expected. The one hiccup is that I had forgotten to link one of the sound asset files and place it in the pack but it wasn't very important as it was for stings Rob wasn't needing to use anyway. The main one had all the sound assets in place and that's all he wanted to use so overall, a successful process!

Wednesday 11 June 2014

Poster Submission

I had forgot earlier to show the poster that I had designed for the show, I only showed the original concept. Well here it is:


As you can see it is very similar to the original concept. I like the dots and the sparseness present in the design and I wanted to keep that however, I felt as though just the dots was just a tad under doing it. So I found an effect within Illustrator called "Pointalize". This effect takes colours and turned them into little points of colour. It will blend different shades of that colour along with white space to create an overall shade and the end result is very pleasing. 

The shape and idea came about through various attempts of trial and error in the early brainstorming process. I then discovered and employed the new found filter to add some polish and I am very pleased with the outcome. Again this design wasn't chosen but it was one of the finalists and was praised by a few of my classmates. I am happy with it and it was good practice. It was an attempt at a messy, unkempt image and I think it went quite well.

Tuesday 10 June 2014

Dots Per Inch Showreel

All of the FDA students have a shared FaceBook page where we can chat and organise various things. It's really handy for communicating on these shared projects when we are only in University twice a week. I was able to utilise it recently for the showreel to make a crucial decision. What music track we wanted to use. 

When working on a showreel I like to have the music already in place and cut together. For me it is the only way to work. You can see where all the beats, and as a result cuts, will be and get a feel for the tone, pace and mood of the song and as a result showreel. You can see when important moments should occur and when shifts in tone should take place. 

This makes getting a good track that fits roughly an overall tone that the work echoes important. This in turn made the task itself very difficult. There was such a wide variety of work to cut together it was difficult to find a song broad enough to cover it all yet consistent and engaging enough to hold interest and hopefully do the work justice. However, I found a few that I liked and pitched my favourite one to the group. They all said they liked it and I felt happy with it so I proceeded with that song. The song was "A Walk" by Tycho:


I love this song. It is calm and spacious. It seems like it should be simple and plain yet there is quite a complicated rhythm and almost off-putting structure to it. It makes it interesting to listen to and just gives it something more. It is more complex and layered because of it. I liked that about it. It stood out for that reason and would suit the work perfectly.

So, with the song picked out, the stings created and the work collated I got to work on creating the showreel. It took me a while to get my head around the timing of the song because of the aforementioned beat irregularity but after a bit of tinkering I got it to a stage where I felt ready to share it to receive feedback from the group. Here is the first draft:


Now this is unfinished. It is just to see what everyone thought about the song choice with the work and the overall pacing/stings. So I posted it to our FaceBook page to get some feedback on it:


It seems to have been well received however, there was some confusion over the purpose of this showreel. This is a tighter cut of everyone's work culminated together and cut to music. Rob is creating the full showreel with everyones work in full.

There were some helpful suggestions though and I will get working on them imminently.

Stings for the DPI Showreel

Before starting work on the showreel, I set about making some short stings both for me to use and to turn into lower thirds graphics for Rob who would be compiling the full length showreel containing everyones full pieces of work. I used After Effects and a logo file that Jess created in Illustrator. This is the logo that I had to work with:


She gave me both a PNG file and the original Illustrator file. I thought that I could add interest and animation to each of the squares and so opted to import the Illustrator file into After Effects as a composition. This means that each of the layers will be separated out into layers within After Effects and can be animated and manipulated independently. So I first opened the Illustrator file and made sure that each bow was on it's own separate layer to begin with. Which they weren't... thanks Jess. So, once I had made them all on separate layers I was good to go.

I imported them in and set about creating three different animations. Each one would be 5 seconds long and for the most part employ a different idea or gimmick. I decided to do one simple pop in animation where each square pops in one after the other. One where one cube flies over and produces the others. And one where the title cube flaps out and flops down the the other cubes fan out from behind.

I got to a point where the animations were complete but they were really lacking sound. So I broke out my Zoom H6 and got to recording some sound assets. I really enjoy this process as it allows me to add a whole other layer to my work and allows me to really play with the viewers attention and feelings. I can accentuate certain parts and smooth over others. Sound is really important with motion graphics too as it adds so much grounding and plausibility to the motion. It really is essential. Anyway, after a bit of toying around with the sounds and some finessing; this is what I produced:




As you can see the sound really helps to add personality and depth to each animation. It goes a long way to completing the effect and adds a lot of the charm. My favourite of the three is definitely the first one. "Grow and Shuffle" I called it. It has the most intrigue I think. It came together really nicely and the sound effects work really well and cohesively.

