Looking back at this project I found that I overall very much enjoyed creating a brand, the research particularly interested me, the freedom within the project allowed me to choose a topic that I was very interested in, allowing me to add my own specialist knowledge to a graphics related brief. I found the time constraints to be a major factor within this project, I think that I require much more time in order to complete everything to a standard that I was happy with, I think that I spent a very long time researching, however, I found this necessary, I think that if I rushed the research stage too much, then the quality of my outcomes would be hurt immensely, I think that I would benefit greatly from an additional week or two in order to allow me to experiment more with in the development stage of the project. I found my outcomes to be professional and reflective of the topic that I chose to explore, However I think that in particular my animation and digital presence could be developed much further and would benefit greatly from further development and could potentially become one of my strongest outcomes if the extra time is put into my final outcome. The exploration of my work was very interesting to me though, I found my Previous projects in level four really helped to prepare me for this project. Allowing me to successfully explore effective visual outcomes that created a well designed and intelligent visual style. I learned more about animation, more effective ways to research as well as a broadened my overall graphic design skills by using new ways of creation, such as use with an Ipad as a drawing tablet which allowed me to draft out ideas fast and effectively. I will use many of the skills that I have learned over the last five weeks in the future, as well as most likely continuing to evolve and develop this particular project further and further over the next couple of weeks, so that I can develop my portfolio as well as the fact that I feel I’m just not quite ready for this project to end yet. This was most certainly my favorite project of my Graphic Communication Degree so far, and I only hope that I feel similar about further projects to come. depending on how effective my outcomes are marked and what my grade is, this project makes me contemplate a potential future within the branding branch of the graphic communication industry.

Poster

 

Moving my posters into their final outcome form. I have sketched out the tower for reactor building number four, I found that if you were to ever search for Chernobyl on the internet, you would be overwhelmed with photos of this tower, making it an extremely interesting and relevant part of the overall image of Chernobyl. The tower helps to guide the viewer’s eyes down the height of the tower, Looking at the information down the page as they approach closer. I have also included a subtle map of the affected area within the background. I wanted to include some kind of radius based circle showing the size of the affected area, while this would have been interesting, I think my small colour scheme makes it so the radius would have to be a deep red colour, because of the multi-coloured logo marque and tower this would then create immense legibility problems, so I have decided to just have a grey background allowing for more focus within the tower and typography. I think this works effectively as a poster, while not being my strongest outcome, I do think that the geometric angles present within the cooling tower matches the typography, the slight angle of the tower matches in with my follow the rules, yet break them slightly approach to work, There are multiple sizes of text in order to entice viewers to come closer. I think this poster would work more effective when printed on a slightly smaller scale than my other outcomes, as the subheadings and info text is still very large, making a large scale print less enticing. I think this poster could be improved by changing my colour scheme in order to accommodate a greater number of colours and shades in order to make both the map and the tower more interesting and detailed.

My second outcome takes an element of my Bus Stop Ad (Mural). And then converting it into a poster, Exporting one of my fingerprints and then extending some of the linework to match the tendril effect present within the logo, I then made this the only main focal point for the work and slowly erased a small amount of fingerprint lines from the image and then used Adobe Illustrators Type on a path tool to create single, flowing lines of text that detailed small parts of the exhibition and also named certain vital individuals involved in the cleanup, these consisted of mainly hidden heroes that perhaps had the most influence throughout the entire booklet. I then took one of my concepts from very early on in the project that saw a large number of positive reviews and created the unstable and disorganized English text, with a solid and organized Cyrillic alphabet positioned behind it. I think this is my less effective poster, however, I do like what I have done with the art of the fingerprint, this could couple very well with the logo as well as form the basis for my animated, moving identity. I think this poster may need some further work, due to the large image and very small body copy in the corner stating small amounts of information of where and when to find the exhibition I think this outcome would work more effectively printed very large scale in comparison to the first outcome. I like elements of this poster, however, I think as a poster overall, it does need certain areas of development.

