Friday 26 February 2010

Don't Panic: Vogue

22.02.10 - My 21st!
Don't Panic send out envelopes aimed at students filled with information packs and each issue includes a poster. Each poster is a competition and designers have to create one based on a word. For this live brief, the word was 'vogue' and I had to design 3 posters based on the word 'vogue' and 30 design treatments. I would then pick the best of the posters and upload them onto the Don't Panic website and the general public would vote.

Envelope design for Don't Panic by Dave the Chimp.




















I thought about the definitions of vogue; the prevailing fashion or style at a particular time, general acceptance or favour, popularity, fashionable. I also jotted down 30 or so words I associated with 'vogue' and created 30 visuals to reflect these.

30 VISUALS

I am no way an illustrator and find image really difficult to work with, because of this, out of my 30 visual variations I think the ones which work the best are the type based ones. As a starting point, I chose to develop my poster based on magazine, size zero, serifs, outrageous and consumerism. Initially, I did not want the 'Vogue' magazine affect my design, however I thought it would be good to research as it is an inevitable association.

25.02.10 - Why did I leave it so late?
Research started on the Don't Panic website, looking through some previous winners. It seemed that illustration was a more popular choice over type. Due to this, I changed my direction and decided to give it a go! I knew this would be more difficult for me, but I was willing to try out something new. Many of the winners also had quite simple idea which was very effective, many of them also did not include the subject word.

I moved onto researching posters, and with my new information on the type of imagery that had been chosen before I could narrow my research down. I was looking for image based posters which had a clear style and message, but character and personality and originality. I found Eye Saw and Niki De Saint Phalle very interesting. I think my posters will be pretty simple with one main factor (hopefully representing vogue!).
Vogue magazine was easy to research due to the sheer amount of archived journals the Art College has! I chose 3 different magazines (November 1985, February 1991 and September 2009) to give me a broad overview of fashion at different times. I scanned in the most outrageous fashions I could find. I am thinking about using a technique such as photomontage (much in a similar style to Ice Cream For Free) to create the most hideous outfit. I don't understand fashion and how when something begins growing in popularity, it has a snowball effect.

Sketching was the best form of quickly jotting down ideas on this brief and I churned out quite a few ideas...

Sketches.

















I liked the idea of a model striking a pose but wearing something pretty horrendous, however, I could not draw it! Due to my lack of illustrative skills I decided to simplify my drawing to the very basics (much like Niki De Saint Phalle (but even more so!). The addition of words aided my design and I liked the structure of using them to create the image/pictogram. To develop upon this, I needed to make it represent vogue more... I went back to thinking of the snowball effect and popularity in fashion. 

26.02.10 - Phew!
My designs have turned out pretty feminine and this was reflected by the comments I received in the final crit. I decided to hand render the text, for the illustration purpose, however I digitalised a very basic version of a woman symbol and used a pink background to reflect this. I am pretty happy with what I have produced by using hand draw text, and would like to develop this further.

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