503 Module Evaluation

This has been the most challenging module I have completed so far on the course, saying this it has also been one of the most enjoyable. This is for a few reasons but primarily the fact that we could choose what briefs we would like to respond to giving me the freedom to build my portfolio in areas I am most interested in having a career, such as: packaging design, pattern design and artwork. The early stages of this module involved searching all of the usual sites for the competitions such as D&AD, YCN and Student Starpack designs, I then selected which ones I thought would be relevant to my development as a designer and also decided which ones would be suitable to be day, week or major briefs. In the end I settled on the luxury range of tea being my substantial brief as I am highly interested in packaging design, a big tea drinker and felt I could really experiment with layout and illustration within the brief. This brief didn't involve as much research as some of the others as I believe different types of design require more depth, whereas others are more about the end product being aesthetically pleasing; in contrast the secret 7 inch involved a lot of research and context to develop a conceptual piece, with this I learnt that research is really essential for getting started on some briefs, getting creative block is normal and sometimes it takes a few days of researching to start to get an idea, with this knowledge I know in the future I have to allow contingency time. This module also gave me more confidence in posting my work onto my design Instagram account, this was the only way to enter the Papergang competition and the hashtag allowed me to connect with other designers that have the same interests and styles. Time management was a big part of this module, I am slowly getting better and I found it easiest to work on one brief at a time, sticking with it until final outcome before moving onto the next brief, trying to juggle is confusing and you end up forgetting stages or ideas you had. I felt I handled the work load quite well, allowing myself enough time to be happy with the outcome for all the briefs and being proud of how much I had achieved in comparison to the result of previous modules. One thing I am eager to build on is stepping out of my comfort zone and I did this with the collaborative, however with all of the other briefs, whilst building my portfolio and answering briefs I was interested I stayed within my strengths, for the next module I would like to push myself to design in different ways and styles, the last thing I will comment on is my lack of engagement in critiques, compared to last year I was active and had a lot of feedback which I found really useful I haven't received as much this year, for the next brief I will make sure I get as much as I can at the different steps of the process.

Time spent on briefs:

Secret 7 inch - 2 weeks

27  Club - 2 days

Penguin Books - 2 weeks

Tea - 1 month

Papergang box - 1 week

Collaborative LFW Street Style Look Book - 1 month

503 - SB1 - 27 Final and Evaluation

Rationale: This piece is inspired by Amy's spiritual side, she had this in common with her Paternal Grandmother and her passing massively affected her. Amy became obsessed with the idea of death, her grandmother was a known tarot card reader, this piece features the number for the death tarot card which is relevant for her obsession, but also the tarot card itself is all about the death of something in your life, moving on and new beginnings, that which Amy tried and tried to have.

I decided to mockup the design I went for to get a better feel for how it would look presented printed and hung up in an exhibition style. 

I am pleased with the result, this project was heavily research based in order to come up with a suitable and fitting concept, with it being such a short brief the outcome was always going to be a minimal design however I feel it does have impact, it is recognisable as AMY with the lyrics whilst the xiii and eclipse adds intrigue. Looking back at the requirements of the brief it hits all of them, the design is 27x27cm and suitable for public viewing. All the design decisions are relevant as explained the colour palette and type choices. This piece is focusing on a specific part of her life, when she brought out back to black and the change of her as a person as well as a musician. Although it focuses on this time period it is also symbolic of her whole life as there were a lot of ups and downs, a lot of changes back and forth to rehab and being in the spotlight. For this project I only used illustrator, utilising the path finder tools as well as type setting for the paragraphs. I have learnt from this brief that some briefs take a lot of research and digging around in order to gain inspiration and start actually designing, with this in mind time management is key, ensuring you account for any sort of creativity block.

503 - SB1 - 27 Development

I Decided to use the xiii - which means 13 as it is the number of the death card, i also included two segments of an eclipse, this is to represent two things that are not full together, but which will eventually part ways and move on which is representative of the song lyrics. Amy felt it would never work with her lover but fell in love anyway, left to feel not her whole self, however the fact her tears will dry means she is looking forward and knowing it will end. This works well with the symbolism of the Death tarot card. The colour palette is based off her signature makeup look - bold black eyeliner and a red lip. I chose the typeface industry inc for the lyrics as i felt it nicely contrasted the other more minimal sans serif seen for the title, as well as being similar to text seen on tarot cards, in order to keep some authenticity. 

503 - SB1 - 27 Initial Ideas

I want to create a piece of work that focuses on something that was good in her life, however something that also undoubtedly contributed to her life choices or lack thereof. Her paternal Grandmother Cynthia.

