Design sheets

The final design sheets for this project contain the information backing up my practical piece.

The research involved, the idea generation process, the development of the final piece and finally the end photographed product.

Evaluation

Ryan Daley
Context of Practice

OUGD601

Evaluation

Being able to research into topics such as feminism, The gaze, Female objectification and the history of film posters all in one essay has provided me with a vast knowledge of various subjects, the topics researched ranged over decades featuring the Second wave of feminism and the golden age of cinema to modern day. Film poster design and cinema in general being something that interests me as a designer means that the topics that have been discovered will remain with me throughout my design future.

Having written a complete paper on the topic of my choice and then designed, what I feel to be a relevant practical piece alongside this, the topics I had researched were thoroughly relatable to my practical piece and the finalised piece that was designed made use of new founded techniques and methods of design that hadn’t previously been used in my design history.

Conducting primary research in the form of interviews provided some valuable information benefitting the dissertation. Interviews in adverse to surveys gave the freedom to quote the interviewees and gain wider opinions on a demographic of my own age. Secondary research was conducted also, something that thanks to the previous COP modules over the past two years, there was no problem with. Gathering research and quotes from books is something that comes freely to me now also feel comfortable referencing the gathered information.

Information that can be analysed and critically compared to other sources through means of triangulation and other methods has been crucial for widening my knowledge of the design world and greater contextual issues.  

Research provided me with knowledge and aid when created final designs, critiques with peers and tutors gave valuable feedback and design direction when I needed this. Experimenting with new methods of design along with new software was valuable and will benefit me in projects to come.

Time planning was something that went successfully during this brief reaching the deadline, completing a full dissertation and also experimenting and printing a practical response. Time planning along with regular tutorials provided me with goals and objectives to aim for that I managed to reach and successfully stay on track for.

Using my dissertation as a verbal representation of my findings, along with my blog and design boards that conclude a visual representation of what I’ve learnt these all collectively show my findings for this project and how masses of context and research can thoroughly aid a design project.

Synthesis

Ryan Daley
Context of Practice

OUGD601

Synthesis

The title of my dissertation being ‘How does Graphic Design represent women in the film industry?’ was always going to take a critical feminist view point from the outset, this provided me with an area of focus and an access to secondary sources of information. Research gathered for this dissertation introduced me to feminist writers such as Laura Mulvey and Betty Friedan, writers who I had never encountered before and didn’t see how their philosophies could relate to graphic design.

Interviews conducted for the dissertation evidenced how the demographic of my choosing had their opinions firmly set on how females were portrayed in the movie industry. Ideas such as naked women being used as objects, film posters not representing enough of the character’s personality with a focus on the body all became evident. People’s outlook on a patriarchal society evidenced that how women had been treated in the past had improved but would always be stuck in this current situation.

Older film posters were discussed such as illustrated James Bond posters giving a range of contextual contexts to ask questions about in the interviews. The results showed that the depiction of illustrated females in films didn’t cause as much offence or cause for concern as photographic images did. These design processes reflected the advancements in technology, how originally film posters were hand rendered and illustrated and now photographs were used to depict women.

The practical element took on the design features gathered from the dissertation involving ideas about the male gaze, female objectification and hand rendered film posters. This in turn led me to creating an illustrated film poster for James Bond’s Casino Royale, a long running series that always depicts the protagonist as a lothario and a womanizer. A film series with a heritage in objectifying females and an almost sexist level of superiority.

The knowledge gathered from the Context of practice module will stay with me throughout my design career, valuable information on the male gaze and how females can be portrayed has been instilled into my motives as a designer. Design techniques to avoid offending an audience but to still convey a message will be capitalised on.

Through out the remainder of my degree film poster briefs will be tackled and conversations have been made about collaborating with a filmmaker and leading the design and branding for these films, the knowledge found from writing this dissertation will definitely benefit me there.

Overall the writing experience has been valuable and the descriptive skills gained for writing the essay will prove valuable. The ability to conduct first hand research and interviews will definitely be a process used in the future.

Providing theory and philosophy behind a design gives the designs greater meaning and can create more influence on an audience, this is a topic I have always been interested in with my design work and a subject that will continuously be research and acted upon in my future of designing.

Time planner

These pictures represent the diary styled time planner that was followed in an attempt to keep onto of the dissertation project. Being a long running project spanning over 3 months it was useful to keep track of the dates and how many weeks I had at my disposal.

