GDA PROJECTS

RESEARCH BOOK

by Vladislav Loveyko

ONE WEEK ......... 1-3MAPPING .......... 4-15ICO DESIGN .... 16-37D&AD 2012 ...... 38-42

GDA PROJECTS

ONE WEEK

In the beggining of the second term as a group of students we were asked to answer the question: What is the future of graphic design? We decided to narrow the area for each person in our group and mine was politics, economics and taxes.

The main principe which we got be-fore the start of the research was that we don’t know the future, but we can try to predict it, if we will carefully analyse the present.

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So, I researched my topics and collected a lot of information mostly represented in numbers, which was quite predictable. I decided to show interesting or unusual facts through info-graphics and simplify facts in to short sen-tences, highlighting the numbers which are maybe interesting to know.

Also I find a few interesting examples, which clearly shows how badly designed things can make serious impact on everyone’s life.

POTILICS / ECONOMY / TAXES

GOVERNMENTWHAT WE GIVE?

1. Development of the regions, making them moreattractive as the cultural and touristic place. 2. Increase level of practising designers in education environ-ment.3. Making work for goverment cheaper, even for free.

GRAPHIC DESIGNERSWHAT WE NEED?

1. Reduce taxes.2. Simplify accouniting, at least for small companies.3. Transparent government trenders.4. Help with looking for empty or inhabitat buildings for exhibi-tional space and work.5. Knowledge of laws, rights and responsibilities.

POTILICS

ECONOMY

OWN BUSINESS1. Your own Limited Company2. Sole Trader/ Partnership3. Umbrella - Pay-As-You-Earn company

FUNDING IN FUTURE

- The National portfolio funding programme will provide £1.04 billion funding for a national portfolio of 696 organisations from April 2012.- We will invest £440 million of strategic funding between 2012 and 2015, including two new programmes for Capital and Touring.- A Lottery budget of £202 million is earmarked for this programme for 2011-15.

We don’t know the future, but we can predict it

TAXES

Example of the impact:During the elections in Florida in 2000, vote was making through the hole in the bulletin. Des-ignated holes were arrange in a column in the centre and names of the candidates - on

both sides of it. Many voters who wanted to vote for the Democrats (the second in the left side of the ballot), pierced second hole from the top. How-ever, this meant a vote for the reformists (the first in the right side of the bulletin).

ARTS FUNDING

by Arts Council 2011/2012

Key:Regularly funded...............60%Grants for arts....................9%Development funds............8%Culture & Education............7%Lottery programmes............8%Administration......................8%

SALARY

ACTIVITIES1. Apply for Government ten-ders2. Join business groups3. Develop a marketing list4. Start social networking – of-fline5. Social network online7. Be political

STAFF AND WADGES1. Consider the costs2. Get the pay levels right3. Look at the whole pie4. Pick a pay scheme5. Obey the law6. Merging NIN and income.

QUOTE“The VAT Initiative applies to all businesses which have a turno-ver of £73,000 or above. More than 40,000 small businesses are being targeted by HM Rev-enue & Customs (HMRC).”

DATASHEETSATTACHED

HERE

20%Value Added Tax

www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/start/introduction.htm

ONE WEEK

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ONE WEEK

For our group exhibi-tion we tried to use any possible space and surface and were quite satisfied with the result.

I’m really pleased with the result, because during the preparation process we gathered a lot of diffierent and inspir-ing objects, which helped us to make it more interesting and attractive for the observers. For quite short period of time we gathered quite a lot of informa-tion and as the result important problems were discussed dur-ing the presentation.

That projects made me think and I see a lot of hidden pos-sibilities as a result of cooperation between government and designers.

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MAPPING : BRANDING

MAPPING : BRANDING

After the serie of introduction work-shops to the industry areas, the brief was set. The task was to create a brief by my-self, to ask a ques-tion for the indursty and investigate it.

My area of explora-tion was branding and on the first stages it was quite hard to understand what kind of question I need to ask.

At the start I de-cided to look for the emotional aspect of brand-building and found amazing books related to this sub-ject. But the question wasn’t concrete and the suggestions were to narrow the ques-tion area.

