After talking through the brief with the Students' Union, we agreed that the best approach for this project would be to put together a few different pitches for the ideas that I think could work. So, to generate these concepts I looked at what I wanted to evoke with them. Or the image of the students' Union and or the college that we want to present as the USP.
The first of these was bright open and optomistic. I have also brought into consideration the fact that the SU want something more edgy and professional this year the reflect the fact that we are an art college and as such have an understanding of the visual.
The pitch above is a simple break down of the bright, open and optimistic look. I have gone for a photographic look because this not only allows for a cleaner finish but also can communicate the simple idea of light in a way that nothing else can. For the photographs I have focused on the theme of a 'window of opportunity'. I have chosen clse in images of windows around college, brightly illuminated and with structural lines and white space in abundance that will help when it comes to placing content. For the font I have stuck to the thematical words open and light, this adds a sense of delicacy to the design and also continues the theme of openess through its wide apatures and slightly increased spacing. I have chosen all caps on titles to keep this openess as blatent as possible.
I have looked at creating small circular logos because the SU wanted something that could sit well next to the SU logo and function as a sticker. The colour choices for this pitch ply on the idea of light and a sunrise, with gentle use of opacity changes to have differnt inensities of colours while still harmonsing well. The grey on the body copy helps to accentuate the warmth of the light in the background photos and the soft sunrise orange.
This pitch looked more to present the identity of the college as being at the forefront of the arts and the cultural makeup of Leeds. The main difference is the asseriveness of this design. Instead of being a slightly elogated square as the preious design was, this design is all about accuracy and angular shapes. I used a full square format to help communicate this (also this will make using the designs on Instagram much easier). I also used a photographic base for this pitch, using slightly desaturated colours and slightly over sharp images to fit with the unappologetic tone of voice.
The concept that shapes the images chosen is the tools of the different courses throughout the college. The grid of the cover, with the cossing 'tools of the trade' dictates the images inside the guide and the content then also fits around this grid. The key clour choices for this brief are more muted to fit with the desaturated images that would be used. My nly concern with this pitch is that it is perhps slightly cold.
My third pitch looked to fcus on something particulrly mentioned by the members of the SU; the increasing role of the SU in the green intiatives around college. You may have seen that on the first and last pitches, instead of the word preshers I have used 'fresh start' this is simply trying the word out because we have had many disscusions about not using the word freshers quite as much because of its connotations of drinking that can alienate and preasure some new students. This pitch takes the concept of a fresh start and applies it to seedling. The eedling is intended to be a metaphore for the new students. When in the cntext of the Freshers guide the little seedling illustration will be on each page, growing as you flip through. I wanted to create a feeling of something quirkier with this pitch and chose a font to corrispond with this (aqua grotesque) which has a few iregular cross bars and varying apature scale. There is lso an option with this pitch of a very simplified logo of just the seed, linking to the theme of a fresh start. However, I do worry that that this doesnt communicate that this is for advertising and promoting freshers week.
Meeting and response:
It was a really valuable meeting in that it gave us a chance to just get on the same page completely, rather than the fleeting conversations we had had previously.
They said there were particular aspects of each of the pitches tat they liked. Te use of textures from across the college really appealed to then and the optimistic tone of voice of the first and the playfulness of the last. They also liked the green focus of the last pitch and we talked about possibly making this the key colour of the campaign.
I talked through the issues I had encountered wit the naming of the week and Josiah came in with the idea of calling it 'You are Here' which works perfectly combining the excitement we wish to convey about the events and moving the focus away from alcohol.
We also talked about ways to create a warmer feel, because that is something that perhaps is missing at the moment. They said that the font for the last pitch is great and has exactly the right tone of voice but it perhaps needed something more to add warmth. I suggested using hand rendered type for the logo design in combination with the font that they liked so much. They were very open to this and only said to be careful about the amount of work that I created for myself during this project, but for me its great practice to use my main specialism in a real life context.
I think the next step is to Start sketching up a logo with the new name and start from the lettering that gets the best response.
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