And now that I had a few options for stings, I could move onto the showreel.

Possible Fix

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my computer was having serious issues with it's RAM management. It meant that I couldn't do any of the scheduled work and may have had to forfeit creating the showreel. Well, thankfully, I think I have discovered a solution. My classmate Jake mentioned he had had a similar problem and suggested a workaround that had helped him.

The problem he was having was that Mavericks was indexing his entire computer to make the spotlight search function more efficient. The computer was writing and remembering a file path to every single facet of the machine which is quite a labor intensive task and thus requires a lot of RAM. All I had to do was go into system settings and stop spotlight from indexing everything. I left on files and videos because spotlight is handy of that but I turned off everything else. And hey Presto! It seems to have done the trick. Touch wood that was all that was happening but as far as I can tell my computer is back to normal. I have downloaded the app "Memory Clean" to keep an eye on the RAM usage but I seem to have about 2GB free when not running anything whereas before (whilst the problem was in full swing) I would have had around 8MB of free RAM storage without any programs open at all. So, a marked improvement. 

With this I think that I am able to create the showreel. After Effects and Premiere Pro only use about 200MB of RAM each until it comes to RAM previewing or encoding a video but I feel confident my computer can handle it now. Which is of course a huge relief. So, fingers crossed, I can create the showreel for the show myself.

Finished Website

My website for the purposes of this project has reached completion. I am yet to add a contact section however, that will be coming shortly. I need to wrap my head around PHP and I don't feel confident enough to give it a crack considering the time constraints. Apart from that though I am really happy with the site. It is fully responsive and supported by the major browsers. It also works on my iPhone, iPad mini and 2nd generation iPad. The web address can be found below:


I really like the design. It is simple, elegant and functional. I think that the red really adds to the design grabbing the eye and allowing for visual flair and fidelity. The monochrome overtones also make for a sophisticated, sleek and professional finish which I think compliments my style as a designer well. I don't do messy, my preferred style is simple, geometric and symmetrical. That is where I feel at home and I feel like my website reflects that well.

Now down to the technical side of things. At desktop screen sizes the website looks as the screenshot I posted earlier. The navigation is in a row in the footer element and the design page has three columns for the images:




When moving down to iPhone sizes a few things have to change to allow for full functionality and ease of use. The first and most important thing is that the navigation switches to a slide out menu that can be toggled with a button that protrudes from the bottom of the page:



It is difficult to see from the images above but the menu in it's normal state sits at the bottom of the page as just an arrow. When clicked the full menu slides out from the bottom and the user can choose their destination. 

Other than the menu the only other changes are responsive scaling of all the video elements and the logo/pictures on the design page jump down to smaller size. Along side various small tweaks to margins and sizings elsewhere. This is the difference:




The menu bar is also drastically reduced in height to help keep as much real-estate free on the iPhone's screens. Particularly for earlier iOS devises with shorter screens than the iPhone 5. I found that even on the iPhone 5 with a taller menu button a lot of the content was hidden behind it.

Once again I am very happy with how the website came together and I think that it is a very strong asset and tool for my personal promotion. The videos fit in with the style as does my design work. 

And just to be clear, the best way to see the responsiveness and all the little nuances is to visit the site with the link above and play around with re-sizing it and clicking around.

Sunday 8 June 2014

Personal Portfolio Website

As the more keen eyed amongst you may have noticed, I had placed a web address at the end of my showreel. As my showreel was nearing completion I thought of including a web address as it would look right and be a good way to promote a website. I then thought to search domain names and see what was available. I used One to search and find www.danielmole.co.uk. I thought I should purchase it now to ensure it's validity when posted at the end of my showreel.

It only cost roughly £10 and was pretty much a no brainer. With the web address sitting there paid for and the showreel complete I decided I might as well start to code a website. I began by looking on Behance for inspiration and stumbled across a post about a website in production for an architectural company called Anker:


The design of the site was beautiful. Sleek, modern, subdued, elegant, delicate. It really inspired me and drove me to want to create something in a similar style. The logo I have previously showcased derived from seeing this website. So I layer out a colour scheme very similar to the Anker colour scheme however, I wanted to add another, brighter more vibrant colour as a tool to highlight, separate and add interest. I decided on a soft red as it was engaging and bright and yet still quite fitting and subdued. I'm not sure what it was about it. It just fit. It was bright and vivid without being distracting or looking out of place.