Sticking with the time planner and knowing when my tutorials were going to be massively helped me to stay on track, especially approaching the end of the module when printing slots were taken up and more stress began to pile up.

Letter outline poster

Design ideas

An alternative design idea was thought of using the female figure from one of Michael Gillette’s famous James Bond film posters and interesting the content of the dissertation in location inside the layout boxes. 

The poster created would represent a series of posters containing the layouts gathered from Gillette’s posters.

The typesetting layout idea would contain the substance of my dissertation and range across 4 A2 posters.

Unfortunately due to time restraints and learning a whole new design process only one poster was complepted and not to an ideal standard.

As mentioned a complete set of posters would feature 4 varying outlined women from Gillette’s  series and feature the entire dissertation as a series.

The single completed poster was the printed on a gloss stock at A2 size to resonate with the processes used when creating actual film posters. 

The final poster is not representative of a film poster and more a means of displaying the dissertation the female layout has been used to draw in an audience and also as a connection to the content of the essay.

Gil sans light was chosen as the body copy in the poster, it was found that bolder or heavier fonts made the poster illegible and readability was one of the main features of this poster.  The choice of Gil Sans also relates to the origins of James bond and the connotations of being typically Britishness that this film series contains.

Colour could have been added to these posters carrying on Gillette’s initial designs further but this would have again take away from the readability of the poster which is the key feature. 

The final print has resulted in quite a successful poster, from a distance clearly showing some idea of an outline of a woman and from a closer view point the text is visible and also readable. 

Illustrated james bond poster

  

Final product

Using the vinyl cutter machine equipped with a biro pen this design was converted into a platform the machine could read, using illustrated layers that would create the tone of the piece. 

The decision to create an illustrated piece came from the findings in the essay with interviewees stating that the use of women on film posters in an illustrated manner detached from the feelings of objectification and staring at the female figure. Also a connection was made between the original James Bond posters such as Thunderball that was illustrated and also painted in a traditional style, a connection was made between these and a more contemporary design approach was applied to Casino Royale’s poster producing a one off illustrated modern looking piece. 

The design was illustrated onto watercolour paper as the texture of this would create the best outcome with a hand made feel.

Potential for the final design to be scanned and printed onto gloss paper always exists to create an actual film poster finalised piece. 

A full range of illustrated James Bond posters would have created a whole response to the dissertation but due the amount of time needed to print and illustrate these pieces this was hard to achieve. For this reason the film with the greatest connection to the female gaze was chosen.

The additional information found on a film poster such as the small print, director, date of release etc has not been added to this piece due to over complicating the design and potentially confusing the vinyl plotting machine in the process. 

This finished art work would be ready to be transferred over and equipped with this information, potentially then open to being used to advertise the film.

Overall a piece was created that reflected my findings from conducting first hand research into the opinions of female representation on film posters and second hand research into feminist books and the impact this can have on an audience.

Final photographs

Final design idea

Moving on from Gillette’s type setting poster idea, another idea was generated and it was to redesign a James Bond Casino Royal poster. This film differs from the rest due to James Bond, the protagonist, actually having feelings for the lead woman and pursuing this into a relationship.

The film features a lot of poker scenes in adverse to the other films in the series, the story of this film focussing around a major poker game against one of Bond’s enemies. 

Knowing the final outcome of this design would involve an illustrated pen and ink outcome, care was taken not to over complicate the design.

The two main characters are featured in such a way that convey feelings of Romance and connection to each other. in adverse to the original Casino Royal poster that makes use of sexualising the female character and showing her as just another Bond girl.

Consideration was taken to ensure the plot of the film still carries through with the redesign, the poker cards found at the top of the poster represent how the film is featured around this card game and resonate with the title involving the word Casino.

The photograph of the two characters shows a connection between romantic feelings and finally the gun as part of the 007 in title signifies that this is an action film. 

The main messaged that was intended from this film poster was to represent an idea of equality between both the male and female main characters of the film this is due to how the topics discussed in the essay explain how males are generally the leading archetypes productions such as this and have been known to show patriarchal views.

The choices made not to over complicated the design left this poster feeling sparse and not necessarily conveying much of a message or much of the story, but knowing that this poster was to then go on to be illustrated meant that the simplicity of the design was key.