ISTD Brief

I have fancied doing an ISTD brief for quite a while now, so it's obviously going to be one of my ten briefs. I like the idea to use one of these briefs to make into a really substantial research driven brief, producing a publication as the outcome to hold the information that I research and find out.

As well as being a competition brief, this will also be a good skills driven brief as I want to produce some sort of high end looking publication, focusing on the type and layout skills in it pushing them further than what I have already.

But first, I must choose which brief I would like to have a go at.

Decisions

After the briefing back on to level 06 with Fred, we were informed that we need to have at least a minimum of 4 substantial briefs to do in response to the first module. Considering the briefs that I have so far, I think I have these covered as they are ones that I want to get started with straight away.

The ones that I want to use for this module for definite are:

• Make Your Mark
• Hot n Tasty
• Typographic Expression

I also want to have a solid, research driven brief (which I will come to blog soon that will be based on an ISTD brief). That then covers the 4 minimum briefs. We were told that there must be one competition brief, one live brief, one personal brief and one that doubles up on any of these.

Make Your Mark - Personal & Competition (D&AD)

Hot n Tasty - Live

Typographic Expression - Personal

Research Brief - Competition (ISTD)

Obviously, I want to try and push myself to do more than 4 briefs to try and ensure that I fulfil the module criteria the best that I can, so I will plan my time out effectively and see what I can do. I don't want to spread myself too thin and not complete briefs to the standard that I would like to, but at the same time I don't want to spend too long doing one thing when some of the time could be better spent doing others.

The other ones I would possibly like to also do during this first module is the collaboration with Baljeet on a branding brief, and possibly the fashion brand one. I am also going to keep my eyes open for any live briefs/other competitions that may come up.

End of Year Show '13

When I was on the ND Graphic Design course at this college, in the first year they set one of the briefs on there for us to come up with an idea to put forward to pitch to the live end of year show brief competition. I really enjoyed the process of this, and have read the emails since then with the brief on there and fancied giving it a proper go.

The outcomes for this brief will be determined by the requirements of the brief that will be sent out from the college, but I will make sure that I aim to fulfil the requirements of it with a solid idea.

Collaboration #2

Another collaboration that is on the table is one between myself, Baljeet and Beth. We have talked about working together to pitch for us to design one of the year books. We all worked together during level 05 on the Enterprise brief, and we each brought different but useful skills to the brief and I believe that it would be the same when we come to doing this brief too.

Which year book we will be pitching for is yet to be decided, so after a cheeky pint I think we will have a lot more decisions made that need to be.

Collaboration #1

The first collaboration project that I have planned is with Baljeet. We have talked about it during level 05 that we would do some sort of branding brief. We have talked briefly about it over the last few days and have decided to have a proper sit down to plan the possibilities of what we could do.

I think collaborating with Baljeet will be interesting because we like similar sort of design work, and are both mainly type driven so pulling our skill sets together on a project would be good.

For now the actual brief and outcomes are yet to be confirmed, but the collaboration is on the table.

Quick Review

Since my last blogging spurt, I've come up with more potential ideas for my 10 briefs to do (hopefully more than what I need, giving me the chance to choose!), but before I continue to type away until early hours I thought I would take a step back with what I have so far to see how I can move on from this.

At the end of level 05, we were given a list of categories for our briefs to fall under:

• Research briefs
• Competition briefs
• Skills Driven briefs
• Live briefs
• Collaborative briefs

Looking at this list, and the briefs that I have already come up with, I figured I may as well see which categories the ones I have come up with fall under, to make sure that I don't end up with way too many in one category and none in others.

Your Own Memorial - Skills Driven brief

The main point of doing this brief, as discussed in my blog post for it, is to use it to really push the skills that I learnt from the type module so it definitely fall into the Skills Driven briefs category. It could also fall into the research one as it is all based on what primary research I collect.

Typographic Expression - Skills Driven brief

I think the line from my blog post 'could make the posters pretty damn sexy' says all it needs to for this brief being under the Skills Driven category.

Hot N Tasty - Live brief

This brief will be me rebranding an existing company and getting input from the owner of it, so this makes it fall under the Live briefs category.

Clothing Brand - Skills Driven brief

As it stands at the moment, I'm looking at taking the route of coming up with an idea for this from scratch so it falls under the skills driven briefs category. Even so, this may change if I end up working with an existing small brand before I start it then making it into a Live brief.

Make Your Mark - Skills Driven brief

This is based on myself, my own work and contacting studios, so it's a skills driven brief for sure, although if they have this one available again as one of the D&AD briefs to enter (where I got the idea from originally) then that would then make it fall into the competition briefs category. I will have to wait and see for that one though.

So... most of the briefs fall into the Skills Driven briefs category. I don't really see this as a bad thing as obviously I am wanting to push my skills further and get better at what I do. With the rest of the briefs that I blog about I will make sure that I have ones that also fall into the other categories (which they do).  

Although, after reading through the descriptions for each of the categories, some of the briefs fall into more than one of the categories. If I was to see it like this, and say they were in more than one then that would be:

Research briefs

Your Own Memorial

Competition briefs

Make Your Mark

Skills Driven briefs

Your Own Memorial

Typographic Expression

Clothing Brand

Make Your Mark

Live briefs

Hot N Tasty

Collaborative briefs

(None yet, but have some planned that I haven't blogged about yet)

I really need to finish blogging what ideas I do have and start making some decisions!

Typographic Expression 2

When ever I think back to the Typographic Expression idea that I have I don't really feel it's a brief for me to do as one of my 10. I've tried a few times now to consider how I could really develop it, taking into account the ideas that I have come up with already for it.

I think using the names is a bit too similar to the Your Own Memorial brief idea, so I think I want to develop away from this because it's a bit daft having two briefs being that similar - may as well make it into one brief if I was.

I like the idea of doing something relating to music, so I have decided that that will be the first area that I will develop it into. Also, I want to do a brief that would be a possible poster series, and I think that this starting idea would be pretty ideal for this.

• Could select a specific band with many well known songs to produce a poster for say their top 10 tracks?
• Could do a poster for each album that they have done, incorporating the songs into it that have been released from the album.
• Could choose just one song that has story to it, and then produce a set of posters that develop from each other going through the whole song.
• Could make it into a poster series where I design one a week for the duration of the module, producing a poster for a song I randomly hear/listen to at some point throughout the week - this would add more variety and a bit more of a challenge to the bried, especially if it is a song I am not so keen on or don't really know too well.
• Would be a great project again to practice type skills, but also be a good brief from an aesthetic point of view - could make the posters pretty damn sexy (or at least try to).

Definitely liking the development of this brief so far and am a lot more keen on it now.