And so after a bit of tinkering and a custom thumbnail on YouTube this is what I ended up with:


The themes prevalent in the Anker can be seen in the page I have created. However, you can see the use of the colour red just to add a little bit of flair and intrigue. I will review the site further as it approaches completion however, I am very excited about how it is progressing so far.

Computer Troubles

A serious problem has occurred with my computer. It has literally kept my iMac out of action for over a week. The problem is a bug in the latest release of OS X Mavericks that other people have encountered before me. It is to do with how Mavericks manages RAM allocation. It basically results in a function called "kernel_task" using all of my RAM even with no programs or files open and active. It will eat every last bit of RAM and then bring my computer to a grinding halt, forcing me to restart just to regain any function. This of course restarts the cycle allowing me 2-3 minutes of usage time before again my computer comes to a halt and I have to restart.

This issue has meant that I couldn't even open Premiere Pro let alone edit within it. I have spent all the time that my computer has been functioning either looking for a solution to the problem or messaging for help. This has resulted in me missing a lot of emails and deadlines. It has really thrown a spanner in the works. The main thing is that I haven't been able to progress at all the with production of the showreel. 

I am discussing with the class in with faculty in the college about handing the task off to someone else as it means that I cannot produce a thing at this moment in time. I will have to see how things progress.

My Showreel

I have now finished my personal showreel showcasing my personal work along side some university projects. I cut it to the song by "Lower Than Atlantis" that I mentioned in a previous post and I am really happy with how it has turned out. This is the showreel here:


Again I am really happy with the song choice and the logo I have created. I think the change in tempo and intensity within the song is matched really well by the change in pace in the video work I am showing. The first cut with the heavier guitar line and intense vocals works really well along side cutting from black to me running through the forrest.

All the typography is delicately balanced against the background and I like the composition of all the shots and how they go together. I think it is quite an accomplished piece of work that does justice to my work. I love the song choice too I think it is perfect and represents me really well. Overall I am really happy with how it all came together and think that it puts across a really strong professional image which is exactly what I wanted it to do.

Set Backs

This end of year show is not only for us. It is also to promote and showcase the BA's work. For this reason we need to be in regular contact with them as each decision should be run past them as well. We need to divide the work up equally and showcase a fair amount of print and motion work. This is where one of the biggest problems has raised it's head. We cannot get access to the BA's. There has been a change in the way our year has been structured that meant that we have started this project earlier than usual. We also have a whole load more responsibilities within the project as a whole.

The BA's are finishing up their major final, personal project at the moment and do not have the time to talk to us about submissions and design choices. This puts our group in an awkward spot as we have to make decisions on their behalf to progress. It's either that or sit around and wait for them to be ready. That isn't really an option so we are going to have to plough on without them somewhat. I can see this having the possibility to cause some friction further down the line.

Saturday 7 June 2014

Personal Identity

With editing the showreel I wanted to create some graphics and elements that I could use within it that would become a kind of brand identity. A simple logo and colour scheme and so on. As is well established at this point. My key trait in design is simplicity and cleanliness. I like simple, geometric design with little going on. Just getting across what is necessary. With that in mind I created a very simple logo:




This is about as simple as it gets. It is merely my name with my two favourite parts of digital media above it. The two things I wish to showcase. This works really well in video as it is sleek and elegant and also because of these two traits it is very well suited to a wide variety of other uses. Business cards, fliers, websites the lot. Obviously the "video & design" isn't essential and just the name would work on it's own. This is what it looks over the first shot in my showreel as it stands at the moment:


It looks really elegant and sleek. I like the unnatural look the serif font has in video. You would usually see a sans-serif font to title a video but I think that the serif creates a visually arresting style. The fact that no motion is applied to the text also helps to retain it's readability.

As for a colour scheme to go with the identity, I wanted to go with something professional, clean and modern. For those reasons I decided to go with a monochrome scheme. Sticking mainly to Greyscale colours and one primary colour. The colours will predominantly be white with very light greys and a mid to dark grey to compliment/act as font colour. The red will be bright and vibrant leaning towards pastel slightly and remain uniform throughout my designs. It can act as a highlighter or just to add interest and flare to say a webpage.

Personal Promotion

I had been taken off head of branding and put into head of video. This meant that the pressure was off me for a little while as the video content couldn't be produced until the BA group had been contacted and their resources pooled. This meant that I could begin to get on with my own personal development. Working predominantly in video I decided to create a showreel as apposed to a website. I can then always go back and create a website at a later date if there is any time later on. 