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MAPPING : BRANDING

I understood that for the start it’s vital to have the base. The decision was made to analyse top 100 brands ranking by Interbrand.Than, I determine 4 biggest groups which represent half of the list: - Electronic- Auto- Business Service- FMCG

Then I had a step back and continiued research in to emo-tional branding.

This area looks very interesting for further investigation, but still seems a bit wide for this project. During the research I also discovered such an amazing area like sensory branding and hope to learn about it more.

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Warm Colde m o t i o n a l

Usability

Visual

a t tr a ct i o n

MAPPING : BRANDING

During the introduc-tion workshops we saw interesting exercise, which looks quite useful if it used in a right way. This exercise repre-sented as a cross, where vectors show-ing diffrent values.

In my version, the intention was to divide brands by personal perception in X line (from warm to cold)and com-pare the differences beetween usability of the product (brand) and it’s visual appeal in Y line.

That can be example of experiment which didn’t work. The particular question wasn’t formed, so, I continiued thinking.

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MAPPING : BRANDING

As part of the case studies I collected some identities which looks more than good for me. Thinking about the link between visual representation (iden-tity) of the brand and it’s perception by a person, I continued to develop that idea and it pushed me further!

And the question was formed:How do we read brands?

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MAPPING : BRANDING

Two exercises were created to research the link between the graphic representa-tion of the brand and personal perceiv-ment.For the base, I pick-up one of the biggest (and probably one of the most well-known) group from Interbrand ranking, electronic brands.

Than, I narrowed down the list to 10 of them and tried to choose brands, which logos repre-sented mostly as a wordmark.

The idea was to divide the process of the survey in to 3 stages step-by-step:- Shape- Colour - Typeface

The biggest problem was to cut all the logos fair but still leave distinctive shapes.

Shape Colour Typeface

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MAPPING : BRANDING

After 25 people responded for my survey I started to think about the pos-sible ways of visuali-sation.

Also, it was really important for me to show not just overall statistics, but high-light the most inter-esting and unpredict-able results.

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MAPPING : BRANDING

For the visual inter-pretation of the col-lected data I chose simple lines, divided by colour, with hori-zontal grey lines for support. (If the dif-firence beetwen the results is 75% and 78%, for example, it’s easier to compare them with a visual guideline).

I also tried to order them in a diffirent ways, according to the information they represent.

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MAPPING : BRANDING

At the final piece the order shows the results from the most recognizable brands to the less.

To reflect interesting result I also com-pared percentage of recognition for sans-serif typeface logotypes and logos with serif typeface.

Also, I discovered quite unusual trend that brands which are located below their competitors have higher percentage of recognition, than the top one.

But my results are more related to the visual memory than brand recognition, because logo is an important, but just a part of the brand identity.

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MAPPING : BRANDING

The idea of the second exercise is really simple, but tricky - maybe that’s why it was especially interesting for me to discover.

Average person with Internet connection using Google tens time per day. And everyone knows how their logo looks like.

But if the task will be to colour Google logo in the right order - how many of the respondents will be right?

I decided not to cre-ate mess with wrong colours and just give away 4 Google brand colours - yellow, green, blue and red.

Hopefully, all the people I asked to complete that task had some fun as I did!

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MAPPING : BRANDING

For the visualisation of respond from 50 people I started from human figures show-ing percent of the recognition as link for people’s perception and visual memory.

But I also remember that gathered infor-mation is about 4 colours in 6 letters and it should be represented clear and simple.

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G o o g l e

% false

% true

55 15 35 25 20 10

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Source : Brand color survey

MAPPING : BRANDING

There were few dif-firent ideas which I like and as the result I decided to combine two of them in one.

Firstly, pie-charts were chosen for the visualisation and it’s shape also is a link for inspirational Google Chrome logo.

Secondary, dur-ing the process of gathering data with this exercise I thought about partly coloured logo, which can show the percent of right answers per each letter.

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People response

True color / Percent chosen

55 15 35 25 20 10

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MAPPING : BRANDING

For the final version I decided to put the number in the center of the circle and visually relate it to the part of the pie-chart which shows percentage of recognition of the right colour for each letter.

I really appreciate the fact that as the infographics result also looks like radar, because Google do-ing the same thing - show and help to find the way in the Web.

