Studio Brief 2 - Concept & Method

Studio Brief 2 - Design Processes, Research

Final Concept and Method

With my concept defined as coins and refined to 50p pieces I wanted to finalise my concept into a succinct concept that is focused and engaging. My first task was to cross reference my fathers collection with the list on the royal mint website (http://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/coin-design-and-specifications/fifty-pence-coin)

I then chose a selection of the 50p from his collection which I felt had the most engaging historical design and aesthetically pleasing imagery. 

I have decided to take a different approach to the brief that I feel will make my collection more interesting. Instead of collecting 20 facts, statistics, opinions etc on the actual coins e.g; the specifications (weight ,size, circulation) which I feel would be very dry both for me to collate and as a presentation for an audience. Instead I have decided to look at each coin individually collating data about the reverse design of the coin e.g; a fact, statistic, opinion on each historical event. I feel this will be much more engaging for myself as I enjoy learning about new things but also for an audience who will have potentially seen the design but have no clue to their actual meaning. I asked a range of students for their opinions to this idea in an informal critique and they all agreed this would make the topic more interesting that if I were to just collate data on the physical coins. 

I then selected 20 coins from my fathers collection in order to collate one form of data (Fact, Stat, Word, Opinion, Picture) for each coin. I then found that he had a considerable number of the olympic collection of 50p pieces put into circulation to promote the London 2012 Olympic games in which 30 coins all featured a different event. Due to this I decided to split the collection into two halves, one documenting important British historical events and the other documenting the London 2012 Olympic Games. Another reason this split was intentional was to make 50 facts on each part of the collection reinforcing the 50 pence piece.

I decided that my end goal would be to produce two booklets one documenting British history and the other documenting the London 2012 Olympic games through the context of the reverse designs featured on 50 pence pieces. I will entitle the publication 'A wealth of knowledge' as it plays on the use of money and is a term used to suggest a range of knowledge which is what the publication will aim to deliver.