Leaflet

leaflet final

Reflecting on my previous leaflet layout, I decided to move the text around the space a lot more, making the pace much more dynamic and while minimal amounts change with each spread, the pace remains ever-changing and different for each spread.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Originally, I did want to cut out the different sections with a scalpel, After seeing that this would take a very long amount of time as well as it potentially lacking large parts of details within the fingerprints. I then wanted to laser cut the paper, giving small burns seemed to work well as it would age and slightly degrade the paper stock, however after being informed that the heat from the laser cutter would simply cremate the paper, this was no longer an option for me. I finally decided to print the covers on acetate, allowing the fingerprints to become transparent, not taking a long time or losing the detail that manual cutting would. The issue that I found with printing on acetate was that while the fingerprints were transparent, the areas that I wanted to become opaque were merely translucent, this does slightly dilute the impact of the effect, however, it seemed the best and only real way for me to achieve the outcome that I desired. The ways for this to be solved in the future could be for me to potentially simplify the fingerprint however that would cause the work to achieve a different aesthetic and potentially lose the stylised look that I have achieved within this leaflet.

I find the body copy to be dynamic and effective, the information within the body copy is interesting, using pull out quotes to give the viewer something impactful to focus on for each page, increasing interest so that the reader will continue on through the body copy to learn more about my exhibition.

I think that overall, this leaflet is one of my strongest outcomes, Clearly containing a strong visual language and identity, being interesting to look out, allowing it to stand out among other leaflets while still containing a large amount of interesting information that is presented intelligently and creatively, all while managing to avoid cliches. I think that in future I would change the way that the covers are made as well as experiment more with paper stock colours, perhaps some pages will be red, some will be black and some will remain a light grey colour.

Advertisements

Digital presence

Instagram ad 2nd page i

Instagram ad 3rd page

Instagram ad 4th

Instagram ad 5th

Instagram ad 6th

Instagram ad 7th

Instagram ad 8th

Instagram ad 9th

Instagram ad front cover

 

Animation & Logo Marque

 

 

 

 

Logo Marque

Hidden Heroes App

Bus Stop Advertisements

bus stop ad A2

 

After a tutor review of the work I have created so far, it was pointed out that the logo looked far too neat for what is essentially the undoing of a nation and the citizens located within it, the unraveling concept that I have mentioned previously within the blog can be explored to a much greater extent, potentially existing across all areas of my promotional material. As it is my logo and therefore, the first thing many people will see about my brand, I found it important to improve that first and this time, focus on the “unraveling” concept.

After revisiting my logo design went back and also experimented with the logo texture itself in order to try and see what alternatives will look like in order to ensure that my design is optimal. However I ended up going back to my original layout, applying a small amount of colour to it and then beginning to add these tendril type effects to the work, This was made using Adobe Draw on an Ipad and then added to the logo later on within illustrator so that the drawing remains vector. I like the way that this looks, the tendril makes it so whenever the design is added to a column-based editorial, while the letters will remain within the boundaries, the tendrils will stretch out and break the margins. I think this fits the unorganized but not necessarily badly designed outcome that I want throughout my work, I find it also symbolizes both the unraveling of the facts after the events of the Chernobyl disaster, as well as the physical unraveling of the human DNA system when affected by ionizing radiation. Proving to be a strong logo to head my exhibition with. However, I do think that the tendrils are beginning to dilute the fingerprint aesthetic, to fix this I will need to develop my logo slightly further into the final outcome that will then be placed all throughout my work.

Final Logo Outcome

My final logo gives off a sinister atmosphere, perfect for my exhibition. Effectively setting the mood for the work that will follow once people visit the space. The tendril effects have been developed massively to look slightly chaotic but still echo the looks of fingerprints as they slowly decay and sprawl outwards and dissipate into nothing, I think this fits the atmosphere that I have desired throughout the brief perfectly and sets the tone of the exhibition very well, doing exactly what a logo is meant to do. It remains bilingual and colorful but still extremely serious, legibility is almost lost on the translation part of the logo however the overall word is still legible, echoing the now hardly accepted and lesser-known lies and extended truths put forward by the Soviet government at the time of the accident. With the much larger and more formed translated alternative positively glaring the viewer in the face, the tendrils serve to make the logo look less geometrically perfect, showing the ugly and unsettling truth to the facts of the Chernobyl disaster while the fingerprint texture still allows you to easily read the words from both a far distance, as well as up close. This logo will work to break apart the page when placed into things such as my leaflet and posters, attracting focus but not becoming the overall focal point of the piece, overall being an extremely effective and visually interesting logo.