And I decided to display that on the laptop screen be-cause that’s mostly common environ-ment to meet Google in everyday life.

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ICO DESIGN

ICO DESIGN

Second project was set by industry partner, ico design. Before the first session the brief was released on the blackboard. It asked to “create a name and identity for a new food concept”, healthy shish kebab shop.

There were top 3 competitors listed in a brief and a task to start researching before the first practi-cal session in FdA studio.

So, I grab my camera and went to the city.

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ICO DESIGN

But at the beggining I decided to divide research in to 2 parts and look how brand is represented online and in real world.

So, firstly I analysed websites, trying to count each small details, from menu content to the ways of the communica-tion with a custom-ers.

I think that percep-tion of food brands mostly build around experience which customer get via the product and atmosphere at the selling point. But nowadays, it’s also really important how brand shows itself online and using different tochpoints for interaction and communication with a client (from simple Facebook page or Twitter to possibilities for creation and shar-ing unique content).

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ICO DESIGN

After I got the first impression through the companies web-sites, I decided to compare the experi-ence and have some burritos as well.

After the visits I understood that companies has no particular message and mostly aimed for visual appeal (expect of the food quality).

There is no visual relation between the things a customer can see online and in a restaraunt. Menus, interiour, even food looks and feels dif-firent.

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ICO DESIGN

During the first ses-sion we started to think about nam-ing generation and wide a range of our competetitors to the companies which are “providing lunch in London”, as we were mostly aimed for the lunch take-away.

Even such a big chains as Starbucks, EAT, Costa and Nero was included to the list. Separated in to small groups, we complet-ed cross exercises for better analysis of the market. Also the naming process has been started.

As the result I under-stood that success of the brand doesn’t necessary based on the name, but it’s still important moment for development.

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ICO DESIGN

As analogue method of group research I decided to gather opinions from poten-tial clients - London-ers and made an online-survey where I asked people about their thoughts and feelings about kebab.

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ICO DESIGN

Analysing the results, I divided them in to categories. The intention was to find the negative sides, avoid them and try to turn them in to pluses.

During the surveys and talks I under-stood that most of the people have strong and particular understanding for the word “kebab” and unfortanetly it’s mostly negative.

The decision was made to avoid the fact that it’s kebab, but represent the product as “fast and healthy grilled meat”.

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ICO DESIGN

It was time to deter-mine brand values, which comes from the research:

Healthy, one of the values for the food served, became one of the brand values to transmit the mes-sage that “fastfood” doesn’t always mean “bad for your health”.

Warm, is also one of the values of fastfood , but it also a guide for the atmosphere and emotional aspect of the brand. It should be cozy and hospitable.

Playful - people love fun and seems bored those days. So, if our clients are looking for interaction - we are reliable to entertain them!

Friendly - friendship is not just about parties and jokes, it’s more about support and care.

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ICO DESIGN

Next session was aimed for the results of naming challenge.

From the big list of different possible names I narrowed it down to 7.

It was the most difficult stage of the project, because there I need to made a decision for further idea development.

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ICO DESIGN

After that session, I decided that more research is vital for deeper and better understanding.

Our partners released the information about location. It was Bish-ops gate. For the next step I analysed competitors in the area and all the people who possibly can be my target au-dience - people who love good food and looking for lunch at the Liverpool street station area.

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ICO DESIGN

It was the best time to look for the people in the area - friday lunch. I tried to understand average representer of the target audience, how do they spend their lunchtime, what they are interested in - because my product need to suit them all.

With help of mini interview series I gathered feedback and opinions and get some more things to think about.

Most of the people have around an hour for the lunch and if they are going to have their food outside - it’s usually happens together with colleagues.

They want to have fast, healthy food with a pint of draft beer or glass of wine and in a warm friendly atmosphere.

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ICO DESIGN

There are a lot of diffirent places in the area, with a variety of prices, starting from 5-6 pounds for lunch and till 10-12 maximum.

Most of them are representing food chains and that means that they can work without profit, like it happens with Starbucks some-times.

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ICO DESIGN

At this stage I had a look back for my brand values and tried to create a col-lection of the images which will represent my perceivment of the values.

Also, I thought that it might help me in process of visual language building and made a mosaic from the images I collected.

