OUGD505 / Studio Brief 01 / Licence To Print Money / Initial ideas

I have decided to base my banknote design on the British banknote. I want my concept to be based around something other than people unlike the current banknote, as this way it will be more timeless, and celebratory of Britain rather than the dead or royalty. 
I want to create something with humour in - making people proud to be British, as well as bringing a light hearted aspect to the other wise serious feel there is with money.

Looking in to typically British things, I started to look into designs with queues and biscuits as these two themes seemed the most appealing as they have a sense of humour. However I think I am going to carry on developing the biscuit idea as it feels more fun.

Thinking of things that are stereotypically British:

Queue design sketches:

Biscuit design sketches:

OUGD503 / Responsive / Studio Brief 02 / D&AD / Dazed & Confused / Development

After a short lesson from one of the technicians, we vaguely knew how to use Premier Pro, and after a lot of playing around on it we became a lot more confident. Using this software allowed us to overlay different effects over the top of the videos, this was done by searching 'overlay' in to youtube, selecting the type of overlay we wanted (e.g; scratches, light levels changing, scribble on the film and glitches) and working it in to the moving image.

A lot of the adjustments to the videos were made in terms of exposure and colour to give it a more dated, harsh and stripped back feel. 

Glitch which we are putting at the start and end of all the videos to show consistency and to link them all together:

Scribble on film - we wanted to reflect the 'weird and wonderful' people in the films within the style of the film also, this was done by adding things like these scribbles. It also matches well with the hand held, un professional style we wanted to achieve which we thought connects well with the young, alternative audience of Dazed. 

At the end of each video we are putting this hand written text reading 'DAZED', this was written with a soft paint brush tool on Photoshop, I did this because I thought it looked similar to neon light signage which ties in with the punk subcultures we looked in to at the start. 

The other ending glitches with Dazed text:

OUGD503 / Responsive / Studio Brief 01 / Make Extremism History / Development

The quote used for the poster is by Hunter S. Thompson. I wanted to include a quote and like a lot of his, so after reading more of his quotes I found this one to be appropriate to the image. 

"For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled."

The typeface used is Maison Neue, as it's very legible and a simple sans serif, this is needed as the rays in the background make the image quite busy. 

OUGD503 / Responsive / Studio Brief 01 / Make Extremism History / Development

For research 1960's communist posters were looked at. These colours and rays especially influenced the design. The rays made on my poster are coming out from the rich mans bum. This is supposed to symbolise him thinking the sun shines out from his arse. 

OUGD503 / Responsive / Studio Brief 01 / Make Extremism History / Initial ideas

When reading the brief the part that stuck with me the most was the quote; "62 people in the world have as much money as half the world's population". 

Another thing to take advantage of is the fact that in guid lines it's states the poster has to be saved in RGB. This allows a lot brighter colours in the poster which will be useful to make things stand out. 

The image the poster will portray is that the poor suffer to hold up the rich. Initially silhouettes were going to be drawn however I feel this this has been done a lot before, then the idea of digital collage was thought of. The image of the greek god Atlas holding up the world is being used as it represents the weight of the 'fat rich' the poor have to hold up. The image which is meant to represent the rich was found on google images by typing in 'fat rich'. These images were then cut out on Photoshop to enable me to move them around and resize them. 

OUGD503 / Responsive / Studio Brief 02 / D&AD / Dazed & Confused / 30 second video

Along with our four 15 second videos we had to submit one 30 second video explaining our concept and the making of behind them. We saw this as an opportunity to use the out takes from the footage we took. 

This paragraph explains everything we wanted to include in the 30 second video. 

"Music culture is used as a voice for personality, passion and protest. We chose the concept of capturing a particular lonesome who utilises independence through either singing, dancing or playing a musical instrument in a public space. We captured each eccentric individual without consent to depict each one in their own weird and wonderful world.
The spontaneous footage therefore became the most interesting; we kept our cameras on us whilst travelling abroad and hanging out locally. This allowed us to create a range of footage all with a sense of realism within our response. We then edited the footage to suit the hand-held, analogue aesthetic and adapted sounds we caught from each of their surroundings." 

 This also gave us a chance to show our design decisions in terms of font choices and colour. The typeface in which I chose was Maison Neue, this was actually found on the Dazed website however I used it because of its legibility, flow and contemporary feel. I used the colours bright red, blue and yellow because the type needed to stand out in front of the moving image. As well as this the bright colours link to the bright spirit and audience of Dazed.

