Studio Brief 3 - Concept Generation/Development

Studio Brief 3 - Collaborative Practise - Leeds Library Exhibition Branding 

Concept Generation/Development

We started by our concept generation by brainstorming a range of ideas individually before coming together to perform a small interim critique with everyone presenting the very rough concepts they had come up with and the rest of the group giving their opinions and suggesting improvements. The main concepts that we felt could be developed further were;

•  2 colours focusing on the limitations of the brief to only use 2 colours within the designs. 
•  The big reveal creating suspense by covering the work and somehow revealing it to the audience 
•  45, a combination of level 4 and 5 students, so the focus is on the students producing the work 
•  Re-, using this prefix as the theme throughout the exhibition, re-cover the books re-design re-flect

We then as a group talked through each of these concepts and talked about how effective it could be, how we could develop this throughout all aspects of the exhibition, how engaging it would be to an audience and how strong the overall concept was. After these discussions we asked everyone which concept they felt would work the best. It was between the 45 and Re- concepts. We readdressed these concept in more detail and ultimately decided as a group that the 45 concept had more potential as was an overall stronger concept. 

We chose the 45 concept as our preferred concept as we felt it would be different to the other groups making it unique as the its focus is on the students so will raise awareness within the industry of Leeds College of Art graphic design as this is a live exhibition. We also felt the concept was versatile enough for us to work with and put our own stamp on it to make it more unique. We also felt this concept would be very contemporary and would be almost enigmatic enticing the audience to read on and want to find out what is 45. When developing this concept in the form of a mind map (below) we found 45 to me significant in more ways that our initial combination of level 4 and 5 students, for example its a triangular number, it is closely related to degrees (used within design) and also this degree concept to relate to the fact we are all degree students using polysemic interpretations. 

45 concept brainstorm

Finally as we realised the concept was fairly ambitious I came up with a succinct written paragraph that explained the concept and exhibition, we felt this helped to clarify the concept and meant we could continue with this theme without causing confusion. 

"FORTYFIVE is an exclusive cover art exhibition at Leeds Central Library featuring engaging interpretations of seminal texts by level 4 and 5 degree students at Leeds College of Art. This exciting collection is inspired by theoretical works and philosophers which have been uniquely reinterpreted to convey a contemporary update of these influential texts." 

We then focused on the exhibition and collateral creating similar mind maps articulating our combined vision for the exhibition and how we could link our concept into the visual display of the exhibition, we came up with ideas such as hanging the work at 45 degrees and placing vinyl decals at 45 degrees on the walls. We then talked about the feel we wanted the exhibition to have we decided on quite a contemporary and sophisticated feel with tasteful type choices and a modern colour palette. 

Exhibition Brainstorm

Finally we looked at the forms of collateral and advertising for the event, brainstorming a range of advertising techniques then narrowing this down to the forms we thought would be most effective and wanted to produce for our exhibition. We assigned each person with different collateral based on their current interest/design specialisms however decided we should all input to each design through regular crits and could each work on the designs if we could improve it, we felt this could be a good way to collaborate to ensure the best results and this would ensure that our designs were consistent and continuative so that it did not look like each piece had been done in a totally different theme. 

Advertising Brainstorm