Moving past the conceptual stage I have made some digital mock ups of my mural concept.

To create this piece I began by using an ink pad and pressing both mine and others fingers onto the pad, while the ink was still wet on my fingerprints I then pressed onto the page to inprint my fingerprint permanently onto the page, doing this multiple times per ink dip in order to achieve different opactities and textures within the fingerprints. This improved the look of the fingerprints when pressing on towards the next stage of creation.

Following on from creating and pressing the fingerprints, I then scanned the fingerprints in and digitsed them by removing the background from the photos, allowing me to then begin positioning them into the pattern that I desired

After further research I discovered that the official Soviet death count for Chernobyl is not infact 3, but is actually a much higher 31. Although this number is much higher it does not reach anywhere near the international expected death toll and the figure 31 most likely looks better than a single three when placed within the page boundaries.

 

 

This piece took only one or two hours to create, the majority of the time was taken up by the conceptual and thinking stage within the piece. The fingerprints were made with two different techniques involved. the “one” figure was created using individually selected fingerprints that were moved across documents, and placed within a stencil type layout until the number figure was formed I then removed some fingerprints so that it did not look too exact. The “Three” figure was made faster and differently. by clumping together fungeprints in a different document, I then duplicated and moved the clump over and over again until i had a large square filled with fingerprints, I then simply erased all of the areas that were not contained within the three figure.

I think that the one figure does look much higher quality, it fits the overall style of the piece much more than the pattern based outcome. However making a pattern was much quicker and so for development pieces I think the pattern effect would work more time effectively. However for final outcomes I think the only option is to make the figures out of individual fingerprints over a pattern.

I think this is by far my strongest outcome of the project so far, the striking appearance works to draw all passer bys attention straight to the piece, however the fact that it is crafted with hundreds of fingerprints gives the work a deep and impactful reveal factor, it confuses viewers enough to lure them in further and learn about why the number is 31 and why it is made of fingerprints. The plain colours match my style perfectly and mirror the aesthetics of my overall visual identity, being choatic, yet strangely organised. given the strength of this outcome I think I would like to take this “Chaotic, yet organised” style much further. Perhaps moving it into my leaflet body copy as well as the content within my posters.

 

Creating Spreads

I decided to keep with my front cover idea and use that inbetween each spread, as the project brief states that it should contain eight pages of information it made sense for me to split the leaflet into four different sections. The research and sections are found prevously on my blog, I simply have to apply the text and information onto the spreads in an interesting and relevant way.

Using the first spread as a way to present all of the headings and use it as a sort of contents page helped to make my leaflet look more professional and organised as well as make it much easier to navigate, this may be nessecary if I am to use cut out covers inbetween each double page spread. I used the diagonal split technqiue in order to save space as well as free up a large section in the centre for body copy, quotes, sub headings etc. I think this makes the page full but not too busy with the help of a very light coloured background in order to assist in opening up the available space. Using a black background may have made the page look smaller as well as force me to use different colours within the headings. Origionally the page number was placed on top of a much larger, black fingerprint however if I did this is seemed to become the focal point of the page, this disruped the heirarchy as well as made the page seem too chaotic and full. dilluting the organised and clean cut finish of the diagonal lines present throughout the spreads.

Spread 2

I feel in this spread I have not used the whole space of the page effectively, the body copy present within the left Hand page is very organised and regimented, which I do not feel reflect what I have done with the English headings, with chaotic headings and lacking uniform kerning. This type of body copy will be suitable for if the body copy was translated to a Cyrillic alphabet. I do think the headings are effectively drawing your eye to the top of the page, with the diagonal line forcing the hierarchy down towards the bottom of the page. I think to improve this design I should take up more of the space with the body copy, as well as making it slightly less organised, however this will take much care to do as I want it to fill the space appearing unorganised without it looking poorly designed on the page. I think that including something else that draws a large amount of focus is important as well, giving the eye something else to focus on other than just the headings. Perhaps placing my logo marque within the bottom corner will help fix many of the issues that this spread is being affected by.