I really enjoy making showreels as I get to edit to music and that is something that I feel really lets me express myself. This is a topic I think is key. Expression. If you go on YouTube and look at any number of showreels you can see that they are edited to virtually one or two different songs. There are the indie, folksy songs and then the electronic, even dub step songs. I didn't want to fit into the norm really with my showreel. I am a huge fan of heavy rock and alternative music. I've always wanted to create a professional showreel to a rock track I actually like as I feel it adds another level of personality and expression to my already personal and expressive work. For this reason I wanted to find a song which I like personally, would work well in a showreel and would reflect my style and personality. There were a few I considered but after listening to them I almost immediately settled on "Mike Duce's Symphony No.11 In D Minor" by "Lower Than Atlantis". 


It has a really solid beat and tempo and has a really nice change of pace throughout the song. I listen to it all the time whilst working and I don't think I've heard it used in this way before. Now that I had the song it was time to get to editing. I have all the videos I have been a part of on my hard drive and all of my uni submissions too so it was just a case of placing them all in the editor and seeing what went where.

My Poster Submission

My original idea was created to get my vision for the show across. I had already developed it somewhat for the initial display of poster ideas however, now with another week to further expand upon our ideas I decided to try something new that I had been looking at for a while and this was pixel art. I absolutely adore this style of art and have been wanting to give it a crack for some time now. My favourite example of pixel art was in the game Fez.


This is a game I had been following for a while and had not been able to play. I love the art style and music. It has such an inherently happy, innocent tone to it which oozes out of every pixel and note in the game. I wanted to try and create something in a similar style and so tried to learn how to create pixel art. This is what I managed to create:


It turns out that pixel art is extraordinarily time consuming. Just creating that house took me the better part of a week. My plan was to create an entire town in grey with a central coloured building highlighting where the show was taking place and it was a major point of interest. However, after the amount of time it took me creating this house (by manually placing each pixel with the pencil tool in Photoshop), I didn't really see it as a viable poster idea. I then migrated back to my initial idea.

I originally had the name of the show written out in a semi-hand-written font with some dots in the background. I refined it a little to create this:


I really liked this. It was simple, engaging and very flexible. I could see it being utilised in the showreel on on the various stickers and invited we would have to create. It was already it's own logo and had so many possibilities and uses within a branding context. This was the idea I wanted to push.

I took my designs into uni and we had a class showing with discussion of all the various ideas. There were a lot of different styles some going down the 8-bit pixel route too swell as others going down a hand drawn style and various others. My idea suffered I feel from spending too long trying to create that damn pixel house and I think that my other design suffered as a result of the lack of time I was able to devote to it. We then eventually decided to go with Jess Hislop's design and so she became the head of branding.

Her design was very hand drawn and personal. Very Jess. She has a keen eye for making imperfections and chaos seem organised and symmetrical. It is crazy and a skill I don't think I'll ever possess. Her design contained an image representing everyone in the group along with each of our names. It looks very homely and hand made which is something that I think fits the name really well and I am happy that that was the design selected.

Dots Per Inch

The few days to go away and brainstorm branding ideas was not fully utilised by the group I feel. Not everyone went away to create images to get across an art style they wanted to push for. There was however, a few people from each camp who created designs. They were very rough and ready, just merely to illustrate the idea we had been going for in our heads and try to get down a physical entity to try to help others visualise it. After getting back into uni there was a discussion and some ideas shared and in the end we decided upon Dots Per Inch. I feel as though it was the tutors favoured choice as it held up on it's own and the "Really Good Bullshit" name was immediately disqualified in their opinion because higher ups in the college and uni would be attending the show and that name didn't really put across the best image.

So with the name decided upon it was time to divvy out roles and responsibilities. This was quite an important stage of the process as it made every part of the group an integral cog to the success of this show. Each aspect was important as the next. There were many sections to consider: invitations, drinks, social media, branding, logistics, etc. Each student would be in a category and have various roles within each division. I was put in charge of branding as my poster design was the strongest of those that initially created Dots Per Inch branding. This had a large part to do with the fact that I was one of the only ones to attempt to create a poster for that side of the fence.

We were then told though that everyone had to submit a poster design. So I thought it would be best to do it as soon as possible so that whoever had the strongest poster as voted for by the group would take the helm of branding and be responsible for creating all the graphics and images for the show. So now everyone would have a week to create a poster for the show and we would then come to a democratic decision as to which is the strongest. Then that person would take the lead role within branding whilst it was early enough to do so.

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