Initial Visuals

Following on from discussing and brainstorming a large number of potential ideas, I then proceeded to condense the list into a few options and express these ideas visually, this coincided nicely with the timetable set out for me, a “3 concepts” presentation is due soon, and as such I have created a large number of draft visuals, mostly in the forms of posters, banners, leaflets and logos, the purpose of this is to give the client a sense of what the visual language is while streamlining the design process and not forcing me to create a full brand just to get a sense of the what the visuals look like, the ways this could be done could be by creating a logo and templates for posters coupled alongside a rough idea of the colour scheme and typefaces used. This is important so that the designs can be easily critiqued, even by someone who is not a designer.

Concept 1

The first concept adopted a very corporate approach to the brief, I find this concept to very be the safest of the three outcomes, however, due to the outcomes being so safely designed, with large bulky blocks of colour and thick-lined illustrations that crystal clearly show that this is indeed a housing advice agency, this may the posters and various other media boring and therefore young students will not pay attention as the relatively simple colours will not catch people’s eye as they pass the created media. This is likely however not guaranteed, I think it is important to create work like this, especially in the earlier stages of the project in order to get feedback from the client, if this is the type of safe and standard visual style that they are looking for then it gives me a very strong sense of understanding of what the client is looking for, allowing me to create something that the client will be very happy with, even if I think that it will lack a dynamic and interesting aesthetic. However, this outcome, even if not used will still form an important stepping stone in creating something exciting and effective.

I think the illustrative style of the logo is friendly and conveys an appropriate message, however, I think due to the fact that the client does not have a set colour scheme, to improve this outcome some experimentation with the colours would be advantageous.

Concept 2

Offering a contrast to the first concept in order to get a more varied response from the client and ensure that at least something that I create is useful the second concept uses a much more complex and dynamic style, unsure of the color scheme yet, but I feel that to continue the contrast with Concept 1 I should make this concepts colour scheme a dark background with an extremely bright second colour to grab the viewers attention when seeing the logo/posters in passing.

I think that this concept is more complex and the even from just a logo, presents a larger amount of potential design opportunities, the lines could indicate a direction or be used to create shapes, make underlines for titles, or simply to add a large splash of color to the page giving certain areas a greater demand of focus and shifting hierarchies with a single path. however with this dynamism comes a greater degree of risk, these ideas may be done incorrectly and ruin the overall aesthetic, the bright contrasts could create potential issues with legibilities when using large bright lines of a dark background. However, I think that if these issues can be overcome, then this concept will be more successful than concept 1.

Concept 3

I think that this concept could quite easily be converted into a visual style, but expressed in the format of both concept 1 and concept 2. The large titles naturally attract the attention of people passing, using words like “Stop” and “Wait” are useful to get my message across immediately, in the hope that the viewer then proceeds to walk up to the poster and view the additional information upon their approach, large scale typographic posters are not something that I have made before and so this would be an interesting challenge for me as well as serve to fill a large gap within my portfolio. I do not think that this colour scheme works with the current posters, however, this can easily be changed due to my client having a lack of branded content. A sans serif typeface would be appropriate for this type of poster, however, serif would offering a different aesthetic than is so often seen within contemporary graphic design. The large serifs would also offer room to place small amounts of body copy or alternatively, I could input elements of text layering, by placing smaller body copy over the top of the large titles will not hurt the legibility of the large titles due to their size and will also allow me to input all of the vital information the posters require.

Overall I think that my second concept is the most interesting and will challenge me much more than my first concept, however, I think that the interesting visual elements of the concept three can easily be transferred into my second concept, perhaps the large scale text will complement the bright-line style of the logo and create effective, minimalistic posters. This is something that I have often attempted to create in the past, however, I have a tendency to overwork minimalistic work and make something overdesigned and therefore, loses its clarity.