Music society poster

LCA MUSIC SOCIETY POSTER

ISSUU: http://issuu.com/ryan_daley/docs/band_poster/1

Pact coffee D&AD competition:

D&AD COMPETITION BRIEF BREAK DOWN:

PACT COFFEE AND FACEBOOK

ISSUU: http://issuu.com/ryan_daley/docs/pact_pres_d_ad_submission_eef61ad7c6c996

Introduction: The Pact/Facebook brief found on the D&AD website proposed that the designer that they must create something which: “Uses Facebook to not just raise awareness of Pact, but to make people want to try it. Think about Facebook as a platform in the widest sense: what are its capabilities, and how could these change in the future?”

Concept: Considering the current Facebook app use and the future Facebook for business, I decided to create a revolutionary new online platform entitled 'The coffee community'. This app was a means for fans of Pact’s coffee and non existing customers to become part of a forum style on line gathering involving the coffee connoisseur to the caffeine newbies, in which the precipitants could discuss, purchase, recommend and browse the range of coffees which Pact sell.

Research: I began by firstly looking into Pact’s current design styles along with other companies offering a similar service which delivered fresh products to the consumer’s door. Graze and Occado sprung to my attention, Graze’s design is similar to Pact’s already, going for the healthy earth vibe and with Occado being a middle class organic food delivery service, that brand related to Pact’s.

Proposal: From the research into Pact coffee as a company and visits to their websites, Facebook and twitter pages, I moved on to planning how Facebook could be used and integrated with this company to grow their fan base and widen their customer range. I proposed to design a new style of Facebook app ran by Pact, called the Coffee community.

The coffee community would be a recourse for coffee lovers and people who haven’t currently tried Pact’s coffee to talk to others, order their coffee, browse the products and recommend to their Facebook friends. Design considerations: Creating a new logo [Fig 2] for the Facebook app with combines the exisEng Facebook logo with the coffee pact logo with the multiple coffee beans representing the wide range of coffee blends and the many users of the Facebook app.

Using 3 stock images found in high resolution on Google images [fig 5] these have been combined in Photoshop to create a seamless 3 pages for the app which measures 2304px. The colours have been desaturated so the content jumps out. Text placement, colour and layout will be considered and based on previous research on other such companies.

Final outcome: Displayed above [fig 6.] is the final app design. The other images display the final designs mocked up into a contextual situational such as being used in conjunction with facebook and also on a computer screen, being used by a coffee drinker. The concept of this design is the strength and accompanied with the original styles put forward by Pact coffee, this is a strong concept and an app which facebook users and coffee consumers would engage with.

Final outcome: The final outcome strongly sticks to the original Pact Coffee’s brand guidelines, using their bright orange pantone, a similar choice of typefaces, suitable photography which works in conjunction with the content of the sit. The sign up box in the middle of the site looks particularly engaging, with the turquoise ‘sign up’ and ‘sign in’ buttons, encouraging new users to join the community.

This final response to the brief set is an innovative way which Facebook can be used both to engaging existing Pact coffee customers and also gather a fan base for a new audience of customers who intend to try out the great coffee blends that is sold by the company. Future considerations: The remainder of the app can be designed in the future which would involve profiles of coffee drinkers using their Facebook accounts and also the other pages of the app would be designed.

Pow wows T shirt

The Briefing

I chose to visit 99 designs, a website known for generally cheap and lousy design 'competitions' so that I have had experience using one of these websites.

After browsing through a couple of contests which stood out to me, I chose to attempt to create a Native American Pow Wow t shirt. I have had experience mocking up t shirt designs before so I felt that this project could be undertaken quite easily for me.

Background information:

To be used on Men Women, so A unisex t shirt must be designed therefor the design must be to masculine or feminine.

Color preferences Native American - I must research typical Native American colours as inspiration for this t shirt design.

These are lifestyle brands. Their designs take pieces of that lifestyle and use them in creative ways. Our goal is to create a set of merchandise for our visitors that will reflect the Native American Pow Wow life. We want a design that is catchy. It can be vibrant, modern, vintage, etc. Just use elements from Native American life to create an amazing design. 

The Research

"Pow Wows are the Native American people's way of meeting together, to join in dancing, singing, visiting, renewing old friendships, and making new ones. This is a time method to renew Native American culture and preserve the rich heritage of American Indians."

The publishers of this contest posted various pictures of inspiration to give the designer an example of what the final outcome should look like. They noted these  images as Style/Theme ideas:

  

The colours and the implements used by the characters in the images were something that massively grabbed my attention and I felt were unisex and were images which represented South American culture well in my mind. The Beads in the top image were something I personally considered to be rather feminine so for this reason I was rather reserved in using this image in my t shirt design.

I viewed the photographs that Powwows provided of their dance events to get a feel of the atmosphere of their group, this also gave me a great indication to the colours used in their vibrant and eccentric outfits.

Pow wows also suggested some other companies which revolve around south American culture and create t shirt prints, the difference between these and what Powwows as a company were doing was that Pow wows was a gathering of traditional south american dancers whom specialised in their bright coloured vivid imagery and iconography. The vectors on these t shirts denotes the wrong message and is trying to represent the more contemporary south american culture rather that the traditional one. 