Ideas:

• Tarrot cards
• Spirituality
• Death
• The future
• Psychic 

Definition of Tarot Card

Tarot cards are used to foresee future events and answer specific questions, and are often used in fortune telling and astrology. A tarot deck is usually made up of 78 cards, each with a unique image and meaning.

The most common 78-card Tarot decks are divided into two main groups — Major Arcana and Minor Arcana — with the latter divided into four suits (Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles).

Major Arcana Tarot Cards

Tarot cards drawn from the Major Arcana group are said to symbolize and predict major events or major turning points in a person’s life, such as a marriage or career change.

Minor Arcana Tarot Cards

Tarot cards drawn from the Minor Arcana group are said to represent or predict experiences in daily life, such as an issue with a friend or lover, or a message that may be on its way to you.

Out of all the above cards I have chosen to play around with the death card, the reading is relevant to a lot ofAmy's life in terms of going into rehab, being in and out of contact with her friends and Blake.

I want to modernise the tarot card design and create something a lot more minimal than the current designs. Amy brought a style of music which wasn't that popular and mainstream, and made it something that most people admired, a lot of people are wary of psychics and tarot cards therefore I want to create something more accessible with this artwork. 

503 - SB1 - 27 Research

The 27 Club is a list of popular musicians, artists, or actors who died at age twenty-seven. It originated with an unsupported claim of a "statistical spike" for the death of musicians at that age, but this has been repeatedly disproved by research.

It remains a cultural meme, documenting the deaths of celebrities, some noted for their high-risk lifestyles. Names are often put forward for inclusion, but because the club is entirely notional, there is no official membership.

"Often as a result of drug and alcohol abuse, or violent means such as homicide, suicide, or transportation-related accidents."

AMY WINEHOUSE

Amy Jade Winehouse was born on 14 September 1983. Winehouse is an English singer-songwriter, known for her eclectic mix of various musical genres including R&B, soul, and jazz. Winehouse won five categories at the 2008 Grammy Awards. Amy Winehouse is best known for her powerful contralto vocals and substance abuse and mental health issues. In 2005, she went through a period of drinking, heavy drug use, violent mood swings and weight loss. Amy Winehouse was found dead at her home on the afternoon of 23 July 2011.

B is for booze: ‘Rehab’, undoubtedly Amy’s biggest hit, was written in just 6 hours with close collaborator Mark Ronson. The singer’s other major vice also began with a b – her tempestuous on-again off-again relationship with husband Blake Fielder-Civil was the subject of many of her best-loved tracks. “I go back to things I maybe shouldn’t,” the singer said in 2004.

E is for early troubles: according to biographer Chloe Govan, Winehouse attempted suicide aged 10, shortly after her father Mitch Winehouse left mother Janis for another woman known as “daddy’s work wife”. Govan claims that Amy was so devastated by her parents’ separation that she fell into a spiral of self-harming, took an overdose of pills and was found by a friend foaming at the mouth.

I is for ink: Among Amy’s many tattoos were a razor blade over her heart with ‘Blake’ written above it, a native American feather, ‘Daddy’s Girl’, a naked woman, her grandmother Cynthia, a horse shoe, an anchor surrounded by the word ‘Hello Sailor’ and a lightning bolt she joked as liking because “like me, lightning’s a natural disaster!”

Henry Hate, the London tattoo artist who got to know Winehouse well, it has been painful to watch. “Fans sometimes come into my shop to ask me to tattoo her image. I don’t do it. For some people she is a caricature, an image. The girl I knew is the one that came into my shop all those times with not enough money on her phone,” he said.

K is for Kalemegdan Park: Amy’s last ever gig was at Kalemegdan Park in Serbia on June 18 2011. The show made international headlines after footage emerged appearing to show the star drunk and incapable of performing, but it’s widely understood that Winehouse was clean at the time of her death, leading her father to speculate that detoxing had killed her. 

"Anna Joe Kida, a member of Zemlja Gruva has claimed that Amy Winehouse tried to leave the stage area before she was forced to perform in front of the baying crowd. The band who played alongside Amy Winehouse at the city's Kalemegdan Park says that Winehouse did try to leave the arena but was physically thrown onto stage. Anna Joe Kida has said: Four British bodyguards simply pushed her to step up on stage. She did not want to and was making a scene trying to escape them. It was distressing to see, she obviously needed help."" 

