nice little bit of design!

Jake Lefebure. I thought this piece of design was really applicable given it's political content and the really nice hand drawn qaulity it has (even though it's vector art). Just thought I'd share because I love it.

So alot has happened.

Ok so I've abandoned the paper fortune teller idea because it was getting me too hung up on details, so I've looked at the spinner idea more closely. I'm going to make it part of the front cover. I will show you templates and stuff on practice blog when i can be bothered to upload them! Anyway here is a little bit of what I've been looking at in terms of visual style:


As you can see, I want to take an illustrative approach, firstly because that's the kind of thing I can really get stuck into, secondly because I think it's the reverse of the usual visuals you find with politics (very smooth, very swish, very old graphics. see last post.) And therefore may be more engagin to students at universities and colleges who are sick of the same old thing. I like the fine detail in the hair above, I kind of want to apply that nice line work to my Obama illustration.


I picked this image and the one below because of the hand drawn type which I want to make part of my work. I really want to sell the hand crafted element, I think it will help make an engagement with my target audience who are generally apathetic to politics. The image below is amazing, it's actually cut out rather than drawn, wonderful.





Again this is a choice made because of the hand drawn element and the vivid colours that I intend to employ. I've started looking at using specific colours to represent different symbolic views of Obama, i.e. Red for communism. So this Image has kind of helped me a little bit in making colour choices.


Finally, this is a piece from a former third year who just graduated. Vicky Smith. I love her work and this kind of illustration is amazing. I don't intend to plagiarise her style, however I do feel that this piece does give alot of insight into the styles I'm thinking of working with.

Traditional American Politic graphics

Here are some examples of traditional political design, as you can see they're highly uninspiring. I really don't enjoy the smooth simple graphics that much. I want to put my own stamp on it. More information on this later!

WHO IS THIS FOR?

So given that my basic principle appears to be Obama is good because everyone has an opinion on him, meaning that he's a good litmus test to get people talking about politics, I figured my target audience would have to be the demographic that seems the least politically aware. The only thing I can register this by and looking at some of the websites I've viewed, anyone can judge this by is who turns out to vote and who doesn't.

To that end, here are a few links to websites that go into why young people don't vote, I'm tempted to ask people to fill out a questionnaire. From this research I hope to get a greater understanding of why the 18-24 demographic is really not politically aware or interested. I hope this can impact on the way I design my work significantly.

A few statistics on 18-24 year-olds votes here
Some more alarming statistics on this demographic and political apathy here

Here's a university organisation called catch 21 that are trying to raise political awareness in their university through TV productions etc. I think that this might be a good organisation to create this kind of little political awareness promotions kit centered around Barrack Obama that they can hand out at universities. They don't really have much of a corporate identity, so it gives me plenty of room to pay with visuals.

Another possibility is to do a promotional pack on behalf of the Young Citizenship Commission who are looking at ways to tackle declining political activity in young people. Again I could manufacture this package to be handed out free in order to sort of promote political awareness and get people talking about politics. Perhaps referring them to a website for further information.

The politic-o-meter

This is another idea I had for interactive paper design, if we had a meter that sort of registered these different stereotypes of Obama according to where they sat on the scale of right to left wing with a moveable arrow, creating a politcal meter designed according to your views on Obama. Here are some (badly designed) versions of what I mean.

Making/Using a paper fortune teller.

Whilst I think it's a good idea that has a great deal of room to work with, there's two things I don't know/can't remember: 1.How to make the thing. 2.How to use it once it's made.
This video solves the first problem


And thank wikipedia for the second answer:
"A cootie catcher or a fortune teller (sometimes called a scrunchie and a chatterbox in Australia), is an origami device used in fortune-telling games by children. A player asks a question, and the holder of the device answers using a regular algorithm like the examples below. Usually the questions, answers, colors and/or numbers (depending upon the playing method) are added to the device by or to suit the user.

There are several different methods by which the device can be used, most of which use the following pattern of steps:

The player first asks a question to the person holding the fortune teller. This question will be answered by the device. The holder then asks for a number and/or color. Once the number and/or color has been chosen, the holder uses his/her fingers to switch between the two groups of colors/numbers that occupy the inside area of the device. The holder switches these positions a specific number of times, which can be given by the amount of letters in the color selected, the number originally chosen, or the sum of both. Once the holder has finished switching the positions of the fortune teller, the player chooses one of the flaps that has been revealed. These flaps often have colors and/or numbers on them, and the chosen flap often is the same as the color/number originally chosen. The holder then lifts the flap and reads the fortune that is underneath. Any one of these steps may be repeated to suit the user.

These devices can be "rigged" by the placement of only even numbers on one "position" and only odd numbers on the other, resulting in forced placement to an even position. In this rigged version, bad fortunes are placed under all the even flaps and good fortunes under all the odd ones, so that when an unwitting player complains that they always get bad fortunes, the fortune teller can expose all the fortunes and claim that the high repeat rate is the fault of the player and not the device."

how can this be applied to what I'm doing? Well the opening question could be "Where do my politics lie?" the numbers/colours could then be replaced by different archetypes/stereotypes of the Obama persona, each one based on an opinion from somewhere on the scale from the far right-wing to the far left-wing. The flap underneath would then reveal their political inclination. This is just an initial theory of how it could work, I think through on-going design I will reach a conclusion as to how it could work.

Packaging Research.

Now I've nailed my concept, which will be on my design practice blog shortly, I decided to put together some ideas for packaging and what my product could be. I had a crit with Justin today, I basically outlined the idea that Obama is good because people can attach their own symbol to him, be it change (good or bad), hope, marxism, defeat, hype etc. and how I want to package Obama in these different ways. Justin suggested that what I was packaging and indeed the packaging it's self should be incredibly interactive to represent changeability of both what he can represent and indeed his own mantra of change. I agreed strongly with this, and he suggested what I've now found is called a paper "fortune teller" that children played with when they were little. I loved this, it was just the inspiration I needed. Below are fortune tellers or cootie "catchers" as those damn yanks call them. Also some wonderful interactive packaging and just some I like.




Cool, no? going to make some mock ups soon. Here's some cool packaging, all of which has something I want to implement.


This is by Sara Strand, They're all full colour and I imagine Litho-printed. I chose it for two reasons,
1. I like it when you print on card and earthy coloured paper stocks with a real grain to them.

2. The use of different colours to represent things seems like it could be very appropriate to my research. Overall the graphics are a bit cutesie for me, but still, nicely printed and again, different colours is something worth exploring.

I chose this Chew'd gum packaging design because I like the very illustratibe style, and illustration is something that I want to keep at the core of my practice. Also it colour codes like the one previously, which again seemed appropriate. Also it uses CMYK to do it, I'm a big fan of those core colours and how they work together.

These next 3 are by Burgopak, who I think just do really inventive packaging that always

seems to have a level of interactivity that goes above just opening a box etc. The one above has a two-way slide mechanism that I thought worked quite effectively. I also like the way the colours work together.

I thought that this was so cool, even though I hate smoking, though I have given it to Craig Laing for his Smoking is good project. I just love the sliding mechanism, I thought it was really

clever, and really thought about the proccess of getting a cigerette out of the packet.

Again, thought this one for the Baftas was just a really nicely packaged thing. I think the word BAFTA is embossed and maybe spot varnished? i don't know, I'll ask about that.

This design by Chris Chapman is a lovely and quirky way to package meet. I like how it uses the same format and varies the graphics to suit the object it contains, it's something to consider for packaging Obama in different ways. Again, I'd say this was Litho and it's full colour because it has photographic shots of meat. There we are.