Now that I have a basic high-quality plan for what the majority of my exhibition will look like, I’m deciding to move forward onto developing the posters and advertisements further. Looking at making advertisements that would exist within the exhibition.

While I already have plans to create a hidden heroes booklet, I think that something large scale is required, a mural type piece to look at while exploring the space within the exhibition. My plan is to make the exhibition along a very long corridor and have the mural based piece present at the end of the corridor, thinking of places where long corridors like this exist that will remain relevant to my topic, bunkers seem a fitting location and after a short amount of research I have found out that there is a disused nuclear bunker placed under Dover castle. While the geographical location is unrelated except they do already hold exhibits there currently and the actual type of building seems very appropriate for an exhibit for this kind. This would allow my mural concept to have maximum impact.

Drafting out some initial sketches of what my exhibition might look like I think that the mural piece will be effective and the educational base for what my exhibition will about seem to fit a narrative past, present and future based layout, the sketches for the layout of the exhibition are as follows.

Creating The Mural

In terms of what the mural is actually going to be My initial concepts are to place a manually constructed collection of small, life-sized fingerprints over a very large wall. These fingerprints will slowly clump together in order to form a large number three. My initial research suggests that three is the official Soviet death count for the disaster that occurred at Chernobyl, this has been unchanged since 1987 and they refuse to change it despite the facts emerging that place the actual death toll somewhere around 90,000 and that number will likely continue to rise as generations of birth defected children are born due to irradiated parents giving birth inside a still heavy radioactive area around Chernobyl. I think having the number three made entirely out of hundreds or perhaps thousands of individual fingerprints displayed over a large wall will be extremely impactful and if created to high quality, it will likely become the advertisement piece that introduces my exhibition in other areas as well. Another layer of detail I plan to include within my mural piece is that once the viewer gets extremely close they will see that some of the lines that make up the fingerprints of some of the fingers will instead be strings of extremely small body copy that displays names of those who have died, or perhaps facts about the deaths that occurred. This will not only keep viewers interested as they walk around the exhibition but it will also play more into the individuality aspect of the hidden heroes booklet, as well as the fingerprint texture logo marque that is being developed alongside everything else.

My concerns for this are simply the time that it will take to draw and create all of the fingerprints, however, if I do run out of time the piece could simply be mocked up digitally and then plans can be made to show how it would be created physically.

Leaflet front cover (

 

As my exhibition is now forming a coherent and competent visual style, I feel the appropriate next step is to begin developing the leaflet visuals as well as the information that will be contained within the leaflet. I feel this is appropriate as I have conducted extensive research into the Chernobyl disaster, allowing me to create paragraphs of interesting reading material that will attract readers to visit my exhibition.

For my leaflet I have used minimal imagery, keeping it simple within the spreads in order to allow me to include large amounts of text, while still keeping the pages open and full of both positive and negative space. My front cover will play on my Tagline, “A Truth, Uncovered” by my plans to use one of my vector illustrated fingerprints and excluding that from a red background, this will effectively create a fingerprint sized hole within the front cover, once my leaflet has been printed I will then cut out the negative space using a scalpel, allowing readers to see slightly into the leaflet through the holes created by the scalpel. However once the leaflet is “uncovered” the page will be tuned and only then will the information on the page become fully visible, This is being done not only to add an innovative print style to my leaflet so that it can stand out when placed amongst other leaflets, I feel this is needed due to the fact that my colour palette uses a minimal amount of colours that are not particularly bright. I have also made my leaflet this way because I think it helps to accurately represent the uncovering of the facts about the Chernobyl disaster, as well as the journey that the visitor will go through whilst visiting my exhibition. Allowing them to uncover the stories, and the facts behind the disaster. I think this is especially appropriate for use within the due to the fact that the leaflet will be the first thing that visitors will likely see about my exhibition, so the striking front cover and specialist print styles will seriously assist in giving my exhibition a professional and high quality look.