I kept in mind the style which was accepted by the modern youthful people of this country, but stuck to my original research of the colours and traditional aspects of their ancestor's cultures.

Colour gathering 

Using the images suggested by Powwows, I used the colour grabbing tool to isolate the specific vibrant colours from the garments and art works create by these South American people. This would be the best way to get those colours into my digital world preparing to work with these for future reference.

Acting as a mood board of sorts, the gradient pattern jumps out to the viewer with the amount of colour used.

Using different types of gradient methods (On photoshop) I applied this colour gradient to 12 t shirts in ways that each varied from one and another.

In instances where the colour spanned from a certain spot on the t shirt, I chose for the colour to come from where the wearer's heart would be, as a concept for 'Powwows is in your heart', or relating to the culture of dancing always being in their heart and relating to these ancestors.

I didn't intend to submit these as designs for the competition, but these could be used as a background for the t shirts or work alongside vectors.

Final designs

From the research I gathered and the experiments I had done so far I moved onto combining the photographs of the events 'Powwows' run and the colours I had discovered in my research.

I made a choice to use the image of children on the t shirts rather than specifically men or women due to the fact that children represent more of a unisex and universal role as part of this dance society, in adverse to solely putting adult men or women on the t shirts.

Using photoshops cutout methods, I removed the background of the children dancing at the events and imposed more icons which represented traditional American Indian culture.

Using the colours researched from the photographs of South American/ American Indian cultures, I created a painted pattern which I then went on to overlay over my cut out images of the photographs from earlier.

This is the final design which I created.

Bright 

Vivid

Exciting 

Eye catching

I Imposed the photograph design onto a t shirt and then onto a man wearing the t shirt to put this design into context. At this stage I decided the t shirt needed to represent the dance company more so I chose to put Pow wow's logo onto the design.

Here the design complete with the logo can be seen. 

The colours on the t shirt are very pungent and luminescent so this would require digitally printing.

I have included an example of the t shirt design desaturated to show how it could be printed in monochrome colours and still be effective.

Evaluative stage

Here the design complete with the logo can be seen. 

The colours on the t shirt are very pungent and luminescent so this would require digitally printing.

I have included an example of the t shirt design desaturated to show how it could be printed in monochrome colours and still be effective.

http://issuu.com/ryan_daley/docs/pow_wows/1

Reddit responses to my survey question

Reddit was an inlet of primary research and opinions of members of the public also, popular amongst the American crowd, Reddit would provide me with opinions of those overseas in comparison to my mainly English tabloid research.

I posted my question topic on reddit to get an opinion from a anonymous group of people and to find out if there was a consensus to be had.

The results were more detailed of those found on survey monkey and people had more to say, forming an actual debate about the topic.

I don't think there is any evidence women are misrepresented in the music industry. Most of the highest selling artists of all time are women, e.g. Madonna, Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, ABBA (since we're including co-ed bands), Rhianna, Beyonce, etc etc.
Notice they are all pop artists. Leeds festival is a rock festival. There aren't many women in rock music, and there aren't many women in Leeds fest. 
Maybe the correct question is why don't more women choose rock?

I wouldnt blame those promoters. There are just way more male musical acts than female

Is this not pretty much just a simple reflection on the amount of female acts out there who are worthy of a big festival gig? I'm not making a judgement there, just really, how many girl bands are there as opposed to male bands? I've watched a lot of live music over the years from bars to bigger venues to stadiums and festivals, and it's quite rare to see a female band.

I would say it is just about who is going to make the most money for the promoters. Pretty much who is the most popular. More male bands might be more popular so there are more males than females in the lineup.

There are less women than men in the music industry? But no, that couldn't be a reasonable explanation. It must be the patriarchy.

• No sexist guy wants to see a woman rock the fuck out. I could write all day about sexism in music, especially rock music.

• I have nothing against women in music, in fact I wish there were more. I'm just saying there are more men in the industry. That's all.

*Women are treated as sex objects or novelties in the music scene. If I had a dollar for every time I heard "I'm in a band with a female [instrumentalist/singer]"...

*Guys constantly think that everything women do is in relation to them. They think that if a woman plays guitar she's just doing it to get attention from guys, not because she enjoys playing guitar.

*Bands with only women are constantly referred to as "girl bands" while bands with only guys always are referred to only as "bands".

*Women are constantly seen in relation to men, not as individuals, leading to comments like "she's good for a girl" or "she's one of the best female guitarists". You don't ever hear "he's good for a guy" or "he's one of the best male guitarists".

*There are plenty of female fronted rock bands, but they're overlooked because men expect only men to be good musicians. And once again, you never hear "male fronted band", because men are not seen as novelties.

There's a general bias against music women like, it's not considered "cool". Taylor Swift (for example) can only be a "guilty pleasure" at best. Festivals want a cool line-up, so because of this it's ends up mostly music that guys enjoy. And guys mostly want music by other guys, for some reason.