Monday, 26 April 2010

My New Brief. . . (In brief)

More to follow, but for this new project I want to update the Ministry Of Sound logo. This hasn't changed since I was buying mix tapes in my late teens! I have a fondness for the brand but I think it has lost its way and become far more downmarket and corperate. This wasnt at all how it started out and I think a refresh is well overdue.


PS.
This is the first compilation they issued, from 1993, This shows how little has changed in the graphics, and sadly how much has in the credibility of the music (Tony Humphries is a highly respected american house DJ whose carear started in the 1970's!)  As contrast, earlier this year MoS released a CD of 'running tracks' yes, music to jog to, attaching the same logo to that is abandoning all underground musical credibility.

Saturday, 10 April 2010

Collaborative Brief Evaluation

This evaluation looks back at the creative contract we filled in at the start of the brief and compares this to how things actualy turned out

Why have you chosen to work with your creative partner?

I wanted to work with Mille because I knew she was a talented illustrator and I thought our skills were quite different and so could complememt each other quite well. This I still think is true, but the way the brief panned out meant that as Mille could illustrate far better than me, I was left doing the concept and copy-writing the slogans, this was quite tough on this particular brief, harder than we both expected at first. I think perhaps we were a little nieve in taking on the engage brief as it was a very advertising style brief. We initially thought we could sort out the concept in a few days then we could both get on with design work, this wasnt how it happerned at all.


What are your specific areas of creative interest in this brief?

I never actually got to do many of the things I am actually good at doing during this brief, and almost none of the things I planned to do at the start. This was actually very frustrating, I know I can come up with concepts and creative ideas, and make design direction decisions but these arnt the things I like to to all the time. We got far too bogged down in the concept stage of this brief and it felt like two weeks of going round in circles scribbling on scraps of paper. The only actual design I did for this brief was the submission board layouts.



What specific non-design skills do you have to offer in relation to your chosen brief? How do you intend to use them?

I think I did get to use far more non-design skills than actual design skills in this brief. I defiantly used decision making and problem solving abilities. I also took on much of the concept development and copywriting, this I found fairly torturous to be honest. We both kept a relaxed, level headed approach to the brief even when it wasn't really progressing in the direction we had hoped, so in many ways the collaboration was a success. 


Roles and responsibilities. . . etc

Looking back at this, we were very loose in defining these initially, but we found it quite easy to divide up the work and agree on things along the way. I think neither myself or Mille did our best work during this brief, but I think this perhaps more to do with the difficulty in nailing a concept rather than a reflection on the working relationship.

On balance, the collaboration was a success I feel. The result, although not fantastic, is not a bad solution to a tough brief and was (another) learning experience.