The patterns and textures was also the thing I looked for.

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ICO DESIGN

Later on, I decided to make a digital scetches for the selected words.

Each option looked like it can be devel-oped in to something more catchy and original.

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ICO DESIGN

For the next stage I had a step back to look one more time for my brand values.

I tried to understood what subvalues can be included to the brand and made a list 5 times bigger than brand values, but narrowed down the list of the names to 3.

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ICO DESIGN

The decision was made to call it Flunch. (FastLunch, ForLunch, etc..)

I like the way it sounds and spells, it’s quite simple, fast to pronounce and has it’s own feeling.

After the name had been chosen, I started to experiment with typeface, bec-uase in my opinion it was important to rep-resent brand throug wordmark logo.

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ICO DESIGN

All of the preferable typefaces were sans-serif, so, I decided to add colour for the type for better com-munication.

The intention was to combine a pallete which will represent one of the brand values.

Instead of the fact that colour palletes were created sepa-ratly, when I put them all together - they were quite similar for each other.

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ICO DESIGN

After another session I got a feedback that name “Flunch” is too narrow aimed just for the lunch-time and it’s better to think about it more.

Except the fact that naming was the most difficult part of the branding process, I got a positive feed-back about this name as well.

So, the situation was quite tricky and if I decided to change the name - it will be my own decision, because there were no possibilites to discuss it more.

And as I like the spelling and pronon-cuation of “Flunch”, I decided to change a bit the visual appear-ance and it become simply “flunch”.

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ICO DESIGN

Before the start of the development pro-cess I looked for the packiaging examples which I like. I really enjoyed the fact that take-away packaging doesn’t need to look like it will leave for a few minutes, but are great pieces of des-ing itself.

Few important things which I understood for my packaging investigation.It should be: - cheap in producing- easy storage- ready-to-go- recycled paper

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ICO DESIGN

For distincitve visual language I created a typopattern which supposed to be made in stamps. According to my idea, there should be 3-4 diffirent stamps, like for salads, main dishes, starters and drinks.

The pattern will be preprinted on the surface of the bag, but the cashier will circle the order on the selliing point (what’s inside?)

There can be also hidden messages inside, information about deals, links to twitter account, whatever. For exam-ple I designed two patterns.

Also I like visual rep-etition effect created by the letters.

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ICO DESIGN

As a background colour is dictated by the material (recycled paper) and perfectly fit in to my identity colours, I implement-ed typopattern for different goods.

One more simple, but effective thing is branded tape which can be used for fast branding as well.

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ICO DESIGN

Based on the ty-pographic pattern I created promotion flyers and business cards.

Also, there are more possibilities in this pattern - design few unique patterns for vertical and horizon-tal format (A3/A4/A5), which allows to brand any image less than a minute without taking designer’s time and client money.

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ICO DESIGN

The thing which I also wanted to imple-ment to the menu design is shown as a white square on the prototype. Short cutted lines allows to change seasonal offers without neces-sary reprinting the whole menu.

It’s quite dark on the City streets, in case of the shadows of skyscrapers - that means that shop sign should be eye-catchy and easy recogniz-able from the lond distance, even when it’s late evening or night.

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D&AD 2012

BriefCreate an original cover illustration for Little White Lies magazine, depicting the main character of one of our five favourite films of 2011.

ConsiderationsEach issue, Little White Lies takes a new film as the lead for its look and feel. Each cover features an illustrated portrait of the film’s main character – simple, iconic and unique. We’ve created a shortlist of our five favourite films of 2011 for you to choose from (please do not submit entries depicting any other films):

Drive, Black Swan, The Tree of Life, Super 8, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

You might want to consider the visual setting, historical/cultural background or key visual images from the film when choosing your approach. You can work in any medium you like.

The majority of Little White Lies cover illustrations depict the main character as the cover star. You will have creative freedom for the background of your illustration, but you should produce a portrait of the main character as the defining focal point.

Each issue we also ask our cover illustrator to include the title of the film in their own typographic style. This could be based on an existing typeface or be an original piece of hand lettering. The typography can sit on top of the illustration or be fully integrated into the composition. You will need to incorporate the Little White Lies masthead into your composition. A correctly sized Photoshop template will be available for you to use – please do not change or re-create the masthead or move its position on the page.