After trying out different colour alternatives for the background etc. I decided that the red background with black text seemed to look most effective, while a gray background looked slightly to bland for a front cover, A black background looked too heavy, however I am thinking of changing the colour of the background once I begin developing the actual spreads that will be used within the leaflets itself. Although I have mentioned that a gray background would be too bland for a front cover, I think for the actual spreads it would work perfectly. I think it will allow me to include informative black body copy with the red and black title format that I have been developing throughout the project. The gray background will look formal, yet slightly aged, perfectly matching the aesthetic that the timeframe in which the Chernobyl disaster occurred.

Moving foward with my decided name for my exhibition, I have developed some inital potentials that can be used as my logo marque, although some of them lack colour, i think leaving them black and white gives off a more aged and serious feel, accuratley representing the gravity held by the event in which the exhibition is going to be about. Attempting to use all of my previous research incorperatied into the logo, as a marque should speak the messages of the product or service of which it is for. For this example I would need something which expresses the individualilty of the hidden heroes while still giving off a sense of seriousness of the events of the Chernobyl disaster. I think the logos containing both the word PROCLAIM and the translated alterntive word helps to show where the exhibition is taking place while the font also helps to guide viewers as to what and where the exhibition is about. I wanted a logo that uses mainly text in order to increase legibility as well as reflect art that was present during the time, the font seems so strong and relevant to the project that I think including a mainly typographical logo is optimal for me.

Overall I think that my best experimentation is one where I overlay a fingerprint texture over the top of the type.

Boris Scherpina

 

Valeri Legasov

By the time of the Chernobyl disaster on 26 April 1986, Legasov was the First Deputy Director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy. He became a key member of the government commission formed to investigate the causes of the disaster and to plan the mitigation of its consequences. He took the most important decisions to avoid repeat accidents and informed the government of the situation in the disaster area. He did not hesitate to speak to his fellow scientists and to the press about the safety risks of the destroyed plant and insisted on the immediate evacuation of the entire population of the city of Pripyat nearby. In August 1986, he presented the report of the Soviet delegation at the special meeting of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. His report displayed a depth of analysis and honesty in discussing the extent and consequences of the tragedy. Legasov recorded 5 audio tapes where he expressed his point of view on events that happened in Chernobyl. The 5th and last tape is recorded together with A. Adamovich in form of an interview for an article.

Legasov committed suicide one day after the second aniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. After he outed the truths about the design flaws within the RBMK reactors, strictly aganist the advice given to him by various Soviet Union officals. He was supported by the various scientisits that supported him throughout his discovery and investigation of the disaster. Although fully aware of the dangers to his life, Legasov took visited Reactor number four multiple times, spending the large portion of his time in camps and hotels inside the exlcusion zone, this rapidly shortened his life expenctancy.

Legasovs actioned essentallly prevented a second disaster on the scale of chernobyl ever happening again, his actions and his sucicide made the audio tapes he created impossible to ignore as the tapes circulated around the soviet scientist community the govenemtn were forced to fix the issues and rectifiy their mistake. Much of Legasovs story had been hidden for a large period of time due to the nature of his actions, the fact he went against what the soviet union govenment was informing him to do, a large effort was made to attempt to hide his heroic actions form view and then to discredit anything that made it outsdie of the scientific community.

Divers- Boris Boranov, Valeri Bezpalov, Alexi Ananenko

The “Divers of Chernobyl” consisted of two plant workers and a manager who delved into the densely radioactive waters of Chernobyl to manually drain the ruptured water pumps that would soon cause a massive thermonuclear explosion cabable to destroying much of the life within Europe. Not told that they would likely die within a week, and offered only a small reward for their efforts, the three men still performed the task, being wokrers within the power plant, they would have certainley been able to work out the dangers of delving in that water for so long, even when dressed in full protective gear.

The mens torches failed whilst in the water and so had to find the water pipes by touch. Spending hours in the heavily contaminated water.

Once the large water tanks had been drained the men were greeted with applause and vodka. However they were expected to be dead of Acute Radiation Sickness (ARS)

Mining crew cheif- Andrei Gluhkov

 

Evac Leader- Maria Protsenko

 

Firefighters-  Vasili Ignetenko

 

Elephants food photographer- Artur Korneyev

 

Roof clearers