1. Inspiration for music branding project

    Two business cards: one for clients, one for suppliers.
    “Clients,” says Gerard, “preferred the bottom one.”

    Inspiration and a fresh perspective for the next Part 3 project was provided last week from Gerard Saint, founder and creative director of Big Active.

    Big Active, who are responsible for the visual image of hundreds of artists since it was founded in the early 90s, (notably Keane, Beck, Goldfrapp, Basement Jaxx) work on the philosophy that the best work is appropriate to the ‘spirit’ of the artist or band. Ideas and input to the final brief comes from “all sorts of people” — from the band or artist themselves to their management and the record label. Each project, Gerald told us, is really different; some artists have a very clear idea of how they want themselves and their sound to be ‘packaged’, others prefer less involvement and take their lead from the creative thinking and image making of the designers, illustrators and photographers that form part of the Big Active network.

    Gerard spoke about the changing landscape of music design. In a world where CDs and downloads are essentially delivering the same information, and, furthermore, consumers can ‘cherry-pick’ tracks without hearing the whole album, designers need to rethink the physical product in a way that gives it a reason to exist outside the digital content it carries (make it collectable! make it interactive!)

    He was optimistic: “It’s just the medium of delivery that is changing. CDs, vinyl, digital formats can sit side by side, each making the most of its own particular strength. Music design is becoming a much broader discipline; that can only be a good thing for designers in the future.”

    Questions from students went into extra time and students were invited to visit the Big Active studio in London.

  2. Part 2 conference branding

    The last practical project in Part 2 is designed to consolidate design skills learned over the last year. Over four weeks, students develop a brand for an architectural conference. They apply it to a conference poster (or poster series), conference leaflet, and ‘a third item’. Good responses were those that considered these aspects of the brief:

    The challenge of scale. The poster had to be A1, to exploit the possiblities of large scale graphics; the leaflet had to be made out of an A3 sheet, that was cut and folded but not glued. The brand had to ‘read’ small, but ‘engage’ big.

    Composition. The distribution of primary, secondary, and tertiary elements on the canvas. In other words, making the pieces work on a macro ‘I know what this is about’ level, and a micro ‘I can find what I need to know’ level.

    Intuitive handling of the other bits: depth, or foreground / background illusion; abstraction / representation, sense of perspective (this is an architectural conference after all), use of colour and pattern, use of type (as image element, and as message) 

    Typography. The given programme text had hidden challenges. Students imposed their own house style, and found ways of presenting a large amount of complicated information in a small format, that reflected the brand and was easy to navigate.

    Originality, surprise, humour. Having ticked all the boxes above, this is the thing that makes the difference. Some projects just drew you in, made you think twice, or look again, or smile. Have a look…