O is for Ol’ Blue Eyes: Frank Sinatra was a major influence on Amy – so much so, she named her first album after the crooner (the title was also a nod to her honest lyrical style). Amy grew to dislike the record, however. “I’ve never heard the album from start to finish. I don’t have it in my house… Everything was a shambles,” she told the Observer.

Cynthia 

As is well known, Amy went off the rails around 2006. She stopped looking after herself, and turned from a fresh-faced, curvy young lady into an increasingly tormented figure. Episodes of drug overdoses, self-harming, public scraps and tears became commonplace. She began to cancel concerts or appear on stage late and recklessly intoxicated. It was a shocking and striking change. Everyone wondered what had happened to her. Many assumed that the cause of this change was her relationship with the notorious Blake Fielder-Civil, which began around this time. However, her father Mitch has always said that the downturn in his daughter's life began after his mother Cynthia died in 2006.

 

Cynthia Winehouse was a singer herself who once dated jazz legend Ronnie Scott. That relationship ended due to an unbridgeable obstacle: Winehouse would not sleep with Scott until they married, whereas he would not marry her until they had slept together. Cynthia's influence on her granddaughter was forceful: so much so that Amy got her grandmother's name tattooed on her right arm. It was Cynthia as much as anyone who encouraged Amy to become a singer. They were like two peas in a pod: no wonder Amy was spellbound by her grandmother and so devastated by her death.

Winehouse wanted Hate to help her with a tribute to her father’s mother, Cynthia, once a singer. “She told me exactly what tattoo she wanted in honour of her nan. She was very direct. I just called my partner and warned him I was going to be late,” said Hate. “As we talked, we really did click. She was funny. I even let her smoke in the shop.”

There was a less conventional dimension to the spell her grandmother cast on Amy: Cynthia was a keen Tarot card reader. Amy inherited her grandmother's belief in the power of Tarot: she was often seen with a pack of Tarot cards in her hand and when asked if she believed her grandmother could read the future, Amy nodded solemnly and said "Cynthia knew..."

Given the reckless, fatalistic way Amy began to behave in the aftermath of Cynthia's death, the question arises: had something she had read in the cards disturbed her? There are hints in the grave mood and lyrics of her second album to suggest that she believed she was doomed. In the titular Back To Black, Amy sang about her "odds being stacked" and in Love Is A Losing Game she lamented receiving a "losing hand".

Meanwhile, she became obsessed with her own mortality. The video for her single Back To Black featured her at a funeral. When television presenter Simon Amstell asked her what had happened to the more wholesome Amy of the Frank era, she replied: "She's dead". Friends and colleagues confirm that death became a subject of increased conversational interest to Amy.

The narrative that painted her as a helpless naïf, led astray by a manipulative Blake Fielder-Civil, was always unfair on both of them. Fielder-Civil is not that sinister or capable, Amy was never that malleable. Could it be that her downfall was as much due to her dabbling with divination as drugs?

Death

Blake, who claims Amy drank miniatures to feed her addiction to booze, apparently regrets his ex never got to have a family of her own. ‘If she’d thought she was pregnant, she’d have stopped drinking in a heartbeat,’ he added. ‘It would have saved her because I think secretly she craved a reason to stop hurting herself so badly. She just didn’t love herself to do it on her own.’ - Q is for quitting showbiz: Winehouse appeared to have plans to leave behind singing before her death in 2011 to concentrate on family life. “I know I’m talented, but I wasn’t put here to sing. I was put here to be a wife and a mum and look after my family. I love what I do, but it’s not where it begins and ends,” she told the Observer.

He believes years on her death was a kind of suicide saying: ‘Maybe she expected someone to come in and stop her, take the bottle away. But instead she was left alone to drink herself to death in that house.

Conclusion

As well as all of this research I watched the documentary 'Amy' for a better insight and learnt a lot about her personality and those who surrounded her. You hear the story of her downward spiral and a lot of it was down to her ex husband Blake, as well as her father failing to help her, and the world around her e.g. the press and other celebrities and media making fun of her when she was desperately in need of help. 

I want to create a piece of work that focuses on something that was good in her life, however something that also undoubtedly contributed to her life choices or lack thereof. Her paternal Grandmother Cynthia. 

Birthdate: October 21, 1927

Birthplace: London, Greater London, United Kingdom 

Death: May 2006 (78) 

Barnet, Greater London, England, United Kingdom

503 - SB1 - THE 27 CLUB (01.03.2018)

The 27 Club is a celebration of the music created by those who died at the age of 27, including greats such as Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse.

