D&AD

For this project we have been given the chance to work on a D&AD brief, this year for the new blood awards they had a total of 16 clients that all had seperate briefs, after reading through a few of them, the two that caught my eye were the national trust as this brief allowed for a lot of freedom and creativity in the output, and the other that I thought was interesting was the XL Recording brief. This brief stood out to me as I love illustration while it still had the online exhibition which gave me some extra room for creativity which is why I have decided to move forward with the XL brief and start my research.

Reading though the brief the key point seemed to that the submission should consist of one A1 poster along side an online exhibition piece that goes beyond the standard ideas of illustration. The project is based around celebrating things that the company and its artists have achieved such as MIA preforming 9 months pregnant or XL The First Chapter rave compilation's first album release.



Brief Outlines

Target audience- Music Lovers

Challenge- Illustrate an event or series of events from XL Recordings history

Aims- Create an A1 poster and one “illustration” for an online exhibition along with a research document showing work progress

Considerations- Concept is key, think about flexible 21st century illustration that is not held down by the medium, designs must work in both print and digital.



XL Recordings is a small British company that started in 1989, they release around 6 albums a year and work with some world famous acts. Their only studio in London has been painted by Stanley Donwood, who has very cleverly transformed the building in stages so that he could create a gif of the artwork moving around the walls. This great artwork shows that the company are very create and care for the small details. Stanley Donwood has also worked with clients of XL Recordings, Radiohead. One of the briefs this year for the D&AD involves Radiohead and their choice to sell their album “In Rainbows” directly from them for as much as the customer was willing to pay, this meant that some customers downloaded the music for free while those who truly loved the music, ended up paying over the normal album price. This experiment they did grabbed news papers and caused a stir as to whether they were devaluing music, however this shot their album to number one and then went on to win two Grammys for ‘Best Alternative Music Album’.


This is the event that I have decided to chose, and as both this album and XL Recordings have such a strong tie to Stanley Donwood, I will be taking a look at more of his work for inspiration towards this project.

Final Piece

Having made all of the changes I needed from the crit feedback, I have now finished my final visualisation with added scenes.

Crit feedback

After receiving feedback from my peers and tutors, I have decided to make the following changes:

• Change the speed of my animations to better pace the visualisation
•  Add more scenes to lengthen the video
• Make the theme of each scene more coherent
• Add music and a background to enhance the attraction to the video  

Dynamic Visualisation

As part of this project we have been asked to create a dynamic visualisation, here is the first draft of mine ready to show my peers for final feedback before hand in.

Dynamic Visualisation research

To get a good idea of what is effective in a dynamic visualisation and what is less effective, I have been watching similar types of apps that target a child audience. There two stood out for different reasons.

The above app is a puzzle game which is available on both android and IOS, this video shows some highlights from the game and shows you brief navigation skills to work it on difficulty levels, I think it is essential to show the user then app is easy to navigate around. The other thing that this video used which I feel could be effective in my work is the cartoon hand. This means the user can see all of the screen without the distraction of a large hand, this could also be drawn in the style of my app to make it look more in keeping with the design.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHmoCjxl6R8#t=176

This app is a collection of short stories for children, the first thing that strikes me about this video is how much less effective it is with no sound while the puzzle app's video was very engaging with up beat music, this is something to strongly consider when creating my video. This video like the first does a good job of showing the user how to use the navigation and demonstrates how easily you can move through the app which is appealing and I will make sure I carry forward to my own work.

Storyboard

I have created a detailed storyboard of my app which could be sent off to the developers for them to code. Within this storyboard I have added all the details such as how the navigation works and the sound effects that will be included throughout.

Graphic Style

As part of the project, we have been asked to create our own style for the app which differs from the original story. Here is what the cover of the original book by William Bee looks like.

The style is very simple and flat, with minimal colour and no texture. I have decided to flip this on its head and make my style very heavily based around colour and texture. After looking at some different children's books, the style that stood out most to me was from the Lola and Charlie series. In these books, the illustrations are a very good mix of photography, drawing and other textures.

These books however are very well known for their style, so while taking inspiration from these, I do not wish to simply recreate it. My theme will be based around drawings and digital textures to add depth and interest while also being a great stimulator for children with learning difficulties.

To go with the theme of childish, bold and supportive of those with difficulties, I have found a font that has been specifically designed to help people with dyslexia and is extremely easy to read while not looking out of place with my plans. This font is called "Open-Dyslexic" and I feel it will suit my app very well while being beneficial to the users.