OUGD503 / Responsive / Studio Brief 02 / D&AD / Dazed & Confused / Footage

Our chosen footage:

We took the footage in a range of different places, making sure we always had a camera on us so that we were prepared. The first piece that was filmed was the old man in the pub, he was really friendly and more than happy to sing on camera. 

Next was in Berlin when we saw a man bopping his head to music sitting on top of a tall post. As he was by himself and seemed really happy up there we filmed him.

By this time through the content of our videos so far it was clear that the concept would be expression through music and dance. The next piece of footage used was a busker on the metro in Berlin.

The last bit of footage we used was a clip of a drag performance, of one of the performers singing. This was shot on a phone which is different to the rest of the videos which are shot on a DSLR. I think the difference works well, as it's a lower quality video it allowed us more to really distort it, making it look very messy but fun. This really captures the Dazed spirit as it feels young, fun and alternative. 

OUGD503 / Responsive / Studio Brief 02 / D&AD / Dazed & Confused / Research 3

We have been looking in to independent music artists for inspiration, how they stand out and express themselves. The colourful, distorted images in FKA Twiggs’s videos combine well with Dazed and their audience as she is featured a lot on their website. Grimes is another artist featured a lot on Dazed and has a very alternative, striking image too, as well as Yung Lean. All of these artists have a different feel to them compared to a lot of current artists, they aren't afraid to be different and express themsleves with more obscure imagery and take strong influences from punk and 90's cultures. 

This is relevant for our own work as we want our videos to have this individual feel that works so well with the Dazed audience. We hope to achieve this through the editing of the videos. 

OUGD503 / Responsive / Studio Brief 02 / D&AD / Dazed & Confused / Research 2

We looked at videos by DoBeDo (a gallery, working with photographers and filmmakers), in particular this Mount Kimbie video they created we thought fitted Dazed's style well - alternative and with a youthful feel, this is due to the editing of the videos, there's a lot of mark making which brings an animation aspect to it. Also the pixelated, bad quality resolution appealed to us as it brings something different to most music videos you see today, making it stand out, as well as having a more retro, offbeat look.

https://vimeo.com/17248832

OUGD503 / Responsive / Studio Brief 02 / D&AD / Dazed & Confused / Research

We looked in to a lot of articles by Dazed to look into subcultures to try and get a better understanding of subcultures.

A young, current subculture - however we wanted to stay away from this as we thought a lot of people may link independence with youth.

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/the-new-teenagers-understanding-the-next-generation-of-british-youth-culture?utm_source=Facebook&utm_campaign=viceuk&utm_medium=social

Female boxers, an interesting possible subculture to explore, these women have a very independent feel about them which is key for our videos. However to find this subculture to film them would be quite difficult.

http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/29684/1/the-female-boxers-taking-on-the-pro-rape-protestors

This article about Iris, a very fashionable elderly women - this is a possible path we could go down and it's looking at independence from an older point of view which is a little different.

http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/15009/1/cover-story-the-age-of-iris

OUGD503 / Responsive / Studio Brief 02 / D&AD / Dazed & Confused / Initial ideas

We wanted to approach this brief in a different way to what we'd typically think of independence. We looked at the winning videos of the VICE brief last year to see what worked well with the judges and what kind of standard they were expecting. 


Here are the initial ideas more refined:

Something that we all liked the idea of was basing the concept of expression. In particular within music or dance. 

OUGD503 / Responsive / Studio Brief 02 / D&AD / Dazed & Confused

CUT TO INDEPENDENCE 

"Using short-form social video (think Instagram, Vine…) as your only medium, make a series of four 15-second films that embody independence."

Polly, Megan and I chose this brief as we wanted to gain knowledge and skills in video making, it's also a very open brief which had a fun, appealing aspect to it.

We need to make 4 15 second videos and 1 supporting 30 second video explaining the thought process behind them.

OUGD505 / Studio Brief 01 / Licence To Print Money / Bristol Pound

Bristol have their own currency which I thought was interesting and relevant to this brief. The Bristol Pound is the UK’s first city wide local currency, the first to have electronic accounts managed by a regulated financial institution, and the first that can be used to pay some local taxes.

The Bristol Pound is run as a not-for-profit partnership between the Bristol Pound Community Interest Company and Bristol Credit Union.

'Love Bristol? Go Local! Support your high street and strengthen your community by spending Bristol Pounds with hundreds of independent, Bristol-based traders.'

The designs are by the people of Bristol - a competition was held with hundreds of entries received from school children, students, professional designers and amateurs.
Each of the winning designs captures something of Bristol’s character.

The £5 appeals to me most due to the fluorescent pink colouring, as well as the illustration as it represents Bristols graffitied image well.