UTOPIA/DYSTOPIA

The first studio brief of the second semester, and the brief we got was about creating a Utopian or a Dystopian society in a group. In our group had Catrina Burns, Ville Niemi, Vince Lee and I. We had to do create a Dystopian society.

I did some research on Utopian and Distopian societies in literature, film and paintings. From the top left going clockwise are some of the things I looked into; Metropolis (both top images), ‘Garden of Eden’ (Lucas Cranach der Ältere.) and Naboo (Star Wars)

In our research we came across a structure on how a Dystopian society should be like. In this, their 3 different levels classes, upper, middle and lower and none could cross into another’s class. In our society, the upper classes were Aristocrats, Fine Artists and the upper class ‘believed’ they existed in a ‘Utopian’ society but oppressed the other two classes. The middle class were ‘white collared’ and were happy with the way they lived but everyone had to wear uniforms and could only use bicycles and buses as a means of transportation. The lower class were the people who powered the city, the ‘blue collared’ but lived in filth and were known as the ‘unseeables’

We told that we had create an ideal city according to our Dystopian society. Since our Dystopian society was in levels, we build our city in that structure. The skyscrapers was where the upper class lived, below that was the middle class and underground was the lower class. Each class was divided by high impassable walls.

MANIFESTO/BRIEF

For this, we had continue on from the Utopia/Dystopia brief with same people. We decided to have manifesto for each class. The first manifesto is Vince Lee’s, second is Ville Niemi’s and the third is mine.

EYES PEER UPON US BEASTLY,

TRYING TO OBTAIN OUR WAY OF LIFE.

WE ARE NOT PEASENTS,PRETENTIOUS NOR

UTOPIANS.THE ENEMY IS THE MIDDLE CLASS.

this is usand what we are

the way we live, the way we growis sophisticated without a doubt

no other societyno other class

can reach what we can

we go high into the skieswe go deep down to the seas

we see more than anyone else can see

we are not designedwe are meant to live this way

do not think we are selfishdo not at all

we are the creativesthe intelligent

the world

PRODUCT/BRANDING

This was our first professional graphic designer brief which was about branding a new product and designing a package for it. We were again in the same group like with the addition of Yanus Mortensen in the Utopia/Dystopia brief. We had to brand a new Thorntons line of chilled dessert.

Our group went down to Waitrose in the Ashley Centre and we found Thorntons current range of chilled desserts and we were not impressed by its design and presentation. We looked at the rival chilled desserts.

As a group we decided to take our individual approaches to designing and branding the chilled dessert range. At this point we hadn’t come up with a name yet. My suggestion was ‘Desservir’ which is French for dessert and the next group we had thought it would be rather hard to pronounce. After some brain storming we came up with ‘Nom’ and again we went our and design it individually.

After we showed our individual approaches to each other, we took the best of everyone’s design in the group and this was our final outcome.

BOOK/BRIEF

What is a book? How should a book look? Feel? How can a book be read? The questions we had to ask ourselves during this brief. We had to challenge how a book should be and our final outcomes would be put up in a book fair held in the University SU area in the refactory.

My first concept was a result of the one day brief. I responded to this by challenging the feel of a book, how should a book open?

I stuck to the question of how should a book open and came up with a concept for my final piece that would go in the book fair

Final/Outcome

INFORMATION/GRAPHICS

For this brief, we had create an Information Graphics on statistics that we have gathered. The did a poll on which game console people had owned over their life. After that, I created a bar chart to but the statistics down. I used bars with its different sizes to compare them to each other to create a abstract piece of information graphics.

INTERVENTION/BRIEF

This was third group brief this semester. In the brief we were told create our own interventions the our group and we had to meet at the Barbican with print-outs of our interventions, Melissa informed us about our new objective for the brief. Each group would exchange their print-outs interventions and we were told we must replicate what the other group has done. We exchanged our intervention with Antonia Winters’s group

Her group’s intervention was fixing road signs had been faded out using chalk. We set out from the Barbican to do the same, we fixed road signs some around the Barbican and Liverpool Street Station.

LAB/MAKE ME THINK

What is a Lab? What is a Studio? Give us the time and space and we will show you what is.

EVALUATION

This semester has been really good, I can draw a lot of positives from it. I felt comfortable with this unit, Production and Consumption is what I had been doing in college and I felt more at home with the briefs we got. Working in groups has been fantastic, most of our brief were group based and I felt more confident in discussing ideas and delegating tasks and can got inspiration from my group’s work.Bev and Brian’s crits was were I felt confident to speak up and rise a question about someone’s work and open a discussion about.The change of crit style by having everyone’s work up on display on the tables, walking around, looking at someone else’s work has made it better for getting feedback not only tutors but from other students and this I would has helped in directing me in improving my work.The Lab has been the best part of this semester. It let everyone burst with creativity, and there was unbelievable amount of energy everywhere, just made want to get illustrate something. It was something that has carried on every year, including the 24hour lock in. The kind of things bring out the best and most creative part of someone.