The Brief:

Create artwork for one of the musicians in the 27 club (list attached). This brief is open and is a chance to be as creative as you like, experimenting with different mediums. Our only restriction is that the size has to be 27 x 27 cm. Think about the focus for the piece, could it be about a musician as a whole or focus in on a specific phase of their life? For example it could be Jimi Hendrix before Woodstock or Brian Jones’s response to Sgt. Pepper. You could even focus in on a specific song like ‘Light My Fire’ by The Doors for Jim Morrison. Find some hidden gems, but please ensure your entry is respectful as the subject could be viewed as sensitive in nature.

Submissions:

All work submitted will be presented to a panel of judges, with the shortlisted pieces being displayed in the exhibition and used within a small publication.

Deliverables:

27 x 27cm artwork.
A short rationale for the piece.

503 - SB1 - Papergang Entry and Evaluation

To enter the competition all you have to do is upload your finished work to Instagram, making sure to tag @ohhdeercompetitions & #designapapergangbox.

This is the finished template that includes all of the designs I created for each product included in the Papergang boxes.

I really enjoyed this brief as it was experimental and involved illustration and pattern design which I am very interested in. It has also allowed me to find other designers on Instagram that I can admire and learn from by searching through the hashtag provided. I believe my design has a strong concept as it is relevant to the month of October, the month it would be released if I won the competition. I learnt about the strong use of a colour palette during this process as well as using a small number of illustrations in different ways to create interesting patterns and visuals. Something I would work more on if given the chance would be the pin background as it is just plain at the moment, an interesting background possibly with text could have worked well. 

503 - SB1 - Papergang Development

For the submission to this competition there are a few different aspects that need to be designed for the template provided that is in Adobe Photoshop. The requirements are as follows: gift wrap, a greetings card, paper notes, Papergang box and a pin. I decided to vary the design slightly for each item as them all being the same doesn't give the customer much value for money. This also seems the norm for previous winners. 

gift wrap 

greetings card

paper

papergang box

pin

Peer review feedback:

I decided to get some feedback before actually submitting the full brief to make sure what I had designed looked well and all of the different aspects were coherent. 

• the different patterns work well for the reasons you specified - the giftwrap being less busy as it will be folded and taped, the papergang box more interesting and in your face to stand out etc.
• it is a coherent set of designs in terms of your colour palette and illustration line weights
• the birthday card is one I would buy in the shop for a niece or young girl really into her ballet

I was very happy with this feedback and so went ahead and submitted. 

I also received a message from a friends design account on instagram when i submitted praising my work which is a good sign!

503 - SB1 - Papergang Colour Palette

I thought it would be fitting to use a colour titled 'Ballet Slipper' found on the Pantone website. From here I used the same but went up and down on the colour picker to get a purple, yellow, blue and orange version which all compliment and work well together. 

I edited the various objects to fit this colour palette and produced the selection I will use to create the pattern.

503 - SB1 - Papergang Initial Ideas

I decided to start the process for this brief by illustrating some of the objects you would associate with ballet, the first things that come to mind. 

Illustrated above are some ballet shoes along with tutu's, these are the objects I am going to go forward with as the main focus point as I don't want it to get too complicated, the key is simplicity as some of the recent previous winners have had very minimal yet effective patterns. I am also going to add smaller illustrations that compliment these two. 

503 - SB1 - Papergang Research

Existing Papergang box research - I don't want to design something similar to what already exists in recent times.

January main themes and colours:

• travelling
• motel
• pink
• green
• pastels
• cactus
• palm tree

June main themes and colours:

• botanical
• dark greens and blacks

July main themes and colours:

• marble
• pink
• blue
• lilac

Inspiration research

World Ballet Day

World Ballet Day is an annual celebration of ballet held since 2014 in the first week of October. It is a collaboration between major ballet companies around the world, which stream live video of their behind-the-scenes preparations in their respective timezones. Other companies and schools hold local celebrations.

The companies which contribute to the live stream are:

• The Australian Ballet
• Bolshoi Ballet
• The Royal Ballet
• The National Ballet of Canada
• San Francisco Ballet

The date of World Ballet Day since its inception in 2014 has been:

• 1 October 2014
• 1 October 2015
• 4 October 2016
• 5 October 2017 

A celebration of dance, World Ballet Day is an opportunity for audiences to see what it takes to be one of the world’s top companies, providing viewers around the world an inside look at the athleticism and dedication required for a life in ballet. Each company will introduce viewers to a variety of experiences from technique classes and rehearsals to backstage preparations.