End of Year Show 2019 Branding Internal Collaborative Brief - Initial Ideas

After research, we all decide to start visually exploring and presenting our ideas. We all had a slightly different idea of how our exhibition branding/concept would look, so we all first started working individually on some visuals. After a little while, we all came together and started working alongside each other, so that we could bounce around ideas and develop the initial ideas further with each others feedback. The way this collaboration worked was that various elements of the branding came together through group discussion, and no one single person came up with all the ideas or design elements.

My Initial Ideas

From the research and our group discussions, I started to explore some visual elements that could become the foundation for our branding. I focused mainly on the moon and its texture, as well as it's relationship with Earth. I also looked at the idea of maps and landscape contour lines, and started to play around with that. 

An 'Image Trace' of the moon textures proved to look too literal, and did not represent the idea of exploration and the unknown as well as we had intended it too. We soon dropped the idea of moon textures and went for something more abstract and subtle.

I looked into simple outlines of the moon and earth, and explored through layout the connection between the too. Although I thought this looked very visually pleasing, I soon realised that including the Earth within the branding would be too confusing for the audience, and actually does not help communicate our branding concept. Here the focus is taken away from the moon, which in not what we wanted.

I started to look at landscape/map contour lines. I found that this looked very visually pleasing, as well as did a good job at representing the moon and it's texture but in a far more simple and subtract way than the 'Image Trace' designs did earlier.

I continued to explore the map/landscape contour idea. This textured seemed to work even better than the previous one. This was because this one had a bit more detail in it, and represented the moon and it's uneven surface better than the previous contours. Although here the idea of map contours was not as literal because it did not contain elevation numbers, I thought that this worked even better and made more sense, because in reality we do not know all the elevation numbers of the moon surface.

Keeping the moon surface contours I created, I decided to explore colour. We had discussed that we may want to include one bright colour within our branding so to make it stand out more. I decided to look at typical space-associated neon colours such as blue, green, pink and yellow. Although these colours are not actually present in space or the moon, they are however have been made popular by film and fantasy culture, so they still associate and represent space to our audience. I choose to use these colours  because I thought that even though we are going for a more subtract and subtle approach towards the space theme, we could still try and implement it into our design decisions as much as we can without going too far. Colour, I believe is always a good tool at doing that. 

Here I started to try and visualise the main/most important format that our branding will need to be applied to, the poster. I started looking at layout and how my moon surface contour design could be applied onto the A4/3/2 poster so that it was visually focused on, but also left enough room for typography and the information that needed to go on the poster.

My group and I really liked this idea of moon surface contour lines, so we all decided to explore this idea further. I went on to look at ways to possibly implement colour into the contour lines (images below), by placing existing space imagery and illustration into the lines. Although this looked very aesthetically pleasing, we decided that we should keep the moon design more simple and clean, so that it does not overpower the typography when we come to add that into the designs.

 

 

 

Group Initial Idea Development

After we decided to continue with the moon surface contour idea, as a group we contributed into the development of the first visual graphic we wanted to create, the poster. We started to add text/copy onto the designs. We started playing around with layout, type and colours. Below are explorations and designs from all group members, but throughout we all discussed the various elements within the designs, made suggestions and gave feedback.

We decided that the moon surface contour could be simplified even further, and so we created another design. This one was much simpler and more abstract, but we liked how it communicates fluidity and a sense of height/depth/elevation without being too technical. Although the imagery of a moon  was slightly lost in the simplicity, we were not worried because accompanied by the phrase/exhibition name 'One Small Step', we believe the context would become clear for the audience.

We started to play around with the layout of the moon graphic and the text copy that needed to be on the poster. We wanted to find a layout/composition that would not only be visually pleasing to look at, but also aided in the communication of our concept. One element we wanted to ensure stayed constant was that the moon graphic always sat top heavy/near the top of the composition/poster, to allow the symbolism/representation of the moon to be more realistic/obvious for the audience.

At fist we wanted to keep the poster colour scheme quite minimal and incorporate branding only one  bright colour so that the poster and all the print advertisings could stand out. However, we were getting slightly lost and unproductive by sticking to this idea, and knew that if we wanted to progress we should explore other colours schemes.

We started to play around with more colours, as well as started to be a more experimental in the use of layout. We wanted to find a combination of all graphic elements that we all would be happy with, and ones that would communicate our concept the best. This was proving to be quite a difficult process because we all have different styles as designers and different ideas of how the poster should look. 

We all agreed that we wanted the typography for the title 'One Small Step' to be bold and capitalised. We searched for various typefaces that fulfilled these requirements. Again, due to our different design styles we all felt more drawn to different typefaces, but in the end we did find a  typeface that we all liked and felt like it worked well within the compositions of our designs. Throughout the whole project we all had to compromise on some of our ideas, however, I believe this was something that made the outcome even stronger as we were able to apply our collective knowledge and skills in design. 

In some designs we experimented with doubling-up the moon graphic, by having two of them overlay each other in order to create even more contour lines within the design. We did this because we constantly had the feeling that our design were missing something, that we had not done enough so far to be able to present our designs as exhibition branding. Even so, doubling-up the moon graphic did not seem to be our solution to this because the contour lines seemed to get lost within one another and with it the concept for the moon design did also. 

Even after exploring various layout, type and colour options, we were still struggling with finding a combination we thought was the most effective and appropriate. We kept on feeling like there was something missing from our designs, and to compensate for that we kept on trying to find some new or interesting way to do layout/compositions. We soon realised that maybe we are over-thinking everything. Our concept from the very start was very simple, and so our execution of it should also be that. Our theme/concept focused on the language and the message of the metaphor between university graduation and the Apollo 11 mission, and so all we needed to do was make sure that message was communicated clearly.

After many different experiments, explorations and attempts at finding the right combination of type, layout and colour, we all finally settled and agreed on this design as the one we should develop further. What we really liked was the colour scheme. We had drifted far way from out initial thoughts of monochrome and bright neon colours, but that was okay because we thought that this toned down colour scheme was more mature and sophisticated. We are students who are adults and who are graduating to join the real world/industry, so a more mature and professional colour scheme ensures that we are taken more seriously. However, even though the colour scheme is more toned-down, it still stands out. We also all like the typeface , and the relationship between it and the moon graphic. By having the typeface overlap the graphic slightly, it creates some depth within the design, and also gives the graphic a sense of distance and height. This was something we thought was very effective as it represented in a way the moon and it's distance ad height over us and Earth. Finally, we all agreed that this design was the perfect amount of minimal and simple, much like our concept. It communicates the concept really well and is visually interesting to look at. We all agreed that by not over-complicating things or having too many elements without our design is what is going to make it even stronger moving forward.