OUGD503 - Penguin Design Awards: Design Development

OUGD503 - Studio Brief 1/Penguin Design Awards 

Design Development

The first component of development was sourcing the fruit which was surprisingly easy in a large city such as Leeds, I was eager to get to work on the development to set up a makeshift photography studio at home using a DSLR and gorilla pod to shoot a direct aerial shot of the fruit. I was impressed with the results of this, the photography was a nice symmetrical image and the fruit already started to resemble the vagina before any post production editing. 

My first attempt of development was unsuccessful in crating an engaging aesthetic, the yellow blends the papaya into the background but the orange flesh makes this stand out too harshly against the rest of the composition. The type is legible however fills too much of the cover removing the elements of white space, the overlaying text makes it hard to identify a single focal point within the composition and results in a busy aesthetic where the eye doesn't quite know where to look first. I wasn't satisfied with the design direction, concluding further development was needed around the fruit before text can be added. 

This development took me back to photoshop for further post production editing. I established there were too many individual colours within the original photography of the papaya, to reduce this I removed the the edge of the image into to allow the fruit to blend more naturally into the background. From this I then created various colour overlays using peach as a starting point as it would further connote the female form. This aesthetic is really effective in making the audience double take as from a distance the image genuinely looks like a vagina, this is accentuated through the gradient background that further suggests open legs,  only upon closer inspection can the image be identified as a fruit. The final post production editing works well as I have retained the detail within the photography such as the excess water on the fruit further adding to sexual connotations and making the image appear more life like. 

Taking a break from the design coming back to the project I realised some commercial considerations of the colour palette. Using peach for the design is too similar to a white skin tone which isn't representative of all women and could create racial backlash regarding the design from women of other ethnicities. Addressing this issue I changed the colour palette to neon pink, although still pink this extreme saturation makes the image unrealistic or unrepresentative of any one ethnicity creating a more ethically neutral statement. The neon colour-palette gives explicit connotations similar to the red light districts, which pokes further comical and satirical statements that these issues are not usually addressed in mass media. The neon colour palette is bold and eye-catching which will ensure it stands out against a busy book shelf in a crowded retail environment. 

I had real difficulty with the placement of the text within the composition. The central image needed to be the stark focal point of the cover for the concept to be most effective, however the information still needed to be clearly legible and available for the user to see at a glance. Further development resulted in this composition which is fairly modular with the typographic elements aligning with the image to create a sense of balance and order within it's composition. This arrangement works well however I will ask specifically for feedback regarding these issues in upcoming critiques and feedback sessions to inform further design development.