Target audienceLittle White Lies readers are film fans with an adventurous streak. They love cinema in all its forms, but recognise that it exists in a wider cultural tapestry, and get excited about that

bigger picture too.

Mandatory requirements•One illustrated magazine cover, depicting one of the five films listed above.

•Please work to the following file dimensions: 20cm H x 24.5cm W, at 400dpi.

•Your artwork should include your chosen film’s title and the Little White Lies masthead (see guidance above).

•A downloadable Photoshop template is available.

BackgroundLittle White Lies is a bi-monthly, independent movie magazine that features cutting edge writing, illustration and photography to get under the skin of cinema. Because movies don’t exist in a vacuum, we venture beyond the boundaries of the big screen, exploring the worlds of music, art, politics and pop culture to inform and illuminate the medium we love. Bold, beautiful and unique, Little White Lies is a magazine on a mission – to reshape the debate across the movie landscape.

Little White Lies is published by The Church of London, a UK-based creative agency. From our offices in East London, we work alongside a vibrant network of contributors and collaborators on a wide range of projects for clients around the world. We publish two magazines, which embody our passion for creating something of our own, and in doing so connecting with other like-minded individuals.

Further informationSee littlewhitelies.co.ukthechurchoflondon.comwww.dandad.org/studentawards@baby_pencils

DeliverablesUpload images of your work. Please see the Formatting Guidelines PDF for more information.

D&AD Student Awards 2012

Illustration BriefBrief set by: Little White LiesWritten by: Paul Willoughby – Creative Director, The Church of LondonSponsored by: Little White Lies

Deadline for this Brief:Entries for this brief must be submitted by Friday 9 March 2012.

Benefits:Nominated and Yellow Pencil winners will be eligible to interview for the D&AD Graduate Academy, with the chance to undertake a paid industry placement. Winning work will also appear in a digital edition of the LWLies magazine, with further benefits to be announced on our website.

#bp_littlewhitelies

Create an original cover illustration for Little White Lies magazine.

D&AD 2012

Since I missed the deadline for the contest last year, I decided that it’s impossible to miss it in 2012.

I chose illustration brief from Little-WhiteLies magazine, where I’ve been asked to choose one out of “five our fa-vorite films of 2011”.

My choice of movie was Black Swan. I’m not a huge fan of bal-let, but it looked in-teresting, so I down-loaded the movie and watched it.

During the introduc-tion workshops Karl Foster asked about the people who may participate in D&AD and we met later on to discuss the ideas and concepts.

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D&AD 2012

As the brief was aimed for the cover, I had a look for movie posters and interpretation of the covers for releases in different countries for visual references. Also, ballet become much more interest-ing than I can expect and I started to look for the plastic of the dancer and unique, dramatic, solemn atmosphere between scene and observers.

Light, shadows, mirrors, reflections, white versus black, black and white - that’s all the things I was looking for inspiration.

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D&AD 2012

The Black Swan website was really useful for contextual studies. Some things just become making more impact, having deeper meaning for me after the reading through interviews with the director, Dar-ren Aronofsky.(Requem for a Dream, The Foun-tain).

Also I used the information about the mirrors for further visual references.

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D&AD 2012

My experimentation was aimed for repeti-tion of the make-up’s distinctive shape, which is also the same shape as the swan wings. Also I quite like the black and white texture which is visual reflection of white swan becom-ing black.

After I got satisfied with the result, I started experiment with reflections and mirrors. It pushed me forward and made an impact on the development of the work.

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D&AD 2012

The final version of the image for the cover based on re-flected stencil made with brush and black ink, making a woman face in the center.

The fact that the shape is also re-flected is one more visual link to the dual identity of the main character and role of the mirrors in the movie.

The typographic part is based on the typeface, which looks quite similar to the original one in the title of the movie and it’s cutted in to pieces buy it’s own copy which is reflect-ed and overlayed on the top. I think that it’s nice reference for mirrors in the movie (especially broken).

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Please contact with me if you want to know more.

Skype: vladislav_loveykoTwitter: @vladislav_loveE-mail: v.loveyko1@lcc.arts.ac.uk

THE END

Thanks for your time!